Be the change you want to see...

One of the things in the referendum campaign so far that really seems odd to me is the amount of debate about "How the SNP envisages and Independent Scotland".  There seems to be a presumption on the part of the Anti-Independence parties that the SNP somehow owns the idea of an Independent Scotland and therefore is not simply allowed a monopoly on what it will be, but must provide answers about this secret Scotland they have in mind because they are keeping things about it from the rest of us.

There's so many things wrong with that approach that it's difficult to know where to start.  I've heard it so many times and had it thrown at myself often enough, and it always strikes me as being completely back to front.  Of course, the anti-independence parties want us all to think that Independence is solely the hair-brained notion of the SNP.  They'd even like you to think that it's just Alec Salmond's idea if they can pin it on him, because then they can be ultra lazy and discredit Independence by discrediting Salmond.

So, you're busy with something at work one day and one of your workmates comes up to you, knowing of course that you are a supporter of Independence, and asks you "So, what's the point in becoming Independent just to go and join the EU?"

How do you answer this question?  If you find yourself justifying the policy, saying things like "The EU will be good for Scottish trade," or "Being in the EU gives us an automatic market for our oil," then without realising it, you are still playing the game the anti-independence parties have set up for us, conflating SNP policy with the Scotland's constitutional future.

In fact, if you find yourself justifying any stated SNP policy for post-independence you're doing the same.  Keeping the Queen as the head of state, retaining Sterling, not joining Nato (still SNP policy now, and I won't be surprised if it doesn't stay that way) and getting rid of Trident - these are all SNP policies, not things set in stone for the future of Scotland.  These things will form the core of the SNP's post-independence manifesto, but  we'll all get another chance to vote on that, and on the policies of the post-independence opposition parties.  If people don't like these policies, they can do what they've always done and vote accordingly.  Who knows how things are going to pan out afterwards.

We seem alarmingly prepared to acknowledge that the next two years are going to involve a lot of party political backstabbing and mudslinging to discredit the Independence debate.   Why are we prepared to accept such a closed political debate?  If the anti-independence parties manage to dictate the terms of the debate in this fashion, then it will not engage the already largely disaffected electorate.  Years of political scandal have taken their toll, many people feel that politicians are only in it for themselves and dwindling voter turnout stand as testament to the growing antipathy of voters towards politics. We cannot allow such an important democratic decision to fall foul of this unhealthy trend.  

Instead of becoming bogged down in party politics, why not ask people what kind of Scotland they would like to see instead?   Gently challenge them to think about what Independence could mean, and in doing so, invite them into the debate.  Too much of the story of the campaign so far is based around what the SNP, or Alec Salmond, would do with an Independent Scotland and this is drowning out the debate that needs to happen, in which every voice in Scotland needs to be heard.

We can sit around waiting for the anti-independence parties to allow the debate to become broader.  We can sit around and wait for the media in Scotland to become balanced.  We can sit around and wait for them to start playing fair, but really, can we guarantee that any of those things will actually happen?

Think about the flurry of negative press that the Independence debate has received recently by proxy of all the attacks on Alec Salmond. We are being forced onto the defensive by things which have nothing to do with the merits of the Independence case.  If this debate is to be treated like what it should be, then we must collectively take it upon ourselves to force this much needed shift.  Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world," and we should apply this here.

So, the next time someone engages you about what the SNP policy is for post-independence, ask them what they would like to see in an Independent Scotland.  Get them to consider what kind of Scotland they feel would be worth voting for, because this is  their chance to vote for a new kind of Scotland, and we cannot let people feel they are being left out of the debate by the politics of it.  If we allow it to be played along party political lines, a great many people will turn away, and even if the majority of engaged voters vote yes, Scotland will suffer from a democratic hangover on Independence day.

I'm offended when you call me Anti-English.

