An interesting article, but you didn't mention the polls which show that support for independence is at about 50% (with a margin of error), despite support (and membership) for the SNP collapsing.
All over Scotland, independence supporters have turned away from the SNP, but are working in other groups. As Alf Baird has stated, the movement has passed through the stage of relying on politicians and is now entering its liberation phase, as Frantz Fanon theorises independence movements must. (Thinkers like Fanon are the writers that indy supporters are now discovering).
The SNP is still under the control of Nicola Sturgeon and her cabal, and has made itself irrelevant to the wider movement. The blatant attempt at emotional blackmail to vote SNP to keep its MPs in comfort at Westminster is falling on deaf ears, even among those who want independence. If the SNP did nothing with the seats it gained in 2019, it certainly won't do anything with the far fewer seats they gain this week. They are the 21st century equivalent of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Scottish voters are not galvanised by Keir Starmer. Young Scottish voters do not seem to see their future with the Westminster parties. It's possible Labour will gain seats in Scotland on Thursday, but I suggest it will be the same way they did in 2017, when 500K independence supporters stayed at home. As you have written yourself, Trade Union membership is now for the professional middle classes, not the young and working class people who most need it. The refusal of New Labour to reverse Thatcher's anti-TU legislation means that youngsters don't encounter the trade union movement in the way we did as workers in the 1970s and even in the 1980s. But it was the trade unions who shepherded their members towards Labour; that doesn't happen now.
I agree the Party's over as regards the SNP, but the concept of independence is embedded within the Scottish psyche in a way it wasn't even 12 years ago. And the long term impact of that is still to be seen.
Until the separatists can come up with a convincing economic and financial prospectus for an iScotland, the majority will be sufficiently cautious to shun secession. And there is no possible prospectus that would mean anything other than years of austerity maximissimus. It is the separatists’ dishonesty over that, and their only offer that faith and hope and belief will conquer the doubters and produce prosperity, that renders their case, such as it is, baseless. All they have is a ‘Triumph of the Will’ mentality, and that didn’t work out too well first time around.
Alex Salmond actually said: "I'm not saying it will be easy, I'm saying it will be worth it."
As for post-indy austerity? We've lived through 14 years of austerity, and now Grangemouth is closing and Labour are planning to remove our renewable power benefit in the same way as Westminster took all our oil revenues.
It's not enough to say that Westminster have destroyed our economy so badly that no Scottish Govt could possibly repair it. Westminster are not motivated to help Scotland, whereas any future Scottish government would be. You only have to look at the difference in living standards between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to see what that means.
Salmond may have said that once, but most of the time he made out that it would be easy. He lied about 'sharing the pound' and about the Royal Navy continuing to build warships in an iScotland, among much else.
Westminster did not 'take all our oil revenues'. Scotland gets its geographic share of oil revenues. But perhaps you think it should have more than that.
What has damaged our economy is two things: Covid and the cost of living crisis consequent on Putin's aggression in Ukraine. Brexit may also have played a part. One million Scots voted for Brexit.
You are the prisoner of SNP/separatist hostile propaganda about Westminster that is mostly based on lies. Don't be taken in by myths about Ireland, whose economy is based on multinationals who declare it as their home for corporation tax purposes but repatriate their profits to their home countries, mainly the US. That is, the paper profits that swell Ireland's GDP do not remain in Ireland. In Ireland, there is no charge for medical treatment IF you have a low income or a long term illness. Otherwise, you pay 40-60 euros for a visit to your GP and 100 euros for a visit to A&E. Your propagandists don't tell you that, do they?
Brexit definitely played a major part in destroying the UK economy, but austerity has done the rest. Since 2018, life expectancy has been falling; our children will now be shorter than European children; our communities and social infrastructure have been destroyed to line the pockets of Tory donors; the greed in unbelievable and unapologetic, whether it be the PPE scandals during Covid or the betting scandals since this General Election was called.
