Yes, yes, Scotland’s vote over whether to stay in the UK is overwhelming me, it’s occupied me a lot lately and quite a bit for 18 months or so. But a schism in the UK and the potential loss to the union of one of the finest nations in the in the world, that happens every day.<\/p>\n
Plus I’m not Scottish nor am I in Scotland so I can’t actually do anything. <\/p>\n
Whereas having two iPhone models to pick from, that’s new. Plus if I think very hard about it, I can make a decision and do something about that.<\/p>\n
Look, I have nothing to add to the Scotland debate yet I can’t let this moment pass without acknowledging how important is. How important it is in every way but also how important it is to me. <\/p>\n
Wait, I do think this one thing that I’ve not heard in the debates. The UK’s sudden promises of new powers and extra autonomy for Scotland sounds to me exactly like a bloke saying “I’ll be better, things will be different now”. You know that’s never true and I’m afraid neither is what’s being said about new powers: if Scotland decides to stay in the UK, that’s a done deal, we’ll get back to you about those new powers. Right. Sure.<\/p>\n
Already you think I’m pro Scotland leaving.<\/p>\n
And I don’t know.<\/p>\n
My automatic, natural, default position is that we are all better off together. It kills me, though, that “better together” is the line for the No side that wants Scotland to stay in the union. It kills me because while I don’t generally think about being English, there are things in that campaign that make me wish I weren’t.<\/p>\n
Being in England, it’s only very recently that I’ve got to see much detail about the debate. (I think that’s very bad, I think that’s made it sound like we’ve had a week talking about it instead of all these months. But at least it’s a big thing on the news now.)<\/p>\n
I hope I’m wrong, then, but of the bits I’ve managed to hear over the whole campaign, everything from the No side has seemed to be patronising, fearmongering and \u2013 I’m struggling to remember a specific thing here so let me throw in the word allegedly \u2013 allegedly just an out and out lie. <\/p>\n
That’s not something to make you proud.<\/p>\n
That is something to make you want to run away.<\/p>\n
But wanting to run away is an emotional response: if I were able to vote in this and I did so based on how furious the No campaign makes me feel, would that be right? We can’t know what will happen if Scotland leaves \u2013 or if we can, neither side has been very convincingly informative \u2013 so it’s hard to be coldly logical or analytical. I’m not sure that I would entirely want to be coldly logical or analytical: this isn’t a maths problem.<\/p>\n
It’s not like, for instance, a 4.7in iPhone screen versus a 5.5in one. That’s a toughie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yes, yes, Scotland’s vote over whether to stay in the UK is overwhelming me, it’s occupied me a lot lately … Continue reading