Scottish independence - not for nationalism, for democracy.
The disaster of the recent UK election has pushed me far more towards Scottish independence than I was. I was 50/50 about it last year, but now I am strongly in favour. And I presume the same has happened for a lot of Scots?
There is no way that it can be democratic for a country to be governed by a party that only 15% of its population voted for. That is all the conservative/Tory party in Scotland got, 15% of the vote (to be precise, 14.9%). Meaning that 85% of the Scottish voters reject them. In a democracy that is an astonishingly high figure. Imagine Putin announced that the whole of Ukraine would now be governed by Russia, despite 85% of them not voting for that. Or China said ‘Taiwan is ours from now on. Only 15% of them wished it? So what. We are the power here now.’ (By coincidence if there was a vote in the Ukraine and Taiwan for such rule by Russia/China i think 15% is about the level of folk who would be in favour of it. )
But I'm not in favour of nationalism, for any country. For me scottish independence is about ORGANISATION - having a distinct unit or area (which happens to be called 'Scotland') that is able to organise society in the way the people there chose. Which happens to be a progressive left wing way. Free from control of the larger population in the organisational unit/area to the south (which happens to be called 'England'), who tend to vote in another direction, for another way of organising society.
The disaster of the recent UK election has pushed me far more towards Scottish independence than I was. I was 50/50 about it last year, but now I am strongly in favour. And I presume the same has happened for a lot of Scots?
There is no way that it can be democratic for a country to be governed by a party that only 15% of its population voted for. That is all the conservative/Tory party in Scotland got, 15% of the vote (to be precise, 14.9%). Meaning that 85% of the Scottish voters reject them. In a democracy that is an astonishingly high figure. Imagine Putin announced that the whole of Ukraine would now be governed by Russia, despite 85% of them not voting for that. Or China said ‘Taiwan is ours from now on. Only 15% of them wished it? So what. We are the power here now.’ (By coincidence if there was a vote in the Ukraine and Taiwan for such rule by Russia/China i think 15% is about the level of folk who would be in favour of it. )
But I'm not in favour of nationalism, for any country. For me scottish independence is about ORGANISATION - having a distinct unit or area (which happens to be called 'Scotland') that is able to organise society in the way the people there chose. Which happens to be a progressive left wing way. Free from control of the larger population in the organisational unit/area to the south (which happens to be called 'England'), who tend to vote in another direction, for another way of organising society.