We Live In A Sick Country

And I don't mean Scotland. 

We do a lot of things really well in Scotland: our NHS is doing better than elsewhere in the UK, our teachers do their best by our children, the infrastructure of the country is improving - and all this despite being kept chronically short of cash and forced down a road called austerity that we didn't vote for. 

Of course, some of you will disagree with me. After all, you can see that we are fed daily bulletins by the media depicting us as hopeless and our elected government as useless. For example, on Friday the BBC Scotland website fed us the line that: 

<<The delayed Aberdeen bypass could cost its builders "hundreds of millions" of pounds more than the contract signed with the Scottish government, it has been claimed.>>

This is presented as a fact. The headline doesn't mention that this is a claim by a Labour MSP and his claim is not substantiated by anything even remotely resembling evidence.  

It's as if the BBC has a list of things to find fault with in Scotland: the infrastructure, the NHS, the police, education - and these are rotated daily on its website.

By the way, you might want to check out the BBC website generally: no other part of the UK is subjected to this steady stream of negative reporting. And I doubt if it's a coincidence that a 'big' - and misleading - story like an overspend on the Aberdeen bypass appears on a Friday, when the Scottish Government and its civil servants have gone off for the weekend. 

But I digress...

Scotland is part of 'The Union' and, as a result, there are things we in Scotland have absolutely no control over. At the moment, the thing that's exercising me is immigration. 

You may have noticed that the population of Scotland is rising. After generations of exporting people, we're actually growing our workforce. That's got to do with Scotland being an attractive place to live and work, both for our own people and those from other parts of the world. We need people to come and live and work here. Partly because our population is ageing but also because there's still a big gap where our own young people should be. Myself, I live in hope our young people will come back as they see our economy improve.  

But thanks to Brexit, which Scotland did not vote for (62% of those of us who voted wanted to remain in the EU and recent polls suggest that figure has increased to 67%), Scotland - and quite a lot of people who have chosen to live here - are facing a crisis.

Here's an example and I apologise if the friend I'm writing about recognises herself here, but the injustice of her situation and that of many others needs to be described:

This person came to Scotland 31 years ago. She has always worked and has paid her taxes. She has skills and academic qualifications (gained at the expense of another EU country) that are valuable to Scotland. She has built up a level of expertise as a trainer of teachers that has earned her a lot of respect. She married a Scot and they have two bi-national children who have been educated in Scotland. The family are Scots. Father and children know the mother's family and country from summer holidays. She has now been told that: 

<<31 years in Scotland gets me the right to apply for settled status, and if successful I can then apply for British Citizenship if I want to keep my job!!>>

I know from my own family that the path she's being sent down by the immigration authorities is long and costly. She faces years of form-filling, with annual visits to her national embassy and payments of thousands of pounds to the UK government. Not to mention a 'nationality test.' And all this to allow her to go on working on Scotland's behalf.

The status of EU citizens never crossed the minds of the Brexit campaign - and still doesn't. Not that anything very much ever bothered the Brexit people, as far as I can see. (Except 'taking our country back.' There are a few of us here in Scotland who fancy that idea!)

Certainly, the wishes of a lot of voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland mean nothing. The idea that  people have now (2 and a half years later) sussed that they were lied to means nothing. It's a done deal, according to the Tories and Labour. Democracy has spoken and there is no turning back. Not my definition of democracy, I have to say.

The naivety of some voters in England and Wales is frightening: they thought they could leave the EU but still get the subsidies they'd always had. They thought they could stop immigrants coming to England but they would still be able to travel freely. They didn't want immigrants to do the work but weren't prepared to work in menial jobs on farms and in factories themselves. Some people apparently had never noticed the blue signs attached to roads, village halls, piers, etc and decided they were getting nothing from the EU. They took the Brexit bus seriously:

I don't know if we can reverse the catastrophe we're facing - or how to do it. But I do know this. I posted this earlier on Friday: 

 <<I just want one of these toerags brought to book: Arron Banks, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage or Rees-Mogg. I just want to see the smirk wiped off their faces...

If you need to know why, I found this phrase in a NY Times article this morning: 

<<copies of Arron Banks’s emails showing that he had had multiple meetings with the Russian ambassador during the referendum campaign and was offered a business deal involving six Russian goldmines.>> 

The level of corruption we're dealing with is beyond our experience. And people I know are stuck in the middle of this shambles.