CLYDE shipyard workers are no strangers to dire threats.

Today's stick sees the Govan and Scotstoun yards suffering 800 more redundancies as BAE's MoD contracts end.

Their carrot is being awarded the contract for the Royal Navy's new Type 26 warships.

That decision will end shipbuilding in Portsmouth after 500 years, with the loss of 1000 jobs, prompting accusations of Union chicanery to keep Scots sweet.

Rubbish. Had there been no referendum, BAE would have made exactly the same decision because, as they announced, "the Clyde was the best location, given their experience of complex warships".

Had Portsmouth offered better value, work on the Clyde would have dried up pronto.

BAE shareholders don't give a toss for political appeasement, they are interested only in dividends.

Contracts for the warships won't be awarded until after next year's September 18 referendum.

In the event of a Yes vote, Scotland wouldn't become independent until 2016, so would we technically still be in the UK?

It doesn't matter. Defence secretary Philip Hammond says an independent Scotland would lose those contracts since no UK warships have ever been built in foreign yards.

Is that so? So why are Tories and Labour fighting to keep the UK's only nuclear deterrent housed in our wee foreign land?

And why, if they don't want foreigners building their ships, will they plead with foreign Weegies to export their skills to Portsmouth?

This talk of a ban on foreign yards smells like a No campaign blue and red herring. Royal Navy tankers are currently being built in South Korea in a £452million deal.

BAE Systems India last week revealed No 10's approach to New Delhi to jointly design and build frigates, and the same offer has been made to the Aussies and others.

BAE workers may question why, amid such deals and guaranteed billions from the MoD, the company can casually sack them between contracts.

But returning warship-building to Portsmouth won't be plain sailing.

The UK's defence budget is being shredded and now we hear the BAE consortium's two new aircraft carriers will cost £6.2billion, almost double the original 2007 Labour government estimates.

It is actually a non-aircraft carrier programme, since in shambolic truth we have no planes capable of using either of the two ships.

Queen Elizabeth starts sea trials by 2020, but we are so skint that Prince of Wales could be sold or mothballed (but just think what they'll save on planes).

Factor in relocating Govan's infrastructure to Portsmouth, when the time delay alone would see costs rocket, and George Osborne's head will burst. Every cloud, indeed.

It will come as a bitter fact to workers devastated at losing their jobs, but Clyde redundancies on their own will not be a vote changer next September, no more than will Trident or the EU or membership of NATO.

Govan workers may like to ask why their local Labour MP, Ian Davidson, and other Scottish politicians are lobbying - with shameful enthusiasm, it seems - for shipbuilding to be handed back to Portsmouth in the event of a Yes vote.

Would not an independent Scotland need frigates of our own?

Tory government mouthpiece Alistair Carmichael is supposed to serve all of Scotland as Secretary of State.

But is the Lib Dem MP not in an anomalous position, representing as he does the good folk of Orkney and Shetland, who themselves have made noises about breaking away from the UK and Scotland?

I'm sure Mr Carmichael will convince his constituents they are Better Together, whenever he decides where that is.

It was the champion Tory mouthpiece, Margaret Thatcher, who started the demise of shipyards in the 1980s.

Lack of government investment, poor management, and unions who fought modernisation, including an integrated steel and shipbuilding industry, did the rest.

Those Unions are still at it. After Unite's capitulation in the Grangemouth dispute and their part in alleged vote rigging in Falkirk, their leader Len McCluskey is now under investigation over alleged irregularities in his own election.

MEANWHILE the GMB union have announced support for the No campaign.

David Cameron has promised to consult Scots about a revised devolution settlement if we vote to retain the Union.

Thatcher made similar noises before the 1979 referendum, then reneged after deciding the Scottish question had been answered.

Instead she gave us industrial collapse, the poll tax, and financed her reign with £100bn in North Sea oil.

Today what's left of shipbuilding is under threat, we have the bedroom tax and the oil still flows south.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Engineers need something to build

DAVID CAMERON demanded last week that students be steered towards engineering.

Where does he envisage them all working?

Not Scotland, anyway. We no longer make things. More than 300 years of London-dominated Union have left us with no shipyards, no steelworks, no mines, no car- making, not even the facilities to manufacture a Hoover.

We already had our world-class universities.

When the oil is gone, you won't hear a cheep about Better Together.