The World This Week From Mennies

Saturday 24 July 2021

Who should have a vote on independence,

Well another week in and a busy one at that, with expansion plans in the vehicle repair side of the business reaching new heights and another step in the direction of electric vehicles, which seems the inevitable rout the industry is taking. I must admit though, that I am surprised that hydrogen is not more to the fore as an alternative fuel.

Who should vote on a countries independence

A thorny question for Scottish people but, I would suggest, not one that should be, and for various reasons.

Firstly ” a thorny question for Scottish people”, exactly, “for Scottish people” is the optimum phrase. If indeed it is decided in the first place that Scotland is not already independent then surely a country’s destiny should be decided by the people who carry the name of the country and that is Scottish people, people born in Scotland and not people who for various reasons at that specific time, happen to live in the country.

Can you imagine a football club for instance who would hold their annual general meeting on a match day and invite all the spectators to vote on resolutions simply because they happened to be in the ground on the day? No, of course not that would be ridiculous, not least for the simple reason that around half the people there would not be supporters of the club and would have allegiances elsewhere.

So why would a country, lets say a colony, of a larger or more powerful country allow the colonisers to actually have a vote on whether that country became free of the coloniser ?

That scenario is obviously ridiculous, isn’t it? It would be like India allowing the occupying British army to have a vote on whether Britain was to lose a major asset, wouldn’t it? Well guess what? That is exactly what Scotland did in 2014.

We assumed ( for some strange reason) the mantel of a colony, decided that we were not independent and allowed citizens of the colonizing country, to vote on whether we became independent. Guess what ? they didn’t and we lost the referendum.

Now, there was other reasons why we lost the referendum and one of them was that the colonising power , contrary to the UN declaration of self determination and de-colonisation of territories and countries, actually participated in the debate on the side of the no campaign. It should be noted that despite the SNP virtually accepting the status of Scotland as being a colony, by virtue of the fact that they saw the reason to hold a referendum in the first place, they did not object to the UK involving itself in the no campaign!

Ok, so, what should have happened? Well, I would suggest that Scotland is already an independent country, all be it, tied in various ways by agreement to a union, negotiated in 1707. None of these ways as far as I can see was to forfeit our independence, in fact the Scottish parliament was only suspended and not abolished.
It is a long time since I actually read the Act of Union but as far as I remember it contains a clause that allows either party to relinquish their membership should their respective peoples wish this to happen.

Lets therfore assume we are not a colony, but ( up to now) a willing partner in a union, similar to the EU, as we were until 2016 where we voted to leave, or to be more precise, England voted to leave taking an unwilling Scotland with it. And let us assume that a goodly number of Scots wish to leave this voluntary union ( which they do). So what is the procedure?

Well it is in effect the same whether we are a colony or already an independent country and the first move is exactly the same. We ascertain the will of the people, which can be done in a number of ways. It can be done by a referendum and this is one of the more unusual ways that countries become independent, or it can be done through elected representatives deciding that they have been elected on the basis of attaining independence or dissolving the union., This is by far the most common method that countries have used to attain self determination.

At the present time we have a huge Scottish majority in the Westminster parliament which would very easily facilitate either a declaration of independence or a dissolution of the union.

The only imponderable, is why the SNP refuse to do this.

Going back to the last Scottish election in May and the emergence of the new party Alba, led by the former first minister Alex Salmond, it would appear that he had much the same idea as I have just been explaining and have been doing since 2015 and that is using an election to ascertain the will of the people and thereafter ( assuming the will expressed was to achieve self determination ) begin negotiations on the split of assets and liabilities.

This sent Nicola Sturgeon into a fit of panic, bringing out a tirade of vicious criticism, castigation and denunciation, together with what seemed a denunciation of the justice system in Scotland in connection with an innocent man. She insisted on the both votes for the SNP which had already been proved to facilitate the unnecessary election of numerous unionist members in the elections in 2016, to once again be the policy, instead of allowing the second vote to go to Alba thereby allowing a super majority in the Scottish parliament which would have facilitated the commencement of negotiations allowing Scotland to leave the union and become independent in all ways.

Make no mistake about it , the one person who blocked that situation was Nicola Sturgeon.

The one person that must be removed from her present position to allow self determination for Scotland is Nicola Sturgeon.

So now to look forward this evening to a nice pint of beer in my favorite hostelry, Mennies.

to all my friends the World over, have a good and safe weekend

Slainte