WE KNOW ABOUT OIL AND GAS WHAT ABOUT AGRICULTURE?

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WE ALL KNOW ABOUT OIL AND GAS BUT WHAT ABOUT AGRICULTURE?

Agriculture and Food play a vital role in the Scottish economy. They provide a huge number of jobs, the quality of our produce is very highly regarded, putting our beef sector and the Aberdeen Angus label in particular as the top premium brand worldwide.

Now we know that while huge deposits of oil and gas are located in Scottish waters, we also know that Westminster has ensured Scots have little say in how it is developed and that very little benefit in wealth terms is derived by Scotland.

You would think we would have learned from that experience. The overwhelming lesson above all being not to allow England to have any say in important industries in Scotland.

Why? Because they only understand the cost of everything and the value of nothing. The more so if there is a quick buck to be made. No matter the long term damage, that will be someone else’s problem, just give them what they want now is their mantra.

I have bad news they are in the process of completely destroying our meat and dairy sector. First some figures

So what is this? This is a comparison between the deal New Zealand has with the EU and the new deal they have agreed with the UK. THIS IS A TARIFF FREE AGREEMENT.

The figures for the EU means the entire EU yet as you can see the new UK AGREEMENT, from the start allows substantially more imports into the UK than the entire EU and very quickly becomes a completely unregulated market where any quantity of meat and cheese can be imported totally tariff free.

As reported in the NZ media “ They are mad. This is a great deal. It wasn’t a negotiation they just said Yes to everything”

And they had no doubt about the impact it would have “This is a great deal for us, for the UK not so much”.

They are right of course there are going to be big losers from this deal and the location for a lot of the losers will be in Scotland.

This is the clearest evidence of different priorities. England is Europe’s largest food importer. Scotland, in contrast is a food exporter. England sees no problem with cheap imports, that the by product of that is the destruction of the Scottish meat and dairy sectors is of little worry. As the English are already hugely dependent on imports, food security is of less importance to them that it is to Scotland. Security is a big deal in this, while the UK spends billions on Trident decisions like this makes the UK VULNERABLE to every geopolitical crisis and totally reliant on food supplies from the other end of the World. Strategically it is madness. But that is Brexit for you. We will see how much “ control” the UK has when one of those geo political crises arrive. Like maybe some problems with China over Taiwan?

Now I am really going to worry you all. I have very limited knowledge and contacts in the meat sector so I asked a friend to find out what Scottish meat producers knew about this. What he discovered was very alarming. He contacted a leading breeder of the Aberdeen Angus breed and supplied him with the above figures. His reaction was it would be hugely destructive to beef and lamb production in Scotland. He then asked my friend “where did you get these forecasts?” When my friend explained these were not forecasts but the specific figures from the signed deal between the UK and New Zealand he was in absolute shock. He said “ I knew nothing of this. The industry knows nothing about this. It will have horrendous impact in Scotland”

So the cost of being part of the UK is not only Brexit, which is proving to be an absolute disaster for our fish and shellfish industries, we also have a UK Government that signs up deals that are catastrophic for our meat and dairy industry. 

So to put it in a nutshell, England controls our oil and gas and we get no benefit, our renewable power is transferred south at little or no cost to consumers while Scottish producers have to pay obscene charges to connect to the grid. Our key food sectors are now being betrayed by London as they welcome transforming Scotland to being hugely dependent on food imports, the same as they are, allowing the spivs in the City of London to get their cut from the imports. How long before we find out what Tory was the driving force of this giant mistake….for everyone, bar him or her?

Until now Scotland was the only country in the UK with a positive balance of trade. London is now taking steps to ensure that can’t continue. Why some Scots fail to recognise this is beyond me.

So Scotland’s elected representatives, I have heard nothing about this from you yet it’s going to adversely affect many of your constituents. It is way past time you did the job you were elected to do…protect Scotland’s interests!

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland.

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43 thoughts on “WE KNOW ABOUT OIL AND GAS WHAT ABOUT AGRICULTURE?”

  2. Unfortunately none of the above came as news to me. Not only are they asset stripping their nearest and richest colony but they are sabotaging our industries so that IF we ever escape in the mid to late term future we will be the ruined, poor country that claim we currently are. It’s long since time we were out of here.

