What is clear

The infighting in the White House is extremely amusing. Petulantly tweeting that you’re a “very stable genius” is a pretty good indicator that you’re no such thing. And then when you tweet “my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart”, you’re coming across as a teenage Valley Girl upset because her parents have taken away her mobile phone. This is after all the man who’s response to Kim Jong-un’s nuclear threats was to tweet that his nuclear button was bigger than Kim’s nuclear button. Although the truth is that his button isn’t any bigger, it’s just that his hands are really tiny.

Most of the planet is hugely entertained by the huge falling out between Trump and Steve Bannon. It’s like Alien Vs Predator only without the social graces and the pleasant personalities. Meanwhile here in Scotland we have the spectacle of the meltdown of our very own rich and spoiled Valley Girls masquerading as the grassroots, the continuing saga of Scotland in Union being funded by the rich and the titled. There is only one grassroots movement in Scotland opposed to Scottish independence, and that’s the one that marches to the tune of songs about the blood of Catholics. No wonder then that the British state is desperate to pretend that there’s another more respectable one. But we know the truth now, and once uncorked it won’t go back into those expensive bottles of whisky auctioned off at Scotland in Union dinner in a posh London club.

The Scottish media has taken a battering too. A couple of days ago Derek Bateman revealed on his blog the entire “media grid” for the Christmas and New Year holiday period given by the Labour party in Scotland to its pals in the media. Days and days of SNPBad stories all planned in advance to be regurgitated as news. The Scottish media was stripped of its pretence and shown as a willing and uncritical front for Labour party press releases. It showed us the reality, that the news in Scotland isn’t driven by a public service agenda, it’s not driven by an agenda of investigating the power structures of Scotland. It’s driven by the party political agendas of parties which support the British state. It’s not that it’s fake news, but it’s a fake that it’s news.

During the first independence referendum, the Better Together campaign focussed almost exclusively on the economy. That tactic allowed them to present one scare story after another from supposedly independent think tanks with close links to big business, Conservative donors, and the British nationalist parties. It’s very easy to confuse people with a barrage of economic statistics, carefully selected in order to present Scotland as a basketcase. All the while they’re aided by the media in carefully avoiding the question that if Scotland is indeed an economic basketcase then surely that must be the responsibilty of the economic and financial policies of a Westminster parliament which jealously reserves all the relevant powers to itself.

Supporters of the British state are clearly laying the ground to fight the second independence referendum with similar tactics. Let’s face it it’s all they’ve got. If there really was a compelling positive case for the Union we’d have heard it by now. Essentially the case for the Union boils down to the people who have impoverished Scotland and treatedd it as a reservoir of resources, capital, and labour to be sucked dry for the benefit of London and the South East screaming at us that we’d be nothing without them. However they chose the economy as their battleground for a reason, because they could create a barrage of smoke and mirrors to disguise Scotland’s true economic potential. Even more importantly they chose the economic battleground because it was a convenient distraction from the other arguments for independence where the British state has no answers and nothing to say.

The revelations about Scotland in Union’s secret funding from the rich and the titled, and Derek Bateman’s disclosure of the Labour party’s attempts to manipulate the news agenda, with the complicity of the British nationalist press, give us an opportunity to refocus on those other arguments for independence, on what independence is really all about. It’s about equality of opportunity. It’s about democracy. It’s about accountability. It’s about honesty in public life. It’s about living in a country which is run for the benefit of all its citizens, and not just for a few very wealthy people who can afford to throw a few grand in secret at the political causes which benefit them.

If it wasn’t clear before it is now as obvious as Donald Trump’s combover, the cause of defending the rule of the British state in Scotland has nothing to do with what is good for the people of Scotland and everything to do with bolstering the power and privilege of the few who already have it all. It’s equally clear that opposing Scottish independence and defending the British state isn’t about being opposed to nationalism, because there is no more nationalist project in Europe than Britain’s Brexit. Those who claim to oppose independence because they say they hate nationalism might be able to delude themselves, but they’re not deluding the rest of us. It’s clear that only independence offers a Scotland that belongs to all of its people. The British state offers us a Scotland that belongs to a handful of the extremely wealthy who own holiday properties in the Highlands that are larger than West Lothian.

All these things are clear, but clearest of all, shining like the beacon of truth that will illuminate that path towards Scottish self-determination is the truth that our campaign is the moral one. We are the ones who walk in the open. We are the ones who walk in honesty. We are the ones who walk in the grass. We don’t hide. We don’t dissemble. We don’t pretend to be something that we are not. The campaign to keep Scotland under the thumb of Westminster does all these things. The question that will be put to the people of Scotland in the coming independence referendum is how can you put trust in people who don’t trust you enough to tell you the truth about themselves? A vote for independence is a vote for self-respect, a vote for accountability, a vote for equality. A vote for independence is a vote to ensure that the path that Scotland walks will be a path that’s chosen by the people of Scotland, a path that leads to equality of opportunity, to fairness, and to a better country for all of us.

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weegingerdug.scot

The Wee Ginger Dug has got a new domain name, thanks to Indy Poster Boy, Colin Dunn @Zarkwan. http://www.indyposterboy.scot/ You can now access this blog simply by typing www.weegingerdug.scot into the address bar of your browser, the old address continues to function, the new one redirects to the blog. The advantage of the new address is that it’s a lot easier to remember if you want to include a link to the blog in leaflets, posters, or simply to tell a friend about it. Many thanks to Colin.

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