As we approach the Generally Election on 7 May 2015 we should reflect on the assertion that Scotland is ‘Too wee, too poor and too stupid’.  It is not clear who originally made this assertion, but certainly John Swinney used the expression when he was leader of the SNP.

Of course as far as the General Election is concerned this expression has a different significance from the referndum question.  Despite the main parties feverishly trying to suck us into a referendum rerun and the British media trying to talk up the SNP prospects to lull us into a false sense of security and complacency and of course mobilise the opposition.  Despite this, Nicola has been relentless in presenting our most basic right to stronger representation at Westminster. Moreover, the media tell us that 60% of English are concerned about SNP having influence in Parliament – or put it another way 40% of English are NOT concerned about the SNP having representation in Parliament.  When the English realise first hand that Nicola and the SNP have a social justice blueprint that aims to improve the lot of the rest of the UK they will realise that she is only the most dangerous woman from the perspective of the Eton boys.  I suspect Nicola will press for a better deal for England that includes free university education, free prescriptions, free parking at hospitals and the English will feel the cool wind of change blowing through the corridors of Parliament.

However, back to the ‘toos’.  Much has been said and written to refute this claim and I have done so myself in a blog.

I don’t know what was in his mind when John said this but I would like to ask my readers to reflect on what might have been meant.  In fact, I also believe the rationale behind this may still be developing to this day and beyond.

Are we ‘Too wee’. In terms of physical size Scotland is in the top 40% of independent countries.  However, it is more important to like at population size and in a sense, the answer must be yes from a UK perspective.  In a democracy where our ruling neighbours outnumber us by 11:1 we would need a 100% turnout, all saying the same, to overhaul a 9% turnout in England.  The ruling Conservative Government represents 17% of the people and 23% of the electorate yet Scotland has only 1 Conservative MP out of 59.

The question has to be, what can be done about that.  In the short term Scotland must strive for more influence in Westminster and that can only be achieved in consort with another party, or more importantly parties.  Scottish politics and SNP politics has much in common with the values of the Green party and Plaid Cymru in Wales.  However, these parties cannot prop up a Labour government they must influence it.  IF that influence is predicated on social justice for all and when I say all I include the totally disenfranchised peoples of England, then Scotland will no longer be too wee.

So the question has to be, ‘is physical size a good measure?’.  The answer to that question must be NO.  If I held out both hands with a big stone in one and a small diamond in the other and asked you to select one, then ….  So let’s put physical size into room 101.

Is Scotland ‘too poor?’  Yes, of course it is.  If we had more money we could invest in; improved education, developing our markets, improving the health of our nation, improving our  infrastructure and securing a working future for all who can and a security for those who can’t.  But we don’t have that money.  We have been on pocket money for 308 years.  Any money we earn is spirited off to London to be doled out, currently through the Barnett formula.  To add insult to injury we are told through our anti-Scottish media that we are net beneficiaries.  In fact we are net contributors.  The result of the false perception is a negative view of Scots as scroungers and a persistent attack on the existence of the Barnett formula.  How quickly people have forgotten that the Barnett formula was predicated on compensation for the £1.5 Trillion NPV and ongoing revenue from Scottish oil and gas that is taken by Westminster for the UK.  {I say NPV or Net Present Value because the actual amount as a proportion of value increases as we go back in time.  £10 today is very much less than it was 50 years ago.  If we extracted all the north sea oil since 1975, last year, it would have been worth £1.5 Trillion}.  But don’t let’s get sucked into this volatile debate on wealth based on oil.  Prices go up and down and a green Scotland would want to focus away from wholesale burning of fossil fuel.

