- Yes We Didnae
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- Scotland, if you can keep it
I've not written about Yes We Didnae for a long time. I apologise for that but I've been thinking a lot about the project. As a result, I'd very much appreciate your views on Scotland's current situation and our future.
I have to say I was rocked on my heels by an email I got after my last missive. A respondent to one of my surveys told me in no uncertain terms that they had no interest in what No voters had to say. That stumped me as a core rule of campaigning is understanding what people think. To be honest, I found it a bit discouraging.
But it was nothing like as discouraging as, well, literally everything else that's happening in Scotland, the UK, and the world.
Frankly, friend, I've spent months shouting with impotent rage into my Lagavulin about the state of our burning world, the crumbling state of our struggling public services, and the general erosion of democracy by fash-adjacent broligarchs, who grow ever richer while the rest of us grimly struggle on.
And most of all I blink in bafflement that Scotland - arguably the most inventive country on the planet - is stagnant. Our once-vaunted education system is failing our children, the NHS is on its knees, social care: don't make me laugh, our transport systems are woefully behind where they need to be. Delicate social questions, like those around trans rights, which should be a careful, compassionate discussion about the needs of various marginalised groups have become black-and-white, yah-boo, political footballs. (And regardless of your stance on that, the recent UK Supreme Court ruling has put Scotland's law-making firmly back in its box.) Meanwhile, the climate crisis, the rise of AI, and the Russification of the US march on apace.
The bottom line is that nobody - yoon, nat, or otherwise - seems to have any transformational ideas to do anything about this stuff or to radically improve people's lives. There's only Reform, whose solution is "bash migrants". (And if that's your answer then the unsubscribe link is at the bottom.)
I think we can do better: you, me, the people reading this. Actually, I know we can do better. I want us, now, together, to build a vision of a better Scotland. The country we could be. Please take this survey now to share your views of that might look like. If enough people do, then maybe we can make some noise about the changes that need to happen in order to craft the kind of country we want to live in. I don't know yet what that might mean: some articles, a report, public meetings? But I want to try something, anything, to kickstart a debate about having a better, more energetic politics for our wonderful country.
The subject line of this email is a reference to a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin. When asked what kind of government the United States was building, he said: "A republic, if you can keep it." God's given us the most beautiful country on earth, festooned with natural resources, a font of invention, filled with potential. If we want it to be the country it could be - it should be - then we need to act.
Thank you very much for reading and taking part.
A' the best
Stewart