WINTER IS COMING as seen in iScot magazine.

If there isn’t majority support for Scotland’s independence there damn well should be. And to bring that support we desperately need to restore competent government. Evidence of competency is found in how we look after our most needy.

Too many people struggle for a GP appointment or a filling on the NHS. Surgeons who used to do five joint replacements a day are doing three. Care workers wages are too low and bed blocking a disgrace.

Social workers cannot find or fund foster placements for needy children – some are moved a three hour car journey away from home. Child and adolescent mental health referrals have waiting lists in some areas of two years.

Prisons –  dangerously overcrowded and vital work on rehabilitation, support and education isn’t happening.

Homelessness, rough sleeping, cured during lockdown has returned worse than ever it seems.

Drugs deaths appear to be rising and though there’s money available it’s controversially not directed sufficiently towards residential rehabilitation; minimum unit pricing for alcohol remains a hot potato and mental health services for the suicidal yet another postcode lottery.

With Westminster holding the purse strings we think we can’t provide universal free meals from nursery to university; not only have we record numbers of food banks, they’re running out of supplies as donors are becoming skint too; we should have had an oil fund like Norway – instead we’re governed by fools arguing to leave it where it is. 

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation conducts valuable research providing influential commentary on poverty; their fourth report on ‘Destitution in the UK’ published in October 2023 should strike fear into the hearts of all, politicians and subjects alike. I say ‘subjects’ deliberately.

In 2022 in the UK 3.8 million people experienced destitution. 2.8 million were adults, 1 million children.

These figures are two and a half times what they were in 2017.

Destitution is when you can’t meet your most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.

In the year when the Queen’s funeral cost £160 million, single working adults couldn’t heat and eat, parents went without to feed their children and schools ran breakfast clubs.

£15 billion is a conservative estimate of the cost to the taxpayer of unusable PPE, tests and vaccines during Covid.

Untold billions have been spent or are earmarked for Trident and its replacement.

Apparently Scotland’s figures on destitution are not quite as bad as those for the UK as a whole. For some this is a cause for celebration. 

See where we are though ? Incompetent government at Westminster and at devolved level a green tail wags the yellow dog leading to senseless policies and waste of millions of pounds. For some though it seems ears as well as windows are painted on.

I know of a man who journeys across one of Scotland’s cities to the food bank on the other side of town because they allow him two loaves a week, not one, and he lives on pieces, sandwiches, because he can’t afford to put the cooker on.

Friends of mine are spending life savings and dipping into pensions to pay for artificial knees and hips rather than spend the next two or three years in agony.

People are pulling their own teeth.

Record numbers use charitable services for food, buy clothes in charity shops and there’s coats, scarves and hats being left outside for whoever needs them. 

We’ve got warm banks – WARM BANKS !!!!! In the land that struck oil when I was 5 years old and now I have my elderly bus pass.  Give me strength!

And what does our experience tell us about politicians – is it all about snake oil and self-interest?

We’ve memories of the Feeble 50, those Labour men and women who sold their souls, many the price of the ermine duvet. No ice on the insides of their windows this winter and no lonely empty bottles of tomato sauce in their cupboards. 

Their infamy is matched by that of those elected repeatedly since 2015 as Independenistas, mandates coming out of their ears remain unimplemented yet curiously if we return fewer of them this will represent a mandate that a Unionist administration in Westminster cannot possibly ignore………one more push…….

Yet credit where it’s due – the Scottish Child Payment, means tested though it is, is helping to keep thousands of children out of poverty and it shows what Scotland can do when we think and crucially act for ourselves. The baby box could have done likewise had it been matched with comprehensive resources around child care, health visiting and education.

We need more innovation – such as a national house building corporation, a national energy company, inspired attention to addictions with a right to recovery enshrined in law,  land reform which is radical and equitable, universal provision of food for all in every educational establishment – no pupil or student will learn on an empty stomach. None of this is rocket science – but it needs political will and spine to imagine, design and deliver.

Scotland’s population are educated, keen and able – it is our current crop of leaders who let us down by mainly pursuing a tired unrealistic unpopular agenda. Scotland is far more than the land of the Scottie dog and the shortbread tin – in our independence movement we’re warriors seeking justice, social justice, equality, respect, our rightful place between Saudi Arabia and Senegal. It cannot come quickly enough – but it will only come with politicians and civic leaders of integrity who are selfless, driven, determined and imaginative. 

Many Scots at Westminster are due to stand down at the General Election – there is no credible reason why they cannot raise Scotland’s profile daily in the House of Commons – take turns at being suspended and give press conferences every single day highlighting Scotland’s needs and its status as a cash cow acknowledged by a wee pat on the head once in a blue moon when the oil licences are issued or the energy comes ashore in the North of England. Their failure so to do, their collective refusal to support Alba’s Self- determination Bill, bar a handful of worthy exceptions, suggest that independence may not be their raison d’être – so the gauntlet is thrown and it’s theirs to lift – prove us wrong, stand up for Scotland in Westminster, create a plan for a campaign to unite our movement at the ballot box next year – and be rewarded with immortality in the history books and the roll of honour when our nation is free.

In 1000 years, as Alex Neil famously declared, people will still speak in hallowed terms of Winnie Ewing and Hamilton 1967. It is now time for every independence-supporting politician and civic leader of Scotland to emulate her fine example and lead our country out of the doldrums and into our new future as a land of potential and plenty.