Do We Have to Polish Our Jackboots?

An English Facebook friend who is pro union posted a link to this piece they liked in Politics.co.uk yesterday: "That" kind of nationalism - nudge, wink. (I may have retitled it.) It’s one of the most vile, ill-informed pieces I’ve seen outside of the Daily Mail (though very like the Daily Mail in its scant regard for research or truth and its blatant bias).

The sad fact is that this is genuinely how Alex Salmond is perceived by many in England and by many in the Better Together camp – granted, usually because, like the author of the piece, they haven’t bothered to do any actual research and just buy whatever the unionist press feed them as truth. And this is how nationalism is seen – it’s seen as “that” kind of nationalism – you know, the kind that wears jackboots.

It’s easier to ignore the fact that many voting for independence are not actually SNP supporters and have never voted SNP in their lives. That kind of truth just doesn’t fit the desired narrative. It’s easier to ignore the kind of nationalism actually espoused by the YES campaign and, indeed, by the SNP: the kind that wants a constitution to protect the vulnerable in society, no matter what party is in power; the kind that votes for gay marriage and that the LGBTI community plans to work with to ensure greater equality; the kind that plans to bring in skilled immigrants to help make up the shortfall in contributions so as to protect our aging population, whilst celebrating the diversity in our society.

Pro immigration? Pro equal rights for all? Pro constitutional rights? Yep, sure sounds like “that” kind of nationalism to me. I’ll start polishing my boots and practising my salute.

And Salmond is always portrayed as this power mad individual, out for himself at all costs, wants to be King/Emperor/God of Scotland.  Hmm - that doesn't quite fit with the fact that he was the one who wanted devo-max on the ballot, does it? If he was only out for himself, was power-crazy, then he'd have hated the idea of devo-max. But he did want it on the ballot - he wanted Scots to have the full range of choices: 1. Stay as we are. 2. Extra powers. 3. Full independence.

Westminster vetoed the devo-max option. Why? Well, maybe because they were so confident of a NO vote, they didn't see the need to give up any power.

MacLean also mentions the fact that no one even blinks when they hear the phrase 'Salmond's Scotland'. Well, I've certainly never given it any thought because the first time I'd ever heard the phrase was in this article. Funny that, eh?

The author of the piece was described in The Scotsman as: Charles Maclean – an Eton schoolboy with a family seat in Argyll, future clan chieftain and scion of one of the best-connected families in post-war Britain.

Not massively surprising that his opinions were fairly outrageously biased then, eh? No self-interest there at all – nope, not a bit of it.

And, of course, his lack of research caught him out again when he spouted that line about Salmond praising Putin – is there really anyone left who hasn’t read the whole interview that gave the Better Together campaign that quote? I mean, obviously, apart from Charles MacLean? Well, just in case you have any interest in how Salmond came to, apparently, randomly praise Putin, here’s the link to the full article: Salmond and Putin, up a tree (I may have retitled that as well.)

If you can’t be bothered reading the whole thing, the gist of it is, Alastair Campbell tried to get Salmond to say something positive about various politicians/political leaders. Salmond obliged. The only time he genuinely couldn’t think of anything positive to say was when asked about George Osborne. Yes - he could think of something decent to say about Putin - when pressed to - but not about George Osborne, which seems fair enough. .

This is when I start to crave honesty. The truth about Salmond, the truth abut the YES campaign is all out there for anyone who wants to take the time and just do a wee bit of reading. It still irritates me when I hear someone say they’re voting NO because of that Salmond. It’s just not a credible answer and does a huge disservice to the person who says it as well as to the whole campaign.

There are plenty of reasons for voting NO and I genuinely believe that people need to start being honest about them instead of just trotting out the tired old SNP/Salmond non-argument.

For example, “I’m voting NO because, despite the fact that Westminster have lied to us many times over the years, I believe that this time they are telling the truth about oil and that all of the figures they have presented on the economy are, this time, the truth. I believe that they will give us more powers, I understand their reasons for not stating what these powers will be, and I trust them to deliver.”

There you go – not that difficult, is it? If you really feel that you can still trust Westminster, just say so.

Or, “I’m voting NO because, while I appreciate that there are foodbanks and attacks on the weakest in our society for as long as I stay with an increasingly right wing UK, me and my family are currently doing very well and I’d rather take my chances with whatever government England votes for, and sometimes that government will, by chance, be the government I wanted, so that’s enough for me. I'm not right wing, but I'd rather put up with right wing policy than take a chance at changing things without cast iron guarantees and absolute certainties about how independence would work. I appreciate that I have no idea how things will pan out in the UK, but those uncertainties are okay with me.”

See? You can say that if it’s how you really feel. It’s far better than just parroting the media’s view on Salmond and nationalism. 

