Women for Scottish Independence.... controversial?

I got up this mornin', and I made myself a page.  Yeah, I got up this mornin, and I made myself a page.  Didn't see the trollin' comin', comin' straight for me....




Er... ahem.  Anyway..
Today I founded the Women for Scottish Independence page on Facebook, then I spent a little while plugging it to a handful of groups and pages.  Immediately the likes started rolling in, which is very gratifying, but I also started to see something I'd not really been expecting, and that was a fair amount of vitriol at the very idea of there being such a page.
The first accusation I came across was that it was sexist.  Sexist?  Really? The point of the page is to encourage  discussion about an issue which deeply affects the Referendum campaign, and that is the lack of specifically female support.  There are more women than men in Scotland folks, we really do need to look at this issue, I'm afraid, and we need to engage women in it both in discovering what the problem is and in finding the solution.  Are Fathers 4 Justice sexist by the same token?
The second accusation was a bit of a stunner.  There is shouldn't be such a group, apparently, it's segregationist.       Currently facebook hasn't put a 'ban by gender' option on the plate so even though the vast majority of likes the page received today were from women, a few men did have the tenacity to sneak through under my nose.  The cheek of it... they'll be hearing us talk about our secret women's issues and Mark Zuckerberg wont let me stop them!  Of course, the whole premise of the accusation is a total nonsense, our page is hardly segregated from the rest of the world and isn't about to become segregated.  What it does do is provide a forum for people to discuss the issues of Independence that affect women and it aims to do so without any party-political bias so that it can be as open as it needs to be.  There are some issues, even now in the 21st century I'm afraid, that affect women more deeply than men, so women are going to be in the majority of people active on the page.

The third accusation was pretty bizarre.  Apparently we don't need such a page at all, and we shouldn't be bothering.  Honestly? When women form 7% more of the population than men and still only 45 of our 129 MSP's are women, women make up only 24% of our local councillors and get only a third of public appointments, we don't need to bother with a page aimed at increasing female participation in Scottish politics?  Is this what we call equality?  Are we wrong to try and figure out how to change this? When I tried to question this gently, I was told rather summarily that women don't need help to participate, they should simply speak up for themselves and if they won't that is their own fault.  I guess that also means we don't need to address the alarming decline in voter turnout either?  It's fine to let the ruling classes get on with alienating people from politics with the kind of behaviour we've seen from the Coalition government in Westminster and to never try to reach out to all of those disaffected voters who just won't speak up is it?  It's got nothing to do with the prevailing feeling of not being listened to that so many people report has it?  

OK, so the last one really got me a bit upset.  Of course that's not the way forward.  We need to look at the issues that women don't feel are being addressed, and we need to do it out of the glare of the mainstream political forum of party politics so that they don't feel intimidated.  I'm not inferring that women are timid here, just in case you wondered, I just think that it is a huge disincentive to speak out for most people regardless of gender, and this is the best approach to take.

One last little point, the majority of hostility the page received today was from women and not men.  The vast majority of feedback we have had has been hearteningly positive, and I want to thank everyone for their support. For the Yes vote to carry the day in Autumn 2014, we need to work to bring all of the disaffected on board with us, we need to build consensus politics with the strength of voice and diversity that will trump the playground politics that currently undermines our democracy.  With the page we're reaching out to the biggest disaffected group in Scotland, and I am not going to apologise for doing that.  

PS.  Maybe some people will be a little upset with the tone of this article, I will apologise for that as I am not out to make people angry.  I simply needed to address the above issues for the sake of my own sanity before bed tonight, otherwise that blues song is going to keep going round and round and round in my head to the wee small hours of the morning!

Over the line

Is it just me, or has a line been crossed in what is considered acceptable practice in a democratic country?  I just looked up at facebook to see that the UK Government is banning ticket holders to Olympic events from taking photographs. Now, to be honest with you, I really don't care much for the Olympics, in fact, I think I can quite safely say I've been against the idea since before the bid was won.  This has no bearing on the increasing alarm I feel at such restrictions being placed by a supposedly democratic Government.

