PICTURE the scenario. You live in a hugely resource-rich country but are so feart to stand on your own two feet – no matter how morally repugnant, ignorant, abusive and openly corrupt a neighbouring country’s rulers are – that you will completely ignore the huge, blatant manipulation of your own country’s media and laws, as well as the enormous, continuous stealing of your own country’s resources to be used for that neighbour’s benefit, despite your own land falling into a state of poverty and decay, and that you will daily fight tooth and nail to try to ensure your own country never prospers.

It really does take a special kind of person to be able to do this, truly special.

If your area has these people like we do round our way, you can usually spot them at the “news” stand each morning trying to hide copies of The National. I spotted one of them only on Wednesday.

This is happening every single day round here and results in struggling elderly people looking round and round to try to find their copies of The National, confused as to why they can’t.

I always take the time to locate one for them, as they are all usually stuffed upside-down in the middle of the weekly or evening papers or in the middle of the large bundles of a paper no-one in their right mind should buy, The Sun.

The question is, though, do these anti-Scottish “Scots” actually think that hiding the copies religiously each and every day is going to stop people voting Yes? The mentality of these people really is mind-boggling, and this coming from a land that is known the world over for its innovation and courage.

I fully understand the Unionist press are absolutely desperate to ensure Scotland’s people do not wake up and start to see that, like so many other countries around the world once were, we are being absolutely shafted by a power-mad, hugely crooked, dying empire that is in its final death throes.

So they have upped their efforts and energies to continue to hoodwink the Scottish people to hide them from reality. But the truth is this is like Canute trying to stop the tide, it’s completely pointless and is only delaying the obvious – that Scotland will without doubt become an independent nation to have any chance to ever be able to offer its children the life they badly need and deserve after complete and utter misrule for the past 300-plus years.

Wednesday’s National-hiding culprit was 70 if he was a day, had a brightly coloured football top on, a baseball cap and jeans that a guy 30 years his junior would have looked too old to wear, and was like something out of a bad cartoon.

But rest assured he will be there today and every other morning, carrying out what he sees as his civic duty until it’s time to meet his maker, and when that day arrives, he can close his eyes for the final time and feel proud of his efforts to try to ensure his own children never benefit from the chance of a far, far better life. It really is like a terribly scripted 1950s B-movie.

Iain K

Dunoon

IT’S the new normal, all these damn malarkeys,

from the Tory, Labour and LibDem parties;

they promise and pledge, then with false sorrow,

then without remorse, they shall U turn tomorrow.

They must get dizzy, they surely must tire,

does their crass dishonesty make them perspire?

they tell us one thing, and then we’re spurned,

as once more, once again, they have U turned.

Do they think that we’re buttoned up the back?

that intelligence and savvy is what we lack!

all three ... the Tory, Labour and LibDem trio,

U-turn all you want, you won’t fool me though!

George Robertson

Edinburgh