Tuesday 1 December 2009

Suppose they gave a referendum and nobody came?

Yesterday Alex Salmond announced, to much bagpipe playing, military marching, blue face-painting and background saltire projection, a small referendum.

Which is the remarkable thing...it was a small announcement. The notable thing is just how small and insignificant are the ripples that the event has created.

To be sure, nationalists are in a ferment. The blogs and letter pages flow with rhetoric. But the nation is unmoved. There is a collective national shoulder-shrug.

This indfifference is best reflected on the Herald front page: a main splash about the Crisis in A&E in our hospitals and a single column side story about the referendum.

Because, truth be told, the Scottish people are more concerned about the real world of unemployment and economic uncertainty, of council cuts and no new schools or hospitals and how they and their families will survive the next few difficult months or years.

The referendum is an irrelevance to the real problems of the real people in the real world.

No doubt it will carry on through its dreary steps, with Alex Salmond waving and smirking and boasting as he usally does. But this time he will be performing in a void. Nobody but his own troops will be listening and even fewer will be caring.

Pity that we have to waste £9 million of public money on this SNP inspired diversion and distraction from our real problems....

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