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| A view of Edinburgh, Scotland |
"The most interesting
thing about the independence referendum is how the yes campaign has gone
from being perceived on the left as anti-British, to part of the
vanguard of a broader populist movement to
restore democracy across these islands. In the larger context, this is
isn't surprising; the Conservatives have long given up even pretending
to represent anybody other than society's elites and their cohorts, who
have taken the country to the cleaners for the last 35 years. (Anybody
who doubts this should look at the continuing flow of wealth from the
many to the few.) Labour has also presided over this ongoing obscenity,
while occasionally hinting that they can perhaps wring some begrudged
concessions from those elites. This seldom, if ever, happens; the UK is
simply not set up that way.
With its morally bankrupt party
system, zero-esteemed career politicians, and plethora of coverups and
conspiracies reaching into the heart of a seedy, decadent, self-serving
establishment in business, politics, the media and the judiciary, the UK
is now perceived as a failed state by many of its citizens. It has
entrenched the entitlement of power and privilege above that of the
aspiration to any true democracy.
But now people are thinking
about the public school elites, aristocracy, City of London investment
bankers, corporate lobbyists, and the imperialist warmongers, apologists
and conspirators in the media, not as instruments of good government
and a healthy democracy, but as dangerous impediments to it. All those
will be eliminated, or their influence largely diminished, in
Scotland following a yes vote and the establishment of a constitution
that confers genuine rights on citizens. If Scotland moves in that
direction, I wouldn't expect England to hang around in developing a true
grassroots democratic movement.
The yes campaign has empowered
people to take control of their own destiny, and offered hope that
they, their families and communities can have a genuine future. The
principle is a simple one: it involves national resources going into
education, health and housing, instead of being siphoned off into the
offshore accounts of the super-rich or squandered on sordid overseas
conflicts, instigated by the inadequate for the profit of their
paymasters. (This is what they mean by "influence on the world stage".)
The yes campaign deserves to succeed in September with a positive vote.
Either way, the genie is now out of the bottle, and the issue, and the
newly empowered citizens it has created, certainly will not be going
away.
On a personal note, I've lived most of the last decade in
Ireland and America, two countries that were once ruled from London.
I've yet to meet a single person in either who is in a hurry to go back
to that arrangement. Once Scotland and England have freedom from the
corrupt, imperialist and elitist setup, I can guarantee that their
people will feel exactly the same way."
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