I HAVE a friend moving up to Scotland who is, like so many other people, fed up to the back teeth of the Tories’ downright criminal antics down south for the last decade or so, who fancies the idea of living in Scotland as, like more and more people down south, she feels it’s inevitable Scotland will break away from the Union.
She asked me to tell her more about how things sit presently up here, and like so many others watched the recent mainstream media coverage of the raid on Nicola Sturgeon’s home in complete disbelief at the sheer scale of the police’s operation. She added that she thought for such a relatively tiny sum of money, when compared to the vast criminality and mind-boggling sums involved in the issuing of Covid-19 PPE contracts to Tory donors, it was quite simply disgraceful on every level, and to her it seemed nothing short of just the latest attempt to tarnish the indy campaign, and just follows on from their previous attempts to ruin Alex Salmond when he announced he was coming back in to politics, failing dismally and then moving straight on to trying to ruin Nicola Sturgeon too, failing dismally there and now moving on to this.
Anyway, I was wondering how to explain the unique nature of the situation up here, so sat down and told her about what I see that is happening as far as I could see it. I told her:
1. We are in a voluntary union we are not allowed to leave.
2. We are told we are equals but all power and final say on financial issues remains with Westminster.
3. We reject the Tories and Labour at every election, but we get Tories or Labour running our lives.
4. We are hugely energy-rich, in fact have more oil than super-rich Norway, yet we cannot afford to pay our energy bills due to Westminster’s complete incompetence.
5. We voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, but got dragged out of it against our will.
6. We vote for the SNP in local council elections, and when they win, the losing parties’ candidates are allowed to club together to take control, completely against the local people’s wishes, so we again get Tories and Labour running and ruining our lives.
7. We are known around the world for our almost unmatched innovation, but are told we are too stupid to go it alone.
8. Despite our waters being full of oil and larger than Norway’s, despite our massive renewables, despite having the largest fishing grounds in Europe, despite having no debt whatsoever as we are not allowed to borrow, we are told we are too poor to go it alone.
9. We see monumental criminality in Westminster, now at unprecedented levels, but it’s the SNP who are bad.
10. The rest of the world can see we are being absolutely shafted by another country’s rulers in their obsession to try keep hold of our vast resources, but some of us seem to blind to see thanks to decades of very deliberate brainwashing by a media which is completely owned by the English and other foreign media corporations.
After telling my friend all of this, she said she may have to have a rethink about relocating here as the whole situation sounds absolutely appalling, and reminds her of some kind of fascist dictatorship.
She ended by saying “it shows just how badly your land is being treated, and the strength of depth of people’s feelings, if despite a truly disgracefully rigged referendum in 2014, nearly half of Scotland still voted to leave, so it sounds like this is the real reason why Westminster is genuinely terrified of there being a fairer run second referendum, but on a different note I hear your new First Minister, who claimed to be a republican, has just let down the independence marchers on May 6 to go doff his cap to someone absolutely integral in ensuring Scotland remains in chains under English control.
Surely he must realise this will do absolutely nothing to help Scotland’s quest for a second referendum, and why don’t they just bypass Westminster and go straight to the United Nations?”
She has so many valid points.
Iain K
Dunoon
THE Scottish Government must take the blocking of the GRR Bill to every court it can, this about democracy! To support the legal challenge, every party in Holyrood should be out at every opportunity, demanding the Tory government pass the bill for approval. LibDem and Labour leadership should be supporting this challenge, the GRR Bill was supported by four of the five parties, 86 to 39 votes.
We should make it about the right of Scottish MSPs to pass Scotland’s laws.
Rab Doig
Bo’ness
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