The economic case for Scotland’s autonomy was won before 18 September 2014 – we know this because that’s why we had The Vow – just when it seemed that YES would win, Scotland – that whining, girning, bottomless pit of feckless, toothless, juice and tonic wine guzzling bampots was transformed by a Unionist makeover worthy of any  glamourised pouting influencer into the best pal across the stony border wooed by plans for commemorative cairns, wolf whistles, phone calls, remember lead us, don’t leave us –  we love you Scotland, land of purple heather, castles in the gloamin’, shortbread tin, Jimmy hats och aye the noo, most maximum devolved nation in the history of devolved nations. And we (not me, but many of you) fell for it – so, as a nation, we are proving, day in and day out ,that we don’t mind remaining relegated.

 No longer the valued, attractive partner, worth our weight in gold, we in Scotland are demoted – playing the roles of Hilda Ogden and Vera Duckworth, stuck in a backwater complaining, in curlers and head square, baffies and peenies, a laughing stock – repeating the same daily mantra – Stop Brexit – we didnae ;Scotland will not be dragged out of the EU – we’re oot;   Scotland will not stand for this – Scotland did; Scotland allows Westminster to trample all over us every single day.

And worse – as our resources are stolen, sold out, from beneath our very baffies and flippers -some of those who govern us describe such travesty as a victory. It’s akin to selling your Granny’s Heilan Hame for a quarter of its market value when if you’d let it out for ten years you’d have earned forty times more. 

As for oil and gas – well, why not just buy it from abroad, at maximum cost, as opposed to seek to harness, produce and profit from our own? Foreign purchase is not reducing the carbon footprint. You wonder where the oil fund went? Are we seriously going to watch the wind fund go the same way too?

An Independence Referendum Bill was drafted in March 2021 – weeks before the Scottish Parliamentary Elections – and it’s in dire need of resuscitation. There was an 11point plan – now suspended in the aspic of precious secrecy the domain not of all grassroots Independenistas but only of those duly anointed ; and even SNP MPs have no clue what the plan is bar an empty embarrassing unjustifiable insistence that all will be done to secure IndyRef2 in 2023 – piffle of course, but if that’s actually the aim of the Scottish Government then they can seek a s30 now – when the Tories are at their weakest – if they are not to be persuaded now, they never will be. 

It is time that those of us in Scotland who seek our country’s independence motored ahead with cogent proposals worthy of debate – in their absence there will be many more years of frustration, hunger and fear. Scotland deserves far better than the pit of despair into which she is sinking daily.