How to train your zombie novel

Ok, time to come clean...

For years now, I have built a career upon being one of those bad-ass writers who will not write spec work.  Writer's block is not a thing.  You pay me in advance and in a currency of my choice.  You can crit my work -  go on, make my day, for I am not like other writers.  You cannot make me cry.  I am detached, analytical, my brain is a series of wheels and cogs. Sharp to the touch. I will analyse your ideas, harvest the things I can use from your critique, discard those I consider to be merely opinion as opposed to analysis.  I can do all these things because I have no emotional attachment to my work.  It is a collection of letters and phrases, each deliberate in its deployment for the singular purpose of meeting a remit, producing a product that behaves as it is supposed to.  I am a master of my craft and you will pay for my expertise.

And then I accidentally wrote a novel.

I say accidentally... it really was.  After the collapse of a particularly difficult film venture, the loss of 9 months of income, 12 months of endeavour and a lifetime of pride, it just seemed like the thing to do.  Nobody asked for it, nobody was expecting it, waiting to read it.  It was my secret and it became the receptacle for a sonic wave of anger, frustration, disappointment, but also hope, pride, political awakening and connection to a city, and in turn, for four of its imaginary denizens, their components plucked from people I have loved, feared, loathed and stood in awe of.

I did every single thing I teach my students not to.  I wrote without a plan.  I prioritised the work to the detriment of paid employment, regular meals and personal hygiene. (There is a dark corner of my couch that has seen some things)  My fiancé is still deeply mystified as to why I would seek that moment to expend that much energy when so much was at stake.  I couldn't stop.  I wrote without much understanding of the world of prose.  I was an interloper, charging across vast unknown plains of words and encountering precious little resistance.  2 thousand words per day, 3 thousand, 5...  It became something that consumed me, a punch bag inside my own head that I could unload upon.  And fuck it felt good...

Once I let the secret slip, good friends whispered wise words of caution as the word count approached 70, 80, 90 thousand.  The thing started to take shape.  Started to become something unexpected.  It had completely broken out of what weakened remit I had chained it with and was rampaging loose under its own momentum, savaging the things I was supposed to be doing, ripping out the throat of anything that threatened its reign of terror.

And then, one day it was done.

I couldn't look at it for almost a week, or much of anything else for that matter.  I left it to skulk, pad around, perhaps in the hope that it might of its own volition find a way out into the world that did not involve me at all.  But no.  It waited... with something almost resembling obedience.  It now had expectations of me that I would have to try to meet.

It felt like taking a rabid dog to the vet.  I coaxed it out from under the couch, ran my fingers through its grammar one last time in the hope of calming it before forcing it into the pet carrier of a 50 page sample and a synopsis that upon reflection was infinitely less revealing of its origins and purpose than this article.  Needless to say, it howled all the way there, scratching at its split infinitives which were becoming raw and infected.  It didn't matter.  It would soon be out of my hands and into those of the dreaded agent, whom I was hoping would be able to diagnose clean bill of health, and perhaps proscribe a sedative for us both.

For 12 days, I sat in the digital waiting room.  At first, it felt strange not to have it around.  It felt odd to watch occasional home improvement shows of an evening.  This is, it seems behaviour utterly incompatible with the life of a professional novelist, especially one bent on writing a whole novel in three months.  Even so, with it out of the house, I began to humanise again, began to eat and bathe regularly, began to work on writing jobs that pay actual money.  I had almost returned to pre-novel levels of paranoia and neurosis when the word came in.

My novel... my poor, angry, rabid, vibrant lurcher of a novel whilst otherwise reasonably healthy, if somewhat over written, had been diagnosed with a terminal case of literary fiction.  The saddest part was, it didn't seem any the wiser about its diagnosis.  If anything, it seemed pleased to see me, as if its poor undeveloped novel brain couldn't comprehend how ill it actually was.  At least it didn't appear to be in any pain.  Like all concerned owners without any real expertise in the area, I took to the internet in an attempt to better understand the diagnosis.

For the reference of anyone else who suffers a similar diagnosis, it is important to note the following.

1.  If one types 'literary fiction' into google, its search engine helpfully adds 'is dead' as item one in the auto-complete search bar.

