It's that time of the year again - very dark and very cold.
You can shiver your way to and from work or study and never see daylight. No wonder we can feel down in the dumps, fed up and miserable - or much worse. It's a range of depressive states doctors call Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
In this last winter before the referendum, Scots have good reason to feel especially gloomy. There's a particularly virulent SAD about - the No side's embittered, harpingly negative, anti-Scottish campaign.
The script writers for the No campaign must have googled 'Independence Day' in a search for ideas. When they came across the script for an alien invasion film, they must have thought they had hit the mother lode. Independence Day equals the end of the world. Actually, extraterrestrial attack is about the only thing the No doomsayers have left out of their dire predictions of what will befall an independent Scotland.
Within months of freedom, we're told, taxes will rocket upwards, public spending will collapse, the oil will run out, every business will move south and we'll be expelled from the EU and NATO. We'll even be banned from watching Coronation Street.
There couldn't be a bigger misnomer than the title 'Better Together'. Forget about painting a positive vision of a prosperous Scotland within a successful UK. The No campaign's dismal prophets of doom haven't produced a single piece of evidence to back up their claim that things will be BETTER for Scots if they remain in the UK.
The reality is that the No side is waging a WOE campaign - Worse Off Englandless. Yes, when it comes to indicators regarding poverty, bad housing and ill-health, Scotland is at or near the bottom of every EU table. True, there is a substantial - and growing gap - between the performance of the Scottish economy and comparable sovereign states. Admittedly, it is a mystery why Scotland has benefited so poorly from its oil resources than Norway. But it would be much, much worse if we weren't ruled from London.
And the voices of authority assuring us that this is all we Scots can ever expect? Well, the leading Jeremiah is the po-faced Alistair Darling, a super hero when it comes to the power of negativity. That's right, the man who was a leading architect of New Labour's espousal of casino capitalism. The Chancellor who was absent from the helm when it all collapsed and the UK experienced its worst economic depression for a century and a half. Ironical isn't a sufficient description. There's surely enough material here for a couple of sketches in the forthcoming Monty Python revival.
At this bleak time of the year, Jews celebrate Hanukkah and Hindus Diwali, both festivals of light. Don't curse the darkness, they're saying, light a lamp. The Scottish Government's White Paper shines a possible way forward to a prosperous future for Scotland. Will the No campaigners respond in a positive manner? Of course, they won't. Their only cry is "WOE is us!" All we can expect from them is the equivalent of 670 pages of nasty recrimination, unconstructive criticism and gloomy despair.
The No side is even ominously silent about the powers of the devolved administration in Edinburgh in the event their campaign is successful. Many would clearly like to reduce those powers. Some have more than hinted that if Scots have the temerity to choose independence, they'd do their utmost to undermine the fledging new state and reverse the decision.
The truth is the No campaign has invented its own SAD - Scottish Affective Disorder. Any mention of Scotland as an independent nation brings forth these very obvious symptoms - cringing hand-wringing punctuated by bouts of boggle-eyed, spitting self-hatred.
The No campaigners aren't interested in lighting a way forward. They celebrate Scots being in the dark. Their cheerless crusade of woe is SAD all year long.
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