Ok, I'm being blunt here, but it's true.  If we've got two years to settle this Referendum for me this is something I want off my chest and out of the way before we go much farther.
Yes, I am Scottish and do not identify with the word British except as a geographical and historical concept.  I certainly do not choose to conflate it with the word English.  I find many connotations of the historical aspect of the word British abhorrent, in much the way I find the British National Party abhorrent.  The jingoism and the superciliousness I associate with the BNP and the colonial British Empire are things I would not like other people to associate with me.  I apologise if you personally associate with those words in a different way and my stance is offending you, it would be hypocritical of me not to.  Can we choose to understand it as a dispute of linguistics, and not of personal Identity?
Yes, I have voted and will continue to vote for the SNP.  Just because it is simple to switch an S for a B on paper does not make the two parties similar in pretty much anything else.  Weren't the BNP recently forced to change their party membership rules  because they were blatantly racist?  By contrast, our Nationalist Party have a fundamentally inclusive philosophy in their politics.  It's Nationalism isn't about birthright, it's about living in the country of Scotland.  In fact, if you go have a look at this New Statesman article you will read that:

 according to Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde University, these attacks are odds with the reality of contemporary nationalism. In his recent study, The Scottish National Party: Transition to Power, Mitchell argues that the party's understanding of national identity is perfectly consistent with the standards of 21st Century liberalism. He writes,the SNP is civic in the sense that its policies are among the most liberal of any party in the United Kingdom on citizenship, emigration and multiculturalism. Additionally, very few of its members would define Scottishness in exclusive ethnic terms. The SNP membership accep! ts a plurality of ways (being Scottish)." In other words, for the majority of SNP members, Scottishness is something an individual chooses, rather than something he or she has foisted on them by birth or through the bloodline.

Yes, I would be willing to call myself an SNP activist, or perhaps, worse still, a cybernat, but just as the good professor explains above, that doesn't actually have to make me anti-english at all!  I do what I do because I can see their is an opportunity to be seized upon here, a chance to make things better for Scotland and the folk who live here simply by allowing ourselves the freedom to make all the decisions about Scottish affairs here in Scotland.
And finally, yes, I will be voting Yes in 2014.  This has got nothing to do with wanting to cut Scotland adrift at Hadrian's Wall so we can physically isolate ourselves from the English.  Actually, if that were possible and we could row Scotland to the Caribbean for better weather, then I'd want to take the English with us too, frankly.  We're all a bit pasty and lacking in vitamin D here in the British Isles.  Can someone give Ireland a tow too while we're at it?
Oh, wait, I've ticked all the anti-English boxes there, haven't I? I've said Yes, I'm Scottish, not British. Yes, I am an SNP voter.  Yes, I am even an activist  and I will vote Yes in the Referendum. I've made my Declaration of Scottishness and declared common ground with the anti-English party.  You may now feel that you can now be at liberty to call me anti-English with impunity,but that really does offend me, because a fundamental part of what I believe in is an all-inclusive society.  In fact, I want the charge of anti-Englishness put to bed now so we can get on to real reasons why we would want to go down this path.
There could be some vision in someone's head, doubtless, of an SNP conference gathering sounding like something out of Monty Python's Life of Brian, but in the negative.  In this hypothetical head, the cry will be imagined "What have the English ever done for us?" to be followed by some horrendous list of charges of stealing all our oil, our industries and dumping their toxic waste on us. But that's not reality, sorry.  For starters, nobody in Scotland truly lays the blame for these things at the feet of the English people, we know exactly who is responsible for them.  It's the Government in Westminster at fault for these things, and I most certainly do not conflate the Westminster Government with the English people.  England is a wonderful country actually, with a fascinating,  parallel, history to our  own, a long history too, with a deep culture and a wonderful language for expressing all of that in.
So, in honour of one great bastion of Englishness, the aformentioned Monty Python, here is my own little list of "Things the English have done for us."  It's by no means comprehensive, and it's largely based on my own tastes, but I hope it proves my point!

Pink Floyd
The Beatles
The Sex Pistols
Association Football
Robin Hood
JRR Tolkien
Alan Turing
Tim Banners-Lee
The internal combustion engine
The Micro-chip
James Dyson and the Dyson
The corkscrew
The magnifying glass
Sir Isaac Newton
The small pox vaccine
The first motion picture camera and projector
Stephen Hawking
Comics
Seth Lakeman
Black Sabbath (and Ozzy Osbourne)
Withnail and I
Watership Down and Richard Adams
The Rollling Stones
Richard Dawkins
Richard Attenburgh
Brian Cox
Jackie Morris
Stonehenge
The Swinging Sixties
The Word
Ready Steady Go!
Leicester
Shakespeare
All my English family and friends *hugs*
Stephen Fry
The Mighty Boosh
League of Gentlemen
Blackadder
York
Alastair Crowley
High -Tea and Sandwiches
Romantic Poets and Artists
Siegfried Sassoon
Lewis Carroll
FC Barcelona


And I could go on, but this is more than enough to start with!  Thank you, England, I love all of these things you've given us, but I'm sorry but I still think I'm going to vote yes.  Why? because you gave these things to the whole world, and I just want my wee northern nation to be part of that whole world.  And, I'd like to see you become part of the whole world too, because I think you secretly want to be able to just call all these wonderful things English and be done with it, and I'm entirely behind you on that one.

