Danger, Union at all costs

So there we have it. Twenty polls in a row and counting, consistently and without waver, record that the people of Scotland, faced with a pandemic which is ravaging its way across the planet (and being grossly mishandled in a criminally negligent manner by a way out of their depth centrally controlling government from another country, still letting thousands of travellers from around the world in to wander freely almost a year after countries who have had deaths numbers of under one thousand since closed their borders, on what is basically an Island) and dragged out of Europe completely against their democratic will, and completely ignored and disregarded by those dragging them out whilst they did so, are firmly behind the idea of returning Scotland to self-government, and most are keen to do so as soon as it is possible. That fact is as clear as the clearest bell ever rung in clear bell land.

However, all of that, according to the finger-on-the pulse bumbling buffoon occupying 10 Downing Street (when he isn’t clodhopping around the country in his clown shoes, squirting pretend Covid-19 vaccine out of the plastic flower in his lapel into the faces of passer-by) is poppycock. According to him the people of Scotland don’t want to “spend more time on constitutional wrangling”.

Watching the news clips of the slovenly Muppet cutting about the Central Belt yesterday like a demented Tasmanian Devil on a bad hair day, waving his invisible allegorical flag I can’t help but wonder about the clear paradox Johnson created by going against the science, against all advice, to Scotland, during these dark times.

Him, and his government make great play, (they think it’s an ace card) and he mentioned it again yesterday, about how terrible the party of Scottish government, and the many hundreds of thousands of us who are advocates for an independent Scotland, are for taking steps to facilitate a canvassing of our peers about the future governance and sovereignty of Scotland during a pandemic. 

Meanwhile, on the other hand, during the same pandemic, him and his advisors are proper mad keen to take every possible opportunity that becomes available, or that they can manufacture, like yesterday, to campaign like Trump at a hillbilly hoedown and squirrel bake, for the continuance of their precious (to them) Union.

They wheeled oot the sojers (he forgot the flypast this time),keep several medical scientists away from their workbenches whilst you fanny about like Frank Spencer in a lab coat, and talk half-thought-out muttered nonsense about how great everything is, as long as you still let us govern you. Oh, and then get in the old usual trope that never gets stale about what’d gonnae happen to Auld Lizzie’s mob if Scotland leaves the union? Who’ll save you from the Sino Russians, and the daddy of them all, straight from the Proudscotbut playbook, what about the pound? 

That, dear friends, is what you would call a brass neck to beat all others. He’s even made it clear that he’ll be back up the road before May’s election to campaign on behalf of Wee Doogie, the VAR with the batteries removed. 

You’ve tae shut up about independence because it’s unseemly, but he can carry on wandering around like a Beetlejuice version of Winston Churchill telling you how great it is living in the 1950’s.

Scotland needs to get away from this circus, a back of a fag packet contract which holds it back, ties it down, sucks it dry, binds it to a distinctly dodgy past and links it to an entity which has no understanding or self-awareness of its real status in the world in the 21st century. Also when you look at their catalogue of incompetent actions over the last twelve months they are contributing to our people becoming ill, some gravely, and some tragically are dying. Independence is now an imperative, not an aspiration.

There was absolutely no need for Boris Johnson and his entourage to make the journey that no one else is allowed to do unless it’s essential yesterday. All of the thanking, virtual elbow touching, and cringe-worthy fancy dress to look like he’s not getting in the road of people doing real work could easily have been done via the wonders of modern audio visual technology. He could even have campaigned for his union to the same extent, in fact to a greater extent, by getting his government’s media arm, the BBC, to broadcast a one or two hour special, that no doubt they could have repeated and sound bitten, and clipped for news on the hour, every hour for a 48 hour news cycle to the point of inducing boak, of him being smarmy and jovially posh to Scottish medical professionals and service personnel of the future Scottish Defence Force. 

Yet he still chose to put others at risk. There are over one hundred thousand innocent people dead, many of whom who could still be alive if it hadn’t been for the grave incompetence of him and his government.  Has the guy nae conscience, has he no shame?

Lastly, on the subject of Johnson taking half-thought-out muttered nonsense, I mention the Guardian’s article overnight about his visit to Scotland directly, where journalist John Crace quotes the bumbling Prime Minister verbatim. Talking at the Livingston facility developing a new Covid-19 vaccine Johnson said..

