I hope you will forgive this one. I know it’s pure maudlin self indulgence but it’s written in honour of the day that’s in it.
My Dad was the youngest of eight children and the son of a baker. Born in a tenement flat in Leith, home of the accursed Hibees. Luckily, the family moved back to Easter Ross and Grandad’s home town of Invergordon before there was any chance of infection.
Dad was a clever chiel and did what clever working-class Scots did in those days. He passed his exams and his scholarships and his bursaries and, in due course, went off to the Uni of Embra to study Divinity. Even more luckily, that passion faded or I could have ended up as a son of the Manse like Gordon Brown.
There is a possibility that Dad strayed from the straight and narrow road of John Knox to the primrose path of dalliance as a result of his passion for playing football and drinking beer in the Union. I will never know as he never talked about it. The end result was a Football Blue and an MA in English and History. Off he went to teach English and coach football at Buckhaven High School. Where, in due course, he went for a foxtrot on the sprung dance floor of Methil Bowling Club and met Mum.
Come WWII, Dad was of an age and in an occupation that meant he could not be called up. So, he volunteered. Thirty years later, he was still fighting Fife County Council for part of his teacher’s pension. Those Communist bastards took three years off him because he volunteered instead of waiting until the rules changed.
Anyhoo, back to WWII. There he was in the Royal Artillery guarding Wembley Stadium, with not an inkling of the forthcoming ‘Great World Cup Robbery of 1966’. His Majesty King George VI noticed his many and manifest talents and graciously gave him a commission in the Royal Engineers. Spent part of the war in Hull as an Embarcation Officer. Mentioned in despatches for going into a bombed and burning warehouse to rescue workers. His abiding memory of that time was that his landlady moved Heaven and Earth, and spent all of her powdered egg ration, to give him a Scotch Egg as often as she could. He never had the heart to tell her that it was not actually a required Jock delicacy.
He stayed on after we won and in due course I came along to help him and Mum and Big Sis occupy Germany. Thus, I grew up an Army brat with a father who was sometimes there and sometimes not there, depending on whether it was a married posting. Doesn’t matter. He was really always there and I will always be grateful for that. He taught me many things and gave me most of my values. Above all else, he was a proud Briton of Scots origin and I share that provenance.
Which is one of the main reasons why I will be voting ‘No’ next year, whatever the economic outcome.
In case you had not worked it out already, it would have been Dad’s 100th birthday today.
Boadicea's Chariot 
From what I hear from the family in Scotland, you will not be the only one voting NO. It appears even Salmond’s trick of allowing 16 year olds the vote may not swing it for him.
I suspect sheona will be right by an embarrassingly large margin.
Interesting tale, thank you.
Thanks JM Nice sincere read
I sincerely hope the Jocks see through Wee Eck’s lies and vote no and suspect they will. I would hate for the United Kingdom to break up, but I fear that if the pudgy little tyrant had insisted on the English being allowed to vote as well, he may have got his wish as many are fed up with the Scots Nats whingeing.
Well anyone South of the border who had an inkling of the Barnett formula would vote in droves for their independence!
FEEG: you are correct. Salmond risks turning Scotland into another Québec. Most people there might be sensible and reasonable, but there is that obnoxious minority that drowns out sensible concerns and proposals. The loss will be humiliating and will hopefully discredit the SNP. Sadly, I suspect that much like the Parti Québécois, the incompetence of the other parties will keep it viable as an other-issue alternative.
Well, yes, except that I don’t fancy a country made up of a dozen little Liechtensteins/Lilliputs with only London capable of surviving. 🙂
I don’t know about Lilliput, Janus, but Liechtenstein seems to survive pretty well.
Has Salmond really managed to allow 16 year olds to vote? On what grounds?
There are two problems, as I see it. The first being that even if the majority of Scots vote NO, the Samondites will not accept their defeat gracefully. – and will continue to agitate,
The second problem is that if the Scots vote YES, idiotic England will continue to provide financial support for Scotland.
Yes, Boadicea, Salmond has extended the vote to sixteen year olds, though JM would be better able to tell you how he managed that. But I was talking to another cousin last week, who told me that mock referendums/referenda held in schools and colleges had generally produced a “No” vote, thus nullifying Salmond’s scheme. He’ll have to rely on young NEEPS – and no he hasn’t yet given the vote to turnips!