I know very well how people live in Ireland. I don't need propagandists. The Republic's main problems are that the people continue to vote for two right wing parties who have held power for a century despite their manifest shortcomings - something we certainly have in common with them!
I’m afraid that just blaming rich people (or demonised ‘right wing’ people) is an easy get out. Swinney has been banging on about ‘austerity’ as if his party wasn’t responsible for any of it. If only the rich paid a lot more, we’d have no problems. No, it doesn’t work like that. Scotland spends on Scots more than it earns, because being in the auk makes that possible. We have had a regime in power that has wasted our money on a host of failed vanity projects - BiFab, Gupta, Prestwick, ferries, and the ridiculous separatist campaign - and has failed poor Scots. The most deprived area in the U.K. is in Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency. She had all that power, and what did she ever do for the poorest in her own constituency? Gave them baby boxes, no doubt. What has the SNP done to combat drug addition and drugs deaths? And no, the answer isn’t ’consumption rooms’. Sturgeon took £47 million out of drug and alcohol rehabilitation funds, and what did she do with it? Gave the middle classes more freebies. It is all a lot more complicated than your anti-Tory stuff.
Scotland is the only part of the UK with a balance of trade surplus. We send more to Westminster in tax than we get back. We can afford independence. If you don't want independence, that's fine. But it doesn't have to be because Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to be independent. That's the Scottish cringe talking.
The UK govt creates the equivalent of GERS figures for Wales and Northern Ireland as well. According to those figures, with 15% of the population, we are jointly responsible for about 80% of the national deficit, and Scotland (which does not have an army) has the second highest military spending in Europe. That's where the myth of the impoverished regions comes from. Every country that has become independent from Westminster has been told that. Including the United States.
Scotland isn't perfect and serious work needs to be done, but there's no chance anyone in London will do anything about it.
It's not enough to say that Westminster has screwed us up to badly for 217 years that we can't get ourselves out of it.
An interesting article, but you didn't mention the polls which show that support for independence is at about 50% (with a margin of error), despite support (and membership) for the SNP collapsing.
All over Scotland, independence supporters have turned away from the SNP, but are working in other groups. As Alf Baird has stated, the movement has passed through the stage of relying on politicians and is now entering its liberation phase, as Frantz Fanon theorises independence movements must. (Thinkers like Fanon are the writers that indy supporters are now discovering).
The SNP is still under the control of Nicola Sturgeon and her cabal, and has made itself irrelevant to the wider movement. The blatant attempt at emotional blackmail to vote SNP to keep its MPs in comfort at Westminster is falling on deaf ears, even among those who want independence. If the SNP did nothing with the seats it gained in 2019, it certainly won't do anything with the far fewer seats they gain this week. They are the 21st century equivalent of the Irish Parliamentary Party.
Scottish voters are not galvanised by Keir Starmer. Young Scottish voters do not seem to see their future with the Westminster parties. It's possible Labour will gain seats in Scotland on Thursday, but I suggest it will be the same way they did in 2017, when 500K independence supporters stayed at home. As you have written yourself, Trade Union membership is now for the professional middle classes, not the young and working class people who most need it. The refusal of New Labour to reverse Thatcher's anti-TU legislation means that youngsters don't encounter the trade union movement in the way we did as workers in the 1970s and even in the 1980s. But it was the trade unions who shepherded their members towards Labour; that doesn't happen now.
I agree the Party's over as regards the SNP, but the concept of independence is embedded within the Scottish psyche in a way it wasn't even 12 years ago. And the long term impact of that is still to be seen.
Until the separatists can come up with a convincing economic and financial prospectus for an iScotland, the majority will be sufficiently cautious to shun secession. And there is no possible prospectus that would mean anything other than years of austerity maximissimus. It is the separatists’ dishonesty over that, and their only offer that faith and hope and belief will conquer the doubters and produce prosperity, that renders their case, such as it is, baseless. All they have is a ‘Triumph of the Will’ mentality, and that didn’t work out too well first time around.