Or, “I’m okay with the right wing – I want out of Europe, I want an end to immigration, I’m not really that interested in the poor in our society (they always get by somehow), I’m happy that the rest if the UK is veering further to the right wing and want Scotland to follow suit, so I’m voting NO.”

There are at least 500,000 Tories in Scotland – it’s okay to come out and say you’re one of them.

It’s okay to have any reason to vote NO that’s based on actual research and personal ideology and there are lots more than the few I’ve mentioned here. It’s not okay to cling to, ‘I hate Alex Salmond, therefore I’m voting NO to the chance of independence for my whole country based on my dislike of one man (a man I’ve never actually met and don’t really know anything about).’ That’s just silly and lazy and nonsensical. Stop it.

Indy Hats For All

If we’re going to screw up, let’s screw up on our own terms, our own policies, our own standards.

Does that not sound like a terribly attractive proposition?

Well, I’m sorry, but I’m sick of being told I’m a whinging, moaning, scrounging Scot.

Are we headed for Utopia? Bloody hell – of course not. Behave. If we gain independence it’ll be tough (and Westminster have made no bones about the fact that they intend to make it as tough as they possibly can – for no genuine pragmatic reasons {because we are not worth anything to them - they subsidise us, so they should be glad to see the back of us, right?} – you know, just because they can). Should the fact that it will be tough stop us? I sincerely hope not.

In last night’s debate, Alastair Darling gave us three job creating powers that would be devolved to a NO voting Scotland: Everything is better in the UK. Everything is better in the UK. Everything is better in the UK. Three options that were all the same and were nothing to do with devolved powers.

In his response to the never-ending Plan B on currency question, Alex Salmond gave three Plan Bs – pound without currency union, new currency, or Euro – but still preferred a currency union. At least he gave three options, albeit not stating which he placed as first contender.

If I’m honest, I’m quite keen on no currency union and sticking with the dreaded Panama option – Panama sank into financial decline and everyone died and the whole place was overrun with rabid monkeys. Or maybe not. Why not check it out?

I’m campaigning for a hat, (obviously) to go with the Panama option – it’s the jaggy bunnet:

And, yes, I’m being frivolous. I apologise. But when I hear a Labour politician, who is supposedly engaging in a debate on behalf of Better Together i.e. Labour, Tory, Lib-Dem joining together against Scottish Independence, sneak in what Labour would do if voted in in 2015, I think frivolity is a reasonable response. If you are there to argue that Scotland is better off as part of the UK, that has to be because you believe that Scotland is better off as part of the UK no matter what party is leading the UK government - be it Tory, Labour, Lib-Dem or UKIP. When confronted with specific issues, you can't say, "Oh, but Labour wouldn't do that/would do this." You're not speaking for Labour - you're speaking for the Better Together, no matter what, no matter who.This was not the place to start campaigning for Labour (Tory Lite) in the UK elections in 2015.

The hat is one of the many reasons it's just as well I'm not in charge. Probably.

Be a Good Little Subject (And say, "Thank You.")

Apparently, because I live in a country where I am not being bombed or tortured, I should just shut up, stop moaning and blah blah blah about politics and get out there and dance in the streets at my good fortune.

Yep. I should be so grateful that I am not being bombed or tortured, I should be a good little subject, sit quietly and never, ever question my government.

But, for me, if not being bombed or tortured is all you require for what you consider to be a good standard of living, then you’re setting the bar pretty low.

Of course I am aware that there are countries around the world where atrocities are carried out daily, where war rages, where drought and famine kills. Of course I am grateful every day for the fact that I do not live in one of those countries.

But this means I should ignore inequalities and injustice in my own country? Well, if there is logic to that statement, it escapes me.

Ah, but wouldn’t the government just love it if we all adopted that line? If we said, ‘Well, hey, I’m not in Gaza, so you guys go ahead and pass whatever laws you like. And that thing about taking away our rights, you know, scrapping the Human Rights Act, that thing you have planned? Well I’m not in Syria, so, yeah, you do that and I won’t say a word, ‘cause I’m not being bombed or tortured. And your continued attack on the poor and vulnerable in our society? Hell, yeah – go for it – they’re mostly scroungers (and probably *whispers* immigrants) so you go right ahead. I’m not in Iraq and no one else is abusing me physically, so you go right ahead and abuse my rights and those of the weakest in my society.’ Ooops – I forgot to say thank you.

This kind of right wing logic is terrifying to me. It’s like looking into the heart of darkness – you can’t come away unscathed. It preys on my mind and distresses me that there are people out there who think this way.

And, you've guessed it, it’s another reason I’m voting YES. I want my country to be as far away from right wing thinking as it can possibly be. I’m not pretending we don’t have any right wingers in Scotland – we do. Roughly 500,000 Scots voted Tory in the last general election and we all know that a UKIP guy got in at the European election. But it is, currently, a small voice. I don’t want it to rise. I don’t want it, fuelled by UKIP and Tory and Britain First, to get stronger. I want us to get away – far away – from the right wing.

