I feel as if I need to speak to someone about what has happened to Scotland since the SNP came to power and the split the referendum caused in 2014. I still cannot speak out for fear of losing business, a customer asked me a few weeks ago if I was looking forward to Indyref 2, I said no and have never seen him since.
I do things like buying Tunnock’s and now Highland Spring just to spite the people who want to bankrupt the Scottish firms who do not toe the nationalist line, "Stronger for Scotland" my a***.
One of the things I find is not fully understood and not explained enough is "Scales of Economy", providing services in a country the size of Scotland with a population of 5 million with lots of remote areas and islands etc, costs a lot more than providing the same services across a similar sized country with fewer Islands and a population of 60 million. So it’s clear we benefit greatly from being part of the United Kingdom.
This spreading of costs across the UK is not only provided by government but also by private companies, one example is the large supermarket chains, though they don't get much thanks for it, the prices in Tesco UK are about 20 to 30% lower than Tesco in Southern Ireland, you can check that online. I think this is such a huge issue as it covers nearly everything that we do...
The Maintenance of roads and bridges, less people per mile (see Southern Ireland road tax rates), electricity, gas, water supplies even phones and broadband services etc, the costs are all spread across the UK.
It’s also easy to forget Royal Mail, a delivery service with the same price per letter to Lerwick as it is to London, and by the way a large letter to London is about 60p but to Dublin it is the same price as posting to Moscow, about £3.30. Would we want all the letters from Scotland to England to be £3.30 or 60p?
The Coast Guard, Air Sea & Rescue etc.... might seem petty to some but I think we have more coastline than the rest of the UK put together but we only have 8 % of the population to cover the costs.
It’s not scare mongering or even talking Scotland down, it's just economics.
This kind of rant might not be what you are looking for, but I am glad to just get some things off my chest, and as I said, I cannot put my head above the parapet and have people know what I believe. If I said part of my business is in what you could loosely call the Arts, and not 40 % but maybe 80% of our customers are either nationalists or the anti-establishment types, you can understand why I have to be careful.
I also work as a jobbing tradesman and the people I meet doing that job seem to be turning against the SNP and getting much more vocal about it, Oor Nicola has become "That Woman"
And a lot quicker than I had dared to hope.