That made me think about the things the YES campaign is saying NO to? I rattled off a list. Foodbanks. 100,000 children pushed into poverty. The bedroom tax. Austerity. Bankers bonuses. Unregulated financial sector. On it goes.
If we crack on with some printing and fly-posting we can turn all those NO signs to our advantage.
It made me think further. Can you do the same with YES? Just what are the NO campaign saying YES to? Well, there’s YES to the Union, I suppose. Not that such a statement carries any substance. Maybe, YES to some presumptious heavyweight of George Osborne’s calibre conjuring a way out of this awful mess of a UK. YES to paying the consultancy fees to his resident experts for their extremely worthy opinions. Or…
YES to meritocratic superiority. YES to decision-making (on anything important) devolved to a chapter-house of old Etonians several hundred miles away. YES to being collectively patronised.
I’m sure, given some thought, they could have come up with something positive about the Union. I’ve been waiting to hear it for two years. I’ve got so impatient I’ve been tempted to make my own list and let them have it. And, I realise it would contain many of the things they’ve already obscured by pronouncements of doom: best of both worlds, shared resources, mutual support. We’ve heard it all and, to be honest, there should have been something to say for them - if they had a solid, positive basis, or a track record. But, as it is, they’re groundless.
To me. the union is two worlds, cutting across geographical and cultural boundaries – two distinct classes. Being a Scot, I call them the goats and the huvnae goats. The goats stay in one world, cocooned with privilege, and only throw the merest scraps from their tables to certain favourites in the other. We live there; we’re the huvnae goats. Amongst us, divide and rule is the norm. Those with the bigger scraps fend off the ones with least: we have a pecking order of the powerless.
Shared resources?. In this place we co-inhabit, we don’t actually share much. Maybe a cultural curiosity or two or our quaint little lives. Like ceilidhs, kilts and hey-jimmy hats. The skirl of the pipes masks our angry frustration. Behind this façade, we share what make and do. We pay as we earn into the piggybank and the sharing flows one way and only a little of it dribbles back. In the flow of money and resources precious little sharing goes on. If it’s shared on some balance sheet, the huge, hidden admin fee goes unnoticed. We’ve been top-sliced for centuries.
And support. That’s a laugh. Westminster gives support like someone sober fleecing a drunk. It holds us upright, the easier to get a grip of the wallet. Security, stability, protection comes in the menacing whisper of a mobster. Protection is offered for a price. It’s never clear. Just, don’t forget, you don’t want something to happen to your country… your family… your lives… Stick with us. We’ll see you alright…
What the NO camp is asking us to say YES to fails to inspire. It fails because positive attributes of union actually have to be positive, even persuasive, and already evident. That’s why we ask, ‘If we’re Better Together, why aren’t we better together now?’ The absence of better togetherness in any real sense gives the lie to the hollow promises. It means the only positive YES to the union is that it’s generally a jolly good thing. It’s something worth having… but don’t look inside. It’s a pig in a poke.
Against that, YES is saying NO to sleaze; NO to cover-ups and hypocrisy; No to foreign wars, NO to politics and business as usual. YES has a future to say YES to.
NO has only the Toom Tabard of a moribund status quo. A status quo they’re already bringing down around our ears. Make no mistake, a NO vote is a dismal YES to remaining silent, giving up any voice we thought we had. Back to being the underdog. Jolly, ginger underdogs and their funny skirts. We’re just salt-of-the-earth, dependable, noisy when drunk and good in a scrap. We’re too dim to be any use in the real world. Thinking’s not our strong point, poor deluded no-hopers.
I, for one, prefer to take issue with that. Better together: no thanks. Just say YES.
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