Brian Monteith: Early independence referendum would get my vote

Published on Friday 4 April 2008 10:21

LET'S have that referendum – now! It is time. The indecision, the equivocation and prevarication, it all has to end. Just last weekend Scotland's richest individual said he would welcome a vote on Scotland's future within the United Kingdom so that we might know the direction the country is headed, and he's not the first to say this.

Tom Hunter, the self-made billionaire, said we would be better deciding what we wanted now than having a long-drawn out breakdown with all the uncertainty that would accompany such indecision.

In business, as in most other spheres of life, uncertainty is worse than dealing with a known or predictable difficulty.

The idea that Scotland cannot stand on its own two feet economically is, of course, laughable. The question is not if we could do it but what would it be like if we did – and that's where the problems start. Many of the people that point to successful small independent countries also happen to support economic or social policies that have manifestly failed in countries across the world.

Scotland's attitude – or at least the attitude of many commentators and politicians who claim to speak for the people – towards individual wealth and the making of money has the potential to be a serious obstacle.

While Thatcherism brought modernisation, individual liberation and economic progress in Scotland, we have never recognised the good it did us. Instead we have created a whole mythology built on the painful social price that had to be paid – a price, I may add, that was made expensive by the cumulative mistakes of premiers from Macmillan through to Callaghan.

Just how is an independent Scotland to prosper if it is not to be a highly attractive place for people to make money – and to spend it at their leisure?

A couple of weeks back I wrote about how Alistair Darling's new 30,000 poll tax on all British residents with non-domestic earnings would hurt Edinburgh as well as the City of London. It didn't take long before the evidence backed me up.

This week Carol Colburn Hogel, a huge benefactor to the Edinburgh International Festival through the charitable trust called the Dunard Fund, announced she was leaving our city to relocate back in North America. She complained not just about the principle of the Non-Dom Poll Tax but about the attitude of Scots that would be happy to see the back of her and her altruistic donations.

Such critics do exist – I know because they often populate the comment section at the end of my articles on the Evening News website!

Alex Salmond says he wants a referendum – but not just yet. He wants time to show that nationalists are not "swivel-eyed anti-English bigots" like those the Scotland Secretary said populate Salmond's Great Conversation website. Surely if independence is a good thing we should not wait any longer for it?

So let's have a vote about Scotland's future.

If it's to be in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland then let's commit to that and tell our politicians to stop pontificating about which constitutional set-up we should have.

If it's to be an independent Scotland then fine, but let's hear what it will be like – rather than pretend it can be a socialist nirvana, an Albania with (depleting) oil for the MacComrades, or a tax haven, a wet and windy Dubai for the MacThatchers.

It can't be both and this dithering is hurting us.

Football's own goal

FULL marks to Spartans AFC for pointing out the blindingly obvious – that Scottish football is in an utter mess.

Why should Spartans not be able to become a new franchise in Scottish football? The answer is because we have a restrictive practice that prevents the pyramid system, whereby clubs play their way up the leagues, and stops clubs bidding for a place in the system. Instead, we have a group of clubs – especially in the lower leagues – that have used their positions to block and barter before voting for new entrants into their exclusive club.

But like it or not, football is a business and without paying customers – as is the case at Gretna – clubs will ultimately fail and should be replaced by those that can attract the crowds.

Cuba's new revolution

QUIETLY but gradually, Cuba is changing. If you buy a Cuban cigar as an ardent supporter of its outdated and almost unique form of socialism you are probably unaware that the monopoly export company Habanos SA is fifty per cent owned by Britain's Imperial Tobacco. Now a new public private partnership is being set up to provide mobile telephones for Cubans – a highly profitable opportunity given that Cuba has the lowest ownership of cell phones in Latin America. Coming soon is a plan to allow ordinary Cubans to stay in tourist hotels. Maybe they'll let them leave the country next?