This my response to a letter in this weeks John OGroat. Lets see if it gets published. :) Voting NO means voting against Scotland. ****, in his dire rant against Alex Salmond and the perceived threat of independence, gives vent to the usual litany of catastrophic warnings so beloved of the Better Together campaign. One of his central tenets seems to be that September’s vote is not about Scotland but is simply all about the First Minister’s ego. Then how does he explain the breadth and depth of the YES movement, which includes organisations like National collective, Business for Scotland, Labour for Independence, Radical Independence, the Scottish Green party…the list goes on and on – and none of them controlled by Alex Salmond or the SNP? He then goes on to misrepresent the YES campaign by saying it is all about oil. Quite apart from the fact that the North sea is booming and that an oil fund is completely viable for an INDEPENDENT Scotland (the NO campaign’s arguments against this are entirely fraudulent - what all the figures produced by the No camp intentionally miss is that with independence comes the ability to control appropriate economic levers of growth) the Scottish economy does not at all depend entirely on oil and gas revenue. Even without this inarguably important resource, Scottish GDP per head is almost exactly the same as the UK as a whole. Talking about the SNP’s policy on a local income tax doesn’t do ****’s argument any favours either. How many times must it be said that the vote in September is not an election, it is not about any one particular party and its policies – such things will be decided in the Scottish parliamentary elections in 2016 when we will have a chance to view the party manifestos and vote accordingly. But such is his obsession with the First Minister that he is willing to see Scotland continue in thrall to a parliament largely determined by the voters of the SE of England. He asks how we would pay for things as an independent country. Well, seeing that for the last 30 years or so we have paid to the UK exchequer more than we have received, that Scotland has a wealth of resources other than oil (which accounts for only 15% GDP), and that we would be one of the wealthier countries in the OECD, surely the answer is obvious? We would run our country like any other small to medium sized nation that possesses its own rightful sovereignty, democratic accountability and control of its own resources. He mentions Iceland. Is he aware of recent developments in that country? Iceland now has a growth rate which is the envy of many European countries including the UK. They have weathered the storm, like all independent countries have to do occasionally. Scotland, like any other nation state, will have its ups and downs in future. Despite what Mr ******* says, no one in the YES camp is peddling a utopian line here - we are simply trying to point out the advantages, of which there are many, of running our own affairs like any other normal nation state, 200 of which have become independent since 1945 and many of which possess far fewer assets than resource rich Scotland. Mr. ****** concludes with the bizarre argument that Scotland, unlike any newly independent nation in history as far as I am aware, would somehow beg to become part of the current UK settlement again. Scotland, Mr. ******, will not be separating from civilisation and floating into the mid-Atlantic; it will be JOINING the international community as a rightfully independent state. I suggest that remaining within the increasingly divided, economically challenged, neo-liberal UK with its increasingly right-wing agenda (note the rise of UKIP and the rightward travel of ALL the major Westminster parties), and its demonisation of the poor with the concomitant rise in food banks, poses the real threat to Scotland. On September 18th, whilst the polling stations remain open, the people of Scotland will for the first time hold the power of true sovereignty in their hands. If Scotland delivers a YES vote, she will take up her rightful place as a free and independent country; if it’s a NO vote then it will indeed mean NO SCOTLAND. To borrow a phrase from Mr ********’s own letter, it will surely be tantamount to committing suicide.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 15:27:54 +0000
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