So let’s look at Scotland’s wealth and potential wealth.The following slide from Business for Scotland speaks volumes.  Incidently, ahead of the referendum the CBI was hemorrhaging members while Business for Scotland went meteoric:

Despite all this wealth, the revenue earned gets whisked off to Westminster where it is ‘pooled’ and a portion comes back under the Barnett formula.  This is one area where the Smith Commission was to address the issue and give Scotland tax raising powers.  In fact Scotland has been allocated minor tax raising powers, which are decremented through Barnett.  This is a poison chalice.  If Scotland needs more income it has a little power to raise through tax and the Scottish Government get the blame for being a government of high tax while Westminster sits back chuckling.  This is the real reason that Scotland needs Full Fiscal Autonomy.  If we are so shit, as we are being told, then this is a bonus for Westminster, getting rid of us Scottish scroungers.  Of course there will have to be a very long period of negotiation – of course that will be more about what Westminster want to hang on to rather than a straight apportionment.  Take for example the oil and gas revenue.  Scotland has 98.8% and England has 1.2%.  Can you imaging how that conversation will go?  Scotland is a very mountainous country whereas England is very rural and famed for its intensive farming.  Nevertheless, Scotland produces 3% higher produce than England as a proportion of population.  In terms of sustainable energy, Scotland has 25% of the EU wind generation and 10% of the EU wave generation and that is with very minimal investment.  Unfortunately, as Dave Coburn, Scotland’s UKIP MEP, points out, ‘ what do we do when the sustainable energy runs out?’  Good question David, but as any 4 year old will say, ‘he’s a muppet’.

In conclusion, yes we are poor as a nation in much the same way as a person is asset poor after being burgled.  Put another way, we are not poor, we have been made poor.  So ‘Too poor’ can now go into room 101 along with ‘Too wee’.

Are we ‘Too stupid’.  Unfortunately, and unequivocally we are.  I know that Scotland probably has the highest proportion of geniuses, inventors and innovators proportionally in the world.  I know that Scotland was the European or world powerhouse of the Scottish Enlightenment in the 18th Century. The one asset that does not appear on the Business for Scotland slide is people.  Scotland sports more than its fair share of the most skilled, most clever and most enterprising ‘ordinary’ people. Sadly and despite our intellectual pedigree we exhibit some of the most stupid, ‘up-themselves’ people in the world.  Before you start coming for me with the pitchforks consider this:

For hundreds or even thousands of years Scotland  and England (although they weren’t always called that) fought each other.  Why was that?  What was it that Scotland had? I expect the English coveted our haggis, our sheep, our long locks of ginger hair, our weather and our abundance of midges.   Or was it possibly the sport of kings, jockeying for land and power?  If we consider the wealth captured in the caption above and ask yourself when all that came about, it is certainly within the last 308 years – or should I say, within the period of Scotland’s rule from Westminster.

All over the world, nations that have been plundered for their wealth have eventually risen up, fought and died to take back control of their country and their assets.  The British Empire (or more accurately the English Empire) carried out global plundering on an unprecedented industrial scale – but that was the way of the world – until 58 of these countries kicked them out.

But here’s the thing.  Let’s look at some examples where we were kicked out and what were the ramifications.  North America kicked us out.  Did that stop us trading? absolutely not.  In fact we became known as the 51st state – we have a special relationship with the US that has led both of us into wars.  This tells us that business trumps everything and always will.  The same goes for many other countries that kicked us out such as India and Australia.

But to get to that point huge amounts of blood was spilled.  Scotland had an opportunity to do what 58 countries had done but without spilling a drop of blood and what did they say, ‘mibbe not, mibbe later’.  In that sense we are too stupid.  But not all of us.  It would be a fool who thought that the independence quest of Scotland would ever go away.  However, it would an even bigger fool that thought this was an issue for the General Election.

The General Election is Scotland’s best opportunity in centuries to show the world their potential.  Around 40% of English people see the march of Scottish politics as a force for good in the UK – and I believe that England will seize the Scottish political blueprint and demand their country and nationality back from the Establishment that has suppressed them as it has suppressed the Scots.

So, in a sense we are too wee, too poor and too stupid.  But that does not mean that we have to accept that.  In actual fact, I think John Swinney was a bit light on his list of ‘Toos’.

I think we are ‘Too divided’.  I think we are ‘Too bitter’.  I think we are ‘Too tolerant’.

