THE WAY PEOPLE REACT WHEN I SAY THE DREADED 'I' WORD IS ENDLESSLY FASCINATING

I find the way people react to me saying the dreaded 'I' word endlessly fascinating. The dreaded 'I' word in question is of course Independence. As in Scottish Independence.

My views on the matter are well known locally as a result of this blog and my efforts during the 2014 campaign. I get the feeling local Unionists studiously avoid the subject in my company. In our neck of the woods, 65% of the people opted to stay in the Union back in 2014 and yet I never seem to meet anyone who is happy to admit to voting for Better Together.

Funny that.

I can only recall one occasion in the last five years when when my uttering the 'I' word caused any kind of upset. It was in Tesco of all places. There is a guy on the checkouts who always asks after the foodbank. How are things going? Are you guys busy? Are you getting enough donated food? His concern is clearly genuine and as often as not he will take a moment to rue the dismal state of the country.

One time he asked me if I could see any possible light at the end of the tunnel. I said yes, I could. The day when Scotland finally frees itself from the dead hand of London rule and gets the chance to act like a decent, modern democracy in the North of Europe. You know. Like our Scandinavian neighbours who don't tend to do child poverty and war on the poor.

For a moment I was worried he was about to have a heart attack. His turned crimson and he actually started to shake. When he found the ability to speak, he told me the day Scotland became Independent would be the day he packed his bags and left.

Forever.

Wow. I said something along the lines that it would probably be best if we agreed to disagree and he slammed my shopping through in freezing silence.

The next time I spotted him on the checkouts I made a point of choosing his aisle and he was visibly embarrassed by his outburst. We found old familiar ground. He asked how things were going at First Base and I told him we were as busy as ever. And we have stayed on the same safe ground ever since. Like I said, he's a really nice guy and I respect his passion and honesty. It is a rarity.

The 'I' word often comes up when I am doing media appearances. When a new set of figures about poverty and food bank use emerge, calls are made to First Base. Have you seen the statistics released today? Would you be willing to comment?

It is an unexpected part of the job. Adding flesh to the bones. Making dry statistics real life experience. The human angle. The view from the front of the front line.

Over the years I have become accustomed to this stuff. The reporter will set me up and ask a series of questions for five or ten minutes. Initially I thought this suggested a well fleshed out news piece lasting for a similar amount of time.

The reality is inevitably completely different. As a rule of thumb, the whole piece will be a couple of minutes long and only three or four of my sentences will find their way onto the nightly news. So now I ask how long it will be and try to make the three or four sentences count. Reporters are fine with this. They actually quite appreciate it. It makes their work tighter. More punchy.

As often as not, they will ask me what might make things change? Is there anything I can see in the future which would mean less people coming through our door for bags of emergency food?

I tend to smile at this. Well, actually there is, but I doubt you'll be willing to air it. Oh really? Yes, really. I reckon an Independent Scotland will be a place where many less people will find themselves in the desperate place in their lives where they need to come to us.

At this point there are apologetic smiles and sad shaking heads. Actually you're right.... my producer would want that... we have to steer clear....

Unwritten rules. Don't give house room to the 'I' word in any news item covering the realities of grinding, soul shredding poverty. It's just not done.

I had a new twist to this familiar tale last week. This time the local ITV news were in First Base to make a short, 'feel good' piece about our new charity, The Kupata Project and our efforts to raise cash to provide sanitary pads to school girls in Uganda.

I know the reporter well. He's one of the good guys and I was delighted when he called to tell me he wanted to come and do a piece. We ran through the bones of the story and how long it would air for. What are the main points you want to get over, Mark? The difference £3 a year can make to a girl's life. The fact that the Kupata Project has absolutely no overheads which means every last penny we receive goes to buying pads to the girls. The fact we have a rock solid system in place on the ground in Uganda which minimises the risk of corruption taking a bit out of our efforts.

Then there's the Scotland thing. The Scotland thing? Yes. The Scotland thing. Because right now London won't allow us any kind of foreign policy of our own. But everything will change once we become Independent. And when things change, we might well look to the fifty plus countries who have freed themselves from London rule over the last seventy years as natural bedfellows. Allies. A window on a sunny future.....

Cue rueful grin. Sorrowful shake of the head. Resigned shrug of the shoulders. Sorry Mark, no can do... the election, right?... can't go there. Not now.....

So my vision of a newly born Scotland cutting a dash in the world was kept well and truly under wraps. Just like I knew it would be.

