Gloomy Reflections on Brexit
Today, the Westminster parliament has voted to block unaccompanied child refugees from entering Britain and voted not to guarantee the status of EU Nationals currently living in Britain.
The Scottish Government has on the other hand, repeatedly spoken up for the rights of EU nationals and committed to supporting their rights to live and work here and continues to do so. Today the SG announced funding which will support 40 refugee doctors living here to qualify to practice medicine here in Scotland. If anyone is still wondering why I support an Independent Scotland then you have it there in those examples. The UK is a place where I no longer fit, with policies that I am ashamed of, politicians that care nothing for the most vulnerable people in our country and our world. The government is a disgrace. We even have a disappointment in the opposition leader – not one single concession or amendment passed but a three line whip issued to back the Brexit bill whilst ignoring the opportunity to do the same to prevent welfare reform which targets the vulnerable, the sick and the poor. We see hooray henrys woofing at scottish women MPs as they dare to speak and we see the voices of our elected officials silenced in a debate about our devolved administrations. All these things disappoint me. But they did not make me feel as ashamed as today’s votes have done.
And so I say, not in my name do you threaten the security of my friends from Poland, France, Spain; from Lithuania, Germany, Finland.
Not for me do you turn away children from our shores who have nowhere and no one. Not in my name.
There’s a song, it’s says “In yer hous aa the bairns o AidamWill fin breid, barley-bree an paintit room” It is of course, Hamish Henderson’s Freedom Come All Ye. For those of us that espouse the values described in the song, for those of us looking outward, wanting an inclusive Scotland with a bright and hopeful future there is no choice. We cannot remain shackled to the UK as it is turned into a shadowland full of insular, racist, voices screaming their hate from the front pages of newspapers. The Newspapers who’s owners laugh over their champagne and slap the backs of their politician playmates, congratulating themselves on lining the pockets of their big business cronies as they flog off chunks of the NHS and open the door to Trump, rolling out the red carpet for a racist misogynist in anticipation of scraps off his trade deals table.
Any remnant of hope that Scotland’s elected representatives or that Scotland’s democratically elected Government will be heard has disappeared. Any possibility of Scotland softening the position of the U.K. Government is gone. Any suggestion that Brexit will create a greater better Britain is worthless. It’s all shit. Now is the time to stand up for the poor and the vulnerable, for the migrant workers, for the children who belong nowhere, and to no one and say not in your name either. We must take our own road and make our own choices and the only way to do that is by ensuring Scotland becomes Independent as soon as possible.
Anything else is nothing – useless, pointless nothing.
I'mNotAWriterBut... 
Well said. That would make a great, rousing speech. The one glimmer of light in the whole shenanigans was the rendition of Ode to Joy by the SNP as the other members of the Commons trooped like sheep into the voting lobbies. It was an act of defiance that reminded me of the way Estonia sang its way to independence.
And shame on a government that cannot accept more than 350 children – refugees with no-one to look after them, vulnerable and innocent kids who have done nothing to deserve their fate except be born into the wrong country at the wrong time. There are many couples here crying out to adopt children, yet we doom these kids to the unthinkable. Shame.
Love this comment. Loved Ode to joy in Hoc this week. Proud to be on their side.
I second that.