I'm fully aware of that, however currently as a population we have nearly nothing to show for decades of oil extraction other than pockets of extremely concentr

I'm fully aware of that, however currently as a population we have nearly nothing to show for decades of oil extraction other than pockets of extremely concentrated wealth. If we make a wild assumption that we did exactly the same with our reserves and somehow contrived to create exactly the same sovereign wealth fund, that'd work out to around £13,000 per person. That's not enough to make everyone a millionaire, but it's much greater than the £0 we put aside the way we did it. Of course this is speculation, featuring ifs/buts and using numbers plucked from our neighbour across the North Sea ... however it's pretty plain to see that we screwed this opportunity up.