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MY eldest daughter was five when she first brought me breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day, with a hand drawn card and bowl of cereal on a wobbly tray.

On Sunday, nothing much had changed. She has the same long brown hair, sweet nature and big hazel eyes at the age of 23. The breakfast was a bit more sophisticated and the hands steadier.

She is an engineer by trade so I get DIY too. She recently fixed the doorbell with a spring retrieved from an old Barbie doll.

When she won a place at an American University to study ocean engineering, we were all thrilled for her. It was an opportunity to broaden horizons.

But pride was tinged with a sad suspicion we’d never have her home again for long. Too many generations of Scots mothers have watched their kids leave for a better life.

But my daughter came back. Oil, gas and renewable energy mean Scotland offers some of the best opportunities in the world for an ambitious young graduate engineer like her.

Last month Oil & Gas UK, the industry body, said member companies plan £100billion worth of investment in the North Sea.

You don’t commit that sort of money unless you expect a very handsome return.

So don’t let ANYONE tell you that this oil, 90 per cent of which lies in Scottish waters under international law, is some kind of hindrance. Production has fallen in recent years because of the recession.

Next year the revenue will be lower again because the massive investment will take about three years to start kicking in.

When it does, we will have a second oil boom. The head of Oil & Gas UK, Malcolm Wicks, says: “A significant upturn can be predicted over the next three to four years rising to two million (barrels) per day by 2017, with significant benefits to the UK economy.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) say future demand from China will keep oil prices high for decades, reaching 150 to 270 dollars per barrel by 2020.

No wonder Westminster is determined to hang on to Scotland.

When oil was discovered in the 70s, a government economist called Gavin McCrone wrote that it would make Scotland richer than Switzerland.

That report was kept secret by UK Labour and Tory governments for three decades.

Unionist politicians claimed Scotland is too poor to runs its affairs.

What deception.

They claim oil is somehow a problem for Scotland because it is “volatile”.

More deception. Norway is more dependent on oil than Scotland – they don’t have our whisky, tourism and financial services sectors.

So if volatility was an issue, Norway would be an economic mess. Instead, they are the richest and fairest country in the world.

The truth is that oil prices are volatile – but ever rising. Every country in Europe faces a tough job recovering from the recession that began in 2008 and has to deal with the challenges of an ageing population.

Oil puts Scotland in a far better position to cope than other countries, but only if we control it ourselves.

Last week a leaked paper showed the SNP Finance Minister John Swinney was thinking hard about how to deal with the challenges of an ageing population and the demands on welfare.

We should be worried if he wasn’t thinking about these things.

If we want good pensions and decent incomes in the future, we need to get hold of the oil wealth taken from us in the past.

And we must ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to our renewable energy wealth. Isn’t it strange that Scotland has lower average wages than England?

But per head of population, we are a much wealthier country. The eight richest in the world, according to OECD figures – higher than the UK.

Every Scot sends £824 a year more to the Treasury than they get back, according to official figures.

For the past three decades it has funded a boom in the south-east. It funded the wasteful Iraq war. It paid for the Channel Tunnel, the transformation of London Docklands and tax cuts for the super rich.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor Joe Stiglitz recently told the Scottish Parliament that the UK had “squandered” North Sea oil wealth.

We cannot allow that to happen again. But Westminster plan to waste £35billion of Scotland’s oil riches on a high-speed railway that stops at Manchester. They plan to burn £100billion renewing Trident nuclear weapons we don’t need.

We face massive cuts and uncertainty now as part of a UK that has lost its triple-A credit rating.

We face reduced pensions now in this unequal union. We face the cruel bedroom tax, rising fuel prices and punishing levels of VAT now.

I am fortunate. Thanks to North Sea oil and gas I have my daughter close by. But think of the families that were split up in the 70s, 80s and 90s as thousands left Scotland for a better life.

All the while, Scotland was neglected, our industries allowed to die as our country was drained of its rightful inheritance.

Every family in Scotland should get to benefit from the blessings of oil and gas.

The profits from our coal, our steel, our shipbuilding, whisky and fishing were not controlled by the people who live in Scotland.

We have a choice next year. We can choose a future that’s much like the past. Indeed, which is much worse as UK cuts bite.

Or we can choose a better future for all of our children.