So, according to the Mail on Sunday all that is British will be dead and gone when Independence is declared. In some cases maybe a good thing. But the scaremongering continues………………..
Car tax will go. Don’t think so. We pay it direct to our own tax office but we’ll still pay it, how else will we fund the roads? If the tax does go it will because Mr Swinney has thought of another way to go about things.
No National Lottery. Don’t think so. You can buy the Euro lottery and the Irish lottery tickets here so why not the UK one? If they stop selling the tickets in Scotland then the Euro, Irish and Health lotteries will benefit. We could even start our own………it’s not beyond our ken as many in the S.N.P. who ran tote will tell you.
Even the Met Office will go. Erm………….we have people in Scotland who can tell us what the weather is going to do. They are usually more accurate than the forecasts from London.
Do they really think that in this day and age we still sit huddled round the peat fire in our little blackhouses with no interaction with the outside world except the odd passing stranger?
Small is Beautiful
I had an interesting chat with my neighbour’s daughter the other day. My neighbour is originally from the outer London area but has wandered the world sampling many lifestyles. Her daughter has also lived in many countries having been a forces wife. On moving to Scotland to be nearer her mum she said she couldn’t believe how big Scotland was. How diverse and how full of potential we were. She said in English schools they were never taught anything about Scotland and she has done a lot of learning since moving here.
Unbeknown to her I canvassed her quite a few years ago in an election (didn’t know her then) and was shooshed away from the door with the “I always vote Labour” shout. Well, she couldn’t be more for Independence now than if she had been born into the 4th generation of a Scottish Nationalist family. It was quite entertaining hearing my arguments being told back to me by someone who had discovered them for herself.
I am not complacent. I know there is a lot of talking to do. And I KNOW there is going to be an ever growing avalanche of tripe delivered from our Southern neighbours. But we have to have some of those genes left that made us self reliant. Mix that with the genes from other parts of the world that our ancestors have given us and we have to believe we can be self sufficient again. As I said to the lady mentioned above the ideal size of a nation is around 6 million (give or take a million) as that way the parliamentarians cannot hide from the people in ivory towers like Westminster. We have easier access to our parliament here, you can just walk in off the street. You are more likely to bump into your MSP in your own local town or at a function as they don’t have to reside hundreds of miles away for weeks on end in their gentlemen’s clubs. Time I think to drag out Small is Beautiful and read all the bits my dad used to read to me in the 1970’s