The news piece was great by the way. An object lesson on how to say a huge amount in under three minutes. Top drawer journalism if you ask me. It's here, if your interested.

ITV NEWS PIECE ON THE KUPATA PROJECT

And if you like the idea of what the Kupata Project is doing then you might be of a mind to bung us a quid or two via the link below.

THE KUPATA PROJECT ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

OK. I'll put the begging bowl away! Roll on a couple of days. The rain was hammering down and our leaky roof was making the buckets go tap, tap, tap. I was waiting on a three o'clock appointment. Five kids from Dumfries High School who had chosen First Base as their nominated charity. They asked if it would be OK to call in to find out more about who we are and what we do. Sure. Nae bother.

They arrived like a clutch of drowned rats and made their way up the stairs. They exchanged embarrassed glances at the sight of our leaking roof and the tap, tap, tap sound of fat drops hitting the carefully placed buckets. Welcome to the voluntary sector guys. Welcome to the front line of the war on poverty.

They had questions pre-prepared on their phones and they asked them one by one in shy voices. How many people do we help? What is in one of our food parcels? Do we help many children? Why do so many people need to come to a food bank?

Good questions. Well thought out. Relevant. Pretty on the ball for S3's.

I answered the questions one by one and waited for the one I knew to be on the way.

“Is there anything which you think might make things better? Anything which will mean you have to help less people......”

Absolutely. An independent Scotland. A brand spanking new country where elected leaders have absolutely no choice when it comes to loking after the most vulnerable.

And it was like switching a light on. Five beaming faces. And I mean really beaming. They exchanged glances. They made enthusiastic notes. They seemed genuinely chuffed.

Was it because of the surprise at hearing this from an old guy with a Lancashire accent? Was it because I was saying something that was not really allowed? Or was it the fact we were all on the same page. Singing from the same hymn sheet.

I like to think it was option 3. In fact I am pretty sure it was. The world seen through the eyes of the young. This was the way they saw the future for our country. Their country. My country.

They were not just happy to hear the 'I' word. They were chuffed to bits.

And when all is said and done, they are the future. Thank goodness.

HERE'S ONE OF THE MANY JOYS OF BEING A FOODBANK MANAGER! YOU GET THE CHANCE TO WRITE A BLOG ABOUT 'BAGS FOR LIFE'.

It's four minutes past eight in the morning on a greyer than grey Scottish Saturday. The world outside is a picture of damp cold. Fair enough, there is no frost on the ground. But cold all the same. The kind of seeping cold which makes me want to put off log splitting.

Instead, the time seems right to embark on a blog about bags.

Yeah. You read it right. A blog about bags. Re-usable bags. Strong ones. Available from all good supermarkets along with all kinds of planet saving promises. 'Bags for life'. Bags to save the Great Barrier Reef.

You know the kind of thing.

There's a problem. My bag talk really has nothing to do with saving the planet and carving out a better future for all the generations to come. The fish of the Pacific Ocean will not play any kind of part in the next few hundred words.

Instead my bag talk is all about how strong they are and how they make it easier for someone to cart half a week's worth of emergency food a mile or two across their home town.

Nuts and bolts. 

For the new readers out there, I manage a foodbank which helps of 5000 folk a year across 3400 square miles of Dumfries and Galloway. In Scotland.

For years we used strong, extra large white plastic bags to house our emergency food. Then the Brexit vote happened and the pound lost 20% of its value. The bag manufacturer didn't want to raise its price of 16p. So instead they went down the road of making the plastic 20% thinner. 20% less strong. 20% more crap. Much like the United Kingdom as a whole.

This meant the bags were no longer fit for purpose. Our clients started telling us dismal tales of split bags and tins of beans on wet pavements.

Another image from a country on the slide.

At this point Katriona and the good people at Nationwide rode to our rescue like the seventh cavalry.

We applied for funding enough for each and every one of our 5000 emergency food parcels to be housed in a strong re-usable 'bag for life'. And the good people of Nationwide said 'Yes!' and they sent us a cheque for £1850. Enough for a year's worth.

We choose natty green bags from Morrisons and they were immediately a big hit with our regulars. Strong and anonymous. Two boxes ticked. Punters happy. Job done.

Well. Not quite.

In a perfect world, 90% plus of our clients would have brought the new bags back to us and bought into the whole 'bag for life', save the planet agenda. To be fair, about 40% did exactly that.

But 60% didn't. Which by the way is absolutely fair enough. It's just how it is. When your life hits the bricks, the last thing you tend to think about is the Great Barrier Reef.