“If [the vaccine is] approved by the MHRA then we will have 60m doses of it by the end of this year for the whole of the British people. And so it’s a success for Scotland. Uh, it’s a success for, uh, Britain and, uh, it’s a success for Britain because it is a success for Scotland. It’s a success for Scotland because it’s a success for Britain. 

So, uh, I’m, uh, you know, it was very, very encouraging to see it. That’s, that’s … I may have done some other things as well while I have been here although I can’t immediately recollect what they are. It’s been an action-packed day and always a joy to see you.”

Really? Would you place your trust in this man to govern your country? I wouldn’t trust him to go for chips.

A disgraceful stunt

So there you have it. Unionism at all costs. No matter that the numbers of innocents taken by a horrific pandemic are increasing at alarming levels. The red, white and blue message must get out, no matter how badly this may impact others. 

A staged and choreographed visit to Scotland by a Prime Minister (easily as unwelcome as a predecessor of his who decimated the industrial and manufacturing landscape and used the people of a country who never voted for her, or ever would if given a thousand years of continuously asking them, as an experiment in social engineering to a degree that she would not have considered, and would not have been tolerated, in most parts of her own country, south of the river Mersey) must take place, against all expert epidemiological advice. It would make you sick, wouldn’t it? I hope that literally it doesn’t.

In a medical facility, or temporary vaccination unit, somewhere in Scotland, several frontline angels, women and men selflessly dedicated to caring for others in their brave and tireless service, will be stopped from what they are doing, from the vital work they are involved in, to be used as photo-fodder, so Boris Johnson and his parcel of sycophantic rogues, the Jack’s, the Ross’s, the Mundell’s et al, can have selfies with people unlike themselves, people with integrity, properly directed moral compasses, humanity and humility.

His media blurbs, and the obsequious ermine-chasers in his northern provincial cabal, talk of the importance of a Prime Minister being ‘visible and accessible’ during the pandemic. 

Apart from these committed health professionals whose place of work will be disrupted by the clown show, England’s Prime Minister, and his entourage, will, (as usual when a Conservative and Unionist politician pays the masses in the north a visit), not come across a single ordinary Scottish person who hasn’t been vetted, double checked, or hasn’t been selected as a tame stooge to add assumed value to their staged show.

Accessible he will not be, and in these strange and dangerous times, why would you want to come across this Muppet, and a group of twenty hangers-on in suits anyway? 

It will be interesting to see which of the usual suspects of tea cake makers, distillers, expensive tourist tack sellers, farmers, fishing industry representatives, or shouldered-sweatered oil and gas tycoons who seem to be able to know with certainty that vast reserves of oil have gone into hiding or are ready to flow in abundance based on the popularity of self-government at the time of asking, that he plays cling-on with this time. 

Surely even some of these pillars of British society in Scotland must be starting to get the hump with their sponsors from Whitehall now that the real impacts of Brexit are starting to become visible?

100,000 plus lost souls, and Boris Johnson is wandering around waving a flag. Isn’t Great Britain great? Actually, no it’s not, it most definitely is not.

Forbidden

So let me see if I’ve got this right, and this is based on exclamations coming fae wee Doogie Ross, the stand in leader of the Holyrood Scottish Tories, from Westminster (finger on the pulse).

Of course Doogie is only in the high chair whilst the actual leader, she of the soor puss expression, sketchy knowledge of all the key issues and a martial fetish, particularly for Challenger Tanks, gets herself relaunched yet again as a down-to earth woman of the people. She’s just the same as us, she says, as she projects her pragmatic furrowed brow image at her adoring media. ‘Look I eat  ice cream 99 cones and sit on the backs of big hairy coos when getting my phoatie taken, just like the ordinary man and woman in the street’, she’ll exclaim tae anyone who will listen, and passers-by catching her coming out of Waitrose. 

Aye, you are spot on there Ruth, right on the button, only, we, the ordinary folk, don’t wear ermine cloaks, or funny rig oots, or process up and doon like pantomime characters in auld musty buildings on a regular basis behind an auld wummin wearing a golden bunnet, anxious to reach her priceless bejeweled seat at the front of the room toot sweet due tae her bunions fair killing her, (and the ten grand shoes she’s wearing are missing a Scholl insole). Oh, and we don’t hoover up three hunner odd quid a day for stretching out and snoring peacefully on a leather bench all afternoon after a subsidised five star lunch and a half hour play with our phone on social media.