    Liked by 15 people

    1. Hugh McDiarmid had it right. Anglophobia is rife throughout the World … and for reasons, both historic and current. We need to adopt a ‘rejectionist’ approach and elevate our own literature, language, culture and history to the forefront our society.

      Colin Kidd’s claim that the Unionist is sometimes a Nationalist because Scottish folk get upset in London when an RBS banknote is trite and laughably simplistic. Equally, his comment on Salmond – the most important figure in the drive to restore Scotland’s full self-government and statehood – being really an underlying Unionist because he advocated things like continued currency union and commended the ‘social union’ during a campaign, could have been bettered by a 15 year old doing his ‘O’ Grades.

      Liked by 13 people

    2. McDiarmid was right on the question of indigenous language and culture being critical factors as both form our national consciousness, without which there can be no desire for national independence. There is a reason why Scots are all Anglicised to some extent an preventit fae lairnin oor ain braw Scots langage. Prof Kidd was also right to some extent that the SNP did not fully understand what independence really means, and they still don’t, but neither do most politicians. McDiarmid also was of the view that the Scottish people’s understanding of independence (which is decolonisation) was rudimentary, which it still is.

      Liked by 7 people

      1. The National today, Alf, is chock-full of letters to the effect that ‘how very dare they’ in relation to the UK government’s case to the Supreme Court. They dare because Holyrood is the creature of Westminster, and the last referendum was underpinned by both the Edinburgh Agreement and a S30 Order. I think you are right about our culture and languages, but, politically, many independence supporters just do not get it that we cannot win in domestic law – not in the longer term, as the refusal to implement ‘Sewell’ (UKG) showed starkly.

        I often think that Holyrood has become the worst of all worlds, not because it is pretty toothless, which it is, but because it has trapped us in devolution with only a cul de sac facing us. I don’t want to see it gone or anything, but I believe its powers are so limited in reality that it actually works against us.

        For those of us brought up speaking Scots or Gaelic, English is our second language. I was five before I learned it at school and could not have held a conversation in English. Younger people today would laugh at that, but it is true. I had to consciously jettison Scots in public situations, although I still speak it at home and we all spoke it in the playground, and adopt English as the Lingua Franca, plus other European languages. I deeply mourn the loss of both Scots and Gaelic as foundational languages in Scotland, and the spin-off is that our culture is on life support, too. On independence, we have to do as the Irish did, and put both Scots and Gaelic on the curriculum.

        I suppose that what I am trying to say is that we need to leave domestic law behind and push on international law to save ourselves. We are being very slowly and painfully suffocated and we are under six million. In a few more years, we will cease to exist except as a footnote in history, our corpse of a nation finally succumbing to a lack of political, social and cultural oxygen.

        Liked by 8 people

      2. “we are under six million”

        Lorncal, In terms of those in Scotland holding primarily to a Scottish identity the figure may actually be half that. The 2011 census told us there were only 1.6 million Scots speakers left, and around 50,000 Gaelic speakers; while the latter has since expanded slightly the former will have diminished further. The main beneficiary is an ongoing increase in Anglophones. Language (and culture) is central to our identity as McDiarmid so eloquently expressed. All peoples in self-determination conflict are linguistically divided and the Scots are nae different. The Yes/No divide is largely linguistic and cultural. His admission to being an Anglophobe is a reflection of our and many other peoples being subject to Cultural and Linguistic Imperialism, which is what then allows for their economic and political exploitation when a people themselves cast aside their own supposedly ‘inferior’ language and culture, and their identity with it.

        Liked by 6 people

      3. Alf and Lorna – as I’m sure you both know ……The Easter Rising and what followed was preceded by and to a large extent was deeply influenced by The Irish Literary Revival aka The Irish Literary Renaissance : which reached it’s full flowering in the spellbinding poetry of WB Yeats .

