The contemporary Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh said:
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Taken from Newsnight (17/04/2012)
“I think Scotland is on the brink of great and exciting things. It’s actually beginning to realise itself now. The nationalist debate seems to have got a lot more mature. All this f”***** Bannockburn, Culloden nonsense has gone out the window.” Instead, he says, there’s a Scottish aspiration for social democracy that’s not shared south of the Border.
“The two countries have gone their separate ways, so [independence] seems inevitable.
“I always think the Union is nature’s way of stopping the Scots ruling the world. We’d be unstoppable if we were independent. We’d still emigrate in droves but we’d do it from a very entrenched position of confidence. All that ambition and arrogance would be unbridled right across the world. It would be a sight to behold.”
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Taken from The Herald (14/04/2012)
The two political cultures of Scotland and England have grown apart. They feel very different countries.
“What is actually holding the Union together? The things that appeal to places like Scotland, the welfare state, NHS and free education. All that stuff has gone. Politics changed in the eighties and they haven’t changed back.”
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Taken from his interview with Alan Bissett on BBC’s The Culture Show (16/01/2012).