Aye, getting back tae it, this comes from wee Doogster, the man who fell over his own feet, and took a header intae the turf just trying tae avoid not coming into contact with a fairly sedate rolling fitbaw, minding its own business, whilst he ran the line one day. Part-time linesman, assistant referee, Scotland’s answer tae VAR with the batteries removed, he’s one of that unique brand of politician, the agents of our neighbours to the south, members of a political party which, incidentally, Scotland hasn’t voted for since the year Jackson Carloan, another such cratur, and Andrew Marr, he of the union weighted rhetorical questions but unwilling ear to pay attention to the responses, were born, and neither of those two are spring chickens. Douglas is the cream of the crop. Heaven help us!

So, whit in fact is it that Doogie is saying, that is so profound in its content, and whit does it mean? With the Holyrood elections to the Scottish Parliament coming up in May this year, it seems to me it is this.

Bearing in mind all of the material changes, sleight of hand and breaches of promises made by the ‘broad-shouldered’, beneficent, and currently dangerously incompetent, London government since 2014, If the party of the current government of Scotland should, in their election manifesto, state that a democratic majority win for them in the election in May will result in a referendum seeking the views of the people of Scotland about their future governance, and as a result, the people of Scotland, as is their democratic right, consequently vote by majority to put them back into power, Doogie recommends that if someone in London does not agree to such a referendum taking place the Scottish people should boycott the vote. 

His logic being of course, that Scotland’s people should not take part in such a referendum because England, another country, other than Scotland, won’t allow Scotland to express its own democratic will, and there is nothing wrong with that, this arrangement should be considered to be correct.

I would suggest, over the coming months, once all of Douglas Ross’s postulations are really considered, digested and ruminated upon by the people of Scotland, and the light bulbs start to glow across the nation, apart from the real hardline minority loyalist Rule Britanniaites, I don’t much fancy unionism’s chances of stopping the majority of my country-folk from taking part in such a referendum. 

Try telling a few million Scots they cannae do something, and see what happens.

Independence is normal, being governed by another country is not. 

What the people want

The idea of the new, but quite old, President of America, (anxious to avoid the whiff of 80 year old stale cigar smoke and brandy emanating from the ghost of declining imperialism’s God figure’s sculptured bust down the back of his neck) punting the quasi-religious icon out of the oval office and into a dusty cupboard was bad enough. 

That was until that blasted Scotch woman with a name like a fish, just like the last separatist chap, started stirring up the speciality jam again.

Yes, the dinosaurs shoring up the crumbling pillars of unionism are becoming increasingly exercised, grinding their teeth, at the goings on in the north, therefore their media, yesterday represented by Andrew Marr, on his regular Sunday lunchtime show, are ploughing the well established protectionist path. 

On the show they came, the venerable talking heads, one by one. First up the kid-on Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy, for a nice wee chat. He let her talk, he hardly interrupted her. She made some points, corrected a few mistruths. 

Curiously Marr chibbed her about Joe Biden being “woke” (I’d imagine keeping him awake is sometimes a problem) and then linked that up in the conversation to the anti –fascist protests in London of a few months ago, when the bigger version of a piece of rock formed into the approximate shape of Winston Churchill (Yes, he got another mention) was encased in plywood to make it look almost like the current Prime Minister when he goes for his customary hide in walk-in-fridges now and again, to avoid it being vandalised. My goodness, them and their statues, their spitfire flypasts and their flags, oh their flags.

Then it was Matt Hancock’s turn. He’s a creepy type of fellow, and gives me the fear, particularly that look he puts on when the likes of Piers Morgan are toasting him on a fork for breakfast in front of a live audience. He actually looks like he enjoys being humiliated, a public school education can sometime do that. 

Not that he was under any pressure yesterday, aw no, the affable Marr did everything but tickle his belly. Let’s all forget the near year-long grossly negligent and dangerous mishandling of the Covid-19 virus. Aye, let’s sweep all of that away under the carpet eh. Wee sweaty Matt, formerly starring in “Allo Allo” as a Johnny Foreigner on the enemy side during the war his Britnat compadres are still obsessed with, is taking the credit for battering out the vaccine amongst the multitude quicker than from a free bar at a highland licencee’s daughter’s wedding. He’s doling it out much quicker than France too, Matt managed tae squeeze in, importantly, between virtual cuddles from Marr. Oh, well that’s awright then. 

