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NOW, I am the least patriotic Scotsman in history.

I don’t do international football games or get teary eyed about Bannockburn or sing Flower Of Scotland or any of that stuff, but it still baffles me that half of Scotland are still even considering saying No.

I haven’t lived in Scotland for 20 years. I have made my life in London and the south-east. I don’t get a vote, and on Thursday, when it’s all happening, I’ll be in Los Angeles.

But I did live in Scotland for the best part of 30 years. I was raised there, born in the NHS and educated there from P1 to my university graduation. My family still lives there. So I might not have a vote but I’ve got plenty of opinions.

The Establishment in London is more powerful and elitist than it has been for generations. Men from the very richest, most privileged sliver of the population run the country for the benefit of themselves and those like them.

They scapegoat the easiest targets, most usually immigrants and welfare claimants (benefits fraud costs us around a billion a year) while protecting wealthy friends and favoured corporations (tax dodging, sorry, avoidance, costs us £25billion annually.)

Now, you might say, that is just is how the world rolls. Those in power help their friends and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and you dig 16 tons and what do you get?

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Maybe so but I believe, along with many others by the look of things, one simple thing – there would be less inequality in an independent Scotland.

In our literature, music and cinema, from the poetry of Robert Burns through to the novels of Irvine Welsh, we are at heart a nation that cares about what happens to each other, that will not automatically drop one another in the mire and step on their heads while grasping for a quick buck.

The NHS will be safer in an independent Scotland. Left to the likes of Cameron and Osborne for another four years the NHS will basically be a box of plasters and a rusted stethoscope. And you’ll have to queue for five hours to get a go on them.

Education will be safer in an ­independent Scotland. Around 70 per cent of my ­university education was paid by the state. My mum and dad worked very hard to provide the other 30 per cent.

If Scotland ends up going the way ­English unis have gone, it won’t be a question of the parents of working class children working hard to send them to university, they’ll be selling their ­kidneys online to do so.

An independent Scotland will eventually get rid of the disgrace that is Trident. This will also save Scotland enough money to pay for all that lovely healthcare and education. And unilateral nuclear disarmament was always one of the goals of the old Labour Party, remember? Back when Labour wasn’t Thatcher Lite, a division of Blair Industries.

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I believe if you vote No, your mouth must be shut forever over what Westminster does to you. Try this – imagine Scotland is currently independent and has to vote Yes to joining a union with England. Who in their right minds would do so?

I love England. I live and work here. My children have grown up here. I see no conflict between this and praying that my countrymen in Scotland never have to live another day under Conservative rule from London.

If you’re much over 35 you’ll remember it, all those elections spent watching ­Scotland turn red and the rest of the country turn blue and then seeing Margaret Thatcher arrive victorious into Downing Street.

Yes, people say, but aren’t we ­condemning lots of decent English ­people – particularly those in the North who have as much truck with the Tories as we do – to eternal Conservative rule? No, we’re not. It’s a myth. If you took the Scottish vote out of every election since World War II, ­England would still have got the ­government it voted for every time.

And still the reasons/excuses for saying No persist. The commentator George Monbiot suggests No voters could be suffering from a condition called “system justification”. This is defined as “a ­psychological process whereby existing social arrangements are legitimised even at the expense of personal and group ­interest”. Or, as we might say in Scotland, “It’s a bloody mess but it’s always been a bloody mess”.

If you put a frog in boiling water, it’ll jump straight out. If you put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil, it’ll sit right there until it dies. Scotland has been sitting in England’s gradually boiling water for so long that many people are used to it.

It feels normal. It’s this kind of thinking that leads people on the bottom of the pile, people for whom the system is ­obviously bad, to justify the status quo. The kind of thinking that leads to ­American phenomena like the Right Wing Poor – hillbillies living in trailers on 50 cents a week who vote Republican and think welfare is bad, who think that enormous economic inequality is a necessary feature of capitalism.

It’s the kind of thinking that leads to people getting hung up on stuff like currency. OH NO! CURRENCY! What currency will we have? WE DON’T KNOW SO WE MUST VOTE NO. Don’t be daft… one way or another it will be resolved like everything else. Do you really think we’ll all be walking about trying to pay for the ­shopping with sheep and boulders?

Also, choosing not to fire the Tories forever because you’re not sure what kind of money you’ll have in your pocket in a few years’ time is like turning down an all expenses paid, month-long Caribbean cruise on a super yacht staffed by supermodels because the toilet was painted the wrong colour. Get a grip.

And I don’t ­understand the whole, “Don’t leave us Scotland! Don’t go!” thing. Scotland isn’t leaving the planet. It’s not uprooting and relocating to the moon. It’ll still be right there where it’s always been. Easy to visit. Come and enjoy. Or not. It’ll be the same old Scotland – just free to choose its own government is all.

As Monbiot also pointed out last week: “Consider yourselves independent already and work backwards from there; then ask why you would sacrifice that freedom.’

Independence is so close you can taste it. If Scotland were independent right now, we would never give it away.

And there are no other words left to say apart from these, and you have no idea how unlikely it feels for me to be typing them: Rise now. And be that nation again.