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MY late wife Margo used to call me Grumpy Grandpa.

Actually, I’m angry Grandpa. Angry at what will befall Scotland’s young people if we remain with the UK.

We have 10 grandchildren. As each one reached S1, I wrote them a “Grandpa letter” of advice and I have talked to them individually as they have made their way through the education system.

I have had to tell them that if it’s a No vote they must achieve the highest level of skill or academic qualifications in order that they can get out to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the USA.

I don’t want to be sitting at home one future Christmas Day and get a phone call from a great-grandchild living in one of those countries and whom I would be able to see only occasionally, if at all.

But that will happen to me and to many reading this. My concern is not only about my grandchildren, but for everyone else’s grandchildren.

I am making a bleak forecast and I have no hesitation in doing it. If we get a No vote, there will be a mass exodus of our young people over the following years.

Here’s a truth: Better Together, like military intelligence, is an oxymoron. I am being polite.

We must look at the UK in its historical context. There has been a British/English empire: an economic, political and military superpower.

But, like every empire, it has risen, declined and has gone into the stages of final fall. Those final stages of fading power are what we are in now.

There is proof of this fading power, in every area, economic, military, and socially.

But before I deal with that, think critically about the No side’s boast of 300 years of success. It was successful for the rich, but what about the workers?

If it was so successful for us, why were children in Scotland when I was a boy stricken with rickets?

Why did the cities of Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh have terrible slums? Why was there such high infant mortality? Why was the working class haunted by fear of lay-offs and unemployment?

Let me turn back to the end of empire. The UK is skint. Let me quote an editorial from the Tory Daily Telegraph, referring to the much vaunted ‘recovery’: “But how strong a recovery is it? National debt is at £1.3trillion and growing; and the deficit, which in 2010 was forecast to be negligible by now, was £100billion in the last financial year.

“For all the talk of rebalancing the economy we still seem unable to stage recovery that is not reliant upon rising house prices.”

The debt is heading towards £1.5trillion. After the 2015 election, there will be £25billion cuts in public services. Balls of Labour is signed up to them too. The Army is being reduced to 80,000, which means only around 20,000 actual fighting troops, hardly enough to defend Cornwall.

An aircraft carrier is to be launched without aircraft, because there is no money for them.

On foreign policy, the UK elite hangs on to America, the price of which is to act as its poodle.

Have you ever wondered why the Queen, at her Jubilee, sailed up the Thames in a wee boat?

Every other Jubilee she, and those before her, reviewed the fleet. There is no fleet now to review. When that yacht capsized in the Atlantic recently and a search was launched for survivors, the US and Canada put up maritime aircraft with all the latest technology for search and rescue.

The MOD here put up a transport aircraft, with the pilot looking out of the window.

These are not the only signs of decline and fall. What is happening in our cities, towns and villages tells the same story, but with tragic human consequences.

As the UK gets poorer, it does not mean we have fewer rich people. It is a characteristic of poor countries that the gap between the rich and others gets wider.

We have an explosion of food banks, needed not just by those on benefits, but also on low wages.

A new word has entered the lexicon of the welfare state – “sanctioned”. Be late for an appointment at the Jobcentre, and you will get no money.

We now have people starving in a country, Scotland, where we export food.

Last week, Julie Webster of the Maryhill Food Bank told of a woman with two children who came to them on a Tuesday. None of them had eaten anything from the previous Friday.

Food banks fed 22,000 Scottish children last year. That is the human price many of our people are paying for Scotland being yoked to a British state that has only one way to go – down.

Is this really as good as it can get for us? We have everything a country needs to succeed. We are rich in energy. We have 21billion barrels of oil in the North Sea.

There is oil and gas in the Firth of Clyde – something they hid from us because of Trident’s need to safely navigate those waters.

Just think what exploiting that oil resource will do for North Ayrshire and Clydeside in terms of new jobs, because of new orders for supply vessels and new rigs.

London could have relocated Trident to let us create jobs around what would have been a new industry, but preferred to keep us in the dark – and poor.

If we vote No, that oil will remain plugged, and people will suffer unemployment that need not be.

The OECD place Scotland as the 14th richest country in the world in terms of resources. We have the potential to rebuild a manufacturing base. We have an advanced agriculture base,

universities among the best in the world, we export more than we import (a sign of fundamental economic strength).

We have everything going for us, except the power to use it, which can only come from

independence.

The referendum is about power. If we have it, our young have opportunity here. If we throw it away, we throw them away too.

Yesterday, Tom Brown wrote a piece that came from the heart.

I am a purely head man. I strip the myth from history and look at the realpolitik, examine the economics, the resources, the potential of our people, and know what we can do.

That’s why I am speaking at public meetings across Scotland and campaigning so hard for a Yes.

RECORD VIEW: Jim Sillars- A respected man

JIM Sillars is one of the towering figures of the nationalist movement.

In today’s paper, he writes a deeply personal essay about his grandchildren.

He argues that a No vote in September will be so bad for Scotland that his grandchildren will have no option but to emigrate.

You may agree, you may disagree. But it’s absolutely right that the voice of Sillars – an old-school conviction politician – is heard.

Even at the age of 75, he has been on the campaign trail day in and day out.

And for that alone, he should be held in the utmost respect.

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