Last week Iain shook his head and looked rueful. No bags left. All gone. Time to buy some more. All good things come to an end.

A bit like the whole of the UK.

So. At this point in proceedings I have to assume not nearly enough people are reading this blog about bags. So I guess it's time to try and go all sneaky Russian and to cynically manipulate the Google algorithm. What's needed here is some click bait. Something to start ringing bells out there in the virtual world.

So here goes. The Donald tends to use block capitals when he is looking for attention. And who am I to argue with the wisdom of the Donald....

“PRINCE ANDREW CAUGHT IN STEAMY AFFAIR WITH ISIS SUPPORTING 'BAG FOR LIFE'! FARAGE EXPOSES THE BAG AS A BREXIT BETRAYER!!! BORIS DENIES THE BAG IS REALLY HIS SIXTH CHILD IN A CUNNING DISGUISE!!!!!”

That should do the trick........... Aye right.

Bags are bags when all is said and done, even when they are 'bags for life'.

I guess this blog is basically targeted at folk living here in Dumfries and Galloway. If any of you have a half forgotten collection of 'bags for life' gathering dust in the cupboard under the stairs, well First Base would dearly like to take them off your hands. You can drop them off at our main base on Buccleuch St or any of our 25 collection points.

All 'bags for life' are welcome, even naught bags who support ISIS or a wicked betrayal of the Brexit dream. Even those bags on the rebound from a frantic fling with Prince Andrew.

Of course, if rooting about in the cupboard under the stairs seems too much like hard work, you can always bung us a donation. £2 is enough for 8 of the super strong paper bags Morrisons are now offering. Just a few weeks ago £2 would have been enough for 10 of the aforesaid bags. But we live in the times of Boris Brexit where the Government's supposed 3% inflation figure is just another of their lies.

The bags used to be 20p each. Then in the blink of an eye, they are now 25p each. As in a 25% increase. So 3% inflation? Really?

So be it. A donation of £2 still puts 8 'bags for life' in the basement, all ready to fill with emergency food and safe from the unwanted attentions of Prince Andrew.

And believe me, they really DO make a difference. Being forced to seek the help of a foodbank is a bad enough thing to have to do. To have to cart the food home in a rubbish bag which is constantly in danger of ripping apart only makes things worse.

Having had a couple of years of providing emergency food in decent, strong bags we really don't want to have to go back to using post Brexit vote rubbish.

So any help you might be able to offer, as ever, will be greatly appreciated.

Here's the link to our online funding page.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

And if you are reading this sentence, I really have to say a massive thank you. Hang on a sec. Let me just check the word count.....

1006!

And you've made it all the way to right here. You're my hero!

I'VE GOT A THOUSAND WORDS AND SIX MINUTES OF VIDEO WHICH MIGHT CHANGE A LOT OF LIVES. FOR THE BETTER. IF ANYONE READS...... OR WATCHES.......OR SHARES..........

OK.

So I've got this video. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. I was the cameraman. It is just over six minutes long and it was shot in the very heart of Africa. Under the green hills of Africa.

I sat and idled away the time as it uploaded onto YouTube like a snail making its way from Dumfries to Aberdeen. But it got there in the end. It lost some quality along the way, but not too much. Not enough to really matter.

And now it's there. On a perch in the vastness of the online world. Six minutes among minutes and hours counted in their billions. Inconsequential. Unnoticed. A grain of sand in a desert without end.

For days now, I have racked away at my brain. How to find the right words to steer some watchers to the video? How to attract attention? How to persuade readers to donate six minutes of their life?

It's a twenty first century dilemma. How to flag down a taxi when it is racing down the M8 at a hundred miles an hour?

Right. Enough waffle. I guess I'm avoiding getting to the point because failure means letting too many people down.

Background.

In November 2017, Carol and I visited a school in the south west corner of Uganda and we gave the girls a year's worth of sanitary pads. 250 girls. Under the green hills of Africa.

The name of the school is a mouthful. Here goes. Kamuganguzi Janan Luwum Memorial School. We have shortened the mouthful for our own personal use. We now call it 'Our school'.

Anyway. We returned to Scotland and set a new charity. The Kupata Project. And over the last two years we have have made three more deliveries of sanitary pads to the girls. There are more girls now. Lots more. 410. Which offers pretty compelling proof of just what kind of a difference free sanitary ware can make. It what is now called a 'pull factor'. No more missed monthly days. No more infections. Maybe these statistics might just make you proud to live in the first country in the world to provide free sanitary pads to every one of its school girls and female students. The country in question is Scotland by the way; for readers out there in the rest of the world.