I cannae work out if his ‘smug’ look is as bad as his ‘I’m enjoying being punished’ look. As my auld dear departed Grandmother would have said he’s got a “face you’d seldom tire of drawing the palm of yer haund aff.”

Moving on. We were treated tae the host getting intae a two-way sketch gag with the representative of Israel’s government responsible for handing out the virus vaccines in that neck of the woods. As they parried backwards and forwards on whether he should be sharing the vaccine with the Palestinian community the Israeli fella had to stop himself giggling twice. 

This chat ended just as the chap from the Knesset was working his way up to trying to make some sort of legitimate argument, in his mind, that yes, his government will get round to sharing at some point because it’s “in their best interests” to do so, (by that he meant only to stop the Palestinian people catching it and then infecting the people he represents).

Then it was time for the main show, and true to form up came the face on screen of a tired looking Nicola Sturgeon to be told she is rotten, and her government is rotten. 

Rotten at vaccinating speedily (see sweaty Matt’s smug progress previously), rotten at firstly protecting Alex Salmond and then persecuting Alex Salmond (Sturgeon herself being rotten at picking the guy she married, rotten at misleading parliament, and rotten at plotting sinister conspiracies). 

In fact she’s rotten to the core, and should just resign because she is so rotten, and when Marr couldn’t pin anything on to her, or get the reaction he was after, she was rotten at dealing with the drug mortality problem which Scotland has, (we were clearly moments away from moving on to education but he was too busy talking about independence to quite get there on time).

Yes, it seems it’s ok to ask interviewees on the right side of the red, white and blue brick road questions which you don’t expect to be answered, and then let them ramble on a bit about what they want to talk about, but no, that doesn’t apply to anyone who represents the perfectly normal constitutional arrangement of Scotland being a self-governing country.  Definitely not. 

No, these people must be goaded and interrogated, peppered in throw-away diatribe, and if they try and actually answer the question asked, a habit with which I would suggest the First Minister of Scotland tends to conform, immediately shut down, discredited or minimised, or suffer the appearance from the questioner of feigned disinterest in their answer.

My missus, the best of me, a lady who has very little interest in politics of any kind, happened to be in the room yesterday at the same time as I watched Andrew Marr follow the standard established British media protocol in his Sunday show. 

Her response at the end of the watching hour? “Wow, he asked her questions but then didn’t want to let her answer. He didn’t do that with the rest of them, did he? That wisnae very fair.” She isnae wrong.

The First Minister of Scotland, who in such circumstances as these, held her own, (it wasn’t quite the Andrew Neil attempted savaging of some months ago, when the leaders of all parties were supposed to be interviewed individually prior to the election by Neil, an interview the cowardly Boris Johnson ducked out of, fearing disaster) but literally she would have been as well pre-preparing signs with one sentence answers on them and holding them up to the camera, so predictable were the questions, and so uninterested in her answers was the questioner. He even called her “Alex” at one point. It would have saved her a lot of trouble.

The one thing that did provide me with encouragement though, and very much so, was her response to the final “we’ve run out of time” question, when Marr asked her if the current Scottish Government won the upcoming Holyrood Election convincingly would she consider calling an advisory “Home-made’ referendum.

Her response leads me to believe that like Marr, and his like’s, lack of interest in any answers she may have to any of their questions, she and her government will, in kind, have very little interest in the response, either way, to any request she may find herself making soon for a section 30 order. 

She is looking to hold a legitimate referendum. She will seek permission to do so. That permission will be sought from the people of Scotland in May. We have gone beyond seeking the illegitimate consent of an entity which has no authority to give that consent. Scotland belongs to no one but its citizens.

Can you repeat the question?

A challenge, a statement, and a question which should be asked of all unionist Scottish politicians past and present, of Holyrood and Westminster (both chambers) whenever, and wherever these people are encountered by any of the vast membership of the independence movement.

Asked as a first question during every interview (we can but dream) or during a chance encounter in a coffee shop queue, Tesco’s, or from the drivers seat of a taxi, or perhaps whilst waiting to cross the road (although it would take a couple of minutes) or definitely when they, or their stooges, chap your door, or stand on a irn Bru outside Greggs and berate you through a microphone about how vile you are for wanting to endanger their cosseted lifestyle or their future cosseted lifestyle, the question is this…..