2.  Most of the articles you then find date back to around 2010.  My poor savage beast was as Will Self puts it, a 'Stillborn novel', written by a misguided person intent on some sort of zombie necromancy.

3.  On the plus side, there is a new wave of articles entitled 'Literary fiction is dead articles are dead.' which would seem to indicate that so dead is literary fiction that even articles bemoaning its death are now also extinct.

The news was difficult to take.  For a while, I didn't want to give up.  I looked up radical new treatments of zombie literary fiction having some success in America.  New experimental interventions that might prolong the life of my novel.  For most, the research was still in its early stages and the techniques were not as yet approved for use by the Times Literary Supplement.  My heart sank.  The agent himself had only suggested two highly drastic possible treatments, both requiring intensive surgery and long periods of medication that might change the mood of my novel, alter its behaviour...  The first was to re-envisage it as a thriller, involving the removal of characters and an increase in plot driven narrative.  The second was more drastic.  It involved the forced neutering and reconstitution of my novel as a 'Young Adult' book...

I carefully mulled over all of these options.  Both were invasive and painful treatments, the second requiring an unrequited sexual tension that I thought would be hard for my novel to bare.  My first reaction was that in order to spare my novel any further pain, and though it would be very sad it might be kinder and easier on everyone concerned to self publish it down.  But it seemed wrong to do that to such a young book that was as yet unaware of its symptoms.  Instead, I decided that it could perhaps be retrained, to somehow make the leap from angry diatribe to something more universal.  (When you try to put 'commercial literary fiction' into google, nothing comes up.)  My novel did not seem to care.

So, with the rolled up newspaper of literary theory, the chew toy of genre identity, and a firm leash attached to its authorial voice, I am going to attempt to make it something more obedient, whilst at the same time, preserving something of the wild eyed savagery of its soul.  This will be a challenge, to be sure, but then if necromancy was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Or perhaps not...

Decision Day

Decision Day

The road has been a long one but the day is finally here

A great delight of blue and white for all that hold it dear

A nation asked a question and an answer close at hand

We look inside our bravest hearts and take our final stand

I hate no man and dare to hope no man nor lass hates me

One Scot shall feel she’s ripped in half - another feels he’s free

But hope or fear one thing is clear – Our nation is awake

Let strength and pride and passion drive the choice that we must make.

Whatever warrior wins the day, that moment, there and then

We all must vow – no way, no how shall Scotland sleep again

Our future rests in our own hands, in all that we can give

Both Aye and Naw will work to build a place we’re proud to live

A Scot is not a person who lets bitterness succeed

A Scot does not define herself by malice, fear or greed

A Scot will fight and die until their cause be lost or won

A Scot forgives his foe the very day the battle’s done

I look upon my folk today - my heart swells up with pride

I see a dream that might come true, I see a dream denied

I wish I could be there with you as our people have their say

I send you all my love and hope on this decision day.

Nick Bain

A proud and hopeful Scot

Who Owns Scotland? A final post on Independence

As the countdown to THE VOTE enters its last exhausting phase, a nation is well and truly holding its breath.  My own family is divided on the subject, as are my friends.  None of these are people I would characterise as idiots - some are frighteningly intelligent in fact.

But there's something I've noticed in the last panicked, frantic week since the YouGov poll so terrified the Westminster parties.  My thinking on this matter has gone beyond the poll, beyond this one country.  The last week has led me to ask a question that uses Scotland as its test case but could be equally asked of the UK as a whole or any country that purports to hold itself to true democratic standards.

So who owns Scotland?  A space alien arriving in the last week might have leapt to some strange conclusions if they'd been held in a secret bunker and been forced to watch rolling news.

