AN OPEN LETTER TO LISA NANDY MP

Dear Lisa

I have just watched your interview with Andrew Neil and I am absolutely furious: furious enough to slam a few words down on paper in the form of this open letter.

Some background. I was born and raised a few miles up the road from the constituency you now represent – Blackburn. In 1989 I became the white half of a mixed race couple. Soon we had two brown boys and by the mid 90's it was abundantly clear Blackburn was no place to raise two mixed race boys. A septic tide of racism was starting to seep into every brick of the town and the BNP were strutting their stuff. So we ran. We fled a hundred miles north up the M6 and found ourselves a new future in Scotland.

I never felt English, but after twenty five years I feel very Scottish. They call us New Scots up here. And being a New Scot has meant my two boys have had the chance to grow up in a country where racism barely exists. The BNP never managed more than 1% up here. UKIP and the Brexit Party never made it past 4%.

How dare you make up fairytales about "narrow, divisive Nationalism."? And how dare you criticise the Scottish Government for a record which you describe as "frankly appalling."? I think it is time for a few home truths. We still regularly visit my wife's family who live in Lancaster. When they need to see the GP they have to wait over a month for an appointment. We get one in no more than two days. When they pick up their prescriptions, they pay through the nose. Ours are free. When they park up at the hospital, they pay through the nose. When we park it is free. When my nieces and nephews look to university, they have to get their heads around the idea of living with a minimum of £30,000 of debt. If they lived up here, it would be free. English prisons are overcrowded to boiling point, Dumfries Prison is seldom more than 70% full. At eight o'clock in the morning in Lancaster almost every shop doorway is home to a homeless person. In Dumfries there is not a single one.

And I know about this stuff by the way – I manage the region's largest food bank. A few months back I handed out a food parcel to a young lad who had been made homeless in Manchester. After a few weeks on the streets, he decided to make use of his last worthwhile possession – his bike. He hit the road and headed north. He stopped at town after town to apply for a bed for the night and he was turned away every time – Wigan, Blackburn, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, Penrith, Carlisle.... until he crossed the border. Into Scotland. And when he applied for homeless accommodation in Dumfries, he was given a room for the night straight away. So how dare you take to the airwaves to accuse my Government of a "frankly appalling record."

However, that statement pales into insignificance in comparison to what you had to say about our demands for a second Independence referendum. You actually suggested the UK should look to other countries for some clues on how to deal with "narrow, divisive" nationalism. And you actually cited Spain's handling of Catalonia as a shining example. 

As a New Scot, I have come to be a fervent supporter of the dream of independence. In the 2014 referendum I took the 'Yes' side in many debates. Over the years, I have written lots of blogs on the subject and nearly a million readers have read them. I guess it is fair to say I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am allowed to do this because I still live in a country where free speech is still allowed and tolerated. And every time I post a blog, I feel lucky and take a moment to remember all those who paid a heavy price for fighting to free their nations from the rule of London. 

In Ireland. In India. In Aden. In Israel. In Kenya. In Ghana. 

It's a long, long list. A shameful litany of imprisonment and beatings for those who dared to defy their London masters.

You seem impressed by the Spanish Government's handling of the Catalonian Independence movement. Well, I'm not. If I was posting my blog in Catalonia, I would be in prison by now. And if I had joined a march for independence, I would have been beaten within an inch of my life by Spanish riot police. And by now, my leaders would either be living in exile or imprisoned for years. And this is how you think the likes of me should be treated? This is the shining example of good practice you feel the Westminster Government should aspire to? Well, shame on you Lisa Nandy.

No wonder your party is down to one MP in Scotland.

Mark Frankland

New Scot

January 2020

UNEXPECTED SIGNPOSTS ON OUR ROAD TO OUR INDEPENDENCE.

Our road to Independence is going to take many unpredictable twists and turns over the coming years. Will we get there in the end? Of course we will. Will we get there in the way we think? Almost certainly not.

