Middle Class Myopia

I had a small flash of insight about myself this past weekend, one which I'd always subconsciously known but for some curious reason could never bring myself to outwardly acknowledge.

I'm a socialist.

Just saying those three words out loud was oddly revelatory, yet it's always been obvious to me that that's exactly where my political beliefs lie. I've always been abhorred by the greed and selfishness of conservative politics and believed that a society should care for its most vulnerable. What's the point of civilisation if it can't do something as basic as that? Yet despite the fact that I knew where my politics lay, I had never until a few days ago applied to myself the label “socialist”. Something prevented me from uttering a simple word.

No doubt, my familial background is largely responsible. I do not come from labour (the party formerly known as socialist) supporting stock – at least not that I know of. In fact, my maternal grandmother was as staunch a conservative and unionist as you would ever be likely to meet, who worshipped Margaret Thatcher unreservedly. In the eighties I was too young and mostly disinterested to get involved with any political discussion if it arose at my grandmother's home, but it was likely a test of endurance for my nationalist father. It is from him that I inherited my support of the SNP - not identified with socialism either - both then or now. Most likely that's where my avoidance so far of the term lies. I can thank the referendum debate for giving me a better awareness of who I really am. And that awareness includes one other thing: embarrassment and frustration directed at an element of the middle classes of Scotland, a layer of society of which I'm part.

There's no doubt in my mind that somewhere-in-the-middle is the social strata to which I belong. Both myself and my partner have good, well-paying jobs. We have a car and a nice home. If we want a new appliance, a blu-ray player or the latest iPhone, we buy it. If we want to eat out or a weekend break away, we do it. It was not always so comfortable for either of us, but we've always had a good standard of living. We've never known poverty, hunger or cold. Not yet, and hopefully not ever.

But there's nothing quite like the diagnosis of a degenerative illness like multiple sclerosis to give a new perspective on life. The prospect of losing everyday abilities that have always been taken for granted, and with them your ability to work and support your family, gives new insight into the fragility and precariousness of middle-class life. When given first-hand experience of how the ground beneath your feet can give way so quickly and easily, what is gained is a greater understanding and appreciation of the social safety net and welfare systems we enjoy, like the vital services of the NHS and of disability benefits and assistance. It also gives a greater urgency and determination to protect them from the raptors of the right-wing, like the kind now infesting Westminster. So when I hear cries of “if it ain't broke don't fix it”, or the even more self-centred and myopic “we're doing okay”, my hackles rise.

That middle-class mantra of “I'm alright Jack” is one that has cropped up in a number of conversations I've had during the independence debate. There are some out there who refuse to see the referendum in nothing more than what's in it for them, never mind the vast numbers of their countrymen and women whose lives could be transformed by the simple placement of an X. There are those whose heads are buried in the sand of soap opera, taking their news solely from the BBC or the Murdoch press, not realising that these institutions' mission is to tell them what to think, not to inform. Making the effort to spend two hours with the Wee Blue Book or googling for widely-available facts is not worth missing the banal anaesthesia of the One Show for. I realise these words are almost certainly pointless, because it's obvious that those to whom they apply will never see them. Nevertheless, what I'd say to that somnolent section of society is this: the risks of independence are now greatly outweighed by the risks of Westminster government.

The UK is now governed by parties who are wholly subscribed to a neoliberal agenda of corporatism, war-for-profit and suppression of public freedoms. This has been the case for many years, but the difference of the past decade or so has been their lack of concern when it comes to concealing it. The reason for that may well be desperation – western governments are all too aware that we're moving into an era of global resource expense and scarcity, one in which they will need to compete harder and more ruthlessly for the planet's dwindling supply of high-grade fuels and minerals - the nutritious feedstock for our rapacious consumer economy. That same desperation is causing the elites that invariably comprise these governments to accelerate the hoarding of wealth, imposing austerity to claim a larger share of a diminishing pie for themselves. The poor and vulnerable are feeling it first, always the weakest and least troublesome prey, but the middle-classes are next in line. Their evisceration began soon after the crash of 2008 and can and will intensify as further economic shocks ensue. Leaving Scotland in the hands of such a government is taking a terrible risk.

