I ATTENDED the march in Glasgow on Saturday and was blown away by the atmosphere created by 100,000 or so supporters of an independent Scotland. What really struck me was the completely friendly, happy atmosphere created by people from all walks of life from the smallest toddlers to the happy, smiling, senior citizens. It was a million miles from the scenes of the knuckle-dragging, volatile marches we are seeing elsewhere as Westminster seems to be imploding.

I think we could easily get the numbers up to a quarter of a million with a few simple changes.

Saturday made a mockery of several things, mainly “there is no appetite for independence” and “people don’t want another referendum as it is so divisive”. The first point is laughable, as the world and its granny know the momentum has swung so far in independence’s favour that they dare not publish them, but the the second point is the one that I wanted to focus on.

For “people don’t want another referendum as it is so divisive”, please read: “If we say this enough some people will actually start to believe it and if they are stupid enough to swallow this, then we may as well say: “Let our foreign government, who has managed to systematically destroy your industry and livelihoods and steal trillions of pounds of your resources whilst you just sit and watch, rule over you and ruin your land forever”.

People need to wake up.

We will never get a better chance to rid ourselves of a foreign tyrant and come out of the dark ages and make this country the land that it can be for our children. We owe it to those who have gone before us.

We can stop our resources being stolen, we can take our stolen lands back, end the foreign monopoly of our media and put an end to the biggest embarrassment to blight our land, bigotry, and we can then rejoin the real world.

It’s time to start talking to people and let them realise we do not have to, and should not, accept food banks, empty shops in our high streets and bigotry and we can build a thriving, happy land for our children and our children’s children and if anyone doesn’t like the idea of this, they either have no children or are so blinkered they really should consider moving to their imaginary land of milk and honey and leave us be to at least try and make this land the land it should be and be governed by our own people.

Lastly as for the tired old Unionist line “the SNP should concentrate on the day job instead of their obsession with independence” – I think the “day job” as they call it should be to win independence, and as soon as humanly possible. Until that time they will never be able to run Scotland properly with the pittance the receive from Westminster. A sum absolutely and deliberately worked out to try ensure it shows the SNP in a bad light and to look like they can’t be trusted to run a country.

Iain K
Argyll

YESTERDAY my husband and I, and friends both older and younger, made our way to our second great march in Glasgow. Not for ourselves, but for our children and grandchildren.

We pensioners have had most of our lives already – but this life has been under the yoke of Westminster. Under the illusion that, because we were lucky enough to have a Labour party to vote for, our vote actually meant something.

We knew that without the post-WW2 Labour government we would still be living in poverty, providing the labour to enrich those already rich enough. Unfortunately the Westminster glamour(!!) eventually had its effect, giving those we elected the idea of their own entitlement to power, forgetting who voted them in. Time for our own parliament to be able to use our finances to run our own country – not to facilitate vanity projects in London.

I marched on Saturday for the future of Scotland, for the future of all the children, young people, workers, pensioners, born in Scotland or having come here to make a life for themselves and their descendants.

Moira Cochrane
via email

I KNOW I seriously risk being called a spoilsport, and probably worse, but at 6pm on Saturday the All Under One Banner march was the small third story on the BBC Scotland web page. The number one story was Ruth’s conference anti-independence rant. On the STV news it is the same, with extensive coverage of Ruth’s speech. The march is in second place and talks of only “tens of thousands of marchers”.

Apart from snarling up the Glasgow city centre traffic, what is the real purpose of the march? Allegations of preaching to the converted cannot be ignored. If these marches have to go ahead, maybe if everyone put a pound coin in a set of buckets we could have an easy way of getting a fairly accurate measure of the number of people involved and raise a fair bit of cash for the cause. If each of the alleged 100,000 marchers delivered 25 leaflets or canvassed 25 doors we could have covered the entire country.

Please don’t shoot the messenger – march on if you feel the need.

Brian Lawson
Paisley

I WOULD like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came to my husband’s assistance when he collapsed in (I think) West George Street during Saturday’s march.

Particular thanks to the wonderful first-aid lady who appeared out of nowhere, the march marshal who called the ambulance, the friendly and helpful police, and the excellent paramedics; also to the many fellow marchers who, in the true spirit of the Yes movement, came up to offer their support and encouragement to my husband.

He made a good recovery after being checked out in the ambulance and was determined to finish the walk (which we eventually did, although we lost the tail end of the march) and we finally reached Glasgow Green in time to get the coach back to Edinburgh!

Patsy Hodgson
Edinburgh