Good evening, Boadicea.
Och, it’s complicated and perhaps a bit of a Jock thing.
Shorthand, Scotland did not diverge from the other Home Countries after formal Devolution in 1999. We were different when we joined up to the Union in 1707 and we have stayed a bit different ever since. Own Church, own educational system and own legal system. There has been convergence where there needed to be convergence throughout 300+ proud years of British history but we often still do things our own way.
The rights of 16 year olds being one those things. As the story of Gretna Green should remind you, they have been free to marry up here without parental consent for decades. In fact, we don’t really do the concept of parental consent in Scotland at all. Long story, but it’s mostly all the fault of the Romans and their Law which we adopted in preference to Southron Common Law.
On a personal note, I joined the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party when I was 16. By then, I was politically active and knew what I believed in. I could, of course, have been wrong but I still don’t think so.
It follows that I find it difficult to argue against 16 year olds having the vote when they are old enough to marry, work, pay taxes and join our Armed Forces. So Salmond was pushing at a bit of an open door for me and for many other Scots when they were given the vote as part of the Referendum Act.
Turns out to have been a bit of an own goal as Sheona says. Overwhelming No votes in mock referendums are resounding throughout the halls of our schools from John O’Groats to the aforementioned Gretna Green
I see today in an effort to buy a yes vote, Salmond offering to keep the pound and the BBC.
Apart from hysterical laughter offstage left, if he really wants to bribe the electorate into voting to go alone all he has to do is promise to shut the door on immigration, repatriate any wrong doers immediately, no sharia law and a few more anti Eastern European moves should do the job nicely!
JM above, I expect the young would like the opportunity to move round the UK freely, can’t say I would blame them! Wait til some nutter starts rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall and demanding passports!
CO, may you be forgiven!
Our Dear Leader could never be accused of trying to buy a Yes vote except by embittered and negative Unionists.
That’ll be me then. according to him. He is wrong as always. Proud to be a Unionist and never been happier nor more positive about my country (UKofGB&NI).
In truth, he is a total piece of heavily-joweled and overweight shite. Compare his official hagiographic photographs with those from today’s Press Conference and you will see how he has thrived and grown fat on off the public purse for far too many years.
You know how people get upset about ad hominem attacks on MyT (from where both you and I both came and which I still miss)? Fair point.
I am. however, prepared to make an exception, ad hominem-wise, in the case of Salmond. He truly deserves it after all he has done to try to destroy my country.
In my opinion.
I rather think that Salmond has shot his bolt today, JM. His manifesto or whatever it’s called is absolute “la-la-land”. Does he not realise that the minute he climbs up the Scott monument yelling “Freedom”, the trains from England will stop at the border, the English bank branches will close and the BBC will have nothing to show in Scotland but Rab C Nesbitt and the Beechgrove Garden? Husband suggests that, given Salmond’s comments about a Scandinavian fraternity, we should describe his plans as “smogasbord independence”.
JM – Many Thanks for the reply.
I suppose I sort of have a sympathy with the idea that since one can marry, etc, etc one should be able to vote…
I’d suggest raising the age for all those things – except perhaps paying tax – which doesn’t require much thinking about.
I don’t really think that idea will catch on. But bearing in mind my own lack of sense of responsibility at 16 I tend to think that not too many 16 year olds are sufficiently wise to take on the responsibilities of family, children – or deciding the way their country should be run. I was most certainly not sufficiently responsible to do anything more than pay taxes.
Sheona
Surely it won’t be the Scott monument – but the Wallace monument? Mel Gibson indelibly linked a Scottish cry of ‘Freedom’ to that particular person.
Are you really sure that England won’t carry on footing the bill for Salmond’s vision of Utopia? I’m not. 🙂
Christina, I was just assuming that Salmond would be in Edinburgh for the result rather than Stirling. England would be very stupid if it did, but then of course with the bunch in power just now … The one bright spot I can see, were my fellow countrymen daft enough to vote Yes, is that there would be no Scottish MPs at Westminster.
For me, one bright aspect of Nova Scotia is the prospect of its being welcomed back into the EU after the pre-defection UK has all-but-left! The euro will be losing its value fast by then too, so English/Welsh tourists will be nipping over the Wall to spend their appreciating pounds. Tasty.