The opportunity to vote peacefully for independence is unparalleled. For it to occur now, at the very moment in history when the need for a fresh start can be no more urgent and necessary, is more remarkable than many perhaps realise. To reject it would be foolhardy beyond words and at our utter peril. Independence will not solve every problem, and we will have to work harder than we yet know in an uncertain, leaner future, but the path most western governments are choosing – the path of last man standing – is a path to eventual ruin. We need a rethink. We need to scrap the me-first consumer culture we're wallowing in and begin again based on community resilience and sharing. Scotland has a well-practised history of socialistic thinking. Time to dust it off and unleash its full potential. Not just for us, but just maybe to inspire a world hungry for a new way of living.

Oh, and to grandma. Our politics may have always been at odds, but you were the best ever. Rest in peace.

Feeling Foreign

One of the often heard sorrows of the No campaign is that Scotland re-acquiring its status as an independent country will automatically render the citizens of the remaining UK states as “foreign”, and we Scots of course as “foreign” to them. Leaving aside the obviously dubious connotations that to be foreign is somehow unpalatable, my personal response to this assertion has always been “so what?” In fact, here's news for them: we Scots already are "foreign", and always have been.

I'm recently back from a two-week holiday to the south coast of England and to London, my first visit to the city in almost fifteen years. My partner and I went primarily to visit with friends on the south coast and to see events in London; we had a thoroughly enjoyable time in glorious weather. Walking along the promenades in Hastings and nearby Eastbourne reminded me of the holidays of my youth, when my immediate and extended family of grandparents, cousins and an aunt and uncle would descend on an English seaside town for a fun-filled fortnight. But then as now, to me when I crossed that invisible line near Berwick I knew I was in another country. Then as now, that other country did not feel like a smooth continuation of my own.

Time has not diminished that feeling I first experienced as a boy. In fact, it has been amplified and matured by an increasing political awareness, first germinating in the 1980s with my witnessing of Thatcherism as a youth, but flourishing particularly in recent years as Westminster's neoliberal assault made Thatcherism look tame in comparison. What I and the majority of other Scots was and are now witnessing was the unelected-by-us imposition of an alien form of government. Few in Scotland agree with it because it does not fit within our centre-left culture. We're not of the same mind as those who devise and implement its policies. In short, they're foreign.

There is a country called Scotland. There is a country called England. They are culturally cohesive units that their peoples identify with. That simple fact can be no more brought home than by a journey and a stay across the border for a citizen of either country. There may be many similarities between the two, but culturally there are many distinctions. Had the nobles of eighteenth century Scotland and England entered into an equitable union, deciding in partnership to create an entirely new country of Great Britain while simultaneously discarding both England and Scotland to history, then perhaps we would not be having this referendum three centuries later. Perhaps by now we would all be truly British, and nothing more. That of course was never going to happen. For England the union was about the acquisition of territory it had long coveted, by means of bribery and blackmail, in order to strengthen and further its imperial ambitions. It went on to do so under the new, often laid-aside moniker of Great Britain. The fact that there were Scots who gladly participated in the new union and its project of empire does not alter where the real power resided – in England.

But even had it been tried, any attempt to erase the nations of Scotland and England from history at the time of union would have been futile. Both had long since coalesced out of the many smaller kingdoms of the early middle-ages to establish themselves as distinct political and cultural units, with boundaries much as they are today. They had entered the modern age as countries, complete with their own stories, songs and traditions. For those politicians who like to claim that Scotland was extinguished by the Acts of Union, they should know then that what they wish for is impossible. We have earned our place in the history of our world, and we are not going away.

What needs to go away is the artificial and unfair construct of the United Kingdom – nothing more than a political contract too often conflated with ideals of one-nation shared values. The campaign to retain Scotland within the United Kingdom falls back frequently on sentimental references to the past, of struggle against common enemies or of shared achievements, but these things have nothing to do with the constitutional arrangement by which Scotland and England are governed. As an example, and for those that haven't yet had it inflicted on them, let's take a look at “Let's Stay Together”, the love-bombing video just released by the No camp. Click on the video on the right side of the page; leave the other video for later, if your stomach can take it.

