I will not be waving a Union flag to mark 80th anniversary of VE Day
To me it's the hypocritical act of a foreign power. Just as with the annual Remembrance Day observance illusion at the Cenotaph, the intervening years suggest that no lessons have been learned. Wars have begat wars. The powerful have got more so, the poor remain poor. And global and national aggression and exploitation is no less than it was before the last World War.
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Now we are subjected to witnessing another mass display of political hypocrisy, having to face the furious warning of the Union flag that I abhor as an oppressive symbol of domination over me and my fellow Scots, our democratic right to determine our future arbitrarily denied. Where is our freedom? We hear speeches by establishment emissaries whose role is to remind us how grateful we should be to live under the 'glorious' yoke of this Britain, which really means England.
The monarch, that human symbol of Britain's ingrained gross inequality, is paraded as the lynchpin of everything that is 'great and good' in 21st-century Britain.
Meanwhile the veterans are wheeled on stage left, patronised, and then shunted off stage right.
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And the mainstream media whip up this 'patriotic' fervour to reinforce the real political and economic power behind the British state that their very existence depends on them maintaining.
To those veterans and their fallen comrades, I give eternal thanks. Their immortality is assured by us remembering them. But I choose to remember within my heart; and the difference with the formal celebrations is that I will not do so for show, I will mean it.
My view would perhaps be different if I thought for one nanosecond that the speeches being made were in earnest, there was a real determination not to repeat the follies of the causes of World War Two. However, who doubts when looking at the state of current affairs that lessons have not been learned, that we are set to repeat the follies of history, and the inexorable rise of the triumphalist far right is the touchpaper to ignite the fuse, aided and abetted by a population that has taken its eye of the ball and allowed itself to be diverted into myriad side issues?
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Over 300 years the British state has succeeded in generating a torpor in the minds of many Scots, who are now so inured in this iniquitous unequal union that we are in danger of succumbing to its many political and economic follies forever. We have missed the best chance for justifying independence with 14 years of British Tory government that assaulted us all. Ten months of this red-tory Labour government, with at least another four years to suffer, and the prospect of a far-right Reform UK government to follow fills me with dread and fear for the future.
These are the reasons why I respect the veterans, but I won't be waving a British flag on May 8th.
Jim Taylor
Edinburgh
WHEN will John Swinney et al cease slandering and defaming millions of our decent and deeply concerned fellow British Islanders who have sought rescue from disastrous 'uniparty' neoliberal Westminster UK Governments in the ranks of the Reform UK party on both sides of the Border? The misrepresentation and demonisation of this growing demographic will backfire badly for the 'continuity' unreformed SNP who continue their failure to honour the mandates given them by the Scottish people, namely to pursue the political, economic and cultural autonomy that would remove the need for Reform north of Border.
I am far from a supporter of the totality of the Reform agenda, but anybody who dismisses the concerns of their adherents and some of the solutions that they have explored merely demonstrate a failure to grasp the reality of life for many people impoverished and immiserated by legacy-party malgovernance in the UK Parliament for 40 years and longer.
READ MORE: Ian Blackford: The SNP are not and never have been ethnic nationalists
If 'Safe Hands' John is 'very fearful' of the Reform movement then he and his SNP high heid yins would do well to reinvigorate and reconciliate a fragmented independence movement by collaborating fully with the Alba party and the popular movement at large to optimise the pro-indy majority in 2026 that could be the means to escape the UK 'far right' threat.
Clinging to past glories of SNP domination of the freedom movement is to be irresponsible with all our futures. Those list seats should go to Alba where possible, and not Reform.
In his Programme for Government all of Swinney's four priorities are best served by cohesion in society, and if this sense of unity of purpose could be re-established in the independence movement, our children and grandchildren would be the beneficiaries. Think on, John!
Dr Andrew Docherty
Selkirk
GEORGE Morton (Letters, May 5) says what mainstream politicians are afraid to say: that unfettered immigration to any country is unsustainable and unworkable.
His accurate take on the labelling of people who express doubts about the wisdom of mass uncontrolled immigration as 'racist' and 'far right' exposes an agenda by the political status quo here, who'd rather we didn't discuss it.
My opinions have been described as 'leftist'. I like to think that's true, so please don't insult me with a 'far right' label just because, like many others, I am not convinced of the benefits of mass immigration to a country which already has so many issues to contend with. Check Glasgow City Council housing problems as an example.
Jim Butchart
via email
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