Choose Free Will, Choose Hope

The Bank of England – actually a misnomer. It’s the Bank of the UK

What honest man would work against the interest of his own family? What man would attempt to keep his family captive? What man would lie and lie, and lie again to his family to fool them as to his concern for their welfare?

That is what Westminster and unionists ask of Scotland and its people.

They place before us as their champion a discredited politician called Gordon Brown, a man chronically unable to relate to people.

This is the man who coveted power and when he got it, squandered it; who has blood on his hands from illegal wars, wars he refused to condemn when he took power; who was bag man to the banks; who robbed from the masses to give to the wealthy; who signed trillions of pounds for weapons of mass destruction while the poor cannot find a place to live; who was happy to watch the NHS privatised in England, happy to have hospitals built at vast rates of interest that will have citizens paying for them for decades; saw our youth in higher education mired in debt; who turned his back on his own nation, Scotland.

This is the man we are asked to trust, to believe his word.

Why do English MPs ask Scotland to sacrifice its prosperity and ideals to save the mess that is England’s doing? Why are we expected to lay down our aspirations to continue giving more taxes and more resources to fund Westminster’s self-centred interests?

For years we were told we were the poor partner, subsidised by the successful partner. Now we know better. If this great debate taught us nothing more, it told us the truth. It opened our eyes and ears.

On this day the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, confirms Scotland’s assets held there surpass £1 trillion pounds sterling.

As the late, fine novelist and nationalist, Frederic Lindsay, put it, “I hand over my wallet to Westminster’s treasury and they hand back to me my allowance. I want to keep what I earn by own effort and endeavour.”

This plebiscite has motivated a great movement, a wonderful open, public debate that electrifies every street and alley, village and harbour, unknown in my lifetime anywhere in the British Isles. Yet it is savagely attacked, belittled, harangued, insulted, reviled by the entire British press and media with the sole exception of one Scottish Sunday newspaper.

A grass-roots movement searching for genuine empowerment, real sovereignty ungoverned by the greed of big business, has been deemed an insurgency, a threat to power, that must be put down at all costs.

We witness a profound desire to overthrow apathy and cynicism. We see a rising protest to defeat corruption in our elected representatives, in our political and financial institutions. This puts the fear of death into the powerful and the elite, those who would have us remain docile and compliant. Their venal influence is challenged by the very people they wish to contain and suppress as passive consumers. No wonder they are fearful.

It is a movement rejecting utterly neoliberal ideology, shock economics, the diminution of democratic and civil rights, and the greater proportion of a nation’s wealth in the hands of a few. You would think the Fourth Estate, the press would be on its side, but it has sided with the privileged and the powerful, the people who do not live in this country yet rule over it, proving how just is this mass resistance to unaccountable wealth and corruption.

We want no more of it.

We reject it unanimously.

We have entered the 21st century to discover we are in the midst of food banks, increasing poverty, endless wars, a rising hatred of foreigners, untrammeled greed, unaccountable corporations, regressive doctrines, and a British political system that is rotten to the core.

If Scotland votes No on this momentous day in its history, even by a small margin, it will have voted to become a region of North Britain, condemned for decades to come. Voting No means we accept neoliberal power. Voting no condemns us to be associated with the very thing we despise.

We will have signed away our birthright for we will be a separate nation no longer. This can only be interpreted by the emissaries of doom as their cue to withdraw what they see as privileges at their cost. More civil rights will be withdrawn. More austerity imposed. This isn’t threatened by the elite, they guarantee it.

We have no choice but to vote Yes.

There is no choice because we have no other option.

There are only empty half-baked, pretendy promises offered by mendacious politicians.

Let us channel our ideals and passion positively for all of us to prosper, not the few.

It is the right of every man, woman, and youth living in Scotland to exercise their free will and take control of their own country without the interference of a dominant nation. Self-determination is a human right, not a privilege.