Here we have a collection of actors, comedians and TV personalities doing their level best to tug at Scottish heart-strings. There are no politicians, economists or other such individuals whose words could matter in this debate. So bankrupt is the No campaign of any serious argument for Scotland to remain under the rule of Westminster that has not by now been comprehensively demolished by Yes, that they are left with no other tactic that emotional blackmail. Some of my favourite moments from the video:

• Fiona Phillips at 0.48. "If independence happens we'll realise that we were all better off together."
  It's more likely that the English electorate will realise they were better off with Scotland as an economic crutch. Both countries will recognise that they were lied to for years by those who knew better.
  
  
• Fiona Phillips at 0.57. "We could have made it work".
  How many more centuries will that take? You've had three already.
  
  
• John Barrowman at 1.03. Just an aside - what an amazing accent he's discovered in time for this video.
  
  
• Ross Kemp at 1.33. “We were fighting for each other.”
  Actually we're fighting for oil and corporate interests in a series of illegal wars - the kind we'll no longer participate in post-independence - but we'll leave that aside for the moment.
  
  
• David Harewood at 2.20. "We've laughed together."
  I've also laughed with the Marx brothers, but that doesn't mean I'd want them running my country. Your point is?

• Fiona Phillips at 2.30. "Scotland is part of my family"
  Scotland is a country. Your family is your family. My partner is American – should we propose a political union with the USA? (Actually I suppose we practically have one...)
  
  
• Tony Robinson at 3.46. "We love you and want to be with you."
  Tony, I love you too. I really do. Blackadder was part of my youth and I love watching you dig stuff up, but really... enough.
  

We're only ripping up a political contract. We're still right here north of the border and not packing up en masse for a one-way ticket with the Mars One project. Our shared values come from the social unions that are naturally formed over time between close neighbours, but that does not necessitate political union.

Scotland deserves better than the self-indulgent nonsense spooned up in “Let's Stay Together”. We deserve a real reason to stay in the United Kingdom – something that will outweigh the poverty, the austerity, the lack of democracy and Trident nuclear submarines. We're not getting it from the No campaign because such a reason doesn't exist. We need a clear direction for Scotland's future as part of the United Kingdom at a time where the future is heading into difficult, uncharted, de-growth territory. We're not getting that from Westminster because they're terrified by that future and know only how to wallow in broken-down policies that occasionally worked in the recent decades of über-growth. Scotland and England and the other nations of the British Isles will hopefully be around for a long while to come as small countries negotiating their way on a different, de-globalising world. But the United Kingdom? If it doesn't end in 2016, the trajectory of the future will likely see to it soon enough.

Apologies for the delay in posting this entry. Life, and MS, have an irritating way of interfering with plans!

Flowering of Scotland?

Like every other nation, Scotland faces some tough challenges in the years ahead. The decline of global industrial civilisation is gathering pace, spurred on by an inexorable reduction in resource availability and quality. The economic hardships that will bring, compounded by the costs we will face due to worsening environmental degradation and failures in our built infrastructure are bound to accelerate over the coming years. The initial tremors of these global seismic events are even now being felt in the form of the market crashes, banking and corporate failures of the past few years. This is only the beginning of a landmark phase-shift into a new way of human living, and no amount of government funny-money shenanigans and massaging of statistics will be able to prologue the phoney “recovery” for long. Sooner or sooner still the dam will burst again and we'll begin another slide down the slope of reducing living standards until we reset at a new normal.

As ordinary life comes apart the need to re-configure and glue it back together in new and unexpected ways will become apparent. For most likely the majority of the population – those caught blinking in the headlights of an onrushing, possibly frightening new paradigm for daily living – the experience may be traumatic. The frame of mind and attitudes we adopt in the face of this demanding future will therefore be important. Does Scotland have the cultural fortitude to keep its head above water? It's a question we need to address, given the injuries our country has been exposed to during its long history.

Carol Craig's book “The Scots' Crisis of Confidence” makes for fascinating reading in this regard with respect to Scotland's cultural traits. For anyone who grew up in or has lived here for any length of time, the descriptions of our national idiosyncrasies are bound to be recognisable – certainly for me personally there was much within the book that I could identify with. The insights I've gained from that recognition has led me to question my own attitudes and driven me to try to change them, and with the kind of difficult and demanding future we're facing, understanding our character as a people could be a valuable exercise if we're to live successfully in it.

