Life and death in Scotland

1172 – Scotland’s annual drugs deaths

1277 – Scotland’s annual alcohol related  deaths 

792   – Scotland’s annual suicides 

50     – children less than a year old died in Scotland between 1 October and 31 December 2024 – the second highest figure since records began in 2014.

£5 – £10billion – annual income from Scotland’s oil

£12.5billion – the cost of Trident

£205billion – the cost to replace Trident.

And if Scotland pays 8% of that cost,  being our population share, not our actual far greater contribution, that equates to about £16billion. Enough to build a new refinery for our oil ? Fund a national housebuilding corporation, a national energy company, revamp mental health provision and train a few thousand teachers, nurses and doctors? Fund legal aid for criminal defence ? Build a network of holiday homes from disused abandoned hotels and ensure everyone has a break in the country ?  Have guides on hand to narrate an introduction to our country’s history and geography ?Organise allotments and community gardens nationwide ? Sell the produce at bargain basement prices to locals ? Or give it away ? 

With imagination and vision following upon the restoration of our independence, the world becomes our oyster. That is why #ScotlandUnited is essential and urgent.

In the absence of unity within the independence movement partisan politics will remain; Scotland will squander the opportunity to capitalise on the disarray of Labour, the uncertainty of Reform and the vapidity of others. Worse, without full economic powers and reordered priorities, unnecessary premature deaths from poverty will continue to climb, fear will replace hope, human potential stunted, Scotland hobbled. 

Not only do we need unity, humanity and decency demand it. History will not look kindly upon those who refuse the hand of comradeship and common cause which is proferred now by those who can see a future Scotland free, not a desert. Proud, not cowed. Peaceable and peace loving, not warmonger or spiv. Prosperity not poverty and an end to curtailed life expectancy and achievement in Scotland’s schemes. A country not a county.