A post-Referendum letter to the 45%

I'm writing this at the end of the kind of grey day I yesterday remembered from the '80s. It's hard for me to feel the optimism expressed by some communicators, and as I hear the news of Alex Salmond's stepping down from his leadership post I feel a deepening of the gloom even as I recognise that in his position I would do exactly the same.

But I'm writing now to the 45% who voted for a different Scotland. A little digging shows that what I sensed throughout the campaign was true: most of you are much younger than I am. So I'd like first to apologise for my generation, for our failure of nerve and of the imagination; for our fears about our pensions and our East Enders; for our unwillingness to listen and to read enough.

And then I'd like to charge you, all you of the 45% who are between the ages of 25 and 55, not to grow to be like the 73% of NO voters who are in my age group. Don't ever settle down inside your head, don't ever mentally don a white cardigan or a sensible skirt or a pair of tartan carpet slippers. Don't ever think that all life holds is a straitened existence in which you hold onto the past and condemn future generations to what they now find acceptable. Never allow yourselves to think that because you're no longer in daily, paid employment all you are fit for is to go for your morning paper or speak increasingly in pious platitudes and meaningless, safe clichés. If you have a mind now, you will - death or Alzheimer's permitting - have a life then. You will have more time to inform yourself about the world than you ever enjoyed when you were running after kids or working in full-time employment. You are currently, I imagine, au fait with Facebook and other social media. By the time you are my age there will be other forms of engagement available - learn to use them. 

So once more, I say I'm sorry. Sorry that my co-aevals lacked your vision and paid no attention to what you wanted. Sorry that we are the selfish and blinkered generation we turned out to be. Sorry that we were fearful, sorry that we were ignorant, sorry that we claim proudly to have no truck with social media, sorry that we didn't engage with you. 

We are not all like that, and I am one of the 27% of over-65s who voted YES. I'm still up for a fight, and I can see one looming as the Westminster machine starts coming apart. But it will now be in your lifetimes, not mine, that we will see off the idea that it is better to spend on our children what we currently spend on nuclear weapons, better to shape our own destiny than be allowed scraps from the Westminster table. 

Don't lose heart. Don't shut down the vision. And don't ever grow old inside your heads.

To boldly go ...

There are some fascinating things coming out of the woodwork now that Scottish Independence is once more in the news. This bizarre star ship comes from a cartoon video on NMA.TV - do watch the whole thing if you feel the need to retain a sense of humour, as some of my friends obviously do. The trouble is that the old adage of not discussing contentious subjects at the dinner table now seems to apply, really, to only one subject: religion and sex don't seem to have the same effect any more. But politics?

Today I was discussing the effect that living through the Thatcher years as a Scottish adult might have had on those who shared this experience. I said in my last post that I was able to view The Iron Lady equably because my experiences of these years were history - but I know that I am still capable of the instant emotional response to a quip such as Kelvin Mackenzie couldn't resist making last night on Question Time - one about the possible name of a putative Scottish currency, punning on the word "Euro". Yes, it was funny, in a way, and I bet he just couldn't resist it, even after volubly expressing his opinion that Scotland should have its own way. But it grated.

Neither Douglas Alexander nor, more impressively, Nicola Sturgeon responded to this. Perhaps they thought it detracted from the real question. Perhaps it is better just to ignore buffoonery. But the casual assumption that it's always going to be all right to laugh - affectionately or not - at "the Jocks" (really) begins to grate. Apparently Michael Portillo, later in the evening, referred to the "infantilisation" of the Scots over the years, and he may well be right.

It's a fact that for a while people like me were lulled by the sounds of Scottish voices at the helm of the UK government. But now? We're not lulled any more, and Cameron is in danger of recreating the Thatcher effect.

Interesting times.