MASTERCHEF

Good Morning Taxpayers

Big John Swindly here, fresh from beating Gordon Ramsay et al in the Great Scottish Cook Off.

Today I thought I'd share one of my famous recipes with you:

 "Le Grande Fantasie de Petrole du Mer de Nord".

Firstly the ingredients:

1/2 gm of factual information
170gms of wild speculation
150 gms of wishful thinking
5 million gullible Scots

So, here we go.

Firstly. Conditions in the kitchen need to be absolutely correct. I usually wait for the BBC or some other evil Unionist Tory propagandist to publish a document that might prove detrimental to The Great Struggle for Independence. This happened only last week when a draft government paper was leaked to the BBC claiming that uncertainty on future oil reserves and the volatility of pricing thereof might mean that any Treasury of New Caledonia might have to make public spending cuts should the numbers go against us.

It fair raised the few remaining hairs on my baldy napper I can tell you, but that was as nothing compared to the torrent of spleen vented down the phone by our glorious leader, and future King of Scotland, Bravebelly himself.

"How in the name of William Wallace did they get hold of that?!?" he yelled "Johnny, boy, get cookin'! I want enough oil to fill David Murray's wine cellar a billion times over by this time tomorrow. You understand boy?"

One does not dare to misunderstand our great leader.

So, conditions set, off I went.

Step One: Prepare a thin base of factual information
Step Two: Take the OBR's oil predictions for 2017/18 and simply double. Don't worry, the plebs won't notice.
Step Three: Separate wishful thinking from factored in volatility and leave volatility to one side. Add wild speculation.
Step Four: Place in oven and leave to cook for one week

Result: £ 26 billion of extra oil revenues. Just like that.

"Johnny, boy. You'll go down as a national hero. " cooed our great leader when I phoned him with the news. "Your grandchildren will be naming streets in Paisley after to you. Now, what about these plans for a mansion tax. Can we start with David Murray's wine cellar?"