 
We Scots were at one time an outgoing people that traded and traveled extensively in Europe, and while we of course have many positive characteristics, Craig's book focuses on the less commendable aspects of our cultural behaviour. Our capacity for negativity and pessimism and our lack of confidence as a nation are major topics for exploration. The causes of these traits are varied: the Calvinist period of religious austerity; the difficult, marginal life of most of Scotland's early inhabitants; the Highland clearances and mass emigration of large parts of our population; our higher than average war losses compared with other allied nations, particularly in the first world war; the Darien disaster and the consequent loss of our sovereignty in 1707's Act of Union. There are many more historical events that have contributed to making us what we are than just the few I have listed here, but the result has been a people practically conditioned to expect the worst. Craig draws attention to our ability to be pessimistic even in the event of good news, citing as an example a bet between a former Scotland rugby captain and an ex-England internationalist at a pre-match event in 2008. The match and the bet went to Scotland, but the former Scottish player, upon receiving his winnings said, “No doubt I'll be giving it back to you next year.” That's the kind of classic self-effacing, more-or-less defeatist attitude so common in Scotland - I've used these kind of lines myself on more than one occasion!

We're going to have to try to address our issues of national self-confidence if we are to deal positively with a harder future. It can be done – in my case, I've confronted two of the traits raised in the book, fear of criticism and of knowing my place (or "getting above myself”) by starting this blog. I've aspired to write for many years without finding the confidence or the motivation to start, but I can thank the independence referendum and my small part in the grassroots Yes campaign for inspiring me to action. It's a movement that's having the same effect on thousands of others throughout Scotland, demonstrating that despite our issues we're not a write-off yet.

The levels of optimism and hope for the future evident in the Yes movement belie the insecure, negative and fatalistic attributes portrayed in “The Scots' Crisis of Confidence”. We're showing that we can change and grow out of our cultural shells, and it's a trend that shows no sign of slowing or stopping on the way to September 18^th. Undecideds and former No voters are swelling the ranks of Scots who see change coming and are eager to be part of it. Contrarily, the No campaign would have us lower our voices and sink back into sullen acceptance of Westminster's grip, surrendered to that other old Scottish cultural debilitation of knowing our place as the UK careens towards its unavoidable appointment with destiny as a failed state.

The real test then of our potential return to the type of outgoing nation we once were will come in September. A Yes vote will be an indication of a re-awakened confidence and self-respect, something we're going to need to build rapidly if we want to meet the challenges of a world in decline. Continuing along the same path is simply not an option – a No vote will bring nothing but regret and disappointment at the opportunity we will have squandered, further reinforcing the foolish opinion held by many - and dishonourably purported by a shameful few - that we are a nation of not-quite-good-enoughs.

That's something we simply can't afford at this critical point in history. Forward Scotland.

Contained within “The Scots' Crisis of Confidence” is a reference to the Afternow website, an excellent university of Glasgow resource addressing many of the global issues we're facing. Highly recommended viewing.

I'm off to visit with friends near London for two weeks - my first visit in quite a few years. My thoughts on the City at the Centre of the Universe in my next post on the 10th of July.

   

 

Forward to the Past

For anyone who lived through the austere decade of the 1970s, the experience might chime closely with the immediate years ahead – if not already. That particular ten-year stretch was my first decade, yet although somewhat faded and patchy now with the passage of time, I retain a few memories of the difficulties many of us shared back then. These were difficulties which barely registered on a young boy more concerned with action man and lego, but are fascinating to study now as an adult as we stumble into a modern-day version of that briar patch.

The seventies were notable for two major oil shocks – two rehearsals for the kind of energy problems we're likely to see again before much longer. The first, in 1973, was caused by an embargo on oil sales to various western countries by Arab oil producers in response to US involvement in the Yom Kippur war. Then again in 1979 the Iranian revolution brought a second bout of chaos when motorists' panicked memories of the '73 fuel shortages drove the oil price higher than it needed to be, despite only a 4% fall in global production due to Iran's temporary time-out. On top of that, the UK's own troubles included the 3-day week, industrial unrest punctuated by continual strikes, and exceptional inflation levels leading ultimately to a 1976 bail-out by the International Monetary Fund. All of this, questionable fashions, fondue parties and Jimmy Savile did not make for an easy decade.