So here are some suggestions:

1.  Gordon Brown

In the heat of the poll shocks, a rather strange saviour appeared on the horizon - None other than Gordon Brown - the same entirely discredited figure lampooned for years in the British media and at least once a week at PMQs since his ignominious resignation post crash, post the end of boom and bust.  But maybe I'm wrong.  By dint of being 'the most famous Scottish politician' and therefore appealing to Scots because, in a fit of faultless logic, he's Scottish, Gordon rode in at the 11th hour to table the version of Devo-Max that was set to save the Union.  Gordon's ideas, far from being anything resembling national policy or any formal proposal were, in Gordon's own words, something he'd concocted in conversations with his own constituents - surely Kirkaldy's first non sheep related contribution to any national debate.  They did not, and do not, as far as I can work out, have even the support of the now leader of Gordon's own party.  They are a blueprint for constitutional change that has not been voted for, ratified or even discussed in either the Scottish or UK parliaments. And yet... they may form the basis of the future constitutional makeup of a United Kingdom in the event of a 'No' vote.  This is, as far as I can make out, extremely odd behaviour for a democratic country.

2.  The Markets

The markets are nervous.  The markets dislike uncertainty.  The markets will make Scotland suffer in the event of a Yes vote.  Alistair Darling and David Cameron are loathe to unsettle the markets, to upset them, to do anything that might make them respond negatively to the UK as a whole, never mind Scotland...  Who the **** are the markets?  Are talking about the movers and shakers of large scale capital and commercial investment?  Are we talking about 'big business'?  Are we talking about those who hold the largest slices of UK debt?  Are we talking about the financial operators and investment bankers whom the UK government just bailed out?  The great financial wizards that just about sunk their own version of capitalism only a handful of years ago?  There are a few terrifying questions here that need addressing.

A.  When did I elect the markets to act as guarantors and overseers of British or Scottish political policy?  Are we to consult the markets on all the democratic decisions we try to make within our political system?  Should I ask the markets to educate my children (Or in my case my cat), dictate our health service policy (The markets also dislike the NHS by the way - its a closed protectorate founded upon 'dangerous socialist principles'.  The market would seek to turn it into a private free for all, run for profit - should we do that too?)

B.  Given that the markets misgivings are in large part being solicited, encouraged and presented by elected UK politicians and not just random back benchers - the Prime Minister and leaders of the next two major parties (Such as we can still call the Lib Dems that), am I to assume that British politics is already largely in hock to big business and capital brokers - that our political system is little more than a multi-coloured layer of administration in which small arguments can be had but the same agenda is preserved?  Business in particular is not shy about its motivations.  It acts in its own interest, always.  This is why our country at least attempts to maintain the pretence of not being run as a PLC.

C.  Scottish Independence is no small matter of branding or PR.  It is real politics.  of course the markets don't like it.  They hate real politics in almost all its forms because we theoretically have a political system in which power ultimately lies with you and I.  There are few things that scare the markets, and indeed the politicians more than an 85% turnout for ANYTHING.  They would rather we kept our expressions of populism confined to X factor.  Genuine populist debate that could shake or redefine the comfortable status quo will not be popular with the markets.  they would rather have politicians who don't do anything and leave them to get on with things their way.  Speaking of which...

3.  The Leaders of the three Westminster political parties.  Westminster politics is a sickly beast right now.  We are led by a PR man for whom principles are something that less evolved beings worry about.  Cameron has backed down to big business on taxation, on alcohol minimum pricing, cigarette packaging and on the green incentives he championed and then withdrew from because it was hard.  he has no demonstrable political backbone and only takes any sort of stand where he perceives there will be a 100% chance of success.  Even then, he still misreads the political landscape as he did over Syria.  He has spectacularly misread the tone and quality of the debate in Scotland and has lacked both foresight and courage to meet the arguments head on.  He could have turned the whole thing into a damp squib by simply conceding to having Devo Max on the ballo
t paper - no independence - no cost to the better together campaign given they are supposed to support more powers.  (Funny how they weren't up for that one)

He is opposed by probably the weakest leader of the Labour Party in living memory (And even I can remember some pretty dreadful ones)  He has next to no personal charisma, no core group of labour voters with whom he has any resonance - too ineffectual to appeal to the liberal intellectulatte, too sheltered, pretentious and socially ignorant to have any presence with the core of working class Labour voters.  Too weak and close to the unions to win over the centre ground South.  I'm sure he is a really nice guy, but he can't deliver a coherent message to the point that his message regardless of its content can only be incoherence.

Then there's Nick Clegg...