Rigging the referendum consultation?

Pot calling kettle black?

There are numerous problems with this accusation. First, of course, there is the simple fact that all consultations in recent years have been run under very similar lines, like the consultation process for the Smoking Ban, run by the Labour/Lib-Dem coalition Scottish Executive. But there's a much bigger problem, if you ask me, and one that Labour seem to have conveniently forgotten.
Over the first few months of the year the Scottish Office at Westminster has also been running their own consultation. They are very keen to tell us that the vast majority of respondents want the referendum brought forward to 2013, for example. That's very interesting, I'm sure, but considering that the Scottish Labour website not only gave you a form for your email address and name, they very kindly filled out the rest of the form for you with this suggested response.

The referendum on Scotland’s constitutional future is hugely important, and I want to have my say on how the referendum is run. I want it to be legal, fair, and decisive.LegalI do not want the referendum to be subject to legal challenge or dragged through the courts. Clarity on which parliament has the legal responsibility to call the referendum must be sorted out.FairI want the referendum to be supervised by the Electoral Commission, and I am opposed to any attempt to water down their role. They must have the legal power to rule on the wording of the question.DecisiveThere should only be one question in order to give a definitive answer on whether or not Scotland remains part of the UK. I do not support attempts to muddy the water with further questions on other matters. I want the referendum sooner rather than later and do not see the need to wait almost three years.Please take my views into account.

They also suggested a subject for you too, since, possibly, being Scottish makes this all too difficult for you. Just in case you were in any doubt this is their idea of how to respond to a consultation, to the right of the form there was a little message, "Sending the message on the left means you will send an email response to the Scottish Government consultation." There were 3000 responses to this consultation, which is now closed. The claim that 70% of respondents did not want to wait to 2014 rather uncannily echoes the wording of the above suggested response. I've been unable to find a breakdown of how many of the 3000 responses came through the Scottish Labour website. I made my own through it, but of course I deleted the suggested response. I've also made my own, non-anonymous response to the Scottish Government consultation.
Last night on Newsnight Scotland Kezia Dugdale seems to categorically accept Jim Eadie's contention that 1500 of the responses each from both the Scottish Government and the UK Government consultations came through the Labour website as above. 1500 amounts to half of all the responses received for the UK Government consultation altogether? Who's rigging it? At around 6.46 Kezia Dugdale makes her admission.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B04p9uf5bKs&feature=player_embedded#!

I'd like to suggest to Scottish Labour that they look to their own arguable rigged referendum consultation before criticising the Scottish Government's one. Unfortunately, the problem isn't just in the Scottish Labour Party. Our own dear Scottish Secretary seems to see nothing wrong with calling the Scottish Government's Referendum consultation rigged even while telling us all quite clearly the extent of the jiggery-pokery going on with his.


On Good Morning Scotland this morning, Scottish Secretary Michael Moore said that of the 3000 or so responses to The Referendum on Separation for Scotland consultation, the UK Government "had 740 that are the text of which was the same as the Labour party text on their website".


He claimed that this didn't concern him, "because that was consistent with a number of others from across Scotland who are also in favour of a single question and wanting to have this sooner rather than later".


So in other words, more than 25% of their responses consisted of Identical Text, and Michael Moore doesn't believe his consultation needs independent verification.


He also claimed that this UK Government consultatiation, "confirms support for the Government's approach to the referendum, that we need to have a legal, fair and decisive referendum", without out even a hint of irony!



Now I took myself off to the Scottish Government Referendum Consultation website because Michael Moore told us in the same interview that the Scottish Government had put a similar automatic response to their question on The Question, but I didn't find that there at all. In fact every box below every question on the on-line form is left blank for your very own response, as if we Scots do indeed have brains enough to answer these important questions for ourselves.