Positively awful

MANY people will be as astonished as i was to read Nicola Sturgeon’s latest assertion that Scots found the 2014 independence referendum a ‘very positive experience’.

Like many others, i found nothing remotely positive about the relentless online trolling carried out by the Nationalist’s infamous army of cybernats. Nor was i at all enthused by the sight of so many vandalised Better Together signs evident along roadsides and in fields wherever i went. Furthermore, i found nothing endearing about the Nationalist flashmobs rampaging their way through High Streets the length and breadth of Scotland.

However, on reading Miss Sturgeon’s recent comments about the whole thing actually being a ‘very positive experience’, my mind turned to the ‘Service of Unity’ held on September 21, 2014 at St Giles Cathedral on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

The service was led by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, The Rt Rev John Chalmers, who preached about the need to promote healing where there is hurt and unity where there is division. in his words, it was an attempt to ‘make it a little easier to stretch out the hand of friendship to our fellow Scots who did not support the side we supported’.

The service was attended by the leaders of the Scottish Conservatives, Scottish Labour and the Scottish Lib Dems, along with many prominent figures in Scottish politics from Holyrood, Westminster and the House of Lords. Hundreds of ordinary members of the public also made the effort to attend.

Notable, of course, was the complete absence of the very people who demanded that divisive referendum in the first place — namely Alex Salmond, who was then First Minister, and his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon.

The First Minister’s claim that the referendum was a ‘very positive experience’ is entirely at odds with the behaviour of both herself and her predecessor, given that neither had the good grace to attend such an important and symbolic event.

MS A MORRISON, Aberdeenshire.