scots whahavering

Dougie's election 1

Scots Whavering

I am not proud to be Scottish. I am not proud to be British, European, or proud to have white skin. I’m scarcely proud to be a human being, nasty, brutish and cruel species that we are.

I am not patriotic. The dying embers of what little patriotism I have left briefly bursts into flame when the Scottish football team takes to the field, but in general flag waving tartanry leaves me cold. I will not kill or die for my country. Any reference to Willie Wallace or the Duke of Wellington moves me to tears of laughter.

I don’t even know what a country is. The map of Europe has been drawn and re-drawn so often that the concept of country is a very nebulous one indeed. In any case, multi-national corporations and finance sweep across national boundaries with the indifference of the wind. Mass migration and modern communications have increasingly diluted national characteristics. And when I hear talk of an independent country I’m all at sea (so to speak.) It’s all Greek to me.

This might give the impression that I am therefore a shoe-in for a No vote in the proposed referendum. Not a bit of it. I’m all for it.

It’s got nothing to do with the Bannockburn versus cost-benefit analysis arguments we’re to hear (endlessly) over the next two years.

Firstly, Scotland is a country like any other (far older than most) and deserves a seat at the tables of the United Nations and European Union, just as the Denmarks and Slovenias do. I don’t accept the argument that Scotland has more punch as part of the United Kingdom. We’ve had more than enough of British punching.

Secondly, please spare us these dreadful Tory Governments. I have some sympathy for the view that we will be ‘abandoning’ northern and urban England to the sorry fate of permanent Conservative rule, and I know that I have more in common with the Geodie or Scouse everyman than that yon birkie ca’d a lord wha struts and stares about his estate annihilating the wildlife. But an independent Scotland might spur them on to forms of devolution of their own. All forms of de-Westminstering are a good thing.

Lastly, I love this corner of northern Europe we call Scotland. Its landscape, literature and history are things I have explored all my life. Scotland should rise and be a notion again.

I accept that all this is confused and contradictory. This is hardly surprising. I am, after all, a Scotsman.