From time to time I have heard commentators make what seems to me a pretty interesting point. They reckon the day when our Independence finally gets over the line, the final push will come from south of the border.

As in a shove into the future from our fifty million English neighbours.

Obviously as 'New Scot' who was born and raised in England, this theory has always got my attention. And the more I have thought about it, the more I agree with the premise.

So how will this work in practice? Well here are a couple of random things which have happened in my life over the last few weeks which give a small clue.

Random thing number one. 

A blog of mine. I wrote the blog in question several months ago. it told the story of one of our cleints at the food bank, a young guy who had cycled all the way from Manchester to Dumfries, asking for homeless accommodation in every town along the way. The answer was a firm 'No' in Wigan, Blackburn, Preston, Lancaster, Kendal, Penristh and Carlisle. Then he cycled by the 'Welcome to Scotland' sign and he was given a room on his first night. Right here. In Dumfries.

The blog was read over 60,000 times. If you didn't see it, you find it via the link below.

MY BLOG FROM A FEW MONTHS AGO

So what? So something strange has happened over the last few days. Well. Strange for me. As a rule of thumb, a blog runs its course over the first few days and then it is read no more. Blogs have a short shelf life before they are parked up in an internet version of a dusty archive.

Well, for some reason this particular blog flickered back into life last week and for no explainable reason it attracted 5000 readers. This is a lot for me. I am no kind of celebrity. I only merit 1000 followers on Twitter and I did nothing whatsoever to promote the blog.

So where did all of these unexpected visitors come from? All Google can say is they were from the UK. My gut feeling tells me they are from England. I am not any kind of Facebook guy, but even I have noticed more and more online conversations between people living in England and people living in Scotland. Strangers in a virtual land. And it is the people living in England who are asking all the questions. Will I be welcome if I up sticks and move? Emigrate? Flee? And do I need a passport? And what are the schools like? And if my daughter decides to go to Scottish university will this mean she can get a Scottish passport once you guys are independent?

Millions of people living in England are in a state of shock right now. They no longer recognise the country they live in. They take a look around and feel appalled. A sense of dread. Those with the wrong skin colour feel a gnawing sense of fear. As do those whose surnames end in 'ovic'. All over England people are beginning to consider the option of finding a lifeboat to jump into. Those with sought after skills and fat bank accounts are starting to Google Canada and Australia and New Zealand. Others without ready cash and the right certificates are looking north. Up the M6. To Scotland. To us.

Last week Dami called in for a chat. Dami is the daughter of one of the Nigerian families we helped through the nightmares of the 'Hostile Environment'. I asked her if she had noticed the appearance of lots of new black faces in the town. Absolutely she had. She has only been here for three years, but already the difference is unbeliveable. As the white half of a mixed race family, I am pretty hard wired when it comes to noticing new black faces on the high street. Or in Tesco. Dumfries isn't anyone's idea of a cosmopolitan town. When we arrived twenty five years ago, Carol was always the only black face. And my lads were invariably the only two brown faces. Not that this was ever any kind of problem. Not like Blackburn. Well those days are well and truly gone. So where have all these new faces come from? They certainly haven't availed themselves of Westminster's warm and friendly immigration policies. Instead they have come up the M6. Internal migration. Sick of the rising tide of racism. Sick of the xenophobia. Sick of the strutting nastiness. Sick of Little England and the Little Englanders.

The new black and brown faces are easily noticed. But what of the new white faces? Like mine was twenty five years ago? How many are crossing the border every single day? Selling up idiotically over priced houses in the cities and towns of England to finance a new start in Scotland?

Is it thousands? Tens of thousands? Maybe? And who are these people who are so disgusted and appalled at the world around them? A few words spring to mind. Educated. Liberal. Tolerant.

Was it five thousand of these people who found their way to my old blog? And were they looking to put some flesh on the bones? They are hearing stories of a shining city on the hill. A sanctuary. Like Sweden in 1938. But is it real? Or is it an urban myth? Can I really get an appointment with a GP in less than six weeks? Can my son really walk home from school without being spat at and called a Paki? Will my daughter really be able get a free University course? Will our new baby really get the chance to breath actual fresh air?