It is interesting to note that UK politics is in such a state of turmoil that though a broadly unpopular right wing government is in coalition with a morally bankrupt centrist party, opposed by a centre leaning Labour Party.  In this climate, with its whole bias leaning right, only the UK could come up with UKIP, a party of protest TO THE RIGHT OF ALL OF THIS!

These people do not have the qualifications to dictate the terms of devo max to the people of Scotland from proposals drawn from thin air and carved up between them, without taking those terms to the House of Commons for approval.  They cannot do that of course because English MPS would use it as an opportunity to answer the West Lothian Question and seek to remove Scottish votes from English issues.  They are hugely opposed to what they perceive as another 'giveaway' to the Scots.  This is why I hope the answer to my question is in fact the below.

4.  You

Call me old fashioned, call me naive.  I still believe that the people of Scotland (And as an ex pat I sadly do not include myself in this) should be able to come to their own decision and for that decision to mean something.  This is about self determination at its most fundamental.  It is about redefining our relationship with our politics - to assume full accountability for the policies we chose to let define us.  We could linger on as the socially liberal corner of a UK that seems to regard our values with less and less respect, but where would that actually get us, would that galvanise a people with many gifts, many strengths and many problems to take some hard choices of our own.  A yes vote will not be a vote for an easy life.  It will be a vote to step onto the international stage and test our identity, culture and principles against the best and worst the world has to offer.  We will be empowered to build a country around the national conscience we pride in Scotland and be expected to defend and uphold its values in the world.  I think we can do it and once we are on the road to that, the markets, big business and even the UK's politicians (with luck new ones) will begin to see the opportunities that only a new country can present.

So when you all come to cast your vote, know that I am deeply jealous of your ability to properly take part, the chance you now have before you.  I ask nothing more than that you take your decision for the best possible reasons in a way that asserts the power of a people to determine their fate.  There is still some strength left in a galvanised people with the ambition to make a real difference, both inside and outside of their own country.

Take that chance, and there is nothing you cannot overcome.

An open letter to Alex Salmond on the eve of the second debate

Dear Alex,

Late is the hour when this non dom Scot forces his way into the role of your digital corner man.  I know it's unlikely you'll see these words before battle is joined this evening, but there are a few things we need to discuss.

1.  The odds.  Alex, I want to say a huge thank you as a Scot and as someone who loves politics for your willingness to lead.  Knowing the numbers you have tried to carry a public sceptical of most things that come out of a politician's mouth and sold them an idea, and not an easy idea at that.  You have done this in the face of odds that most observers would surely agree to be nigh insurmountable.  You have taken on the UK government, the BBC (Whose reporting bias was revealed by this research in case anyone doubted it, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajd4R-9BEIw&app=desktop), Scots with vested interests down south, many of whom hold powerful positions, foreign leaders and institutions who hold a natural conservative position against constitutional reform, not to mention the 10 - 15 percent of people living in Scotland who identify themselves as English.  You have done this, and both you, and the argument are still standing.

2.  The semantics.  Any half reasonable person can understand that nobody can predict the future.  Scotland currently lies within a union that has one hundred detailed constitutional arrangements within it. Alex, you are being asked to provide the same level of certainty about an arrangement that does not yet exist, and can only exist through protracted negotiations with parties opposing the basis upon which the discussion would take place.  It is therefore impossible to provide such certainty and you should say so.  People are not stupid and straight talking is what will be ultimately respected.  If I may suggest a line - "The pound belongs to Scotland as much as to England.  An independent Scotland will fight like a tiger to keep the pound as our national currency and given the asset position of Scotland upon separation from the UK, it is likely that we will succeed in keeping it.  If the UK government is unwilling to countenance this arrangement and moves to block us, we will extract via negotiations, substantive compensation as to offset any currency transition.  A new currency is not something to fear.  The pound whilst familiar, warm and cuddly is not a friendly currency for exports, nor for tourism.  Were we to create a new currency we could do so in such a way as to mirror the pound or something different that was advantageous for the state we intend to build."

Incidentally.  We will not break up Britain by becoming independent.  We will still be British, or indeed Britons if you want to go back to the Romans.  Britain as a geographical expression for our Islands will be the same as Scandinavia serves to describe and define four distinct nations.  The United Kingdom does not own Britain.  It is only 300.  Britain has been on maps for two thousand years.  Alex, please tell them that cos it's doing my head in.

