Donald MacLeod: Vote Yes, Scotland we will survive

First I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without Westminster on my side.

But then I spent so many nights thinking how the polls were wrong YES grew strong, YES learned how to get along.

Haha! OK, you get the gist. But as Scotland’s Day of Destiny draws close, as the rough and tumble of politics becomes a chaotic stampede of ideals, an overload of opinion and incredible untruths, I reckon we are sorely in need of a bit of humour.

Especially now that a greedy battalion of angry and desperate Westminster miseries are squatting on our doorstep causing more mess and mayhem than a pack of rabid dogs.

Here to save the Union they claim here to save their jobs, more like! Do they not realise that for most us they are just not welcome. Better together? Aye right.

Their arrival was far too little and way too late. They hadn’t bothered about Scotland, its people or their aspirations for decades. Up until that YouGov poll scared them out of their troughs they were happy to have us pick at scraps while they ate cake.

Yet here they are telling us how much they love Scotland, how they really care for us, that we cannot cope on our own but we can have a little bit more power if only we decide to stay.

Pathetic, desperate, insincere platitudes and promises.

I haven’t forgotten they promised us devolution in 1979 only to leave us with 18 years of Tory Government, huge dole queues, the methodical destruction of our steel, coal and shipbuilding industries and the communities there.

I haven’t forgotten how we went to war on a lie under Labour. Or the financial meltdown they caused by over-borrowing, a financial legacy we are still being crippled with today.

I haven’t forgotten how they bailed out the banks with our money only to now have them threaten many Scots whose taxes helped bail them out. RBS in particular are a disgrace the number of homes they repossessed, the businesses they shut, the honest people they made bankrupt.

And here they are supposed Scottish Bank rallying to the cause of the unionist alliance. If I had my way I would pick up their small city in Gogarburn and drop it in the North Sea!

I haven’t forgotten the MPs’ expenses scandal thieving on industrial scale by our elected members. It seems they’ve forgotten it all, as have their greetin’-faced supporters.

A Yes vote on Thursday will guarantee that a future Scotland will always have a government its people voted for, not one we didn’t. No more Tories.

An independent Scotland will protect pensions and not allow them to be raided by Labour. It will borrow what it can afford and make sure it has the ability to pay it back.

The NHS won’t be slashed to pieces as it will be when another £25 billion of cuts take effect.

There will be no such thing as a bedroom tax in an independent Scotland. We just wouldn’t allow it. Job creation, not job losses, will be at the heart of a free Scotland as we’ll offer financial incentives to attract new business here.

We will have our own armed forces, not Trident and the humongous cost of keeping it. Our children will not be sent to fight in illegal wars.

We will have the pound and banks that help customers not destroy them. We’ll join the EU and NATO. We will pay our share of the national debt and much, much more besides.

Why? Because we can!

So forget the scaremongering from the naysayers. Independence gives Scotland a fresh start, a new, bright beginning, the one chance we’ll have in this lifetime to fix what is wrong and repair the damage of the past.

We can take the first steps to make Scotland a much better and more prosperous place to live. We should grab that opportunity and not let it slip away.

To do anything other than vote YES on Thursday would be complete folly and something we’d soon live to regret.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this.

If Better Together is the answer, why has no country who gained independence from the UK then asked to go back?