If you consider yourself truly to be an honest servant of the people, committed to democracy, a public figure that the voters of Scotland can count on as having integrity, would you then concede that consistent polling evidence of the last year clearly reflects that a material change in circumstances has occurred since 2014, and that if the democratic rights of the people of Scotland are to be accommodated, a second referendum on Scotland’s future governance must now take place? 

Until these folk can firstly answer that question, without evasion, without a standard reference to the ‘once in a generation’ trope, and with some conviction, why should we give house room to any of their answers on any other subject? 

If they don’t answer this fundamental  question about the democratic rights of their fellow Scots we should just continue to ask it, to their eventual  embarrassment. 

Independence is normal, being governed by another country is not. 

Unfounded superiority

Can there be a clearer example of the crass exceptionalism of a shrunken and bitter former imperial power (an exceptionalism that time-after-time in regular polling is now being wholly rejected by a sickened Scotland) than the words of the Member of Parliament for the 19th century Jacob Rees-Mogg in the House of Commons yesterday, as he smugly laughed and joked?

In the face of the disaster which is unfolding in the Scottish, and the other parts of the UK, fishing industry, where Brexit, as a result of lack of government preparedness, poor communication and  bureaucratic incompetence has created supply bottlenecks, shrinking markets and red tape nightmares, resulting in catches being unsold, stocks of seafood previously delivered to markets at the peak of their value rotting on docksides, and companies throughout the fisheries sector on the brink of going under (and we’re only a couple of weeks into the brave new world of Little England separation) all this throwback fossil of Victoriana had to contribute by way of comment was that the most important thing is that that the fish are British, and therefore will be happier fish.

This following the incredible revelation, again jocularly, and with a hint of a chuckle coming from her gub, that Westminster’s Minister for Fisheries, Victoria Prentis, was too busy pinning up the Angel Gabriel’s frock in her local village for the nativity play to pay any attention to the finalised released document sent to her setting out the details of the post-Brexit arrangements between the UK and the EU for fishing, oops, never mind, we’re British, and proud, and that’s what counts.

What is wrong with these people? Seriously, what weird and sinister red, white and blue planet are they from?

Earlier in the week, in true bolting the stable door long after Dobbin has given them the middle corn of a hoof and trotted off over the nearest hill to escape the madness style, in a country, which apart from America, has made the biggest dug’s breakfast of a world pandemic known to man and beast, (instigating an extended round of indecisive gross and deadly incompetence, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of many thousands of innocents) they launched a public relations campaign about their performance in vaccinating the population with a phoatie of their glorious flag (them, and their flags) and some smug nonsense about how they are thee…eeee best at vaccinating. “We Are No 1 In Europe and third in the world for vaccination doses administered!”

Oh look at us, they bluster, how great are we? Better than Johnny Foreigner eh! How dreadfully smug and self-indulgent.

It would make you sick. Is helping to save people’s lives, the ones they haven’t (only purely by accident) managed to expose to mortal danger as yet, by inoculating them, a competition? Are we back to all of this “two World Wars and a World Cup” imbecilic nonsense yet again?

I don’t care who does it, Nicola Sturgeon, Joanna Cherry, a reinstated Alex Salmond or a re-elected Angus Robertson, or even the ghost of Don Roberto himself. 

Somebody, anybody, please find a way soon to disentangle Scotland from this awful weight of self-superior fantasists we’ve got shackled around our ankles.

We need to get away from these people. Some in other parts of the world are looking at us, and asking ‘are you with them?’….and giggling.

Onward

I’m not for or against Nicola Sturgeon or Alex Salmond, preferring at all times, to concentrate my site’s work to furthering the cause of an independent Scotland. My ire is aimed exclusively at those, mainly in public life, who would see a nation stifled, stunted and democratically ignored mainly for their own self-serving personal advancement, either in status or financially, or both.

These individuals are lower than a centipede’s Sambas. 

I have no issue with those of our people who, having given due consideration to the facts, still feel that their Scotland is best served being governed by another country. That is their right, we all deserve an opinion, but the self servers, particularly those who make great play of the fact that they are Scots born, the ‘Proudscots’, as if that somehow gives them the ability to somehow know better than the rest of us what is good for us, to be entitled, along the lines of their masters, “patriots’ of the isolationist, elitist neighbour which controls our purse strings, and makes all the major decisions for us that we should make ourselves, gie me the boak. 

My sister and brother Scots born here, and those that are new Scots, those who chose our country to live in, contribute to, and to bring their children up in, matter to me. We are all Scotland’s people.We all add to the mix of a progressive european nation set to be reborn.