3.  The reasons for independence.  There is more to a national identity than money.  There is more to it than GDP or oil or even the NHS.  There is more to it even than getting rid of the Tories and staying within Europe.  There is more to it even than the assets of Scotland staying in Scotland to serve and benefit the people of Scotland.  It is about building something new.  It is about doing business in a different way.  It is about taking a high, hard road to building a nation state from a white paper up.  It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a stable, democratic, potentially prosperous nation to become a country of its own volition.  It is a chance to focus on our strengths, to innovate, design, open up our land with proper roads, pull in investment, develop our infrastructure.  It is to be determined - self determined as a nation and to embark upon a journey that will begin with yes not end with it.  There will be challenges and issues and problems.  There will likely be moments where we think sod it, we should have stayed in but the destination is what motivates us not the journey.  The journey is the bit we must have the stomach for.  Guts is something of a national characteristic, and I'm not just referring to our obesity stats...

4.  We can do this.  The only remaining question is the how to convince those who are still open to any form of convincing.  The best way is to play to the strengths of Scotland, the strengths of its calm, rational open parliament. The reason for independence is change.  People are hungry for change.  They need to stop being told that under independence everything will stay the same.  It won't and that's ok.  We want to be different or we wouldn't be having this conversation.  The people who want the easiest road will not vote yes.  Not in the cold light of the ballet box.  Independence is not the vote for a peaceful life... not at first anyway.  A vote for independence is a vote for a generation of hard work. Not sound bite politics but hard politics of the kind the UK simply does not have the stomach for.  This will likely be the Edinburgh trams x100, in no small part due to the army of people who will, like the oft quoted Darian Scheme, want to see us fail... but the result could be a nation that really truly is the envy of the world, separate from a fading UK institution, unable to come to terms with its imperial past or its European future, lurching to the right, preaching union and isolation at the same time and pandering to xenophobic elements just because they perceive them to be popular, unable to defeat its reliance upon class, old school tie and nepotism.  Scotland has so many gifts but none greater than its people who understand their place in the world, who are welcoming and welcomed across the globe.  Scotland doesn't fear Europe.  It doesn't fear anyone because it is confident in its identity, even with its headache-inducing national instrument.

5.  So go for it Alex.  Give it your absolute best of... well, British.  (We will still be British after a yes vote - please counter that idiot claim).  Please don't try to be too clever, to fit yourself origami style into a tiny box of relativism and semantics.  You are not a small man, Alex.  You're one of only a few politicians who has believably eaten a pastie.  You do not want to be dancing on the head of a pin, or a pound for that matter.  Leave everything out there.  Don't come away with regrets.  Don't be so strategic that you forget the very energy that will drive this is passion. That's what we need to see.  I realise you are probably more knackered than anyone could possibly be.  I realise that large sections of the media will call the debate for Darling before it even begins.  I and you must realise all of that and do it anyway.  Do it for Scotland.  Not for the Scotland we have now, but the one we could have ten years from now.  Whatever happens, we will be proud of Scotland, proud of the campaign, and dare I say it proud of your courage for bringing this great debate to this, the last and steepest hurdle.

Good luck.

Nick (dirty ex pat) Bain

Joey Barton and the Death of Ugly Girls

This week in Pakistan, a woman was stoned to death in the street by her own family for marrying the wrong man (Who, incidentally it turns out, had strangled his previous wife in order to marry her)

Tonight, on BBC Question Time, equality took a similar leap backwards as Joey Barton compared deciding whom to vote for in the recent European elections as 'Like a choice between four ugly girls".  BBC QT reported that this remark was made 'to audience boos'.  There were some, along with more than a few chuckles which went unreported on the programme's twitter feed.

The crowd's reaction was interesting.  Instantaneous amusement, followed by the sudden doubting pause as if the audience sensed the statement had tripped a taboo somewhere and though further analysis proved inconclusive, it was safer to disapprove.  There must be something wrong with a simile about four hypothetical ugly girls...  Mustn't there?