I see independence as the only way for that to happen.

P.S. If my posts on FB or Twitter bother you, just unfriend/delete me. I'll understand.

Sensible Negotiations

One of the more disturbing reasons I’ve seen for voting NO is that the post-YES negotiations would be carried out by – you’ve guessed it – that Wee Fat Eck and the SNP.

So let’s think about this. Scotland votes YES to independence. Negotiations with Westminster begin. Do you want the Scottish negotiators to be the people who said we can’t do it, who said we’re too wee, who said we are ‘not genetically programmed to make political decisions’, who said we are Better Together?

What kind of negotiators would those people be? Would they have an independent Scotland’s interest at heart? I fail to see how, but I’m happy to be enlightened.

However much you hate the SNP and their leader, you have to give them this: They have Scotland’s best interests at heart. They have fought for, and won, the chance to have this referendum, to give you the chance to make this decision. They’re all about Scotland and what is best for Scotland and what they believe Scotland can become with independence.

And the negotiating committee would not just be SNP - it would be made up of representatives from other parties and Scottish civic societies. Would it be majority SNP? Very probably, but that’s just logical, when you think about it (please think about it) since they hold the majority of MPs and MSPs who fought for independence and are the only party in no way beholden to Westminster i.e. no one is going to lose their job if they don’t do as they’re told. I would be seriously suspicious of e.g. Johann Lamont negotiating my country’s independence, given her stance.

I appreciate that this may be unpalatable for those who, for whatever reasons, hate the SNP, but it would be just plain daft to give up the chance of independence – if you genuinely want independence – just because you don’t like the guy/party doing some of the negotiating.

As has been said many, many times – this is a means to an end. In 2016 there would be the first Independent Scottish elections and that’s when you get to decide who runs your country. And your vote would actually matter.

Please don’t give up that opportunity based on a dislike of one person or because you’d rather the people who don’t believe in independence negotiate the terms for that independence. If you stop and think about it, it really doesn’t make sense, does it?

I'm sorry? What? Could You Say That Again?

Sometimes you have to step away from the screen, rub your eyes, look back and check that you really read what you just read.

I saw a NO voter today, a life-long Labour supporter, say that, in the event of Westminster reneging on its vague promise of more powers or, worse, actually reducing powers and/or funding in Scotland, that it would be Alex Salmond’s fault and he hoped that Salmond would be able to live with himself.

I’ll just type that out again for you: any negative consequences of a NO vote would be Alex Salmond’s fault.

His logic – and I use that term loosely – being that, had that wee, fat Eck (height and weight v important in politicians) just left things alone, not bothered everyone with his pesky desire to give us the opportunity to see our nation free from Westminster rule, everything could have stayed the same. ‘Cause, you know, it’s all perfect at the moment.

Again, you’ll note the personal touch here with all blame being attributed to one man – not a party or a campaign or YES voters – just this one man, Alex the Merciless. You’ll also note that any ill-effects after a NO vote would not be the fault of NO voters. Nope. Nor would they be the fault of the Westminster parties lying. Nope.

And this life-long Labour supporter is perfectly happy for his party to link arms with his life-long enemy – the one he never votes for, but frequently gets stuck with – the good old Tory party. He doesn’t blink an eye. It gives him no pause for thought that his party is in cahoots with the Tory party and the Lib-Dem party in their attempts to convince people that Scotland is incapable of being a successful independent nation. If he did stop and think about that, he’d probably find someone else to blame anyway. Any guesses who that someone would be?

Has anyone got a pair of ruby slippers I can borrow? This can't be real.

What It's Really About (for me)

What It’s Really About

Well, it’s all about Salmond, isn’t it? The question on the ballot paper is: Do you want Alex Salmond to be the king of Scotland. Forever.

Except it’s not. It absolutely is not. The question is simple: Should Scotland be an independent country?

In the event of a YES vote, would that make Alex Salmond happy? Yes, of course – it’s what he’s campaigned for all his life. Would it make him the leader of Scotland, in any capacity, after 2016? Only if enough people voted for him. In other words, it would be up to you, the Scottish voters.

Is your hatred of one man, and the fact that something you do could result in him getting something he wants, worth giving up the chance of taking control of our own finances, making our decisions for our own people, having a vote that actually matters rather than one that only gets us the government we vote for if it just so happens that enough people in England want the same as us?

That’s for your conscience. If personality is more important to you than policy, then you’ll stick to your guns and be very pleased at having thwarted one man, ignoring the fact that you have also thwarted a nation’s chance at self-determination and self-rule. But so long as that wee fat Alex isn’t smiling, eh?

