I am genuinely undecided on which way I will vote when it comes around. I am proud to be Scottish, but have no real problem with being British and am proud of the things that Scots and people from the other British nations have achieved over the years.
Nationalism troubles me deeply however - far too many terrible things have been done "In the name of a piece of dirt, For a change of accent, Or the color of your shirt" to quote Rush's song "Territories" - which pretty much echoes my feelings on the topic. I try to judge people (if I need to) based solely on the person that they are - where they happen to have been born is irrelevant.
However, my real issue with the current Independence "debate" is not anything to do with Nationalism. It is simply that I have seen nothing yet that can be reasonably described as debate. Childish yah-boo yeah-but-no-but squabbling, yes, reasoned, adult debate, no.
All of it seems to be "if you vote yes, we'll do..." followed by something great that they probably can't guarantee that they will be able to carry out. Or "If you vote no, then maybe..." followed by some dire apocalyptic consequence. Neither side seems to be able to back these statements with anything even resembling hard facts. Surely someone, somewhere is able to provide us with actual, definite answers to these sort of questions? What we really need, I think is an independent (irony, we do that, yes!) assessment of the key issues, so that we can make a realistic and informed decision as to which box we want to check.
Maybe we could even extend real, grown up, sensible debate into the rest of politics too? Nah, it'll never happen...
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