I'm confused.  Are we to suppose that this remark was offensive to 'ugly girls' and that as one rather self righteous audience member went on to threaten, legions of the wronged cosmetically challenged Valkiries would descend on Barton's twitter avatar and unleash the full fury of their negative self image?

Barton, cornered on national TV and clearly in unfamiliar waters, apologised to the mob, and in doing so, came across as profoundly reasonable, unlike those queueing up to castigate him.

Perhaps we are supposed to believe that in this enlightened age, 'ugly girls' no longer exist.  We have evolved far beyond selecting our friends and partners upon such shallow measures.  Everyone is beautiful all of the time, unless they are men, like Ed Milliband who recently managed the ugliest human consumption of a bacon sandwich without the digital human rights police queueing up to defend him.

When pushed on another question, the BBC was later willing to admit that the country has a few fat people in it, and all agreed that 'something must be done' to curb the rising tide of obesity.  Perhaps the obese should go the same way as ugly girls - exiled into an alternate BBC political reality where we don't talk about them for fear that the offence makes them reach for another frozen pizza.  (There is pizza in this alternate reality)

And what if I'm ugly and obese?  I might start to feel victimised, especially if I was also in favour of a third runway at Heathrow.

This kind of hysteria is exactly what makes most political shows completely unwatchable.  You end up with dumbed down drivel from politicians who speak with the same faux outrage and reverence as they perceive to be the public mood.

I don't want to live in a world where I can't deploy a simile for fear of a monstering from the mindless twitterate or the even more mindless UKIP representative who climbed somewhat unsteadily onto the bandwagon, perhaps motivated if not by her ugly opinions, than by her ugly haircut which had clearly taken offence on her behalf.

Please can the people who take it upon themselves to police these things just stop removing the last vestiges of humanity from the airwaves, lest the whole thing resemble a conversation between preprogrammed drones - good looking drones of course as ugly ones don't exist.

An Independent England?

Green and pleasant future?

The upcoming referendum has given me cause to re-examine some thoughts I have carried for a long time.  As I mentioned in my previous post, my own position as a Scot living in England somewhat compromises me should Bannockburn part II break out in the coming months.  Saying that, it does help when formulating the other half of the debate - the one studiously ignored by the British media so far, that of the makeup and character of England, post UK. (My friends in Northern Ireland and Wales, I haven't forgotten you, but I'd like to focus on England in this post because for me, England will suffer most from a diminution of the British state)

A few years back, and in large part as a response to immigration, various programmes were made about the ideas of Britishness and Englishness.  There was a nervousness at the appropriation of the flag of St George and even Churchill by the BNP.  Our attempt to set down some kind of behavioural contract with migrants to the UK showed up a weakness at the heart of British identity.

"A sense of fair play."  "The Royal Family"  "Wimbledon and Ascot"  "Elgar"  "Cricket"  "Afternoon tea"  "The Village Green"  "Tolerance"

The old lion casts a long shadow

It is no accident that most of these would appear to be more English than British.  (In Scotland we deplore fair play because it means we lose at everything)  But another key point falls under discussion here.  These identities seem to hail from an era that whilst not totally forgotten, would not seem to chime with the modern nation to the same degree.  They also have the unmistakeable whiff of class - white upper middle.  Then there is the great denial…  The missing word that could easily encapsulate much of the aforementioned but is always conspicuous in its absence from BBC polls.  "Empire"

It occasionally jolts my woad-smeared claymore-wielding reality to remember that I am in fact engaged to an Englishwoman and have spent close to a decade of my adult life in England's two largest cities with relatively few excursions into the places where I perceive this brand of chocolate box Englishness to live.  My fiancé is a Londoner.  If I call her English she seems to regard it as some kind of implicit insult.  (Maybe because the word sounds different when a Scot says it)  Saying that, she is, though born here, from a genetic standpoint 100 percent Caribbean (and as such, has a number of issues with the trappings of this Imperial identity).  Therein lies a disconnect that is very very English.