        The Irish had to go back to their own roots – literary / cultural and – above all linguistic in order to gain the confidence to throw-off the colonial yoke of 800 years of Anglo rule . I think McDiarmid had a similar belief

        It is impossible to overestimate the power and importance of Language to a nation and it’s people . Or , the corollary – underestimate the psychological cost of it’s loss . Languages contain Worlds . In a sense they ARE the Worlds

        Liked by 5 people

      4. Yes Robert, language is absolutely central to this and to all peoples in self-determination conflict with oppressor powers, including currently Ireland, Wales, Catalonia, Ukraine, Scotland and numerous others. Postcolonial literature abounds with the significance of an oppressed people’s language, just as McDiarmid maintained, and their need to grasp it again upon liberation “when suddenly the language of the ruling power is felt to burn your lips” (Frantz Fanon).

        As Albert Memmi described it: “the colonized no longer knew his language except in the form of a lowly dialect. In order to emerge from the most elementary monotony and emotions, he had to borrow the colonizer’s language. In recovering his autonomous and separate destiny, he immediately goes back to his own tongue. To this self-rediscovery movement of an entire people must be returned the most appropriate tool; that which finds the shortest path to its soul, because it comes directly from it.”

        It remains a scandal and the height of political ignorance that any Scottish government never mind a nationalist one aye refuises tae lairn aw Scots bairns thair ain mither tongue in the schuil, and has never brought forward a Scots Language Act despite having the powers to do so – there isn’t even a Scots Language Degree course at any Scottish university never mind a school Higher in the subject. Yet the Scots language is the most important feature of the Scots identity and absolutely shocking that it is not taught. Much like the glazed expressions on most of the audience’s faces when McDiarmid telt thaim whit hits aw aboot – language is a fundamental determinant of national identity!

        https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/07/04/paper-two-the-determinants-of-independence/

        Liked by 4 people

  4. That really is an astonishing table. Presumably the ‘negotiation’ with Australia yielded pretty much the same terms, but perhaps on other produce?

    This arrangement plus all the other rip-off facts around oil/gas, wind/tidal/wave energy, fresh-water, whisky, should be packaged into a single leaflet easy to read crib sheet titled, and explaining, the

    PRICE OF BRITISH UNION DEPENDENCE.

    Liked by 18 people

    1. You are so right, duncanio, so right, but not just a dry leaflet either, but a comparison table beside it with the effects of those losses to Scotland. Any Unionist, in debates/letters who opposes us also needs to be made to account for it all, and we should not let them off the hook. Only a person who is lacking in sanity, frankly, or a died-in-the-wool Tory, Labour or Lib Dem voter could possibly try to justify this outrageous exploitation and insult to Scotland. This takes a very special kind of dissonance that smacks of brainwashing and/or such twisted self-interest as for it to verging on the malignant, not to mention the outer reaches of rational thought.

      Liked by 9 people

      1. ” that smacks of brainwashing”

        We perhaps need to consider that the colonial mindset is a psychological condition (Fanon), lorncal. Why do we think so many Scots still vote against their own liberation or to run their own affairs? People behave/vote on the basis of their values, not on what is in their best interest. In colonialism it is “the values of the colonizer that are sovereign” (Albert Memmi).

        Liked by 4 people

      2. Agreed, Alf, but it is also more likely that those voting against independence are comfy, middle-class, self-interested people. The two very often go hand-in-hand. I rather think that that middle-class cosiness is drawing to an end, and, although they wont suffer quite as much, they, too are in for a shock, big enough to bring back their self-respect and pro Scottish credentials. We’ll see.

        Liked by 5 people

  5. This is a forerunner. By breaking our own farming industry, the quality standards of the food industry are then thrown out the window to enable even more cheap imports.

    Incidentally, it is not just the farms, the milk, cheese, yogurt producers are very much tied into this. Once the farms go, they go, and imports of same are a necessary. (All of this is standard US trade policy – they absolutely break the local farming and food production as an essential part of all other trade.)

    That then affects people’s health (big time) with hormone injected beef, etc, etc.

    That then creates the worst possible kind of circular economy, with a private health service a Health Insurance Industry and big pharm waiting in the wings for the pay off.

    What’s intersting with this set up, is they are using NZ as a forerunner (they have better animal husbandry standards than America), so, by allowing them in, to break up the Scottish farming industry, it doesn’t seem so obvious.