Is it real? Should we go?

Well I get the feeling they are coming. Maybe it is trickle which might soon become a flood. And most will come with skills, energy and ambition. The same kind of immigrants who turbo charged America in the nineteenth century. A boon to us and brain drain to England. And which way will they vote when Indyref 2 comes around?

No prizes for guessing. For most, I have no doubt it will be the same way as it was me. Is for me. Throughout history, new immigrants who have fled oppressive home countries always become the most fervent of patriots in their new country. Their sanctuary. Their shining city on the hill.

These guys will be no different. When you arrive at a place where your kids don't have to suffer being spat at called Paki, you really appreciate it. You sign on the dotted line. You don't take it for granted. You take a side.

OK. Random thing number two.

It's a cold, windy night. It's the first Anfield game of a new decade. Liverpool are away and clear at the top of the Premier League. Sheffield United are newly promoted and basking in one of the best away records in the division. 3000 of South Yorkshire's finest have made the trip over the Pennines to roar on their boys. Loud and proud.

'You fill up my senses,
Like a gallon of Magnet,
Like a packet of Woodbines,
Like a good pinch of snuff,
Like a night out in Sheffield,
Like a greasy chip butty,
Like Sheffield United,
Come fill me again
Na na na na na...Ooooohh!'

None of their fire and fury bothers the Mighty Reds in the slightest. Liverpool keep the ball and make a mockery. It's so conclusive it's almost boring. With twenty minutes to go, the Reds are 2-0 ahead and cruising. Time for some substitutions to rest legs weary from the hectic Christmas programme.

The board goes up. 26. Andy Robertson. Our Glaswegian left back. New rules dictate he must leave the field at the nearest point. To avoid time wasting. So Andy exits on the Sir Kenny Dalglish side of the ground and makes his way around the touchline towards the dug out. At first his progress is met by thunderous applause for the home fans. Then he reaches the away end and all of a sudden South Yorkshire's finest explode into howling rage. Twisted faces and pointing fingers. A sea of V signs. And one word slammed out into the cold January air.

'ENG – ER – LAND !!!! ENG – ER – LAND!!!!!

ENG – ER – LAND!!!!!!'

So there it is. Andy is a Scot. The new enemy within. The new 'other'. The last time I saw a similar reaction from away fans to one of our players was way back when in the late eighties. Then the player in question was Johnny Barnes. Who of course was black. And for the avoidance of any doubt, they threw bananas at him.

Well it seems being Scottish is the new black. Maybe we should be flattered.

The UK will be leaving the EU in a couple of weeks. The deed will be done and all those who worshipped at the alter of Johnson and Farage will be eager for another enemy to aim their bile at. Of course anyone with the wrong skin colour will continue to be front and centre of their xenophobic ire. But it seems like we Scots are being lined up to play the part of the new Enemy Within. Traitors. Trouble. Perfect to play the same villianous role as the Irish, the people of Liverpool and the miners played in the 1980's for those who like nothing better than to sing 'two world wars and one world cup' on the back of a few pints.

And how will we Scots feel about this? No prizes for guessing. We'll be Seriously pissed off. We're not exactly known for going all meek and mild in the face of adversity. There are lots of died in the wool unionists who aren't about to change their minds no matter what yessers like me have to say. But once the spitting venom of those 3000 South Yorkshiremen reaches the mainstream and the red top tabloids, well I reckon we'll soon see a different story start to emerge.

So there you have it. Two random things. Two signposts on the road. And with every passing day, journey's end is starting to take shape.

A GLIMPSE OF THE DISMAL REALITY OF SCOTLAND'S SO CALLED 'TRAINSPOTTING GENERATION'.

About ten years ago, First Base launched a new project. It looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. We called it the 'Walk the Walk' project.