Now this 'line' I'm talking about hasn't just recently been breached.  To my mind, the first attempt at crossing the line was made with the Criminal Justice bill 1988, but it probably wasn't until after 9/11 that  it was truly breached.  What is the line I'm referring to?  It's the line over which Ministers no longer even consider what the electorate thinks of their rights being curbed.  It's the line when they stop saying to themselves "The voters won't like that," not the line where they stop taking it into account.  If you think I'm being a little dramatic here, or if you think that we are doing much better now than say, 2 centuries ago perhaps, then consider this rather scary notion about whether or not Robert Burns would have been jailed under modern laws for his work.

Look at the increasingly invasive and restricting laws trotting their way through the Parliament in Westminster right now.  Our government thinks nothing of demanding the right to snoop in our emails and social networking, they think nothing of preventing us from having free access to the Internet, they give tax breaks to the rich and are making poor people pay for the mess of management, legislation and piratical capitalism with 'austerity measures' that look increasingly like a massive privatisation drive.  Meanwhile, back at the Olympics, they are stuffing the rooftops with Surface-to-air missiles and the skies with aircraft in the name of security.  Wonder what it  would look like to the rest of the world if a riot broke out and the rioters took hold of one of those SAM sites?

Look at the UK as it stands.  CCTV is more prevalent here than in the rest of the world, we are no longer allowed to gather before Parliament to protest, the police, although not routinely armed, use delightful tactics such as 'kettling' on peaceful protests and have used the powers given them under the Terrorism Act (2000) in such a way that the European Court had to intervene in 2010. What about last summers riots in England?  The young, poorly educated and disaffected may have gone on a criminal rampage and caused large amounts of damage, but they are poorly educated and disaffected, they have been failed by the system that was supposed to help them.  The response in handing out horribly harsh sentences to those who were caught did not even try to address the causes.  Do you think the increasing bite of Austerity is going make things any better for people from these deprived parts of these islands?  I don't think so.  It looks to me like we are heading into a downward spiral of state intervention that will leave our human rights scattered behind it like ash on the breeze.

There is so much blatant disregard for Human Rights in the UK that they have become more associated with things that prisoners shouldn't be allowed than what the rest of us should! Perhaps, with our 'British' sense of 'entitlement' we don't think we need our human rights safeguarded?  That seems somewhat typical of the short-term thinking rife in Westminster politics currently, which is driven by populism and the desire to woo swing voters in the South-East of England.  Nobody ever seems to imagine that this kind of infringement of our human rights might ever be turned on us.

Yet, that's exactly what is happening.  Banning people from taking personal photographs and posting them on social networking sites might not seem like an infringement of human rights, but it's definitely an infringement of privacy, and we do have a basic right to privacy in the UK!.  Passing laws to snoop on email and other internet correspondence of private British Subjects is also a huge infringement of privacy, and therefore an infringement of our human rights!

Public outcry is treated with contempt too, though.  Look at how little has been done in practical terms to deal with the perpetrators of the banking crisis, or at the tokenism of the MP's sacrificed in the expenses scandal. While party leaders are still tripping over themselves to ingratiate their party with The Sun, we are treated to the spectacle of the Leveson Inquiry.  There is so much mock outrage from the Political Parties over phone hacking, while they are concurrently trying to pass laws that let them do exactly the same thing to anyone in the country.  Who believes Leveson will end with anything other than a fudge and a string of legal action from the celebrities that can afford such a thing?