    If we can get this information out to the farmers we have the potential to turn them, overwhelmingly to Yes. It would be good if our leaders and our Yes supporters, form a rescue plan for our farm industry, by which I mean they sell to us and we become survival customers, until we get back into the EU… incidentally possibly we could do the same with our fishing industry.

    I read the other day, can’t recall the source, that 60% of our Scottish farms are going to go bust due to Brexit.

    Still, think of all the retirement homes that can be built on that land.

    Liked by 16 people

    1. Farmers are independent minded folk. They need an independent-minded party to represent their interests before they will vote Yes. That will never be the SNP.

      Liked by 12 people

  6. This surely presents a conundrum for the National Farmers Union of Scotland. Their loyalty to the Conservative Party has resulted in their members becoming the first item on the menu. Time to wake up and realise that voting for the Union is voting for annihilation.

    Delivering food security for Scotland and the ability to deliver high quality produce for export would mean that farming (and fishing) had a secure future. Alas they are now engaged in a race to the bottom to feed the masses south of the border as cheaply as possible.

    Here are some stats from the NFUS, https://www.nfus.org.uk/farming-facts/what-we-produce.aspx It doesn’t appear to fully separate the value of what is produced from the UK figures. The numbers are large, but the decline is there for all to see.

    Liked by 12 people

  7. Without scotlands revenue englund is well fkd. So what other way to stop independence is to destroy the infrastructure fro within.
    Scotland indeed has a very high quality food industry although ( I will stop at salmon fish farms ). Yeuch!
    Oil on the other hand is a joke on the scottish people. We own a miniscule part of that industry, we do not own any oil rigs like Norway does and should be renting them from Norway.
    As soon as a rig goes off line for maintenance ( this is highly abused)
    Scotland in taxes receives O, sweet F ALL!
    Scotland is hemorrhaging money like a tea bag to England who initially hold and control our nations finances.
    Nicola Sturgeon with what little is left couldn’t organise an orgy in a brothel ( unless maybe if everyone was gay perhaps, who knows, she doesn’t.
    Why is politics so fkn corrupt, why do they lie cheat and break their own rules and after more than enough monies ate spent on inquiries and quango set ups for internal investigations, fk all gets held accountable?
    We all know the outcomes of these comedy theatres but we sit back and take it up the ass every time and no one is held accountable!
    If you want to bring a government downtoits knees STOP FKN VOTING but to achieve that EVERYONE in scotland must reach a CONCENSUS AD IDEM, which ( to be honest) will never happen.
    In my humble opinion I suggest you by lots of lubricant because the future has an eternity of ass fkn tricks to serve you.
    Meh! Meh! Meh! LIKE SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER!

    Liked by 5 people

    1. Why is politics so fkn corrupt, why do they lie cheat and break their own rules and after more than enough monies ate spent on inquiries and quango set ups for internal investigations, fk all gets held accountable?

      Because they are unaccountable scottishnative – when I want to weep over us still being in the “union” I look at the unaccountable sex obsessed incompetent that got us to this dark place and then I look at the SSRG and Salvo and I think: Well Sturgeon you did one good thing: you showed Scotland the importance of a constitution that can hold power to account.

      We have to get all the excellent work showcased in this blog out to everyman: the question is how? Wondering now about Facebook and getting hashtags for articles here to trend on twitter?

      Liked by 16 people

  8. This article is timely and brings into sharp focus just how being in the union with England and out of the EU is absolutely hammering the Scottish food industry.

    Over the years the Scottish food industry, and in this I think particularly, but not exclusively of meat produce, has built an enviable and justified reputation for quality.

    Concomitantly, British, or should we say English produce has suffered from a less than desirable reputation for poor quality and there can be no better example of this when British beef, due to BSE was banned around the world. However out of the EU and in entering so called free trade agreements with countries like NZ or America we are now talking about a race to the bottom.

    Steroid and antibiotic fed beef is the American way to force growth, and stimulate profit at the expense of quality. Chlorinated chicken is another example where poor husbandry. poor hygiene is once again the way a food sector reduces costs to increase profits. Or what of genetically modified crops. Banned in the EU but not in the USA these are further examples of free trade produce headed to our shores.

