ON Sunday I went into my local shop to pick up the Sunday National and saw the front page proclaiming the launch of another independence task force by the SNP. I’m afraid your paper stayed on the shelf as I just couldn’t bring myself to even turn the page.
In the movie As Good as It Gets, Jack Nicholson’s character utters the immortal line: “Go sell crazy someplace else, we’re all stocked up here."
Well, I’m all stocked up on task forces, false starts, relaunches, fundraisers (where exactly IS that “ring-fenced” cash?) and indyref2 being just round this corner. I’ve had it up to here (imagine if you will a line somewhere waaaay above my head) with it being assumed that I am going to swallow the latest reheated mince which is produced just prior to an election, and boy haven’t we had a lot of those to go round since 2014.
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This might be good enough for the “Nicola has a secret plan” brigade, but really, there has to come a time when even the most loyal of Pavlovian supporters must cry “not again”!
What happened to the analytical, forensic, critical thinking of the 2014 Yes movement?
Collectively we could demolish any argument put forward by the No campaign through attention to detail; now I hear too many voices exhorting us not to look too closely, to overlook the fact that we keep being promised progress yet nothing concrete is ever delivered.
I’d imagine that this new initiative will be more task farce than task force, and will disappear into the same cupboard as the mythical Rebuttal Unit.
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If I seem disappointed in the SNP’s performance over the last few years it is because I am. In some respects they have provided competent administration. They have presented a calm and measured response to the coronavirus pandemic which, while not entirely removed from the routes adopted in England, has been done with an air of control lacking from Westminster.
But in so many other areas they have been an utter let down, most notably the ethics (or lack of them) in regards to transparency and accountability.
The Yes movement of 2014 was carried on a wave of optimism, a chance of a better future, with a cleaner politics, where the Labour party trademarks of cronyism and nepotism where a thing of the past. What now for the Yes movement in 2021 as we try to go forward reliant on an SNP riddled with those same failings?
We cannot go on deluding ourselves, and The National cannot be complicit in deluding us. You can either be the voice of the Yes movement or the voice of the SNP, because at present those aren’t one and the same.
Perhaps by being more critical of the SNP your paper can steer them back onto the straight and narrow, because as it stands it is becoming increasingly unpalatable for many in the Yes movement to stand with the main party of Scottish independence.
Jim Cassidy
Airdrie
THE established Schrödinger morality of the UK Government is similar in nature to its clear commitments, its vows, and its copper-bottomed guarantees, in that they can apparently both exist, and not exist, at the same time.
On further inspection, however, the cupboard of morality, decency, and integrity is shown to be bare to the point of vacuum, the excuse given for the missing morality, commitments, vows and guarantees, is the migrant that is Covid-19.
The above probably sums up the essence of the past No and Leave, and forthcoming No2 campaign(s).
The forthcoming Holyrood 2021, indyref2, and EUref (Scotland) elections therefore will in essence be about the citizens of Scotland choosing to share the EU-wide cupboard, and not being shelved in the morality vacuum that is, and will continue to be, the rUK.
Stephen Tingle
Greater Glasgow
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