The jobs are gone too. They went because we, the people of Scotland - along with much of the rest of western society - got too big for our working boots. We challenged the plutocracy for better working conditions and, eventually, we got it for a few glorious decades. But they never forgot that. We did. We forgot. We took our eyes off the ball, while a rapacious few quietly privatised the infrastructure and industry that our predecessors built up - that which wasn't already private - and spirited it away to where labour was cheap and easier to bully. The proceeds are now in the tax havens poised ready for conversion from digital, fiat currency into real assets when the time is right. We have nothing to bargain with now, so we borrow ever more of that Ponzi-fiat money from the bullies - at interest, of course, in an attempt to maintain the living standard we once knew and thought would last forever.
Another thing we forgot about when we were living our halcyon days of full employment and the perception of an unassailable right to universal suffrage - were the people in the world who had not achieved the same living standards our predecessors had fought and won for us. We also forgot how hard these things are to win and how easy they are to lose. We took them for granted and amazingly, it seems most of us still do.
It's quite normal for people to drift apart when their institutions fragment and decay. We often hear the marriage analogy in the context of the independence debate. If nothing succeeds like success, then maybe nothing fails like failure and there are those who say that the West is in inexorable decline. Maybe rats leave a sinking ship because they aren't stupid. And maybe bankers aren't as stupid as they make out to be either when they're gambling with others' lives, because some are threatening to move their HQs south of the border if Scotland opts for independence.
Alex Salmond's Finance Minister, John Swinney said he wanted independence because it would give us "borrowing power". You might ask; what kind of power is borrowing power? When you go grovelling to a supranational cartel of moneylenders (backed, albeit, by the military industrial complex), what kind of power is that? What kind of independence is it? How independent is a nation that has to ask permission of a supranational cabal of usurers (invariably not granted, these days) if it wants to implement the more fair society that its politicos promised on the electoral stump. You can ask the Greeks about that too.
Alex Salmond says that Scots voted for fair society time after time and instead got Thatcherism time after time. That's why he suggests that the answer is independence. He wants independence so to set corporation tax at a lower rate, which he says will encourage investment into the country. He no doubt wants to invite all the most rapacious corporations on the planet back from the sweatshops of the erstwhile third world to set up their sweatshops in Scotland where we, the 'human resources' can once more be shackled by the same sort of conditions our great grandparents once knew. Then, to compete, the English will have to cut their corporation tax. Then the French will too - and then, the rest of Europe and on throughout the rest of the world. On goes the downward spiral - or upward spiral, depending on whether you're of the ninety-nine percent or the one percent. But never mind; at least we won't have to sing God Save the Queen anymore. However, Alex Salmond wants to keep the Queen, as nominal Head of State, in the same illusory way he wants to pretend that we will still be a democracy - were there ever such a thing as democracy where there has never been economic democracy.
The reason for Margret Thatcher's parachute to 'power' in the late seventies was that the corporately owned media approved her ideology. Margret might've been an ideologue but to those who facilitated her success it was more likely strategy - the counter-revolution of the 'robber barons'. Many people believe what they hear for some strange reason, but does anyone believe, whither they're 'yes' or 'no' voters, that Alex Salmond's message, or anyone else's message for that matter, would get out there were it not approved by the ruling elite. When he and Rupert Murdoch get together, they're as chummy as the Chuckle Brothers. The elite don't care a jot whether Scotland thinks it's independent or not as long as we don't mention economic independence. If we do that, we might find ourselves promptly with 'rogue state' status, with neither "borrowing power' nor pot-to-p*ss-in.
If politics is the art of the possible then we, the Scottish people, might ask ourselves in what ways we can rebuild the more egalitarian society we once knew before we allowed Thatcherism to dissolve it. We might ask if breaking away from one economically captured state to recreate another similarly financially straight jacketed is the best use of our time and effort when the answer to our problems is not so much about how we interact on a national level but more to do with how we interact and behave towards one another, as individuals. We've succumbed to the doctrine of putting a price on everything we do and, under that paradigm, it's not surprising that dark powers will monitor everything we do so fastidiously.
Yet, there is no reason why Scotland couldn't function as an independent state and enjoy similar success to that of any other small independent state. There are plenty of examples. On the other hand, there are examples of what we are to understand as 'failed states', which generally means states that default with their debts to the supranational banking cartel. That brings us back to the underlying problem. The one we never hear the politicos and media pundits mention because it's where the real power resides in the world. Some people say that it causes all the wars we have under false pretexts. It's the undemocratic control over the creation of money.
The BBC says "Scotland Decides". You can decide between beans on toast and fillet steak for lunch, but your employer decides whether you can afford it or not. There, the economic decision tends to overrule the gastronomic decision. The people who create and control the money supply will always make the big decisions for the creation and control of money was never democratic. Yet no one should expect politicians in an independent Scotland to defy the current world order. We have to box cleverly, especially if our independence is to succeed - albeit nominally. Politicians have to box cleverly for the sake of their careers; otherwise, dark power wouldn't let them function. And, as usual, the silent majority would remain silent. We'd need to go with the flow. It seems that any nation state with the audacity to defy the prevailing paradigm goes on the hit list - branded with rogue statehood. Furthermore, we'd be hard pressed to find a better option to the current order because people who are attracted to take up the reins of power seem of a certain psychological bent regardless the ism they espouse. Isms don't take our freedom; humans do that with their interpretations of our isms.
Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder of the Rothschild dynasty said, "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes the laws". That man knew where power lay, as does his progeny. He knew how to gain power and hold on to it too. Ordinary folk might baulk at the methods and lengths such people will go to, to hold such positions during this short period we have on earth, but there is an antidote to the situation.
It's neither national nor supranational; it's local. Our quality of life can only enhance when we work together. One thing above all that a rapacious elite fear is ordinary people learning to work together. That's why the fundamental of Thatcherism is self. That's why the established order promoted her ideology.
The trouble with independence is that there is no such thing as independence. We are all interdependent. Starting from birth - or conception even - we need the help of others. However, when the treasury of an independent Scotland needs to borrow money to pay pension liabilities, for example, they won't be going to their mums. They'll have to go cap in hand, as all western nations do, to that banking cartel - and even the most naive of us are surely aware by now that whatever these people are, they are not philanthropists.
We should experiment with so-called independence. Life's a gamble whatever we do. But don't let's be of the illusion that we can solve a supranational problem on a national level. We might be able to negotiate better conditions, but there's little evidence to support that. There will be winners and losers whatever course we take and if things go t*ts up economically our quality of life will not be helped by the amount of material stuff with which we surround ourselves, but more to do with how we interact and treat one another.
Whatever we do, we, the Scottish people, are the true wealth of our nation. What we do for one another, regardless of the supranational or even national goings on, will determine our quality of life. If we evaluate our quality of life in material terms we might be disappointed, taking into account what the 'New World Order' has seemingly already planned for us. But any nation, or body of people, that can learn to work together to facilitate that quality of life for one another - ready to close ranks against unfairness and oppression - will hold the keys to all the freedoms that interdependence can afford us and all the health and happiness that all life on Earth deserves.