Queuing for petrol in 1973.

Amongst the many hazy but happy memories I have of that decade are a few that are relevant to the woes of the seventies. The power cuts of the three-day week and dinners in a kitchen lit by candles and the little flickering blue ring of our paraffin heater; my parents' angst over stretched finances, delayed wage payments and the need for assistance from their own parents; the kindness and friendship of a neighbour when emptying larders needed to be shared to provide a simple meal of scrambled eggs and toast for two households' children. To me then it seemed like normality, and I remember it with fond nostalgia, but to my parents and others – primarily those who had dependents – I'm sure their recollections of those times will be harder.

We're going forward into a time where seventies reminiscences are going to be brought to the fore for many who experienced that decade. For those of an even older generation who can remember post-war rationing and thought those days were gone for good, they're likely to be shocked by its eventual re-introduction in one form and another. Coming energy shortages and price hikes will impact food production as much as power generation, so it's not unreasonable to expect rationing in the supermarkets and forecourts of the near future, not to mention of gas and electricity and many other consumer items as an early response to the predicaments ahead. What other unexpected surprises an uncertain future has in store for us remains to be seen.

What we'll need to navigate the challenging times ahead is plenty of the type of sharing and cooperation that I spoke of above – the kind that took place between my family and our neighbour forty or so years ago. That is the kind of sharing of resources that will matter in future years; the kind that will occur in communities and households facing increasingly tough times together, not the one-way “sharing” (ie appropriation) of one nation's resources for the benefit of another that those arguing for the continuation of the unfair UK like to espouse. We'll have work to do to re-build some of the community spirit that's been eroded by a culture of selfishness in more recent times, starting with the toxic me-first ideology of Thatcherism in the 1980s and extending to today where we find it more rapacious and callous than ever. Hope lies in Scotland's more egalitarian nature, which has always resisted the worst of Tory dogma, placing us in a better position to deal with a future that will measure success in the ability to put all of us first. Scottish socialistic tendencies, expressed in such projects as the Jimmy Reid Foundation's Common Weal shows that we have a natural, national sense of community. That's going to prove to be invaluable to us.

And it will be important to put all of us first in the years to come. Post-referendum, whether the result is yes or no, the winning and losing sides are going to have to put past divisions quickly aside. Next on the agenda could be a de-stabilising UK and the economic shock-waves that will set off, likely to be equally as intense whether Scotland is still part of it or not. Cool heads and hard work will be required across the board if we want a country that's re-organised well for the different way of living we'll soon have to adapt to.

There's an impressive grassroots movement in Scotland that proves we can work for a worthy cause. As a follower and participant in the Yes campaign, I'm continually amazed and delighted at the transformation in Scotland – of the awakening of people up and down our country. The air of optimism and hope is palpable on social media. There's a camaraderie there that's delightful to see in our generally apathetic land.

Here then is a suggestion: let's use this energy that's been gathered. If we win, let's not disband in the belief that the job is done. There's a country to re-build, and it will have to be pieced together in ways we aren't yet fully anticipating. If we lose, don't retreat into a sullen gloom – the kind of mood we've discovered is rare in Scotland, counter-culture to our often pessimistic nature. It has arrived at a crucial and expedient time to be put to use for what could be the challenge of the century. Whichever way September goes, let's use it.

Too Big Will Fail

Irrespective of the referendum result in September, one thing is certain: Scotland is going to change markedly over the years and decades ahead. Independent or not, the future we're about to participate in is a daunting, mostly unanticipated journey wreathed in uncertainty.

Right now Scotland is being carried, along with all the other nations of the world, on a roller-coaster train of globalisation that reached its summit a few years ago with the advent of the all-time maximum in global conventional oil production. Where we are now is the long, surreal pause before the steep dive – what feels like a moment out of time while politicians and bankers mash on a brake pedal of “creative” finance in a bid to hold us at our precarious position in perpetuity. They will not succeed. Like gravity, history can not be opposed as it takes us where it will.

