Quintin Jardine's blog

So, JK Rowling has donated £1 million to Better Together. So what?

If I’d sold as many books, movies, memorabilia as she has, I’d donate a million to Yes, but I haven’t so all I can do is give it my support and declare that on September 18, I’ll cast my vote in favour of an independent Scottish Nation.

However I do have one thing to say to JK, before we cancel each other out at the polling station. A few weeks ago I did an event in Waterstone’s Sauchiehall Street store. I had a few minutes in hand,so I went for a wander, and was appalled to realise how downmarket the famous old thoroughfare has become. I saw poverty, depression and despair, and worse of all I saw resignation in people’s eyes. I doubt if too many of the folk I observed that day have been sampled by the pollsters. The good news is, they all have a vote.

I must admit that a small voice at the back of my head whispered, ‘Do I really want to be part of this?’ A few seconds later it was countered by a louder, angry voice that declared, ‘Too bloody right I do! This decline is the direct result of Westminster economic policy that has centralised more and more of Scotland’s wealth in and around London, and the already prosperous South East. The only way to reverse it is for our nation to become fully responsible for its own affairs.’

When I make my cross on that paper in three months, I won’t be doing it for myself alone, but for hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of my fellow Scots, whose hopes, aspirations and basic human rights have been ignored for too long by people who are still working against them. When I vote ‘Yes for Scotland!’ that’s exactly what I’ll mean. Those who are seduced by the dishonestly labelled ‘Better together’ crew will be voting for continued deprivation and social decline, and for the continuation of the system that has brought it about.

Is that what your million is meant to achieve, Joanne? If so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, for your wealth has been created largely by the affluent metropolitan class that has become rich itself at the expense of a truly fair and balanced society, where nobody is abandoned and left with nothing to do but bounce between the bookie and the boozer.

Whatever Alastair Darling’s advertising agency does with that million … and I hope most fervently it pisses it against the wall … already it has done one remarkable thing. It has taken an affluent, acquisitional bloke who’s seen himself as slightly conservative for all of his almost seven decades, and who’s never voted Labour in his life, and it’s made him realise that just like his old man, he’s a socialist at heart.