A story with a cast of 5.3 million

No, this isn’t about a lost Cecil B Demille movie, this is about Scotland.
  

The population of our country is at an all time high and we’re part of a diverse and fluid mix of different cultures that are being blended together to form our identity.  A Scot isn’t just someone who is born here, or whose parents were born here, a Scot is someone who calls this country home.

Picture taken from Sign for Scotland HQ

Sometimes it might seem that we in the Signing community and other minorities are on the outside looking in, but it’s just not true.  We’re as much a part of Scotland as everyone else and we need to make sure that things are better after independence than devolution allowed.  With our government closer to us, we can have greater influence.  We can get rid of the sense of entitlement that too many Westminster MPs feel and have a more diverse and accountable politics.  We can push for reforms, for the fact that we will be independent will prove that the people are strong, and can enforce change.  We can make sure that no-one is left behind, and that everyone has a say.
  

The draft constitution produced by the Scottish Government shows consideration for all of Scotland's domestic languages. There is a determination from different Yes groups, emboldened by the possibilities of independence, to challenge gender and wealth inequality. And we will empower a more democratic and representative form of governance, which is more responsive and reflective of our values and wishes.

 

Westminster isn't working, but if we work together, we can create a better society

The cast may be of millions, but a single person can make a real difference.  Please get involved and help out.  It might not seem like much, but a lot of people doing a little each will go a long way to securing a ‘Yes’ vote next week.

Drew
 
If you like this blog, then please consider visiting our other sites:
Facebook - Sign for Scotland
YouTube - Sign4Scotland
Twitter - Sign4Scotland

He asked 'what is your vision for a new Scotland' and answer came there none

This is the second guest post by Hilary for Sign for Scotland. You can read her first, Indie Dumping and Scapegoating, here.

 

Yes, poor darling had no answer at all. He was completely flumuxed.  Vision? What’s that?

 

So I ask myself the same question and suggest that we all do that and post in our ideas. 

 

What is my vision for a new Scotland?

 

Firstly   I see a new Scotland not reliant on weapons of mass destruction, that is the real name of Trident. The name ‘Trident’ is a pretty cover up.  Alex Massey said in one of the TV debates that Trident is a complete irrelevance. I like listening to him in the same way that I liked listening to Malcolm Muggeridge and  Boris Johnson. They are all very quick, very sharp and can be very funny but in this instance I think Massey is trying to be amusingly dismissive but is actually being superficial.

  

If you go out and buy a gun and put it in a drawer and never use it , that is not an irrelevance. It marks you out as a person who is or was prepared to use violence against another human being and that is a very different  thing from being someone who would never dream of possessing a weapon that could cause harm . Therefore if we give up weapons of mass destruction our psyche alters. In one way we are defenceless against maniac nations but in many other ways we have alternative defences. We develop alternative means of communicating rather than always having the great explosives at our backs. We know that we have to keep good communications going; we use trade, cultural and educational exchanges, twinnings; our academics and researchers pool their findings. In other words we behave like sensible adults not like cowboys and Indians.

I think this is important. There is no weapons-insurance policy so we have to strive for secure friendships and be watchful over the peacefulness of our state of mind.

It can be done. It is done everywhere except in a few power mad lands.

 

Secondly    I see a Scotland that is much fairer. How about us actually ‘loving our neighbour’?  Who is our neighbour?  Familiar stuff this.  The neighbour is then anyone that you see or know of who is lonely or in need. The difference between the wealthy and those in real need is staggering in our country. In the aftermath of apartheid Desmond Tutu suggested to the wealthy that they adopt a family and look to its real needs. I don’t do that here but the idea is worth playing with. Let us, collectivley look for ideas that can make a real difference.  There is really a whole load of money being flung around.  The coffee houses thrive on it. How we can redistribute money and make a difference  and how we can make others who feel unvalued feel valued I am not qualified to say. You will have better ideas than me. But think we must.

 

Now this is crazy…!  I see a Scotland where we remember Carnegie’s words ‘The man who dies rich dies disgraced’. I would  even enlarge these uncomfortable words and make them even more feared: ‘The man who lives rich lives disgraced’!!  In the States it is considered a good thing to be a philanthropist. It is ‘cool’. There’s a lot of kudos to be gained in big giving and a lot of good feeling from those who benefit. I have aired my views on this before and people immediately think I am calling for more taxes on the rich. I am not doing this at all. Taxes are given grudgingly. The philanthropist gives willingly and publicly. The ‘publicly’ is important. Secret giving is fine and modest but the word philanthropy means ‘love of mankind’ . If a rich man gives anonymously, in many ways, this is good but mankind needs to know its rich people as friends and benefactors who will help in need.  Money is not bad in itself. It can do wonderful things but money kept, hoarded, far away from those in need, rejecting them  …that is bad. And it breeds distaste towards the rich man, not envy but contempt and anger. This is what we see so often in feudal Scotland.   

