Letters / Scotlaphobes
Thank you Gordon Harmer (Well and truly blinded; 29/10/13), Alistair Inkster (Dread da thought; 28/10/13) and my dear friend Ian Tinkler (Raw prejudices; 28/10/13) for taking the bait and standing up for a most inexcusable, corrupt, selfish and socially destructive political system, designed around the home counties of England where most of the wealth lies.
It is not as simple as a Yes or No vote as there is a much, much wider and deeper debate to be had here with growing concerns and anger at how the ruling classes, political and wealthy elite have their hands in the till, rewarding themselves for failure and forcing the less well off to rot.
Gordon – you are correct I am deeply Anglophobic towards the English establishment that is on a different planet; greedy, selfish and arrogantly thinking they are superior.
I am also English and came up here almost 40 years ago to find a more socially fair and community-oriented society that had better values than I saw and experienced in England, where it is now reaching astronomical levels of greed, corruption and unfairness.
I came here with the attitude: when in Rome do as a Roman, and tried to follow this principle, whilst almost year on year watching Shetland face more and more barriers to its way of life, erosion of customs and practices, harmful levels of regulations and costs simply because Westminster rubber stamps all the stupid EU laws.
And adding injury to insult, draconically enforcing them unlike any other EU member state.
Fishing and agriculture have been decimated with regulatory stupidity that is choking the life out of Scottish islands as well as all Scottish remote and rural areas.
Alistair – I accept many in the far corners of Scotland see Edinburgh as just as far away as Westminster and don’t like either the SNP or Alex Salmond or both, but any political entity that embraces political autonomy for a specifically different region within a larger area, has to be more relevant.
Also it has the ethos of self determination which Shetland along with all the other island and rural areas of Scotland need so desperately now to survive.
I would love to see Shetland become a more autonomous region or politically independent Island group, but doubt we have the calibre of local political leadership for this at present.
Ian – you defend the Unionist cause without any obvious recognition of how bad the arrangement has become for Scotland (and everywhere else in the UK for those not on the gravy train) now that Westminster has become a glorified club for the public school elite and far from a House of Commons.
When Tony Blair (an untried war criminal) scrapped the Labour Party that previously had a social conscience and aligned his New Labour to occupy a space so close to selfish Tory heartland, two things happened to British politics.
There wasn’t enough space between them to slip a LibDem in between and British politics became stale and skewed in favour of the ruling elite.
Since then all that Westminster has achieved is smacking a huge wedge in between the haves and the have nots.
It’s getting so rotten down there in Westminster that now even the Tories are getting confused.
Remember the evil Margeret Thatcher’s mantra: “There is no such thing as society, only a collection of individuals”? Well how true this has become.
But just this morning I listened to Ed Davey MP – LibCon energy minister saying: “Power firms should not treat the public as a cash cow” when commenting on the latest energy price hike.
WOW! A government minister suggesting that a private company responsible for making a profit for its shareholders is ripping off its customers!
Is this a seed of a new social conscience emerging from the heart of government in England? Wow & double wow!
I feel sorry for you Scotlaphobes if you cannot see how rank rotten, bankrupt and corrupt the system is in Westminster and how we have a real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grasp a new and more socially responsible governance.
I also apologise for suggesting that folk who want to hold on to the old greedy, bankrupt system should go back to England.
I should have said: “Why would anyone want to stay in Shetland with such a strong sense of community when they could go and live in a place that has no society, only a bunch of individuals.”
Vic Thomas
Clousta
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