Sturgeonland

[57vintage]

You lost me at “I’d like to think”. That sort of ‘we’ exceptionalism fûcks me off. It’s one of the ‘one size fits all’ homogenisations that allows areas of Scotland to be treated the same way as the new Party heartlands where needs and aspirations are quite different. A sort of mini-Westminster.

One of the key props of the devolution I fought fûcking hard for in 77-79, and throughout the 80s and 90s via the Wright Convention when The Party was in the huff, was the PROCESS of devolution which had subsidiarity at its heart, ie DEVOLVING MAXIMUM DECISION-MAKING TO AS CLOSE TO PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. That’s been total(itarion)ly trashed by the past 9 years of obsession with centralisation and control by She Who Has Just Run Away Before The Shîte Hits The Fan.

Eroding people’s local and regional identities isn’t attractive to me. My ‘micro-we’ is as important as anyone else’s macro.

[InversneckieDob]

"I'd like to think" is as close to predicting the future as I'll get.
And "we" and "our" are intended solely as pure nouns.
That level of devolved socio-political decision making would be my model of choice within an independent Scotland, to me that IS grown up politics.
The subsidiary question is always going to be an issue, "Weegies" and "Tuechtars" and "Snotty cu nts fae Embra" sitting in Holyrood putting their vested interests aside to govern in the interests of the local people (in local shops) throughout the land?
The first hurdle is getting past the thatcherite and post-thatcherite mentality of "me first".
A high hurdle but surely achievable?
If not WTF is the point?

There's no doubt the SNP has sh@t the bed over, certainly the latter part of, their time in Government.
Devolution should not look like this.
I suppose the greatest compliment and insult that can simultaneously be directed at them is they now look indistinguishable from the political parties UK wide.

[57vintage]

I suppose the greatest compliment and insult that can simultaneously be directed at them is they now look indistinguishable from the political parties UK wide.

That isn’t recent. Devolution saved them from almost total oblivion. In 1992, Salmond floated his “Free by ‘93” schtick, and after a baker’s dozen of years under the yoke, I voted non-tactically for The Party. The result was that the sitting Liberal MP’s majority shrank to 274 (-12%) from 1987’s 9500, nearly handing it to John Porter, the (albeit almost pleasant) Tory. In 2019, my hand forced by the EU farce, I had to vote tactically for The Party, and some now-invisible nationalist placeman won it, and threw his hand in with The Continuity Candidate recently.

2017 was much easier. A proper mannies’ mildly social democratic manifesto was on offer, and I walked out of the polling station with my head held high for the first time since 1992. I noted later on that night/next morning that the so-called Caledonian comrades lost their bearings in not voting for anti-free-marketeers’ left-of-centre offer, calling somewhat into account the notion that Mr, Mrs, Ms, Mz and other salutationary designations of Joe/Josephine MacPublic are as collectively-minded as they claim when given the opportunity.

You’ve a generation of entitled but loyal dross to clear from the benches, the committees, the machine, the ‘middle management’ (as my exploited nationalist pal called them), and the cosy new Scottish political establishment before there exists an organisation serious about its stated aim, with the accountable urge to deliver for those who it currently takes for granted by making their lives better. The old guard had some skilful, powerful operators, but they have retired and/or been marginalised and not replaced as admirable radicalism has given way to pragmatic “progressivism”. Stuff it.