BETTER Together's latest adverts exhort us to vote No if we love our families ("Salmond:
New No family posters are a 'serial blunder'", The Herald, September 2). By coincidence, last week, in a pensive mood, I wrote the following letter to my grandson, whose arrival in the world was eagerly and imminently expected:
"Waiting for you, my tiny unborn grandson, my wee boy. I'll hold you close, a heavy bundle of warmth against my heart. Your tiny fingers, sea-shell nails, will curve around mine. I'll watch for your dark gems of eyes to open and gaze into mine.
I'll change you, bath you, pile bricks for you to scatter, hold your plump arm as you paddle, point out the crab and the waving seaweed, read that book again, and again ... help with homework, wipe ice cream from your cheeks, wait in the playground ...
You'll enter a wide world, full of dangers, challenges, opportunity. You'll become a man - tall, laughing, bright eyed with excitement. Or crushed with frustration and blighted dreams. And right now I have one chance, one real opportunity - for once, I can influence what your world will be like. What chances you will be offered. There is no status quo. This is a parting of the roads, a choice of direction, of which sort of change we want.
Voting No is a once and for all decision - the power will forever remain out of my reach, the power to change your world, my dear wee boy. The foreign wars, the weapons of mass destruction, the poverty, the unemployment - I'll only be able to watch from the sidelines as far away they decide what your life will be like. You'll live in footnotes and parentheses, afterthoughts, Scottish addendums to the policies and legalities that will define your future.
Voting Yes is not once and for all - we can work the problems, embrace the challenges, grasp the opportunities - every election will bring us the chance to change things, again and again.
I will not gamble with your future, I will not place it in hands far away that I cannot influence. I will place it where I and others who love you can change it and refine it, time and again. I can do this for you now. I can give you a new country."
My grandson has now arrived. I will live up to my promise to him. Because I love him, I will vote Yes.
Meg Lindsay,
Huntley Cottage, 15 Ferry Road, Millport, Isle of Cumbrae.
THE SNP have erred to lambast the latest No campaign posters as blunders. Surely the Yes folk have not forgotten already that separating from the UK is forever and not just for five or 10 years? It is absolutely right that voters should be reminded that the referendum campaign is about our children's children's future and so on, and the fact is that a separate Scotland's long-term finances are reckoned to be so stretched that maintaining public expenditures in their present pattern will likely be tricky, new initiatives being a no-no.
That sees off Nicola Sturgeon's improved pensions, more free childcare (never mind associated early-years' development), and her risible increase in the admittedly-insufficient minimum wage.
Joe Darby,
Glenburn, St Martins Mill, Cullicudden, Dingwall.
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