 

But I knew a rich man in Ardross ,some years ago, a Greek of Scottish descent, John MacTagart, an ill man. He was freehanded with his money, he built a fine community hall, he allowed no fishing out of respect for the fish and no hunting for pleasure on his estate. The deer were managed and a certain amount eaten by the estate workers and the family and the rest was left for the wild animals to feed on . I do not know if this is good management but it gave a very good feel to the countryside and the community. There was respect and responsibility towards all living things and people. But he was only part Scot so the feudal path was unknown to him.

 

The philanthropist should, I think, look around at all those bare areas in Scottish life and see how he or she can fill its many needs, building hospices (which can bear the donor’s name), sports facilities, setting up youth projects and so on and on and on. The rich man should love his country and his fellow Scots, whatever their position in his world view! and should give handsomely and he might then  in return be held in affection. Unfortunately, he keeps well away from the rabble and does not appear to love the land, except in so far as he owns that part of it. The Selfish Giants of Alba.

 

Land reform is thus necessary. The rich could to some extent ward off the worst effects of this by openness and philanthropy but I am pretty sure they won’t.

 

Thirdly I see a Scotland that, even more than now, welcomes the immigrant. I do not mean those extremes examples that are shown as the norm on salacious TV. At my first school my best friends were a girl from Uganda and a Polish girl whose family had managed to escape from Poland in the war. Ever since then I have been excited by ‘the stranger’ and made countless warm and lasting friendships. The immigrant has a lot to offer and a lot to teach us.

 

The immigrants speak our language already or works hard to do so. We are so useless that we often alter their names as it is too much trouble to pronounce the foreign names correctly. Such imperial arrogance! They also work hard, they dress properly, they arrive on time, they are polite and good natured. Our young people who complain that the foreign workers are taking their jobs could learn a lot from them. There was a radio 4 programme recently and an English farmer said he tried to give the local English kids a chance but they weren’t up to fruit picking. They arrived late, grumbled and didn’t pick fast enough. A whole generation, maybe two have lost out on a good attitude to work. The Me lot can’t do it.  I suppose ‘They don’t deserve it!’

 

I understand therefore why lots of jobs are given to the foreigners. They are reliable. 

  

However I think the practice of shipping in loads of workers from abroad and giving them jobs that are not even advertised locally, is quite despicable and I hope this will be outlawed in our new land of peace and plenty. I believe this happens at Walkers in Aberlour. If I am wrong then I apologise immediately. I am repeating the local gossip.

 

In our new Scotland I hope to be assured that asylum seekers will be welcomed. These are a different category of homeless people. They have no safety in their homelands; they have possibly witnessed their family members being murdered, raped or tortured. They may have endured rape and torture themselves. They live in a twilight hell and are haunted by nightmares.  Whitehall has little understanding of their griefs and fears. Freedom From Torture battles hard on their behalf but it is a hard struggle against beaurocracy. I hope our Home Office will show itself compassionate and allow asylum seekers to work and be rehabilitated more quickly.

 

I would like to see a Scotland where people begin to speak languages again. Languages open up new friendships and cultures and other countries are no longer seen just from the outside, as tourists. We should be citizens of the world soon. But languages are a sort of taboo. The presenters on radio Scotland set the example by tittering in embarrassment if anyone so much as says Bonjour! My family say ‘What’s the use of learning languages? They never helped me!’  So our people don’t get the interesting jobs abroad; they miss out and have an inferiority complex. What’s wrong with English?  Plenty if you don’t respect other languages and people and mispronounce foreign proper names.

 

These three things – weapons of mass destruction,  the gulf between the rich and the poor and emigration are the big issues that I would like to see reformed and made good in a New Alba.

 

Please write what you would like and get folk answering Alec’s Oh so Difficult Question for You Know Who.

  

We at Sign for Scotland would like to say a big thank you to Hilary for writing a second blog for us. 

 

If you like this blog, then please consider visiting our other sites:
Facebook - Sign for Scotland
YouTube - Sign4Scotland
Twitter - Sign4Scotland

Indie Dumping and Scapegoating

A guest blog for Sign for Scotland by Hilary Christie.

My teenage years in the fifties were clouded over with anti-communist outpourings from my step-mother who was otherwise a great person. There were reds under every bed and she spouted fire in the direction of any labour politician. I met some of them and thought they were ordinary, pleasant enough human beings. How many evening meals were spoiled by these rantings. My father would leave the room. Then came the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. There was a call put out on the BBC for families to give a temporary home to a refugee. I was delighted. At last an opportunity to show real solidarity with those who had suffered the hated communist  oppression that had benighted our evenings.

  

I asked ,’Can we have a refugee?’ The answer was a tremendous disappointment and at the same time an eye opener: ‘My dear, you are sweet. No, we couldn’t possibly’.  ‘Why not?’  ‘My dear, he would smell so!’  This is theatre. People don’t say such things. But it was said. So we had no refugee. We did not welcome the stranger and I saw that politics was very often not about real life and changing wrongs but about having someone or something to hate. That’s very useful for the hater. Something inside you growls and snarls and conveniently you, subconsciously, choose somebody to hammer and that makes you feel a lot lighter, a lot better for a while, superficially at least. It doesn’t of course rid you of your anger – in fact it almost certainly fuels it and keeps the pot cooking and it most definitely alienates other people by its sheer virulence.
 
