I WOULD have loved to have attended the NFU Scotland conference this week. Work commitments, alas, forbade me. Through the miracle of social media, however, I followed the fascinating discussions online.

The debate included an extraordinary speech by the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson.

It is my opinion that, in any sane universe, she should have been chased out of the room, her credibility and integrity shot to pieces.

Davidson was part of the whole “vote No to stay in Europe” lie, during the 2014 Scottish Independent referendum. To be fair, she fought credibly to remain in Europe, but lost, and immediately became a hard Brexiteer. And then she came to the NFU conference promising things that, because the Supreme Court has now ruled that Scotland need not be consulted over Article 50, she cannot possibly deliver. I suspect she doesn’t even want to.

Just for the record, I have no quarrel with the good people of the Supreme Court. In fact, I applaud them and welcome their judgment. For the growing number of us who want an independent Scotland, they have done us a favour.

It was charged with giving a legal ruling, not a political one. It has played, as they say, a blinder, not least by confirming what many of us had suspected.

Which is this. The Scottish Parliament is built on sand.

Our powers, such as they are, are lent, not given. Power devolved is power retained.

The Sewell Convention, which was formed to ensure that, in the event of any Westminster legislation potentially or actually impinging on Scottish devolved competencies, is now legally redundant. The court said so. We don’t have a Parliament. We don’t have a country. At the risk of boring your readership, Brexit and immigration have a direct impact on, say, education (which is a devolved issue but in which many of our knowledgeable people come from the EU).

A country that can’t have any say on this doesn’t, in fact, sound like much of a country. In truth, it isn’t a country at all.

There will, thankfully, be another referendum on Scottish independence. Two and a half years on, I often ask myself: what if we frame the question a different way? What if we looked through the looking glass from the other side? And ask this simple question: “Who speaks for Scotland?”

So, here it is.

My question to my fellow Scots, those who share my views, and those who don’t but who remain my dear friends, post-Supreme Court judgment, is this: “Is that OK? Are you alright with that – aye? Are you fine with not having a voice, a non-permanent parliament, with not mattering? Are you OK with not being a country at all?”

Or, perhaps, this: “Is there any circumstance in which you would consider independence an option if the relevant facts are presented or must we in all circumstances stick with the UK even to our own impoverishment?”

That’s it. That’s what it comes down to. Not politics. Just simple questions.

Because at least we know where we stand now. Anyone who’s fine with our legal status – which means, remember, that we aren’t a country – should obviously vote No in 2018 (which is when the next referendum will be, I believe).

The next Scottish independence referendum will determine not so much our politics but something deeper and more fundamental. Our own self-respect, and our pride. After all, without this we are nothing.

There’s a line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “Stands Scotland where it did?” The reply is “Alas, poor Scotland. Almost afraid to know itself”. Time for Scotland to know itself. And to think for itself.
Alec Ross
Stranraer

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There was no debate over Brexit – it was all posturing

SO, all this posturing about the sovereignty of Parliament, democracy and all that was just a sham. There was no significant challenge to the Government at all.

The debate was nebulous. Once Article 50 is triggered there is no way to halt the exit process. There is no such thing as “hard exit” or “soft exit”. Senior members of the EU have stated quite clearly there will be no cherry-picking of the Union by the UK. May has stated ad nauseum that Brexit means Brexit and in terms of the EU treaties she is correct. The only negotiation can be about how to extinguish the various treaties and other commitments the UK has, the financial consequences and the plight of immigrants.

What politicians, businesses and the electorate want to know is: what new trading agreement can be negotiated? Has the EU agreed that the two issues can be discussed in parallel? I haven’t been able to find any evidence of that.
Mike Underwood
Linlithgow

I CAN think of many who deserved a gong more than David Beckham – my late mother would have been one. She struggled to bring up a family during the Great War, the depression and the Second World War, with her man doing his bit in the Merchant Navy. No gongs for then, when his boat was torpedoed and he was paid off, until he signed on another boat.

Walter Hamilton St Andrews ITV’S News At Ten last Tuesday evening featured Peterhead’s TV celebrity skipper and one-time Conservative candidate for Banff and Buchan Jimmy Buchan on an anti-EU rant proclaiming that the EU is the reason for the demise of the Scottish fishing industry, and Brexit will once again return control of Scottish waters to “British” fishermen.

In it, Jimmy proclaimed that he wanted to catch “British fish to feed British people”. That probably means he no longer wants to sell his langoustine (that’s large prawns to you and me) to the finest restaurants in Europe. Or perhaps refuse to land his catch at Peterhead’s new ultra-modern fish market which was built by an EU grant?

Those of us who were fishermen throughout the 1980s and 90s remember the Scottish fleet of that era as a huge insatiable monster driven largely by huge egos and financed by unscrupulous banks, with an enormous catching power that far outstripped the natural resource. Cod, haddock and whiting were officially declared on the brink of unrecoverable extinction and would no longer exist at all in our waters today had it not been for EU intervention to control the relentless slaughter of those and other core white fish species by our own Scottish fleet.

The EU is the only reason that there has been the stock recovery we see today. Conservation, sustainability – and ethics dare I say – are not on any boat owners list of priorities when there is a boat mortgage to pay and money to be made. The only way for our fisheries to remain safe and sustainable is through an independent Scotland continuing to operate under the umbrella of the EU quota controls and by not allowing another short term “gold rush”-type boom resulting in a certain permanent extinction bust which is the way we are steering.
Graeme Goodall
Buckie

DURING the recent referenda here we have had interesting coinages: indyref, indyref2, Brexit, etc.

Given the ongoings we are about to witness after Article 50 has been invoked, perhaps another orthographically changed coinage, already used by many, will come to the fore, namely “MayHem”.
John Edgar
Blackford

CONTRARY to what Michael Fry states, the US engaged widely in surveillance, including of its kind citizens. Read the Snowden files.
Mary Fletcher
Stirling

I SUPPOSE it is natural for Tory MSP Murdo Fraser to be astonished that our Finance Minister has the sense to have a little money put aside for a rainy day (though such prudence used to be the norm, certainly for Scottish domestic establishments). Murdo, just be glad Scotland is governed by people with old-fashioned financial prudence.
Peter Craigie
Edinburgh