Alex Salmond actually said: "I'm not saying it will be easy, I'm saying it will be worth it."
As for post-indy austerity? We've lived through 14 years of austerity, and now Grangemouth is closing and Labour are planning to remove our renewable power benefit in the same way as Westminster took all our oil revenues.
It's not enough to say that Westminster have destroyed our economy so badly that no Scottish Govt could possibly repair it. Westminster are not motivated to help Scotland, whereas any future Scottish government would be. You only have to look at the difference in living standards between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to see what that means.
Salmond may have said that once, but most of the time he made out that it would be easy. He lied about 'sharing the pound' and about the Royal Navy continuing to build warships in an iScotland, among much else.
Westminster did not 'take all our oil revenues'. Scotland gets its geographic share of oil revenues. But perhaps you think it should have more than that.
What has damaged our economy is two things: Covid and the cost of living crisis consequent on Putin's aggression in Ukraine. Brexit may also have played a part. One million Scots voted for Brexit.
You are the prisoner of SNP/separatist hostile propaganda about Westminster that is mostly based on lies. Don't be taken in by myths about Ireland, whose economy is based on multinationals who declare it as their home for corporation tax purposes but repatriate their profits to their home countries, mainly the US. That is, the paper profits that swell Ireland's GDP do not remain in Ireland. In Ireland, there is no charge for medical treatment IF you have a low income or a long term illness. Otherwise, you pay 40-60 euros for a visit to your GP and 100 euros for a visit to A&E. Your propagandists don't tell you that, do they?
Brexit definitely played a major part in destroying the UK economy, but austerity has done the rest. Since 2018, life expectancy has been falling; our children will now be shorter than European children; our communities and social infrastructure have been destroyed to line the pockets of Tory donors; the greed in unbelievable and unapologetic, whether it be the PPE scandals during Covid or the betting scandals since this General Election was called.
I know very well how people live in Ireland. I don't need propagandists. The Republic's main problems are that the people continue to vote for two right wing parties who have held power for a century despite their manifest shortcomings - something we certainly have in common with them!
I’m afraid that just blaming rich people (or demonised ‘right wing’ people) is an easy get out. Swinney has been banging on about ‘austerity’ as if his party wasn’t responsible for any of it. If only the rich paid a lot more, we’d have no problems. No, it doesn’t work like that. Scotland spends on Scots more than it earns, because being in the auk makes that possible. We have had a regime in power that has wasted our money on a host of failed vanity projects - BiFab, Gupta, Prestwick, ferries, and the ridiculous separatist campaign - and has failed poor Scots. The most deprived area in the U.K. is in Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency. She had all that power, and what did she ever do for the poorest in her own constituency? Gave them baby boxes, no doubt. What has the SNP done to combat drug addition and drugs deaths? And no, the answer isn’t ’consumption rooms’. Sturgeon took £47 million out of drug and alcohol rehabilitation funds, and what did she do with it? Gave the middle classes more freebies. It is all a lot more complicated than your anti-Tory stuff.
Scotland is the only part of the UK with a balance of trade surplus. We send more to Westminster in tax than we get back. We can afford independence. If you don't want independence, that's fine. But it doesn't have to be because Scotland is too wee, too poor and too stupid to be independent. That's the Scottish cringe talking.
The UK govt creates the equivalent of GERS figures for Wales and Northern Ireland as well. According to those figures, with 15% of the population, we are jointly responsible for about 80% of the national deficit, and Scotland (which does not have an army) has the second highest military spending in Europe. That's where the myth of the impoverished regions comes from. Every country that has become independent from Westminster has been told that. Including the United States.
Scotland isn't perfect and serious work needs to be done, but there's no chance anyone in London will do anything about it.
It's not enough to say that Westminster has screwed us up to badly for 217 years that we can't get ourselves out of it.