All Aboard The Cutty Sark

It appears that Ms. Sturgeon of the Scottish National Party, SNP, has made it back onto the front pages etc. again, which was her intention, to demand another vote on Scottish "independence".

She has attracted some critical comment personally, which I have a problem with. If she has a squad of ancestry in Ayrshire at the same time as those of my lot we might, I emphasise might, share a twist of DNA.

It is said that the UK currently is subject to around 14,000 obligations, treaties, commitments etc. gathered over the years to many bodies and agencies around the world. I assume it is not the SNP intention to dump out of them all to achieve true freedom.

So how many and which will simply continue and how many will they want to revise? Answers please on the back of a postcard of old Campbeltown distilleries, an ancestor worked in one. For starters, do you know about the way Eurocontrol works? You may be independent on the ground but not up in the air above.

At present the SNP is devoted to making it sound so easy. Just vote this way and then all will be well, nothing to worry about, move along there now please, just tell them all what you want and how you want it and none will dare argue or disagree.

For those whose personal memories are scarred by major upheavals, reorganisations, closures and the rest ought to be aware that nothing of this kind is easy or quick to deal with. It will mean a decade at least of hard decisions, upsets and crises and a condition of being a hostage to fortune.

Moreover in dealing with England, the SNP do not seem to have realised that the England of their stereotypes and media is not the England as it is now. I have only to walk round the town I live in to see that this England is not that of even twenty odd years ago. The town I grew up in is no longer English.

The actual "independence" means detachment from Westminster because that is as far as it can go before engaging in global and European matters. But the reality is that in these matters Westminster will be involved and in contention.

Given that Westminster may or may not or more or less be in hock to Brussels, this is not simple. Never mind all those big, bad, brutal financial and other corporations and international agencies, all with their own agendas.

In the last couple of decades, looking at it from south of the border, Scotland has been given a great deal of scope and Westminster, notably under Labour, has been all too anxious to keep the Scots, if not happy, at least quiescent.

The SNP with its combative and aggressive stance may find that if independent this could change overnight. It will not be the soft ride that is being suggested to the voters.

It is much more likely to be a long hard footslog in which neither England nor Scotland are the winners, only the others they have to deal with.

Campbeltown once had thirty distilleries, and now is said to be down to three.

Anyone for gin and tonic?