Well, lots of things look good on paper. I guess invading Iraq might have seemed like a good idea at the time. Sadly, when good ideas which look good on paper are plunged into the freezing waters of reality they tend to fall apart.

Yup. Been there. Got the T shirt. Bitten and many times shy.

So what was it? This 'Walk the walk' thing of ours?

Here are the bare bones. We have always had regulars who appear at our front desk month after month and year after year and yes, decade after decade. The majority of these regulars are fully paid up members of what has come to be known as the 'Trainspotting Generation'. These are a cohort of lads and lasses who blundered their way into mass heroin addiction from the mid nineties to the mid noughties. It was a pandemic which started out in Glasgow and Edinburgh and spread across the land like a modern day plague. Dumfries and Galloway became an unlikely hotspot. When the plague reached its peak, an EU funded report revealed South West Scotland as the home of Europe's second worst rural heroin crisis. At that time, 7% of males between the ages of 18 and 30 had a habit. The scale of the disaster as mind boggling.

And we saw the victims. Lots of them. Every single day. Walking skeltons in charity shop anoraks. Pinned eyes and pale skin stretched tight over razor sharp cheek bones. Rattling or gouching. Usually rattling. Loathed and reviled by the local community. Despised ghosts. Not a pretty sight.

We spotted a trend. A treadmill. A seemingly endless cycle. Once the agonising craving hit an unbearable level, the ghosts would go to idiotic lengths to come up with the tenner they needed to make the pain go away. This almost always meant frantic, bumbling attempts to lift shops. It seldom went the way they hoped. The shops knew all the faces. The security guards would grab a hold of skinny arms and the cops would be summoned. Then it would be court and six months, usually in HMP Dumfries. Over and over and over and over.

HMP Dumfries was and is a great jail. It offers no material for a Netflix eight parter. Most of the ghosts would emerge from their sentence several months drug free. One of the first jobs on their to do list would be to bring a referral slip into us to collect a food parcel to take to their apponted homeless accommodation.

Most of the time, their good intentions hadn't survived their first hour of freedom. There is only one road out from the front door of Dumfries jail. Liberation hour was eight in the morning and the town's dealers knew this only too well. They would hang out at the junction where the one road emerged into other roads. Y'alright pal? Fancy a wee taste? And a £40 liberation grant was more than enough to pay for the wee taste and a resumed place on the treadmill. A few were knocked over by their wee taste, their systems unready for the first hit in months. For them a short sentence became a death sentence.

Others would ride the wave and make it into our place like zombies. Dribbling. Barely awake. Barely able to string three words together. In the words of the street, completely monged.

Later they would come back. Hungry eyed and twitchy. To apologise. To curse their own stupidity. To hate themselves for being such easy pickings. Distraught to have made so many promises to their families and broken them all within a few hundred yards of HMP Dumfries.

And they would often say all kinds of 'if only'. Honest Mark, this time I really thought it was going to be different. I was three months clean. I was going to make it up to my mum. And my gran. I was going spend time with the bairns. I was going to get a job and a place of my own and hook up with old pals who never went for the kit. You ken? That was going to be me.

So why wasn't it?

You Ken. They fuckers were waiting. Want a wee taste? Aye right. A wee fucking taste. And that was me. All fucked up again. Even if I'd make it all the way to the hostel, I would still have fucked it. Every fucker in there is on the kit. No way I'd have stayed away from it.

So what would make it different?

And always the same answers. Someone to pick them up from the front gate of the jail. And then a place to stay where there wasn't heroin behind every door. A safe place. A sanctuary.

So we took it all on board and came up with the 'Walk the Walk' Project. And it looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. We set up a partnership. First Base, the Prison, the criminal justice department and the homeless department. A two bedroom flat in town was allocated to the project. It was on a first floor and defended by a locked door and cameras. We designed a set of rules based on what the guys asked for. They knew they couldn't be trusted. They knew they would exploit any weaknesses. They knew their addiction would make them lie and cheat. They had no interest in any niceties.

