I USED to get annoyed at some nationalists who claimed that in recent years SNP MPs and MSPs were more interested in settling down than settling up. However as time goes on I am slowing beginning to suspect that for at least some of them that is indeed the case.
In my former working life I was based in London one week in six. I have to admit it was fun. Air travel both ways and use of a company flat all provided by my employer at no expense to me. I think I saw all of the popular West End shows, visited all the London museums and tourist attractions, attended lots of concerts and even visited the House of Commons.
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London is certainly not somewhere I would want to live or work on a permanent basis but it does have its attractions. Eating out can be expensive but then MPs enjoy the benefits of subsidised dining.
The past eight years have seen little in the way of a real campaign for Scottish independence. Getting on with the day job has been the order of the day at Holyrood and asking questions of the UK Prime Minister and receiving no real answers seems to be the highlight of the SNP’s week at Westminster.
The recent bizarre emphasis by the Scottish Parliament on gender legislation has not helped the cause of Scottish independence in the eyes of the population outside what is fast being seen as the Holyrood political bubble.
The idea, recently announced by Angus Robertson MSP, that if we ever get to hold and actually win a referendum that it will automatically involve a return to the EU is both laughable and still very unpopular with a large minority of the Scottish public. This is a political idea which will ensure any referendum campaign is born to fail and ensure that the good life for the members of both parliaments will continue uninterrupted for the foreseeable future.
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I await with more fear than hope for the outcome of the SNP’s mid-March conference. I fear the date of any real move towards independence, by whatever means, is about to move further into the future, possibly the distant future.
I had thought that the outer limits of the timeframe might be the Scottish Parliament elections in 2026. However in a recent interview the newly elected SNP Westminster group leader Stephen Flynn is quoted as saying that the United Kingdom as we currently know it will have broken up by – wait for it – 2030.
With the perfect storm of Brexit, high interest rates, food and fuel inflation, the pressures on the Scottish NHS and continued public-sector unrest, I dread to think what Scotland, if still in the UK, will look like in 2030.
Iain Wilson
Stirling
NOT for the first time, Kevin McKenna spouts his scattergun journalistic opinions like an ill-informed, soporific bar room bore (Glasgow lives up to its billing as comedian’s graveyard, Feb 5). His contention that Alan Cumming has displayed “narcissistic arrogance” in announcing that he is returning his OBE can doubtless be found in the columns of the right-wing press that he is familiar with but his rationale for his scathing criticism of Mr Cumming’s decision somewhat misses the mark.
Mr McKenna defends the acceptance of honours from the UK state as recognition of individual and group achievements in communities and not necessarily support for the monarchy. This attempt at a defence of an honours system that is anachronistic, corrupt and still rejoices in the very idea of a British Empire demonstrates a distinct lack of understanding of why so many Scots wish to achieve independence for their country.
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The honours system, like the royal family, the House of Lords and the whole disreputable Westminster apparatus is part and parcel of an ongoing outmoded exceptionalism that perpetuates the power of the right-wing political elite. Mr Cumming has obviously come to this conclusion some time after receiving his OBE but that does not make his decision to return it any less important as – believe it or not, Kevin – people are entitled to change their opinions, especially when they become more enlightened about “the toxicity of empire.”
If Alan Cumming’s resolve to hand back his OBE publicly directs people to find out why he took this course of action then it can only help the independence movement gain support. John Lennon publicly handed back his MBE in 1969, four years after receiving it, to protest against UK support for America in Vietnam and Britain’s involvement in Biafra, as well as to highlight his desire for world peace. He was no longer content to be merely a Moptop and had embarked upon a Yoko Ono-influenced political education.
Right or wrong, he and Alan Cumming re-evaluated their beliefs and and moral compass before returning their “gongs.” Their decisions must have taken a great deal of soul-searching and professional courage. Kevin McKenna, please take note.
Owen Kelly
Stirling
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