Globalisation, a term that saw its introduction in the 1980s to describe our increasingly complex international systems of trade and finance, is a feature of the modern world that now finds itself with a surprisingly close sell-by date. With a plentiful, growing supply of cheap oil to fuel it, the twentieth century saw a massive increase in global interconnectedness. The world's shipping lanes were transformed into a mammoth and dizzying network of conveyor belts for the transport of raw materials and finished goods. Only the economics of growth made it possible for seafood caught in Scotland to be sent to China for processing, then be sent to supermarket shelves right back where it came from.

Expensive oil causes that convenient but ludicrous system to break down. The 2008 financial crash, coming as it did suspiciously hot on the heels of the 2005/6 peak in conventional oil production, brought with it a steep drop in the volume of global trade. Fleets of cargo ships found themselves with nowhere to go and no freight to carry.

Ghost fleet of idle cargo ships near Singapore, 2008/9.

Since then, the financial contortionists in exchanges, banks and governments around the world have managed to keep the wheels on the system via injections of pretend money. Simultaneously, unconventional oil sources have filled in the growing gap in energy availability. The result has been a slow, patchy recovery at the top of the energy arc – the last few metres of gently sloping track before the plunge. The next oil shock of shortages and soaring prices will be the tipping point that heralds in that fall. When it happens it's 2008 to the nth power, and this time there may be precious little recovery, if any, as the banks find themselves with nothing left in their armoury of monetary wizardry to attempt to patch things up. We'll find ourselves in a rapidly de-globalised world – a world that no longer does big.

A breakdown of this magnitude is not one in which large, complex enterprises will be able to survive. Economic paralysis on a global scale kills small companies first - supply chains fail, and the larger entities at the top of the food chain will struggle to find replacements to fill the gaps. Ultimately, the house of cards comes down. Cumbersome, bureaucratic governments, reliant on the private sector for many of their services, will likely disintegrate with it.

The UK government is just such an a lumbering dinosaur. Westminster reveals itself everyday as a pompous anachronism of tedious tradition, stale ideas and cruel policies. Riddled with cronyism and corruption, it is unfit to lead any part of the British isles, let alone Scotland. There is little evidence that they are willing in any way to prepare the country for the kind of future we're entering – a future the likely nature of which they themselves must be all too aware of. They ignore it for any number of possible reasons (a subject for a future post), but the net result will be a population shocked by the accelerating rate of failure of institutions, services and infrastructure as the years progress. As the government grows more inept and sinks deeper into irrelevancy by the day, it will be up to us to take responsibility for ourselves and our well-being.

Freed from Westminster, an independent Scotland could arrive in the nick of time to address the issues of a de-globalising world. With a clean slate and a chance to re-imagine itself, a smaller, nimbler country unburdened by big-state delusions of grandeur will fare better on the road leading to re-localisation of everyday life. We need to start changing everything we do to a local, sustainable level; from food production to transport, health care and employment, energy production, finance and commerce. It would be infinitely preferable to have access to all the levers of statehood to do so, while also having the advantage of a relatively small geographical area to administer in an increasingly expensive age of constraints on fuel and energy.

Not ideal will be a No vote, leaving the oppressive weight of Westminster still on our backs. Although in time it may implode, or slowly become more remote and unimportant to us as everyday living gets harder and new local systems of government try to fill the voids it leaves, it will serve only as a hindrance in the early years of global decline. We can't afford to waste time with it or share the noose it has placed around its neck with its refusal to realistically prepare for the years to come.

History Rhymes Again.

I'd thought this week to look at why Scotland, as a small nation, would be better placed to manage the tribulations of a degenerating global economy than it would as part of an ill-fated UK, and why large, complex entities, whether countries or organisations, would increasingly begin to fail and fragment as the future unfolds. However, last week's acquisition by UKIP of a third Scottish seat in the European elections has put me in mind to divert briefly towards another subject: the lurch rightward seen both here and abroad. It is in part a consequence of the new reality that western nations must learn to operate in, and the worrying uptake of reactionary politics we're seeing shows that precious little learning is yet to be evidenced.

