Scots’ rig lie

SCOTLAND’S entire income from North Sea oil in the past year was £29million less than Paul Pogba’s transfer fee.

Remember that snippet whenever the SNP talk tough about a new independence vote or “blocking Brexit”.

It’s a huge bluff, a smokescreen to hide that the financial case for Scotland to go it alone has been blown to bits.

Oil revenue is crucial to it. The SNP originally expected £7.9billion in 2015-16. They were more than 99 per cent out. The oil price collapse has reduced the takings to just £60million.

The sole reason this is not an unimaginable catastrophe for Scotland is that it is bailed out as part of the UK.

It could only go it alone with ­monstrous tax rises, a savage austerity programme that would make George Osborne’s look like a Disney cartoon and by reinventing its economy entirely.

As for it rejoining the EU post-Brexit, Brussels would turn Scotland down flat with its finances in such hopeless chaos.

Ludicrously, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon claims “the foundations of our economy remain strong” and that the biggest threat is Brexit.

It’s utter cobblers and she knows it.

Instead of sustaining a career griping about Westminster, she should try ­governing — fixing her NHS and her flagging education system.

She should remember that the majority of her people voted FOR the union.

And thank her lucky stars Scotland isn’t already freefalling, alone, into the abyss.

Unskilled tide

WELL over a third of the vast net migration to the UK in the latest figures had no confirmed job to come to.

Turning them away should be the first step as Theresa May sets about the daunting task of reducing the 327,000 total to a level Britain can cope with.

Voters are obviously far more concerned with unskilled migrants arriving hoping to pick up work than those whose talents are provably in demand.

The statistics reveal nothing yet about the impact of June’s Brexit vote.

But the PM still needs a rapid solution on immigration, to give certainty to the British people, the EU migrants already here and those preparing to come.

Dodgy Beeb

THE BBC’s refusal to reveal top stars’ ­salaries is both arrogant and dishonest.

The corporation pretends it’s for licence-payers’ own good. That the ­“talent” would hike their pay demands if they all knew what the big names get.

So what? It could turn them down.

The Beeb’s real motivation is its own embarrassment that it hands about £1.5million to such run-of-the-mill broadcasters as Gary Lineker.

The public has a right to know how money extracted from it by law is spent.