So I avoided politics scrupulously for decades while Harold Wilson  ruined our meals; Mrs Thatcher ruined our meals and Tony Blair ruined our meals. And then came the Referendum and it all changed.

 

Now I go around the streets and houses and chap on doors and meet with friendliness, enquiries and blind hatred. One big guy screams, ‘You’re all a load of paedophiles!’
  

An other elderly woman hates Alec Salmond and says ‘If I had a gun I’d shoot him’. I ask what he has done to her that she feels this way. She says, ‘I think he’s out for himself’. That’s a small reason for capital murder.

 

A third person sees me coming, spots my badge and bag and greets me with ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’ I am interested. ‘What are the two most poisonous fish in Scotland?’  I begin to run through jelly fish and so on in my mind. Fool! It dawns on me. Our First and Deputy leaders. I found this so disgusting that I couldn’t speak  about for it a fair while.

 

All these distressed people have the same thing in common, namely a great need to dump, i.e. a need to find a scapegoat to blame and on to whom they can  pour out their anger, frustration and spite. An interesting ‘Dilemmas’ column in the Independent by Virginia Ironside, (30 July 2014) explores scapegoating. She says that one person is selected by someone or a family and those around them learn to despise this victim as well. This person is blamed for all manner of ills. The cause of this hate can be a similarity to someone remembered and disliked from the past. Or, which is more likely, the hater may see in the scapegoat traits that he or she has  personally and is ashamed of . By dumping this hate and rejection of bad traits on to this person then that gets rid of them for a while and they don’t have to be faced or dealt with for the time being.

 

These powerful subconscious feelings have to be avoided. Run from them if you can. Arguing and reasoning are useless. ‘Get the hell out of there,’ she says. Keep clear of the situation.  And then she says a thought stirring thing – in order to survive the hater badly needs you to be around. Take away the prop and the bad feelings will come home to roost. It seems that people are unaware of what they are doing when they are scapegoating. They think it is justified and their hatred deserved. They do not want to listen to moderate arguments.  These take away from them their great weapon. This is dysfunctional behaviour and it stems from deep hurt from the past, buried but living unhealthily inside.

 

So our poor but sturdy First Minister has the unfortunate distinction of being of some use to these unhappy individuals whether they like it or not. It would be good if politics could be free from fly tipping.  May all scapegoats be protected from spite and evil thoughts and come through unscathed.

 
We at Sign for Scotland would like to say a big thank you to Hilary for writing this blog for us!
 
If you like this blog, then please consider visiting our other sites:
Facebook - Sign for Scotland
YouTube - Sign4Scotland
Twitter - Sign4Scotland

It's Great To Be Different

According to a study entitled ‘The Psychology of Voters in Elections’ by Michael Bruter and Sarah Harrison, the 4^th most common thought experienced by voters in a polling booth is ‘vote of the rest of the country’.  It’s a thought that more than 60% of people have before finally placing an 'x' onto their ballot.  Only ‘Responsibility’ (78.8%), ‘Possible Prime Ministers’ (66.6%) and ‘Constituency Candidate’ (65.4%) were more frequently considered, and two of them won’t even be relevant in the independence referendum.
  

The term ‘vote of the rest of the country’ is, for all intensive purposes, a form of peer pressure.  If you believe that a certain side will win, you will want to back that side to fit in with the crowd.  If it was the right decision then you can share in the credit, and if it was wrong, well, at least you weren’t alone.  You don’t need to consider the issues and you don’t even need to accept much responsibility.  After all, you just followed what others were doing…

But you should consider the issues.  It doesn’t matter if someone else is claiming that every normal person is bored and that you should be too...you don't need to be like them.  You don’t need to pander to the laziness or misgivings of others.  You can state what you think and research what you don’t know.

 

I’m going to vote Yes in 2014.  I'll do it because, after looking over the evidence so far, that is what I believe to be right for the people who call Scotland home.  I don’t care if others will agree or disagree with me, I don’t care if I’m the only one who takes part, I only care in staying true to my beliefs and convictions.

Even though I have always in one way or another supported independence, I used to be quite shy about it.  It's hard to come out into the open and state clearly what you believe in.  There's a fear of being stigmatised, of being mis-understood, of being looked at differently by those you know, of being accused of hating others and simply searching for someone else to blame.

 

And sometimes those things do happen, but they are born from the ignorance of others.  I know that I'm not looking to blame anyone, I just want the future to be better, and believe that making decisions for ourselves is the best way to achieve that.  And by letting others know, I hope it will make them more open to a new way of thinking.

One of the most important things in life is to trust in your own judgement, and to not worry yourself with what others do.  The majority of people might disagree, but I don’t want to follow the crowd to somewhere I don't want to go.

I want to walk my path.

And, having the certainty that I won't be swayed by the baseless impressions of others when I complete my ballot, I can honestly say, it’s great to be different.

Drew

If you like this blog, then please consider visiting our other sites:
Facebook - Sign for Scotland
YouTube - Sign4Scotland
Twitter - Sign4Scotland