I shall vote YES – the vote for Scottish Independence

As usual in August, I’ve been in Edinburgh for the Festival.  This year there’s been the added frisson of the debate about Scotland’s vote for independence. However, debate seems to be the wrong word.  The vote that could result in Scotland becoming independent from the United Kingdom seems to centre around a very limited number of unsubstantiated claims from either side, with almost no critical analysis of what it might mean for the future of the nation.

The proposal put forward by the SNP is that Scotland will control its own destiny, funded by a belief that tax revenue from North Sea oil will grow.  It’s a bit like an established company saying that it is about to embrace a fundamentally different business model, for example M&S announcing to the City that they’re going to stop selling food and revert to just being an underwear retailer. If that happened it would come with a strict warning that future performance could go down as well as up.  The independence debate has no such caveat for Scotland’s populace, seeing only a future upside.  So it seemed appropriate to update Christopher Logue’s poem “I shall vote Labour” to help the undecided:

 I shall vote YES

I shall vote yes because
I believe in wind farms.
I shall vote yes because
Tartan is my favourite colour
I shall vote yes because
I’ll have had my tea before I get a chance to vote.
I shall vote yes because
Alex Salmond kissed my sister Mary’s baby.
AND
I shall vote yes because
My hairdresser told me to.
I shall vote yes because
My Jamie found an image of Sean Connery in his deep-fried Mars bar.
I shall vote yes because
I love Edinburgh’s trams.
I shall vote yes because
I believe Greggs can solve Scotland’s obesity problem.
I shall vote yes because
I want my pension and my children’s pensions to be paid for by oil taxes, and
Alex has promised that oil will be $150 a barrel by Christmas;
I shall vote yes
Even though my milkman thinks the oil will run out;
AND
I shall vote yes because
I believe in saving the NHS.
I shall vote yes because
Peter Capaldi is the best Doctor Who.
I shall vote yes because
I think Scotland should keep the pound, but mostly
I shall vote yes because
Deep in my heart
I want to be English.

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