Lots of people talk of the uncertainty, not knowing what Scotland would be like if they vote YES, exactly which currency, exactly who’d end up as the leader. And so, they reason, it’s safer to stay with what they know, with certainties.

But there are no certainties. No one can tell you who will be in charge of the main UK political parties in 2015, which of those parties will win the election, which of the policies in their manifestos they will actually keep. We’ve been promised more powers if we vote NO (by parties who vetoed devo-max on the ballot paper), but we’re not to be told what those powers are, just as we’re not allowed to negotiate any details of an independent Scotland before the referendum. We are expected to just wait and see. Uncertainty is rife no matter which way you vote.

And please remember that voting NO isn’t just voting against something – it’s also voting for something. It’s voting for Westminster to continue its control over these aspects of our lives:

benefits and social security

immigration

defence

foreign policy

employment

broadcasting

trade and industry

nuclear energy, oil, coal, gas and electricity

consumer rights

data protection

the Constitution (the UK doesn’t actually have one of these, so I’ve never quite understood that, but it’s what’s on the government’s website, so I included it here)

I see those as quite important. All the more so since the recent attacks on the poor and disabled through ‘restructuring’ of benefits. All the more so since the slide to the right that’s taking place in the UK at the moment. All the more so since more and more information comes to light about how much we’ve been lied to, and are still being lied to, about oil and gas.

No one can force people to look at issues rather than people. I could just be petty and say, ‘Oh, well, if a YES vote is a vote for Alex Salmond, then a NO vote is a vote for David Cameron.’ But that would be silly. This is not about either of them – it’s not about Lamont or Darling or Davidson or Miliband or Clegg either

A YES vote is to give Scotland complete control over its own finances and its own affairs. A NO vote is to leave some of that control in the hands of whichever Westminster party the majority of English people vote for.

For me, it’s that simple.

My Journey to YES

In a break from writing stuff and cruise stuff, a wee bit of political stuff. Fell free to ignore and wait for the more light hearted stuff to return.

A Journey to YES

It’s 4^th May 1979. I’m 16. My mum is calling me to come downstairs and watch this historic event. She’s never voted Tory, and never would, but she can’t help being impressed that a woman has finally become Prime Minister, albeit this woman, from this party. She wants me to watch, to share in this moment.

Reluctantly, I relent and join her in front of the TV. I’m not madly political at this age, but I know enough to know that I don’t like right wing policies, and I don’t care if this is the first woman PM – she’s from the wrong party, and policies and party are far more important than gender or personality or being ‘first’ at something.

That voice, the one most of us will grow to hate, already makes my skin crawl as it says: Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

Well, we were soon to learn, had we ever doubted it, that that was complete bollocks.

I couldn’t vote until after October 1980, so I had no influence. It didn’t take me long to learn that I would never have any real influence. By the next general election, in 1983, I had already decided that I would never vote Tory because they didn’t care about Scotland (or, as it often seemed, basic human decency). Quite right, to be fair – from a political point of view, why waste your time on a place where you will never win votes? I had also decided there wasn’t much point to voting Labour – they didn’t seem to be that bothered about us either. Again, quite right – why waste time and energy on a place where your vote is pretty much guaranteed? Far better to start changing your party, to slide further towards right, in the hope of gaining new support or regaining old support. Don’t blame them in the slightest – it was what they felt was politically sound.

That left me, as far as I recall, with the Liberals, the SDP and the SNP. In the end I decided that, since my vote had little or no influence in Westminster, that I’d opt for the SNP and hope that one day we would achieve independence. No one else had any particular cause to care much about us; surely we’d be better off taking care of ourselves?

That doesn’t mean that I loved all SNP policies, or that I was convinced they had the best leader – to be honest, I don’t even remember who that was. I know I could google this stuff, but I’m trying to give you it from memory, to take you through my thought processes as I remember them. I opted for the SNP because I wanted my vote to count. I understood – still understand – that I wouldn’t necessarily get the government I voted for in an independent Scotland, but at least a greater percentage of my countrymen would get what they had voted for.

Oddly, I’m in agreement with some of my NO voting friends on this point. I agree that Scotland gets exactly the representation it should in Westminster. We are a tiny nation. Why should a nation of 5 million dictate to a nation of 55 million? That would not only be wrong, it would be ridiculous. But while my NO friends see this as a reason to stay, that we have the correct level of representation, I see it as a reason to go. My country will only ever get the UK government it votes for by chance, if it just so happens to tally with the desire of the country with the larger population. While that is, technically, fair, it’s not good enough for me. I don’t believe it’s good enough for my country.

That was how I came to support independence. I’ll blog again about more specific points (unless the comments on this get too ugly, of course) but I just wanted to share, as others have, my journey to YES, which started long before YES was even a real option.