BEING a military veteran and supporting an Independent Scotland are not mutually exclusive.
Like all other aspects of Government spending, the UK’s defence budget has been brutalised with cut-backs. Quite simply, we cannot afford to continuously send our forces on deployment on the whim of an idea from whoever happens to occupy the Bunker complex in Downing Street.
Scotland having control of our own military is an absolute must, and that can only happen with independence.
Once that is achieved, then we can move away from the post-colonial rampaging that the UK Government has been conducting to some degree or another since the end of the Second World War.
Controlling the deployment will obviously then have very important knock-on effects once those personnel leave and officially become veterans.
Those veterans, unlike their predecessors, will hopefully not have been exposed to the brutality of conflict and thus will leave the military with good skill sets and happy memories.
READ MORE: This is why Scottish independence will benefit farmers all over Scotland
In the meantime, we have many thousands of veterans in Scotland that have been let down by the UK Government with the much lauded, much vaunted, Armed Forces Covenant being nothing but a hollow shell of a public relations facade, a facade which is so unashamedly abused by whichever party has the keys to Number 10 Downing Street.
Successive UK governments have had little or no hesitation in deploying our armed forces, and every government has swept the consequences of such deployments under the carpet.
Those that send us on deployment have farmed out the care of veterans to the devolved powers in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and the councils in England.
We must break that cycle. We must have all the levers to deal with our veterans.
That is not asking for anything which any government with a hint of a moral compass would not provide for those they have sent into harm’s way.
So yes, we at Veterans for Scottish Independence 2.0 implore all veterans to have faith in Scotland and her ability to govern herself as a socially just, independent country within the family of nations across the globe.
If you would like to contribute to this new series on how Scottish independence can benefit your area, be that geographic, like Harris, Annan, or Perth, or societal, like older people, retirees, or hospitality, you can do so here.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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