Scots thriller writer, Val McDermid, said in a recent interview that she is setting her next novel in 1979 – because she doesn’t believe that writing about the present day is possible at the moment: “Nothing you write is going to have the same meaning when the book is published”. I think that is a very telling observation about the volatility of our lives in Sept 2020; that any depiction of our current reality, could be unrecognisable within months.
McDermid is gloomy, believes that the real ‘Corona catastrophe’ is yet to come; that when the Govt stops propping up wages, paying us to eat out etc, a significant number of citizens, whose lives were precarious to start with, will be in a whole new reality. In the coming winter months, an almost certain second wave, will see huge job losses, families will lose their homes, even break up. As more people become more desperate, the social capital which binds our communities will be tested.
In terms of our own psychological survival, we need to tell ourselves a story – our interpretation of what’s going on; I turn again to an old faithful: Margaret Wheatley’s ‘The Place beyond Fear and Hope’. (This is a summary she wrote in 2018). Wheatley describes the state of being liberated from results, giving up on outcomes – doing what feels right rather than ‘most effective’. ‘Hopeless’, she says, is free from fear and can feel quite liberating. She ends: “This is how I want to journey through this time of increasing uncertainty: groundless, hopeless, insecure, patient, clear and together”.
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On Tuesday, Nicola Sturgeon set out the SNP’s Plan for Government – an impressive programme which includes several substantial measures. The same afternoon, Greater Glasgow was returned to partial lockdown, and our media promptly ignored everything else; such is the enduring dominance of the virus. These are some of the key measures from Sturgeon’s statement – which political commentary will gradually address. I choose the critical importance of the Youth Guarantee – Scottish Govt’s commitment to supporting our 16-24 year-olds in their transition to the labour market. Economy Secretary, Fiona Hyslop got Sandy Begbie to write the initial report, which can be downloaded here.
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Writing (in the Spectator) about returning to Scotland following the death of his father, Andrew Marr comments, “ The opinion polls confirm what general conversation suggests – that Scotland is likely to leave the UK before the end of this parliament…nothing is inevitable, but, at the moment, the Scotland my father knew is slipping away”.
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Do British citizens have the ‘right’ to a passport – have we a legal right to leave and return to the country at will – can we ‘assume’ Consular assistance’? This Conversation piece about the situation in Australia asks interesting questions: do Covid and Brexit mean our days of carefree trips abroad are over?
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My support for Scottish independence transcends economic arguments; we are an enterprising people and it’s perfectly obvious that the model of the Nordic social democracies is open to us. George Kerevan, a pro-independence, leftie economist, argues in this Bella Caledonia piece, that there is a very strong economic case for independence.
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Citizen Advice Bureaux (CABs) sit at the interface between the very poorest citizens and their access to help – including state benefits (the tragic death of Mercy Baguma). I simply don’t believe the story this week that Council cuts will close 5 Glasgow CABs. Civil society in Scotland still has sufficient ‘voice’ to prevent the more obvious political blunders.
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It’s over ten years since Margaret Wheatley’s essay The Place beyond Hope and Fear made such an impression on me – still does.
“When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure. Life now insists that we encounter groundlessness. Systems and ideas that seemed reliable and solid dissolve at an increasing rate. People who asked for our trust betray or abandon us. Strategies that worked suddenly don’t. Groundlessness is a frightening place, at least at first, but as the old culture turns to mush, we would feel stronger if we stopped searching for ground, if we sought only to locate ourselves in the present and do work from here”.