On the morning after the results in England's local elections were known I tweeted the following, only in part seriously:

“Looking a bit 1930s down there. Pray we're not seeing the birth of Nazi England.”

England is, of course, a very long way from the madness that overtook Germany in the early part of this century, nor is it likely to come anywhere near to it anytime soon - but the parallels are there, which is what I was thinking when I sent those two sentences off into the twitterverse. They're also parallels that some are unwilling or unable to see, since that one whimsical tweet got me blocked by one user, who also replied with a scathing “Get a grip!”. Oh well - such is the nature of conveying a thought into 140 characters. Nevertheless, it was retweeted a number of times by others, so some perhaps understood where I was coming from.

The similarity of our present moment in history to some of the events of the 1930s is noticeable, which is in essence all I was trying to say. This was the time of the Great Depression - the brutal economic malaise which followed the stock market crash of 1929 and was only eased a decade later when the world's factories went into overdrive to supply the combatants of the second world war. Very recently we experienced another financial crash, its origins – greed, overconfidence, lack of banking and stock market regulation – again similar to the causes of the 1929 crash. The decade of hardship that followed the '29 crash brought forth many of the things that are again coming to prominence now – soup kitchens, food banks, unemployment, increased homelessness and poverty, and sadly, a surge of bluster from the practitioners of ultra right-wing policy.

Then.....                           .....and now.

More to the point perhaps is that such practitioners are more likely to be listened to and taken seriously when times are hard. When the populace is experiencing economic pain, when jobs are growing scarce in lockstep with increases to the cost of living, desperate people become more likely to listen to voices they would have previously ignored and more willing to accept policies they would normally have rebelled against. The uncertainty such economic climates create breeds fear, and fear is a valuable tool for those with an agenda to push through. As is the tool of scapegoating – the setting up of a group or groups of individuals to take the blame for society's ills, either to serve as a distraction from those that are genuinely causing the problems or for whatever other motive those in power may have.

The actions of the UK's right-wing coalition government are light-years away from the horrors of a certain regime of the 1930s, but some of their techniques are from the same hymn sheet. The use of a difficult economy to allow the introduction of preferred policy is one example – in our case a program of austerity that penalises the poor and disadvantaged while preserving and enhancing the wealth of the few, many of whom are in fact the most culpable for the problems in the first place. And of course there is scapegoating - benefit recipients are demonised on a daily basis with accusations of fraud when in fact the cost to the treasury due to tax avoidance is many multiples of times higher.

So we come back to the rise of UKIP and others like it around the globe, dragging with them their reptilian-brained ideas and prejudices, right on time for the beginning of a new era of global adversity. Their brand of bigotry and narrow-minded isolationism cannot exist in a climate of prosperity and plenty, such as the times we are now leaving behind in latter half of the twentieth century. The future waiting in the wings, a future of declining wealth and energy availability, is the weakening body in which their type of cancer grows. As the new century progresses, they and their kind could bubble up out of the cesspit of humanity's darker ideas more often than most would like.

The marked difference in UKIP's popularity in England and Scotland shows quite clearly that we are a nation that overwhelmingly rejects their type of rhetoric; we must be careful that this remains so in a challenging future. That will be a task made all the more difficult while we remain chained to a system of government that is rapidly embracing policies and parties with ever more rightward leanings. Scotland is an outward-looking, European nation with a left-of-centre culture; to preserve it we must take charge of it and do our best to keep it nurtured in the hard years ahead. That is a task that will need careful management and fresh ideas in a world undergoing profound change.

I think we are up to it. We showed the world a new, alternative path before; we can do it again. How about the Scottish Enlightenment part two, starting September 2014?

Lifeboat Scotland.

The common conception of the future held by the average westerner is one which has been molded by their knowledge of recent centuries, by popular culture, and by their own day to day experiences. It is an expectation of continuous economic growth and technological progress, of greater living standards and life expectancy. Each of us is embedded in a culture which promotes this view constantly, and few question it.

But what if it's a myth? What if the extraordinary rate of progress our civilisation has sustained over the 19^th and 20^th centuries is a temporary blip, one about to slow and possibly stall as the 21^st unfurls? Progress requires funding, and it should not have escaped your notice that governments are running into problems with money.

