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. 

 

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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!
 
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A Vision for Scotland

This month's guest writer for Sign for Scotland is Jean Urquhart MSP. We're delighted and very grateful to have such a well respected figure from the Scottish Parliament write a post of us.

When I was growing up in West Lothian, I remember writing “North Britain” on my school jotters. Scotland to me seemed parochial; the land of Brigadoon and the White Heather Club, and not a positive, progressive, place to be. It was a place I left twice- once for America, and once for London- before returning to live and work in Ullapool.

 

What changes I have seen in Scotland since then. We’re now far more comfortable in our own skin; we recognise our shortcomings at the same time as trumpeting our successes. We have a parliament that can make some- but not all- of the decisions about what type of country we want to be. We have become far more internationalist in our outlook and now have the opportunity to slough off the last remnants of age-old grievances by once more becoming an independent country.

  

If you think that Westminster feels distant in the central belt, it feels like another planet in Ullapool. The balance of power across Britain as a whole is so skewed towards the centre that people feel distant from decisions made about their own communities. As the Jimmy Reid Foundation stated in their report ‘The Silent Crisis’, “we elect fewer people to make our decisions than anyone else and fewer people turn out to vote in those elections than anyone else”. Out of 2,071 Scots- roughly the population of Aviemore-only one will stand for election in their community; in Norway, it’s 1 in every 81. In Sweden, 4.4 people contest each seat; in Scotland, it’s 2.1. Out of 4,270 Scots- the population of Lockerbie- only one is an elected community representative; in Austria, it’s 1 in 200. These figures are often misconstrued as an argument for more bureaucracy, more machine politicians and a bigger trough to feed from; they’re not. What it is an argument for is revitalising the links between ordinary Scots and their democratic structures, addressing the democratic deficit at the lowest level and involving a more diverse cross-section of society in their local community.

  

Independence would shake the snowglobe of British politics and give us a once only opportunity to reshape who makes those decisions and where they make them. The work of island local authorities in engaging with both Westminster and Holyrood to secure further devolution to the isles is particularly instructive and offers a glimpse of what is achievable with independence. The First Minister’s recent speech in the North of England- where he posited the idea of an independent Scotland working in tandem with the North to act as a counterweight to London’s overwhelming pull - shows that the impact of independence could create a healthier balance across the economy of the British Isles as a whole.

  

The most heartening aspect of the independence debate has been the rise of the Jimmy Reid Foundation and their Common Weal project. They have led the way in showing that another Scotland is possible; a Scotland that values its workers, revitalises local decision-making and local governance and recognises that there needs to be a better balance between work and leisure. Their policy proposals are all based on examples from other countries, demonstrating even further the extent to which the British model of an unequal, low-productivity, geographically skewed economy is the exception rather than the norm. They have given some thought as to how a 30-hour working week and a basic citizens’ income could be affordable, workable and desirable, working with renowned economists such as the late Ailsa McKay to also examine how we can adapt the workplace and childcare provision to close the gender gap in the Scottish economy. Given Scotland’s social democratic consensus at a party political level, and the work of the Foundation in speaking to both Labour and the SNP about their ideas, there is no reason that at least part of the Common Weal can be implemented following independence. 

  

A revitalised democracy and a rebalancing of the economy are obviously two of the domestic benefits of independence; however, an independent Scotland also has so much to offer the world itself. Despite the robust nature of the debate, we mustn’t lose sight of how orderly and peaceful our path to a referendum has been. Our experiences, both good and bad, could be of great use to others post-independence. Coupled with the removal of the abhorrently expensive and inhumane Trident nuclear weapons system from Scotland’s shores- one of my major reasons for supporting independence-Scotland would be uniquely placed to establish a Peace Centre that could draw on these experiences and offer support and guidance to others across the world. Combined with membership of the EU and historic ties to countries like Ireland, Poland and Canada, an independent Scotland would look outward as it reassumes its long-vacant seat at the table. Our education system continues to attract international students in their droves, and our renewables and food and drink sectors are known the world over. 

  

On September 18^th, the door to a better Scotland will be unlocked for the first time in centuries. All we need is the confidence to cross that threshold and to be the change that we wish to see by voting Yes. 

Jean Urquhart is an independent list MSP for the Highlands and Islands region. She is the Deputy Convener of the Cross-Party Group on Crofting, and is involved to varying extents with the CPGs on Architecture & the Built Environment, Epilepsy, Human Trafficking, Palestine, Poland and Rural Policy. You can visit her website here where she writes about her ideas for an independent Scotland and the work that she does for the people of Highlands and Islands region.
Drew
 
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