Why is the word ‘threatening’ used in the headline? I voted YES in 2014 and will do so in the future. I visit London several times per year because I have family there and I get on with their friends. I and my fellow supporters of independence are not threatening anyone. Perhaps it is Mr Miles who feels ‘threatened’ and it would be helpful to understand what that ‘threat’ is?

Secondly, consider this paragraph:

“Scotland makes an enormous contribution to the UK and is a strong ally in democratising the way the UK works. We must do all we can to keep Scotland in our family of nations. We will all be worse off if we don’t succeed in that.”

If Scotland, as part of the UK for 310 years, is just an ‘ally’, where stands the oft repeated Labour mantra of ‘a partnership of equals’ or ‘family of nations’, as he calls it.

But he describes it as ‘our’ family. Are we Scots, who seem to being presented as somewhat outside, party to the ‘our’?

And, ‘We will all be much worse off if we don’t succeed in that’.
It seems here that as a Scot, I am not part of that ‘we’. And, most, importantly, by Scotland becoming independent is the cause of ‘[us] becoming worse off’, what things will be ‘lost’ to rUK?

In so many statements in the mainstream media and by politicians (including several Scottish Labour MSPs), Scots and Scotland are characterised as ‘subsidy junkies’, ‘whingers, ‘a basket case’, ‘not genetically programmed to run our own affairs’, ‘too wee and not very good’, ‘surviving only of fiscal transfers within the UK (Mervyn King – although he, graciously, stated that, of course Scotland could be an independent country.)’ and more in that contemptuous, derogatory and, indeed, racist vein (I am thinking particularly of the holier-than-thou Guardian.)

So, if ‘We’ (which does not include us Scots) ‘lose’ Scotland, ‘we’ lose all of this scrounging, which is surely better for rUK?

Or is it the fact that Scotland is a net contributor to the UK that is the worrying factor? I think that is the unspoken fear which fires the contempt. Taking into account territorial waters Scotland comprises 51% of the UK area. Scotland has most of the UK fishery. Scotland has 25% of EUROPE’s renewable energy potential. There are still vast reserves of oil and gas in the Atlantic waters off Scotland and it is this which underpins the pretty shaky sterling. It was the Labour Government of the 1960s which suppressed the data of the extent of Scotland’s oil potential. It was the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher and Mr Major who squandered the oil revenue, deindustrialising huge chunks of British industry, destroying trade unions and creating the financial behemoth that is the City, which was the principal player in the crash of 2008. Scotland food and drink industry revenues have reached record levels, and most is from Europe and the rest of the world, not rUK. Scotland has the majority of the UK’s water. Scotland houses the UK’s nuclear ‘deterrent’. (The metropolitan media wanted it somewhere ‘out of the way’, such as 25 miles from Glasgow and its surrounding area with a population in excess of 2 million people. The Pentagon Papers described the Glasgow area as being ‘a zone of total death’ in the event of a nuclear war.)

So, these are some starters. Perhaps Mr Miles and others, particularly in the ineffective and directionless Labour Party would like to comment.