    It is a race to the bottom and this government know it. But for them it is all about profit and low cost, and if the local home producer cannot compete, which it can’t in terms of market size anyway, then it’s change or be replaced. And of course, tied to England , and English policy, where does this leave the Scottish produce.

    But that is only one particular issue. Even if Scotland were to be able to produce and sell a quality premium product would they be able to export it to market. Based on the current situation where we are war with the EU, where tariffs appertain, where once free trade is now restricted, there has to be a big question about the future. Our farmers and fishermen are already experiencing it, see the future, and it is not bright. Typically Tory voters, at least in the past, some of our framers and fishermen must now be feeling like the proverbial turkeys voting for an early Christmas.

    Mind you the shortage of labour to uplift crops and fruit must be another post Brexit issue rumbling around a few producers minds. But hey ho, we’re British, best in the world, and the world know it, knows of our superiority, our greatness. Cheap imports and damn the home producers up north.

    But its past making sharp comments about the folly of past voting. The issue is now and where we go from here.

    Agriculture is a huge business for Scotland. In many ways a complicated business, or it can be as we are finding out. Over recent years Scottish agriculture, Scottish produce has performed very well. But now, well it could go down the pan, sacrificed for corporate profit, sacrificed for cheap imports of steroidal, chlorine and or GM loaded crops. Its a big issue and it would be great if the debate could be opened up by people a lot more knowledgeable than me so so that between us all we can understand how our industry is being destroyed and what we need to do to protect it, help it thrive.

    And no, putting a Union Jack on whisky does not help – and therein lies another tale about what has happened to malt whisky sales to America!

    Liked by 12 people

  9. @ duncanio

    Aye, Hugh McDiarmid was spot on I have no idea if we have ercted a statue of Hugh McDiarmid if not we should.

    Donald Dewar has a statue erected in Glasgow. Once Scotland becomes Independent, Dewar’s statue wants taking down. How dare this guy have a statue erected when he and his buddies imprisoned Scotland with the Scotland act, he’s no hero of Scotland at all.

    Liked by 18 people

  10. This was always going to happen after Brexit, especially when we could see that the UK was willing to do deals with anyone and everyone as the lowest common denominator, and to introduce the Common Framework, destroying devolved powers. Scotland and England are very different countries, and anyone who still doesn’t get that is brain dead.

    The farmers, by and large, voted for Brexit. For freedom, as it was put. That will always mean English freedom, not, as many farmers thought, freedom from EU bureaucracy (necessary bureaucracy, in many cases, by the way) as it was sold. Brexit was and remains an English Nationalist enterprise. It is all about England. Little to no benefit exists for Scotland.

    We can blame Westminster, but culpability also lies with Holyrood that did nothing to alleviate the suffering to Scotland that was to come – by withdrawing from the Union and repudiating Brexit. Now, we are ripe for destruction, which only a fool would have failed to be cognizant of – which begs the question, where have the researchers and bright sparks of the Scottish government been all their lives? I don’t blame ordinary punters for not having the foresight to see this coming, and the theft of devolved powers to prevent opposition, but I do blame the supposedly sentient beings in the Scottish government and parliament who have been too busy pontificating on just how much deviance they can get away with, how many female rights they can harvest before the electorate notices, how many children they can mutilate before the house of cards falls.

    Ordinary Scots are nothing – absolutely nothing – to our so-called representatives, the deviants and narcissists, not to mention psychopaths and sociopaths, who now dominate our political parties – ALL of them. Oddly enough, Battling Ruthie and Weaponised Gordie aside, this is the one area where all the mainstream parties, both independence-supporting and Unionist can agree: six men in frocks trump around three million females. Well, I have news for them: we are not going to vote for you, you ignorant, malign people. You have betrayed every principle on independence and every principle on human rights that was ever promulgated. Disgraceful does not cover it. You make people sick with anger and disgust. Hatred for you and your doings is not far off, so you will be able to utilise your unwanted hate crime law very soon, too. Ugh!

    Liked by 14 people

  11. And for those of you who are old enough to remember can anyone recall the by word for quality imports.

    Well if not, I’ll remind you, but it was ” Empire Made ” History it seems is about to repeat.