They asked for a complete ban on visitors. Break the rule and get chucked out.

They asked for daily drug testing. Fail a test and get chucked out.

Black and white. No grey areas. Hard line. Their call, not ours. Their rules, not ours.

So we took their requests and sold them hard for a few months until all the ducks were in a row.

Anyone wanting to join the project had to let us know a few weeks before their liberation date. I would go into the jail to meet them. To do my best to assess their determination. If they were willing to sign on the bottom line, they could join the project.

I'll call the first two guys Bill and Ben. Not their real names - obviously. I saw Bill in HMP Dumfries and I saw Ben in HMP Barlinnie. Both were emerging from more than two year's worth of time. Both were in their early thirties and had been living chaotic, heroin fuelled lives since their late teens. Both were past the point of no return with their families. Both had multiple stretches in jail under their belts. Both said they were sick of it and ready for a new life. A better life. A job. A flat. The whole nine yards.

They were both wider than wide. Seasoned in artful dodging. But smart. More than capable of finding a decent life if they stuck at it.

So I collected them from the gates of the two prisons and got them into the flat. Stage one. Tick. No relapse in the first two hours of freedom. And for a month or so, the daily visits to do the drug tests went like clockwork. Then things slipped. Not in at the appointed hour. Half baked excuses. And when they failed the drug test, they said the tester was wrong. Shite. A pure joke. And they left the flat in a flurry of swearing and complaints at the unfairness of life.

We still saw them of course. At the front counter. As the weight fell away and the time served clocked up.

Bill died long before he turned forty. And Ben faded. Two years ago I met him in Dalbeattie and he was a human skeleton. I didn't think he had more than a couple of months left. But a stay in hospital brought him back from the brink. Just not very far. By now he was a pathetic shadow of his former self. His family had disowned him. He had ripped off every one of his mates. He was banned from every shop on the high street. His life ran on a heavy daily dose of methadone and a couple of bags of smack when his benefits dropped into his account. In his words, he was the classic 'Giro Junky'. Pure fucked, ken?

Ken.

Yesterday morning I had an appointment at the hospital. I was running late and there was not enough time to trawl the car park for a space. So I parked up on the road and opted for the five minute walk option. Not a great choice. The forecasted 70 mph gale lashed rain at me. The cold lanced into the bones. The world was wall to wall grey.

The pavement leading to the front door of the hospital was gleaming wet and the newly planted trees were limbo dancing in the wind. Not many people about. Bent and hunched under flapping brollies.

And to the side of the sliding door was a figure in a wheelchair. Light blue pyjamas. Staring out into the raging grey. No doubt taking a break from the stifling warmth of the ward. And as I drew nearer I clocked the fact that the figure in the blue pyjamas had no legs. Everything below the top of his thighs was open space. Poor sod.

And them the figure in the blue pyjamas raised a hand and waved at me. A familiar voice from way back when.

“Alright Mark.”

Christ. 

Ben.

Ben minus both legs. Ben minus friends or family. Ben minus everything. Sat out there in the soaking cold of a January morning. Just staring. Staring into a future as bleak as a future can get.

Christ.

I returned his wave. I returned his greeting. I tapped at an imaginary watch. No time. Sorry. Need to get inside.

Which is what I did. And I made my appointment on time. And when I stepped back out into the rain he was gone.

So what next? I have no clue. It is hard to see anything good. It is hard to imagine a life more empty. Will he keep on using? What else is there? And for how long?

Over the last year or so, the news has had a lot to say about Scotland's rising number of drug deaths.

We have witnessed our fair share. Like Bill. Each and every one has been of the Trainspotting Generation. Each and every one has been years and years in the making. Slow deaths. Bodies reaching the end of the line. Old fighters unable to take one punch too many.

Ten years ago we came up with an idea which looked good on paper. An idea which slammed into a reality called Bill and Ben.

And now Bill is no more.

And Ben is sitting out in the cold staring into a million miles of nothing. With no legs. With nothing much at all.

And not much race to run.