I REFER to the article by Jim Fairlie in the National on July 3 (Here is how Scotland takes control of indyref 2). I agree that, as he says, Scotland must start to act like an independent country. We are after all a nation in which the will of the Scottish people has been established as sovereign.
It was first established away back at the time of the Declaration of Arbroath and was passed again and confirmed in Westminster just last year. So, yes, it’s time we stopped playing the underling. We’ve been told on numerous occasions by England that we are “equal partners” in this Union. OK, they don’t treat us like equal partners, but it’s time we asserted the equality that they tell us we have.
We should now be telling them, almost exactly as Jim Fairlie states, that we are going to have a referendum, and not “please can we have one?”. To do it the way Jim Fairlie suggests makes it foolproof as being the will of the Scottish people expressed in a legitimate election.
READ MORE: Joanna Cherry calls for SNP debate on how to secure indyref2
The only difference I would suggest is that we can’t afford to wait until next year. By then we will be out of the EU and at the mercy of Westminster with its Henry VIII laws. We have already heard from the Tories that the UK is one country without borders. It has been stressed to us that ministers are not required to speak to the Scottish Government since they are UK Government ministers who are answerable only to the UK Government, as has happened with Steve Barclay, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
The next obvious step from this point is that Westminster will rule that “one country” without borders. They will do it through the large number of English Government departments that are being moved out of London into the devolved countries; and using the new debating chambers they are setting up for the Westminster Government in Edinburgh, and probably in Cardiff and Belfast too.
No doubt they will say something like “having devolution only puts a strain on the workings of Westminster and hampers the progress we want to make for all the people in this precious Union, so regretfully we are compelled to temporarily suspend the devolved administrations”.
Of course, it will only be temporary – just like the “power grab” of devolved matters that are coming back from the EU will be temporary. Only, “we are doing so well without it (just as the second-worst statistics in the world for handling Covid-19 is “doing well”) that we don’t need to reinstate it”. When that happens, forget independence forever!
The only way to combat this is to bring the election forward to this year, say October, and leave just enough time to get a referendum in place before we are pulled out of the EU.
READ MORE: Ruth Wishart: A Parliament that can't pass laws is no Parliament at all
Once we lose the protection of being part of the EU, we might as well forget it. These are the same Tories who stated at the time the Treaty of Union was signed: “We have catched Scotland and we will not let her go.”
Unless we do something about it this year, they will engineer it so that they don’t let us go and we can’t escape.
Charlie Kerr
Glenrothes
I READ, with astonishment, that wind farms, predominantly in Scotland, have been paid millions to turn their turbines off.
Since 2010, constraint payments of £726 million have been made in Scotland and only £43m in the rest of the UK.
Constraint payments are added to the electricity bills of all households and businesses in the UK and since Scotland only has approximately 10%, that means that the households and businesses south of the Border are heavily subsidising Scotland.
Once those south of the Border realise how heavily their electricity bills have been inflated to subsidise Scotland’s, it is they who will be demanding independence from Scotland. Now here is an idea for the SNP to get quick independence.
Clark Cross
Linlithgow
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