I love London.  It is the most exhilarating place I have ever lived.  It is outward facing, international, vibrant, open-minded and if the latest stats are to be believed, less than half white English in population.  London is the biggest city in Western Europe, and by some distance.  It could be its capital.  In an unguarded moment at a party, I once voiced that I didn't regard London as part of England, and meant it as a compliment. (How to win friends and influence people)  I suspect I was probably young, stupid and inebriated at the time but looking at the shaping perceptions around these arguments, I begin to see something in the honesty of the idealist drunk.

The BBC, in their recent documentary, "Mind the Gap" pointed to the growing economic imbalances between London and the rest of Britain.  The programme did not however, address the cultural or political gap, one espoused by John Cleese.

Robin Hood speaks out

"London is no longer an English city which is why I love Bath," 

Perhaps more tellingly, he went on to explain that the reasons were routed in something beyond racial demographics.

"There were disadvantages to the old culture, it was a bit stuffy and it was more sexist and more racist. But it was an educated and middle-class culture. Now it's a yob culture. The values are so strange."

I love John Cleese.  I can sing all the lyrics to the One Eyed Trouser Snake, but as a Scot, I don't hanker for this vanishing English idyl he describes.  Those moments where I have seen it in modern England, I've noticed that its character has changed.  It's a scared culture, nervous of the future, unable to redefine itself and critically, unable to find the language to defend that which they feel is under threat without straying into that of UKIP with its xenophobic, isolationist undertones.

As an economic migrant to London, the characteristics that seem to define the English identity of the media's home counties seem to draw a great deal of influence from this reactionary dialogue and the ever present spectre of class identity.  The monarchy is lauded, enforced and strengthened by an almost state tv-like sycophancy from the BBC.  The government and most of the key positions in media and business are monopolised by this same elite.  Britain languishes amongst the worst developed economies for social mobility.

Is it cricket?

As an outsider, it seems to me that England, as the dominant shaping force of the 'British' identity of the south needs some sense of superiority - some sense of distinction between the Englishman and the 'other', whether it be EU migrants, the Scots, or the post imperial migrants of the Caribbean and subcontinent.  This identity seems to feel that it can only exist if some sense of Englishness can be exclusively reserved for the historical ideal, the England that ruled the waves and the archetypal white Englishman of Jerusalem - an England for the English, but retaining the rights of empire to go where he chooses and do what he chooses.  The whole concept of "Tolerance" as a national characteristic for me contains an implied superiority.  "I may think your way of life is strange or backward but due to my Englishness I will tolerate it, and by extension, you, in my country."

Here is for me, the fundamental reason for Scottish independence.  In this characteristic, Scots and English are of fundamentally different outlook.  Scotland, in part because of its relationship with England and its economic history has always looked outward.  England has shielded us from the Romans, the Danes, the Jutes and the Normans, absorbed the Lion's share of the imperial hangover, most of the migration. Now England looks inward, anxious to protect the illusive sense of Englishness that has no answer to what London, its capital has become.  An England, shorn of its Britishness would be a place in which these conflicts of identity would have to be faced.  A likely Conservative majority.  An end to the grand isolation with a potential independent European minded country sharing the same island.

The DFM - Looks terrible, tastes amazing

Scotland has a growing mixture of identities, but also has a defined national identity to share not to protect.  The Scottish identity is robust and needs no protection.  Even if that identity is couched in a historically inaccurate film starring an Australian, the tartan tradition or Highland Cathedral (Both invented by English people) ceilidh dancing in which anyone can take part, the worst sounding national instrument in the world, the best tasting national drink. (Whiskey, or Irn Bru if your religion prohibits the former and you don't mind umber coloured lips) Such culinary contributions as the Haggis and the Deep Fried Mars Bar.  This is an identity that has no roots in class or in Empire and one that has rejected conservative principles to be forward thinking and ambitious, innovative whether that be in engineering or economics or ways to lose football internationals.  This could create a nation with no shortage of challenges to overcome, but the progressive, independent nature of our politics has the right to shape the country that gave it birth.  That country is not England, nor, deep down, is it Britain.  British identity as defined by the BBC and the press at its heart, belongs to England, and not even all of England.  It is defined by a scared, shrinking slice of little England society that has no answers to its own shifting demographics.  It does not know where its future lies.  As Scots, we must seek to define our own future and be brave in doing so.