There are many self-inflicted reasons for our economic difficulties – fraud, corruption and incompetence in the financial sector being central. But lurking behind our economic problems are our planet's lowering reserves of fossil fuel. Oil is the one must-have super-resource of the modern world. Without it, nothing works. More to the point, without it at an affordable price, nothing works. The hyper-complex, warehouse-on-wheels, just-in-time economy we've built up over the preceding decades was developed on the back of cheap oil, during a period of time when the global oil supply was in constant growth. With it, the ready supply of money in the form of cheap loans was also in constant growth, and consequently the economy and the people benefiting from it prospered. Progress and innovation followed easily as there was excess money to invest in it.

With the peak in conventional (easy and cheap ) oil production now in the rear-view mirror, growing the oil supply means going after unconventional (hard and expensive) sources. That is why we are now seeing deep-water oil extraction (remember the ill-fated DeepwaterHorizon?), the race for the arctic, and the craze for fracking everything in sight. We're moving into a period of history where the average oil price will remain consistently high, and our global economy, reared on the dummy-teat of cheap oil, is developing a considerable case of indigestion. In years to come, as price spikes climb higher and averages follow, more of the complex world around us will run into difficulty. As our established infrastructure ages, we'll have to pour more money into maintaining what's there already and less into new ventures, and all the while from a shrinking resource base. Hence progress slows and stagnates.

A look around at the news of the past few years should be enough to signal that something is going wrong. The global economy has been in the doldrums now for some time - businesses are closing, unemployment is rising, and government cuts to welfare programs and services bite ever deeper. The gap between the rich and poor in the UK has risen to levels not seen since the second world war as the coalition's austerity program clamps down harder. Meanwhile, some the few growth industries of note are defence contractors and suppliers to the military; illegal wars and occupations in the middle east are the other hallmark of recent times, a region of the planet noted, unsurprisingly, for its abundance of black gold. There can be no doubt that the West's interference with and occupations in these areas are to ensure it never misses its fix while denying its competitors theirs.

All of this can only exacerbate in the years to come. The 21st century will be nothing like what we experienced in the 20^th in terms of increasing affluence and standards of living. On the contrary, our economic difficulties can only intensify, and must be responded to with an entirely new way of thinking. For that, we need an entirely new leadership and system of government. Obsessed with maintaining business as usual at all costs, systemically venal and beholden to corporate interests, Westminster is already a relic of a past world. It is, simply, unfit for purpose in the 21^st century. Its failures can only mount until it finally collapses or sinks into irrelevancy as the people of the UK learn to fend for themselves. To aid them, local governments may have to learn to step up to the plate and take on more responsibility.

We are fortunate in Scotland then that we already have an alternative government – one that is currently asking for more responsibility. I believe it may have it sooner or later, irrespective of the referendum result. Nevertheless, I'd much rather it had it sooner while we still have some time to prepare for an unexpected future; while there is a chance - however slim that may be - of electing the right people for the job of steering into it.

There is nothing to say that the Scottish government might not suffer the same fate as Westminster in time, if it is allowed to be captured by the same forces of greed. But I believe that it will fare better, imbued as it is with the energy of youth and hopefully soon to be unleashed with the full powers of independence. Not to mention its modern structure, unburdened by the stifling weight of farcical, outmoded tradition and the unreformable antiques display otherwise known as the house of lords.

The Scottish government deserves a chance to show what it can achieve with full independence. It should have that chance now, while the global economy is functioning more or less as we have known it. Time is not on our side – another nosedive, similar to or worse than 2008, could be imminent. The fraud and illegality in the world's financial system was not fixed after the last crash – if anything it has only been encouraged, setting us up for something far worse. Who knows what conditions we'll face on the other side of the next slide down.

RMS Westminster, steaming at flank speed in iceberg infested waters, is doing nothing and will do nothing to avert another economic plunge. A No vote could see Scotland sink to the depths with it. A Yes vote does not guarantee a better fate, but if we are vigilant and follow with a careful selection of the right government with the right policies, we can give ourselves a fighting chance of navigating the treacherous waters ahead.

As a small nation, an independent Scotland will be best placed to steer through the years ahead. The next post will look at why in a de-globalising future small is best, and too big will fail.