We are too divided.  Ever since I was a kid, and probably long before, growing up as a Belgian Catholic, as all Belgians were, I was all too aware of the religious divide.  We are world class at religious divide.  Some say it comes across the water from Ireland.  It probably did but it is real and it is present.  A few years ago I was in Cuba and was chatting with a taxi driver called Jesus.  When he heard I was Scottish he asked me if I was Celtic or Rangers.  When I explained I was Partick Thistle he almost crashed the cab.  Scotland has vast divisions across religion and the churches, class and geography.  Growing up in Glasgow I was expected to hate Edinburgh – I hadn’t even been there.  As transport came into reach and we ventured further north I discovered I was a lowland leper, a Sassenach.  Highlanders would have nothing to do with Lowlanders.  When I was wee, I experienced social engineering where the Corporation of Glasgow would design housing schemes to shepherd the social classes and trouble makers into ghettos of the future.  That is how we created places like Drumchapel and Easterhouse.  The vast majority of folks who found themselves in these areas have spent decades trying to recover and restore their dignity and the stigmas heaped on them by deeply corrupt and socially suspicious local Government.

We are too bitter.  Actually the problem is not the English, it’s the Establishment and that Establishment exists in Scotland as much as it does in England.  Image the irony of hating an English plumber and loving a Scottish merchant banker with his hand in the till.  I believe too many Scots don’t get out enough, and I mean ‘out out’.  I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunities to work in the City of London for over 20 years and in Europe for a number of years.  People, especially in London love to have a wee poke at us Scots, and we poke them back, but I am surprised at the way they actually like us a lot and too many of us hate them in return.  I suspect we could talk all day as to why that may be, but let’s just accept that we must identify the real divides in our society and that is not defined by a national identity.

We are too tolerant.  I mean too many people are too eager to accept the crap we are served up.  Too ready to accept the accepted norm.  We accept politicians dishing up so much rubbish and we let them away with it.  Someone hit Murphy with an egg?  After what that man has done to our society, and he gets ‘egg’d’.  This is a Blairite who thinks so much of the Scots, has so little respect for the people, that he thinks it is OK to lie on demand.  Worst of all, we accept what we are told through the media.  They are story tellers, clypes (to use the Glasgow vernacular) and liars who exist to sell newspapers and advertising space at any cost.

We have had a peace camp and a CND movement in Helensburgh for over 50 years.  The vast majority of Scots don’t want weapons of mass destruction housed in their country.  Many Scots understand that Faslane is simply a decoy centre to buy the US reaction time – they also realise that although we have the submarines and the nuclear war heads, they forgot to give us the trigger – that’s in the US.  People living in the vicinity of Faslane are well aware of the 50 to 100 radio-active leaks every year; and that is based on MoD statistics.  They are also aware of substantial anecdotal evidence of alarmingly high instances of cancers and still-births etc.  The reason that this is anecdotal is because it has been almost impossible to get any information out of the base.  For all that, the base is still there and they are in the process of expanding its capability and marching ahead with the next generation of nuclear weapons.

During the referendum we were bombarded with ridiculous lies from people like Jackie Baillie telling us that a YES vote would close the base and lose 12,000 jobs (by contrast the Mod, Babcocks and Lockheed say the figure is 520).  Every time she opened her mouth a further 1,000 workers would lose their job.  Of course, the town of Helensburgh would be devastated if it lost the revenue from the base?? Aye right!  Helensburgh has a very high percentage of retail shops closed down and a large number of charity shops.  That does not sound, by any stretch of the imagination like a prospering town.

But my point is simply this.  We have tolerated this situation for over 50 years and the way we are going we will be tolerating it for the next 50 years.  How long would the base be located there if we had 2 million people outside protesting.

Surprise, surprise, on the 7 may 2015 we may find that we have 2 million people protesting in the classic democratically accepted manner by voting SNP – and that scares the bejesus out of the Establishment.

So, in conclusion, a lot of people will recognise all those ‘toos’.  But there are a coupe of ‘toos’ that I have held back on.  This political system that controls us has been going on

TOO LONG and when it goes it will not be TOO SOON