Most of those numbers are incorrect, if not downright false.

Yes, but when you are running countries, you burn through billions pretty quickly.

It is not the Bank's debt; it is the UK government's. You can read the DMO contracts if you like. And the debt does not have a monetary purpose: it is issued to finance government spending.

You're right, sterlingisation can't be blocked, but full-on currency union certainly can. I don't think anyone in the Yes camp gets that no-one in Westminster is interested in entering into a currency union - not with Europe, and not with Scotland either. What's in it for them?

So why are so many terrorists engineers?

The largest field discovered in the last 25 years produces 0.2m bpd - included in the 1.5m figure - and you think that supports your argument how, exactly?

You make the assumption that the planet will not transition to a primarily renewables energy mix. Given that a number of renewable sources are already competitive with fossil fuels and investment at scale is only beginning in this sector, I would suggest that is a hell of an assumption to hang your country's prosperity on.

Yes, but a startling proportion of that 1/3 is vertical. Or loch.

Sadly, the chances are it will be cataclysmic. Scotland's spending and tax revenues balance at the moment only through using oil money. Oil will last for ten, fifteen, twenty years if we're lucky. Then we will be sitting on an NHS with an aging, sicker population. No-one - and I really do mean no-one - has a cogent explanation of how Scotland will deal with this.

No, I'm afraid you don't understand a few things. Firstly, Scotland's oil is small beer on the global stage. The North Sea produces ~1.5m bpd, OPEC alone is something like 30m. Scotland could turn off the taps and the planet wouldn't even blink.

So, the inrush of global partners wouldn't happen. More to the point, why would they rush to jump into bed with a government that has already stood up and said it is seriously considering reneging on UK debt? Which, by the way, is not the norm for newly independent countries and would be remembered by the markets. If they lent at all, they would certainly require paying for it. You really want to pay Greek interest rates on your government debt?

Think Venezuela, not Norway.

Correct. There is a missile in Bumfukski with Glasgow's name painted on it. Kicking nukes out the Clyde won't change that.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to consider the practicalities of a major upheaval.

Even now, Putin is hovering over the list of first strike cities, ready and waiting to strike Glasgow and Edinburgh from the list. Let me save you, he whispers gently. Expel those weapons. You'll be so much safer.

While I agree with your philosophy, in practice what happens is that companies become massive tax avoidance holes. People put their personal wealth in investment companies, which simply accumulate and accumulate income with no tax being paid except on that which the owner withdraws, which once you've bought a house, farm, car, helicopter and country club membership is not all that much.

Have you considered growing the hell up?

Richy, this is the 19th century. 19th century, meet Rich. 19th century, Rich wants to hear about the good old days when a minor cut would routinely kill through infection.

In all seriousness, better hygiene is doing most of the heavy lifting to control it. The problem comes when you're in a situation where that's not enough, like being in hospital with another health problem.

Sorry, I meant that the spending capability is there if the financial case justifies it.

And no, there aren't massive swathes of potential avenues of attack. There are only the pathways that bacteria don't share with humans where the drug has no other toxic effect. There will be new antibiotics - no question - but its questionable whether there will ever be another sulphonamide or penicillin.

We did have a little thing called "smoking" which was quite popular in the 20th century. A second order effect was something called "industrialisation". Another second order effect was the fact you became ten times less likely to die of accident or disease. Yeah, certain cancers in certain cases are driven by environmental exposures, and other cancers have trends we don't have explanations for. From there to "it's getting worse" is an unsupportable leap.