Discussion is good, debate is healthy.

In the Scotland of our future, under a codified constitution centred on the needs and aspirations of its people, I except the various political parties which develop to meet the requirements of the electorate to fight tooth and nail amongst each other to ensure they do meet the requirements of those that elected them, whilst also,when necessary, working collaboratively with each other for the common good on issues which require a parliament to act as one. (The current pandemic demonstrates the guddle, in this case with deadly consequences, that political division in times of national crisis can create).

Until then, up until we’ve achieved our goal of returning Scotland to its rightful state of independence I’m not interested in in-fighting. It does not progress our cause. 

Independence is normal. Being governed by another country is not. 

Democracy rising to the surface

Och well. We’re in a new year, (just in it), and it looks already like a new pastime is required for us all eh, a hobby perhaps? It seems we of an outward looking, socially democratic, progressive civic nationalism mind have been defeated, gubbed, humped by our betters, our masters into a final subdued coma of subordination and dependency.  Fetch the cloth caps, we’ve some serious doffing to get started on.

How did this come about? What masterstroke was played that did for us, what act of heroism finally saw us off in favour of the menace of right-wing insular xenophobia? It was easy. That fine cerebral statesman, oozing with gravitas, the Premier of England and its neighbouring subsumed countries, the blonde Beetlejuice impersonating Winston Churchill, simply waffled on a bit on Sunday morning telly.

Yes, in that straightforward crystal clear communication style that he has Johnson Minor, Senior is trying to acquire a French passport, let it be known (you know the one, the one that involves grinning like a Brexit nationalist snorting uncut HP sauce, squeezed from an out-of-date sachet lifted from an all you can eat English breakfast café in Benidorm, off the china surface of a 1953 Coronation saucer, whilst mumbling phrases like “a new global dawn”, “A navy for Nelson to command” and “Really? I’m the Prime Minister?”) that we in Scotland have absolutely no chance, before some point around the fifth decade of this century, of having our views regarding the future governance of our country democratically considered again. We did this already in 2014, so we won’t need another one, will we Jock?

Our dream is over. What a pity, particularly with the growing numbers of Scots who have opened their minds (as consistently evidenced in what is now approaching twenty consecutive sample polls) to the idea of Scotland producing its own governments of whatever political leaning the democratic majority of us vote for in future, from our own country, rather than us increasingly having absolutely no influence on the government of our country by another country, having been thwarted by such a move of genius.

Boris Johnson has spoken. We’re finished. According to the wooly-headed posh boy there is no democratic means for the majority of Scots to express their views, or have those they elected carry out a process to comply with their stated will as voters. None at all. We’ve had our tea, now we’ve just to sit in a corner quietly chewing dry stale non-EU cereal.

Can all of this be true? All these years of campaigning for the just and rightful outcome of a return to self-determination for Scotland that many have put in, all for nothing? Is it right we have no say, no influence, no control over our own future governance? Can we be put off and dismissed so easily by such a man, by such a government from another country, by such a failed in-just, sham and deeply entrenched corruption of what democracy is supposed to be? Really?

I would suggest, the dreadful Covid –19 and its variants not-withstanding, that we consider not looking for a hobby, not picking up our painting by numbers kit, our jigsaws, our chessboards and our TV remotes, and instead get ourselves ready to get right back on our journey to our destination, an independent Scotland. 

If, like me, you feel that our country being dismissed as an irrelevance by a man whose only real talent involved having the ability to con himself into a position of power, initially by fending off his opponents with the bared teeth of his now pseudo-resigned attack dog,(an individual that Johnson would defend to the hilt even if he infected half of the north of England with the virus) a non-leader, now hanging on, way out of his depth, a  man who is frankly ridiculous, then your efforts in 2021 to return Scotland to its rightful state of democratic self-determination will, like mine, be redoubled. 

The time is near, peacefully and within the bounds of the law, where the failure to recognise the democratic rights of a nation must be reciprocated in kind. If they don’t recognise us why should we recognise their authority to govern? 

We’ve been more than patient. Independence is for the people of Scotland to demand as a sovereign nation. It is their right. 

In a bona fide democracy it does not form part of the jurisdiction of another country to have to be asked for their permission on such matters or to have the ability to refuse to adhere to the will of the majority of the people of the nation seeking self-determination. 

That time is coming.