We the electorate are here merely to be consulted once every 5 years on who gets to exercise the Royal Prerogative.  Election promises are made and ditched practically on one breath and there is very little effort to stem the tumbling turnout numbers for elections (with the exception of the 2010 UK GE).  Look what happened to the AV referendum.  Cobbled together as a sop for the Lib-Dems to get them on board for the coalition, it was undermined and undersold deliberately so that there could be no drastic change to the electoral system, even though there was genuine concern about the result of the 2010 UK GE.  We were also promised the right to recall MP's who were not living up to their obligations, but the bill that has been drafted has been branded 'deeply flawed' as the ultimate power in it really lies with the Government, not the electorate.  There is a lot of hot air about the "West Lothian Question" but not a whole load of action being taken - Scottish MP's from Labour and the Lib-Dems (oh, and David Mundell) still vote on English issues and it's now been 13 years since the Scottish Parliament opened and 35 years since Tam Dalyell proposed it.  The political will for reform of the political system that benefits the political parties so much is minimal. And, of course, there is Lords reform, which has been such a long, painful process and is yet to lead to a single vote being cast by the people for a member of the so-called 'Upper House'.

Which takes us in a very round about way back to my original point.  Our government in Westminster actually cares nothing at all for what the electorate think of their actions.  We are not even in their thoughts, except as a statistic to work around.  Time and time again, they attack our rights and freedoms, and we do very little except grow increasingly apathetic.  The line has been crossed, voters are merely operating in a consultative fashion and politicians even treat that level of contemplation with contempt.  Democracy in the UK is entirely dysfunctional, and this is leading to a dangerous erosion of our rights.  What's to be done about it?

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.

