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Sir,

 

Ever since Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister at Holyrood, she has been utterly obsessed with one thing only: independence. A dreamy craving to be separated from the UK is much more important, and a greater priority, to her that all the 1,001 despairing problems with Scotland's NHS, economy and education. She’s not interested, and never has been, in the important ‘bread and butter’ issues that affect so many people in Scotland, over which they struggle with every day.

 

Having lost at the ballot box in 2014, she is now daring to impose yet another independence referendum on the people of Scotland. Foolishly thinking they made the wrong choice then, she just can’t accept reality. Like a wee girl having uncontrollable tantrums, in the school playground, the First Minister has played the part well, daily, over the past three years because she didn’t get what she, and her Holyrood crew, desperately coveted.

 

Stubbornly, and bitterly, refusing to accept that the UK voted to leave the EU, she now seeks revenge by loading her ‘independence rifle’ - with Brexit bullets – ready to fire at everyone on the other side of Hadrian's Wall.


There are an 1,001 reasons why we don’t want or need independence. For the moment, I’ll only make a brief reference to only two. One of the fundamental reasons for Scotland to remain a part of the 300-year-old union is an important economic one, which cannot be lightly ignored by any sane person. Even though our block grant has been cut by Westminster, it still remains a fact (to the annoyance of many English MPs) that we get more per head in public services spending than England. This is reality, whether we like it or not. To the penny, £10,536 is spent each year on people here in Scotland, which is £1,460 more than the UK average of £9,076.

 

If anyone is fooled into thinking that ‘local oil’ tax revenues will maintain this spend, they better think again. In the year 2001/12, Scotland’s North Sea Oil was doing so well that the tax revenues were worth in excess of £9 billion to the economy. By the year 2015/16, the last time that the figures were assessed, that revenue had been virtually wiped out by the global fall in the price of oil. The revenue had gone from £9bn to a mere 60m! Leading up to the 2014 referendum we were told that an independent Scotland would be wholly reliant on oil revenue, to resolve every foreseeable problem that goes along with governing ourselves!

 

Excuse me, but which planet are they on? It is high time that Nicola Sturgeon, and all who are obsessed with independence, woke up from their dreamy sleep. Last time round it saw the demise, from Holyrood, of the then First Minister, Alex Salmond. Maybe, maybe Nicola Sturgeon has done us a very great favour, in calling for another referendum, so that hopefully she too might at last disappear, forever, from Scottish politics. She might be a great woman of learning, but she has very little discernment or concern for the people of Scotland.

 

The persons we crave, and pray for, to govern Scotland are ones who fears God and who, under His Divine hand, will make this once great country, currently upside down and in much confusion, a great nation again. Only then will it have the blessing that it is currently denied. It is dependence on God alone that brings about independence, as John Adams, 2nd President of the USA and signer of the Declaration of Independence, reminds us: ‘The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him.’ And as the Bible records: ‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.’

 

Mr Donald J Morrison

85 Old Edinburgh Road

Inverness.

Letter:  Obsessed with independence

18 March 2017