There is just one thing I need to know as this yes/no referendum debate really gets going and we face two years of having our senses assailed by self-seeking politicians and their mendacious spinmeisters.

I want to know if there is a place I can go right now and make my mark (a tick or a small St Andrew's Cross) in favour of independence?

I don't need to study the pros and cons. I say Yes to Scotland because I do not feel British. I have never felt British. I have always felt Scottish. Apart from some early confusion in my primary school when I wondered if I was in a place called Ireland.

My cultural uncertainties were sorted out over the years by having a Scottish education and by being brought up in a Scottish family in a Scottish street in a Scottish city.

Voting yes is an affirmation of Scottishness which happens to involve a rejection of Britishness. I choose now to take a firm if not entirely analytical approach to the arguments from the No Scotland camp.

It goes along the lines of la-la-la, not listening. I don't need to hear debates about sterling or the euro, about membership of the European Union or Nato or the United Nations or G8.

Whether we have a monarch or elected president. Whether we will have oil wealth or be as poor as church mice.

This will all come out in the wash if the people of Scotland declare themselves independent. I suspect Scotland will be stronger on its own and much better at looking after the weak in society than is the case in a united kingdom.

Instead of a two-year campaign of repetitive sniping, we should concentrate on stuff that needs to be done. Putting that Baroness Warsi Tory chairwoman and Cabinet Minister in jail if she really did steal cash from the public purse. Putting Tony Blair before the international war crimes court. Putting Engelbert Humperdinck before a Eurovision music crimes tribunal.

But seriously we should be getting ready for those early days of a better nation. We need to bring up new generations of thin, sober, healthy Scots with good teeth who can do maths and science and speak loads of foreign languages and get great jobs anywhere in the world. Maybe even Scotland.