The case for the vulnerable in Scottish Society

My partner and I home educate our son, who is a sufferer of Asperger's Syndrome and Cortical Visual Impairment.  Among my closest friends I count sufferers of Mental Health disorders and among many of my close acquaintances I have several who are recovering addicts.  I myself have suffered from Mental Health issues in the past.  I believe the current term for all of us is Service Users.  There is a great deal of stigma attached to these issues, but also a great deal to be overcome with the professions that we have to deal with on a regular basis.
Many of my friends, who are in delicate states of mind for all of their various reasons, have to go through the trauma of proving to the system that they genuinely need it's help, not just once, to their own GP for example, but to the benefit authorities, to social services, to schools and to charities and other grants giving bodies.  This puts an immense strain on the claimant, their families and their carers.  Changes that have already been implemented to the benefits system have left many vulnerable people being forced into work or go through a lengthy and stressful appeals system.  These are changes happening now, not the awful changes currently making their way through Westminster just now, but the changes already implemented.
I am not going to speak for any of my friends here, but I am going to cite the case of the treatment our family received from our local LEA.  Our son was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome when he was eight years old. We had already withdrawn him from our local school after Primary 1 because he was having clear difficulties that the school were putting down to bad behaviour.  If I were  to be truly honest, we were left feeling that we were to blame for his poor behaviour as being bad parents.   Before I go on, I feel I must mention in their most recent HMIE report they were given a rating of good at meeting learning needs and good for Learners's experiences.
When he came to Secondary age we all decided to give the School a second chance, as my son is very keen on Science and we lack a laboratory.  We took the long approach and contacted the LEA an entire year in advance of his joining S1, and tried to use that opportunity to describe his needs to the School so they could be able to deal with him sensibly.
Here I have to explain a little bit about Cortical Visual Impairment.  At the start of this process, we did not have this diagnosis for some of our son's issues, but we began a re-diagnosis period to make sure the School could get access to all of the relevant material about him.  This involved regular sessions on anxiety therapy, a lengthy re-assessment of his Asperger's, an occupational therapy report, a language therapist's report, visits to the Neurologist and eye tests.   Already that's at least six people we had to take our son to so that he could prove he had extra needs in a school environment, without including out local GP's who have both seen him for his issues.
We then spoke to our first Educational psychologist, who was very open to our thinking and supportive.  Unfortunately, she was standing in for her regular colleague and we did not get to deal with her again.  We began to go to the local school for meetings with the head master and staff, working to arrange a period of orientation for our son into the school.  We explained that he becomes highly anxious in unfamiliar places and  about crowded places.  We asked for a flex-schooling approach, as he has low levels of energy and would need a good deal of time to adjust to formal Schooling. We asked for support for him through classes so that he could have the extra help he needs with many tasks.  We asked for him not to attend classes like PE and Technical Design because of the noise levels and high number of potential triggers for our son's anxiety problems.  We asked for him to have a laptop for lessons because he suffers from a tremor that makes handwriting difficult.  Handwriting is also an issue for sufferer's CVI, we subsequently learned.
These might seem to the casual observer as quite a long list of demands, but we had at that point been dealing with our son's difficulties full-time for ten years.  We understood ad recognised his problems, and had gone to the trouble to make sure we had the medical advice to back us up.
 The very first hurdle was over induction and orientation time.  The school already ran a series of induction days for all upcoming primary sevens from our area and our son was invited to these.  No extra orientation time at all was offered, even though we repeatedly requested it.  Next  our son had to undertake a series of tests with the (new) Educational Psychologist, to prove once again that there were areas in which he both had difficulty with and others were he excelled.  Then there were more meetings, and the school was still not prepared to meet the things we had asked for.  Our son attended some of the induction days.  We had more meetings, complaints had to be made about the conduct of the staff at some of these meetings as things were beginning to become highly stressful for us with the schools continuing intransigence.
Summer came and went, and a full year into the process of trying to get our son into school with suitable provisions, he did not finally begin until September, when at last the school made concessions over flexi-schooling and laptop provision.  They insisted all along that their teachers would be well informed and had been trained to deal with problems of our son's nature.
Pause for a second here and consider Aspergers Syndrome.  Asperger's is a condition on the Autism spectrum.  It is considered to be 'high-functioning' meaning that those with the syndrome are usually highly intelligent, often obsessive, verbally communicative and capable of a reasonable degree of independence in many areas.  They can also suffer from a severe dislike of sudden change and any uncertainty, and they are often very awkward socially.  They can be very comforted by ritual and routine.  But, and this is an important but, these are only general symptoms and some sufferer's can be very different or not have some of those symptoms.  A lack of imagination is often a symptom, but one thing our son does not lack is imagination, he is a keen story writer and also an expert at creating scenarios that make him panic when faced with unfamiliar or sudden events.
The year he was in S1 contained so many disasters that to list them here would be both tedious, draining and, frankly, personally upsetting.  Our son was repeatedly accused of bad behaviour and the school repeatedly blame us for imposing "preferential" treatment for him.  We went as far as to get take out an FOI on his records, place formal complaints, take those complaints to the council's Corporate Complaints dept., get sick line's from the doctor because our son was becoming increasingly anxious with every day at school and to attend mediated meetings where nothing constructive ever took place. It ended with an ultimatum from the school that we either send our son Full-time, part-time to their timetable or to withdraw him from school again.  By this point we were going through the process of talking to a child psychologist and a neurologist about our son and they both agreed that the classroom environment was an unhealthy one for our son.  They recommended we went back to home education, which is exactly what we did.
This was not the end of the process, as we now had to deal with the de-registration process, which was a trial in itself this time.  Last time we did it we withdrew Alex over the course of one summer and it was actually painless.  This time we had to meet a social worker and an officer from the LEA to approve our request.
The number of people we have had to explain our son to has been phenomenal, but worse still is the number of so-called professionals that have failed to listen to our advice about our son has been nothing short of criminal.
We are not alone, we are not unique.  The heavy weight of the hand of the state on it's vulnerable members is not currently a source for good at all, but a source for great stress and worsening of many problems.  If you take the case for not extraditing Gary McKinnon, a large part of it hinges on the possibility of the likliehood of introducing psychosis to Gary because sufferer's of Asperger's and ASD are much more prone to such things while under stress than other people.
The UK Government wants to make this harder for vulnerable people.  They will want to put my son into a work placement when he is older, and we cannot trust them not to send him somewhere where his problems will be exacerbated.  The UK Governement wants to decide whether terminally ill people should be assessed to see if they are fit for work.  The UK Government plans to introduce big changes to DLA for children.  The UK Government plans all in a timeline that runs all the way through the referendum campaign up until 2016.  These benefit changes are utterly unwelcome and frankly cruel, and we can avoid them by gaining our Independence from such toxic Westminster policies.  The economic argument is familiar but the social democratic argument is becoming clearer.  We need to have Scotland's future in Scotland's hands to redress the awful damage the current system does to our vulnerable people.  We have to opportunity to bring some sanity and unity to the process of helping our vulnerable people.  That's good enough for me to vote yes.