    Liked by 12 people

  12. Perhaps it’s good if this does serve as a wake up call to Unionist farmers of the Red Tractor persuasion, but I suspect it maybe won’t.

    The real wake up call should have been Brexit and the associated deregulation proposed then. The writing has been on the wall ever since Brexit.

    If only there was a way to let these farmers experience life in an Independent Scotland, but even then, with Sturgeon’s SNP screwing up all that they touch… It just takes all the wind out the sails.

    Liked by 12 people

    1. I really believe that they would rather commit commercial suicide. When they voted for Brexit by a majority, that was the telling point. Most of us on here tried to get the message through. We all knew that this would happen but they believed, as all Tories do, that bureaucracy is a constraint, even when it is put in place to protect vulnerable animals. We warned all the Brexiteers and Unionists. It begs the questions: why didn’t the SG see it coming; why didn’t the NFU see it coming; and, finally, you can bet your bottom dollar that Westminster and Whitehall saw it coming, and welcomed it because, beyond being a ‘blood’ bank, Scotland has no worth for them.

      Liked by 7 people

  13. Meant to say, re above post, food labeling standards will have to be removed, so that even when you can afford the quality food, you can’t differentiate.

    Anyway, I’ll be taking a screen shot of the above and speaking to the vendors at the next farmers market. (Might as well enjoy them while they still exist),

    Liked by 10 people

  15. “E – land” is an abbreviation for a country that IS NOT Scotland; the answer is so OBVIOUS that I cannot offer a prize… However, the free world will be absolutely astounded! Should Scotland accept this imperial behaviour, or will it react appropriately? Just as an independent nation would? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

    Liked by 5 people

      1. I immediately got an automated reply telling me that she got so many emails and was so busy that it was unlikely that she would reply personally. But that it would be one of her staff that replied to me. So I think that the chances of her reading the article are slim.

        Liked by 5 people

  17. Agricultural productive capacity in Scotland is facing a huge challenge from the ‘greening brigade’ policies which are leading to vast tracts of good productive land being purchased by land speculators and corporate institutions for the purpose of planting trees to generate ‘carbon credits’ which can be offset.

    This in itself has already set up another activity, trading in ‘Carbon Markets’.

    Agricultural land values in Scotland have risen by over 30% over the past 12 months leading to a situation whereby ‘active’ farmers are finding it increasingly impossible to compete in purchasing additional land which might become available in their locality and as a result good productive land is being lost to afforestation.

    Grassland is crucial in the production of world leading quality Scottish dairy, beef and lamb which are in high demand and contribute millions in revenue to the English treasury from world exports. Tree planting on the scale envisaged by Westminster AND Holyrood could well sound the death knell for food production in many areas of Scotland and by so doing will accelerate access for lower quality food produced abroad tariff free at point of entry.

    A further consequence to this activity concerns some landlords and estate owners seeking to ‘cash in’ by giving notice to rescind productive farm tenancies of longstanding in favour of tree planting with all of the grief and potential hardship which will undoubtedly visit the tenanting families and their workers condemned by this activity.

    This is yet another policy being driven by Westminster with no resistance whatsoever from the feeble ‘Team SNP’ MPs and MSPs supposedly working on behalf of Scotland her people and our future prosperity.

    It will be interesting to see for how much longer Wishart, Swinney, Ewing et al enjoy the patronage of the ‘actively engaged’ within agriculture once the keech hits the fan and the chickens come hame tae roost, (fae Thailand)

    Liked by 10 people

  18. There is another dimension to this problem, surely? The Dutch Parliament told the Dutch farmers their meat and dairy industry would have to be cut by 30%. Maybe not entirely honest of them, but refreshing to hear politicians not hiding bad news. Dutch farmers are going to the wall. German farmers too. And these two countries didn’t leave the EU.
    Many other countries are suffering similar measures not to mention the USA itself. The pretence being carbon dioxide is harming the planet. “Not Proven” M’Laud ! I love it when politicians follow the science.
    Farmers are losing their farms! That’s their whole lives up in smoke What can make up for that?
    Oh wait a minute…. Someone is buying up all the farmland, so at least the farmers will be recompensed. Who you ask?
    Why it’s Billygoat Gates, coming to the farmers’ rescue. You know Billygoat. Him of the Illuminati, Club of Rome, WEF fame. So far he’s bought 600,000 acres of farmland in America alone. It has been said that he is also buying farmland in Europe and further afield. That’s good of him, isn’t it. Quality meats are to be reserved for the chosen ones. The rest of us will eat crickets, apparently. Do you think they will hormone inject them?

