We’ve just had to have a bit of a sit down after trying in vain to get our heads around the dizzying spin deployed in a story in this morning’s Herald, which appears to utilise some form of crazed Catch 22 to ensure that no matter whether an independent Scotland was stony broke or rolling in cash, it’d still end up skint.

We’ll give you a moment to guess who wrote it, and then we’re going to step through the piece line by line and see if we can figure out what sort of madness is afoot.

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Warning over Scots EU costs

Magnus Gardham SCOTLAND’S payments to the European Union could rise from £124 million to £673m under independence, official figures suggest.

They do? Which official figures are these? Where can we read them? And what exactly do you mean by “suggest”?

An independent Scotland, with oil reserves, would become the third richest country in the EU in terms of GDP per head.

That sounds like good news!