In a week when Michael Forsyth and Ian Paisley made sense.

I can't decide which quote this week amazes me more.  Is it the Reverend Ian Paisley's magnanimous statement :

The Scottish people are a canny lot, I should know, my mother was Scottish! I fail to see what all the angst is concerning the question to be put in the upcoming referendum. The Scots know exactly what they want, know how to get it, and probably would greatly appreciate it if we left them alone to make their own decision.

or is it Michael Forsyth's basic admission that Government Ministers know more about the south of France than Scotland :

 "I think that's probably true.  What alarms me is that when I got into the House of Commons in 1983 almost every Tory supported the Union and was committed to it.  Now I find Conservative MPs saying in increasing numbers 'Why do we need Scotland?' and abandoning the unionist position." 

 Does this sound like, with two years left to go, that the Unionists are giving up?  Much as I'd like to say yes, I doubt it.  When the balance sheet of the UK becomes more closely examined in the run up to 2014, then we'll see real panic set in.  I've seen a lot of commentators say that the Unionists are already panicking, and while this may well be true of Scottish Labour seeing as they have so much to lose come May this year, I don't think either the Tories or the Lib Dems are quite at that point.  The Lib Dems have been in gentle decline for almost a century, and this taste of power that Cameron offered them has turned so sour that the gentle decline is turning into a head long plunge to oblivion.  The Tories have only one MP in Scotland and don't really care much for the devolved party in Scotland.  They just don't care enough from a political stand point.  Currently, we're not worth the trouble we're causing.
No, the Lib Dems and the Tories aren't panicking, they are being condescending.  The scare stories being circulated by them are truly what they think will bring us back into line.   There's no co-ordination between any of the parties, simply because it's not being given enough credit yet for true cross-party action, and with Labour tail-spinning north of the wall, because they are on the brink of losing their northern fiefdom long before the referendum, they can't risk co-ordinating with the other parties because of their obvious toxicity.  Do you think Johann Lamont was truly grateful for Ed Milliband's token public statement of support for the Co-alition line on Scotland, knowing full well how toxic the Tory brand is in Scotland? Of course she has to play the faithful underling, but she deals with the day to day politics of Scotland and has in the past tried to link the SNP to the Tories to try and gain from that same toxicity.
Michael Forsyth is right though, they aren't getting their act together at all, and Scotland is already well engaged in the debate about her future. Meanwhile, Westminster just keeps throwing occasional glances our way to see if we're still too scared by their stories to vote yes.  The polls still look that way.  Anyway, we can see the gradual upward trend towards yes from poll to poll anyway, so we know that with time on our side, we are going to win.
But here's the point, and here Ian Paisley has the right of it too, some point within the next two they will realise that we are a canny lot, that the pro-independence arguments have been well thought out and are being positively put to us, while they have been busy engaging most of their attention elsewhere and occasionally throwing their laughably negative nonsense our way to keep in the debate.  Remember how confident Iain Gray was this time last year?  Remember their campaign?  The Unionists haven't given up, but for the most part they are kidding themselves.  Labour has a clue about what's going on, but doesn't have a clue about what to do about it.  The Tories and the Lib Dems are too caught up in Europe, the banking crisis and Westminster politics to really have a clue at all.
We have momentum now, but we musn't take it for granted that the current state of affairs is going to remain.   Michael Forsyth's words may well lead to the beginning of a waking up to what this Referendum really means for the whole of the UK, or maybe it will be someone else further down the line, but eventually there will be a co-ordinated and well funded No campaign and we will have to start the fight for real.  We are holding pretty much all of the cards now, but we've got to watch out for our opponents bluffing us!