The Scottish referendum debate regularly refers to maintaining the Great in GB as well as ‘Better Together’.

Perhaps it's worth reflecting on the 300-year-old ‘union’. It was basically an act of convenience for English money to bail out a bankrupt Scotland after their complete failure at colonisation and for England to draw Scotland into a political union that would stop them plotting with Catholic France, Spain and Ireland to overthrow the protestant Government and monarchy in England. This is now completely irrelevant.

The Better Together campaign always refers to the fact that Scotland will be financially far better off (on the back of the English taxpayer?).

Scotland and England were and still are countries with their own very different cultures and traditions, intellectual and natural resources.

It is not about what is in someone’s bank account, it is about the right for an independent country to govern itself.

There is no reason why Scotland cannot run its own affairs as an advanced, wealthy, civilised democratic country.

Is there one country in the Commonwealth, the old Empire governed from Westminster, that did not want independence and the right for self-government? They didn’t think about penny-pinching, there were greater principles at stake!

Finally GB doesn’t now govern an Empire covering a quarter of the globe and its population, its Navy doesn’t “rule the waves”.

As an Englishman, every bit as patriotic as a Scotsman, I recommend that every patriotic Scotsman votes for independence and consigns ‘GB’ to the history books!

Ian Cummings

Gibson Close

Abingdon

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