    Liked by 8 people

    1. New Zealand has already cut swathes of subsidies, etc, to farmers and their agricultural industries are now much leaner. They must have thought that God had heard their prayers when the UK signed that deal.

      Liked by 7 people

  20. Yes, Alf, I agree. I was being optimistic, although it is getting harder and harder to be so. I think we could even absorb the influx if it stops now, if only our leaders would call a halt to their collaborationist policies and start implementing Scottish-led policies. What they do, unfortunately, to show their divergence are the easy ways: for example, England has Stonewall; let’s have four or five or more trans organisations affiliated to Stonewall so that we can claim to be different; let’s not rock the boat or England as the UK might actually tip us out; let’s not do anything overtly Scottish in case it offends people who came north two minutes ago. It is truly sickening.

    Liked by 8 people

    1. As in this and many other enviromental, political and societal concerns going with the flow is a too easy option.
      Part of the classic Scots character was canniness tinged with skepticism. In the current world full of claimants to the ethical/moral high ground not a bad characteristic to promote.

      Liked by 4 people

  22. Yes, Robert, they did go back to their cultural and literary roots, including Irish Gaelic to be taught to every Irish child. Unfortunately, some sneered at this revival, including James Joyce, a Protestant who had had many advantages that had been denied Catholics, who went to France where the natives did not speak their own language, etc., naturally! Even very clever people can be stupid sometimes. I listened to a programme on the BBC, I think, – a few years back – and they interviewed Irish school pupils who were very positive about the Irish Gaelic being in the curriculum. I can’t recall exactly, but I think that all schoolchildren have to learn the Irish Gaelic up to Year Four. If we want our culture and languages to survive, we are going to have to do the same and put the middle digit up to the cringers, to put it crudely.

    Liked by 3 people

  23. I thought I’d quit reading at the bit that said that the Aberdeen Angus label is the top premium beef brand worldwide (it’s not, although some farms in Scotland have started breeding what is). I wish I had stopped reading…. Followed but some woolly stuff presumably about exporting industrially farmed salmon and some shellfish delecacies that Scots don’t eat, or prefer to buy from Vietnam already shelled by Vietnamese.

    Nothing about the means of agricultural production pretty much entirely determined by the EU CAP, ie. heavily industialised, heavily chemical, heavily centralised, and very cruel (and the CAP was just a passing necessity for a common market. As a result, there is more, and healthier wildlife in central Glasgow than on farmland – there’s a far greater variety of habitat, and far less pesticide). Nothing about the majority of arable land devoted to mono-crop drug production (barley => beer => whisky). But too much about a lack of really cheap imported labourers willing to live in tents and boil in poly-tunnels. Or even work fishing boats.

    Who wrote this stuff? I think I should stop reading blogs – they are seriously old-hat.

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  24. Sadly, the direction of travel has been apparent since Brexit – a race to the bottom. At a point in time when food security is crucial and Scotland should be striving to become self-sufficient as a nation whilst enjoying the benefits of exporting surplus to our requirements, the UK is striking trade deals to import produce from the other side of an increasingly volatile world with all the hugely damaging economic and environmental impact that will have. Unfortunately we are saddled with a First Minister who has done nothing during her tenure to protect Scotland’s interests: she allowed Brexit to take place, the loss of access to the European common market, and the subsequent ruin of our fishing industry (just one of many); she did nothing to fight the UK Internal Market and protect Scottish branding and food standards; and she has done nothing to prevent such damaging trade deals which will now decimate our farming industry. As England cripples Scotland economically and plunders our resources, with energy bills soaring astronomically when we live in an energy-rich country, and now the very food we eat under threat along with all the livelihoods connected to it – the need for independence could not be brought into sharper focus. Independence is no longer merely desirable; it is imperative if we are to survive, let alone prosper.

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