New Year? Let’s have a decade of kindness...
FORGET giving up chocolate or finally starting that ISA. As we enter the new decade, the important promises, the ones that really matter, are the ones we can all get behind. Here then, I present Scotland’s New Year resolutions. No crossing your fingers, now.
1 NO MORE REFERENDUMS
We can’t take it any more. It’s done. Over. Finito. We went to the polls three years ago – and that should have been an end to it.
Whether you wanted Brexit or not (and I, personally, did not), that it will now go ahead almost feels like a relief. Come 2020, come what may, we’re out. After several years of political turbulence, of seeing politicians tearing lumps out of each other and not doing their day jobs while voting tooth and nail to reverse something that was voted for by the people in a democratic election, was unsettling to say the least.
And yet here in Scotland, the SNP is determined to keep banging the drum for independence, sowing the seeds of discontent, and bleating on about a second referendum. Well, they said once in a generation, and as far as the majority of the population is concerned, they should have meant it.
At the start of 2020 the Scottish Government’s focus should be on employment, education, improving the NHS and growing the economy. And wouldn’t that be a lot easier to do if they weren’t thinking about referendums every five minutes?
2 PROMOTE THIS GLORIOUS COUNTRY
SCOTLAND’S greatest asset is, well, Scotland. I mean look at the place. There’s a reason why people spend their life savings to travel half way around the world to visit this country, and it’s not because of our politics.
It’s easy to become a bit jaded about the natural wonders of our home nation but from Glencoe to the Cuillins, the Royal Mile to the Cairngorms, we are unbelievably blessed to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
So as the new decade arrives, isn’t it time to start making more of it? Tourism is now our biggest industry and that means more investment, more tax breaks and as much of a boost as possible. And we need to learn to promote Scotland abroad better too. That film studio that’s been mooted for years? Time to get it built.
3 LOOK AFTER OURSELVES…
A DePReSSING thought, I know, when breakfast for the past week has been a glass of Croft Original and three Ferrero Rocher, but Scotland isn’t the healthiest of countries, particularly when it comes to our waistlines and in particular, those of our kids.
It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Scottish children are now obese, leading to a lifetime of health issues and yet more pressure on our creaking NHS.
School meals need to be healthier, shops need to start promoting healthy options, but the ultimate responsibility is on us to provide more nutritious options for our children, and ourselves.
That doesn’t mean subsisting on kale smoothies and pumpkin seeds (perish the thought), but it could mean a few less takeaways and the presence of something green on the dinner plate (don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be sprouts).
4 … AND THE ENVIRONMENT
WITHOUT getting all Greta Thunberg about it, it’s all well and good living in one of the world’s most beautiful countries, but if we don’t take care of it, we could lose some of its greatest assets.
Some of Scotland’s beaches are in a terrible state, while the number of marine mammals washed up on our shores that have been killed by plastic is shocking.
Recycling has become far more de rigueur lately, and that is only to be encouraged.
Less single-use plastic, more using the right coloured bins on the right days, and a reminder to pick up after yourself when you’re roaming in the gloaming and with any luck, we’ll be right as rain.
5 BE KIND TO EACH OTHER
THIS could really be an extension of number one. Because it’s a sad fact that ever since 2014, the year of the independence referendum, a certain nastiness has pervaded Scottish society.
Politics has become a flashpoint for intolerance, bigotry and anger, while moderate voices have been all but drowned out.
Is there any chance we could just, well, tone it down a bit? As the late MP Jo Cox – an inspiration if ever there was one – once said, ‘we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’. Such wise words don’t seem like a bad way to start the new decade.