When we give the girls their pads we also give them a postcard bearing a simple message.

'To you from the people of Scotland'

Which of course is exactly what it is.

This year the generosity of the people of Scotland enabled us to help 900 girls in 4 schools. We are adding a fifth in a couple of weeks time.

So now you know why we were there. At Kamuagnguzi Janan Luwun Memorial School. At our school. Under the green hills of Africa. Two weeks ago.

To make a movie.

I had made some requests. The movie was for Carol. A song from the black and white TV pictures of the streets of Martin Luther King's 1960's America. Brutal cops. Snarling Alsations. Ripped and bruised flesh. Non-violent defiance. Off the charts courage. An anthem for the ages.

“We shall overcome.”

A three worder: Dominic Cummings style. Three words to say it all. Three words to stand the test of time. Three words to change the world.

For the better of course. Still work in progress of course, but at least we now live in a time when people who call other people 'Nigger' get arrested and charged.

So I made my request. Could the girls have a go at giving their take on the old Civil Rights anthem? Could they collect the soundtrack of the defiant Sixties and take it all the way to the green hills of Africa?

Of course they could.

For a while things were in the balance. At the very moment the girls were ready to roll, a raging tropical storm chased down the valley. For an hour or so, the school was half submerged by the kind of rain Noah was worried about. It poured from the tin roofs in a constant stream. The glassless windows were home to hundreds of grinning faces.

But this wasn't Scotland. This was the green hills of Africa. One minute it rains like the world is about to end. The next minute, the sun rips aside the clouds and the ground starts to steam.

Show time. The whole school headed back outside for the performance. Reverend Benon, the headmaster, was the accomplished ring master. The machine was well oiled as an audience of 700 was arranged into place.

Then the hubbub dropped into silence.

Lights. Camera. Action.

Over to you. Here's the link. It requires six and a half minutes of your life. And I hope you feel inspired. Uplifted. Maybe even hopeful. Because the world doesn't always have to be about constant bitter ugliness. Instead it can be...... well. Like this.

'WE SHALL OVERCOME'

So there you go. Thanks for the six and a half minutes. Each and every of the girls hasn't had to miss a single day of school since November 2017. Thanks to the generosity of the people of Scotland. Westminster might not allow us a foreign policy of our own, but they cannot stop us doing this kind of thing.

Well you know what is coming next. Course you do. Can you blame me? I hope you don't. If you do, well, so be it.

Maybe the girls have inspired you. The bare facts are as straight forward as they come. £3 is what is required for a Ugandan school girl to be provided with a year's worth of sanitary pads. From the people of Scotland. From you.

For their families, £3 means three days worth of average wages. About £300 in our money. As in completely out of the question when filling empty bellies is the number one priority. So you can see just how a big a deal £3 can be.

I guess I better do the unconditional guarantee thing. If you give £3 to the Kupata Project, not a single penny will be spent of salaries or fancy offices or all expenses trips to the green hills of Africa. Every last penny will be spent on sanitary pads and nothing else.

Here is the link to our online fundraising page.

THE KUPATA PROJECT ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

There. It's done. Just over a thousand words to be thrown out in the ether to go along with six and a half minutes of video. To sink or swim. To gain a toehold or to be swept away into oblivion. A tiny flicker of a flame to either burn or be snuffed out.

Who knows? I don't. Which is why I have put off choosing these thousand words. I can't think of any more. So it's time to do the wrap up. Throw the words to the spell checker and then cast them out into the vastness with a well trodden sense of trepidation.

To sink or swim.

Thanks for getting this far. I might as well push it? It's what you do in the sharp elbowed online world. Could you maybe share these thousand words and six and a half minutes?

Enough, already! Time to post.

ONE PHONE CALL AND 239 LIVES ARE CHANGED FOR THE BETTER....

Running a small charity can be a tough gig at times. On the surface things seem pretty simple. Something bothers you. Something just doesn't seem right. So you decide you would like to try to make things better.

The vehicle to make this happen is a registered charity. So you jump through a whole bunch of hoops and few months later you're good to go.

There are times when the improvement you are looking to make has a clear end point. You know, like climbing a mountain. You either get to the cairn on the summit, or you don't. Maybe you decide to try and raise enough cash for your local hospital to install a new MRI machine. Or maybe your goal is to chase up the money needed to dig a new well to provide fresh water for an African village.

Basically, this kind of charity provides you with a specific goal. An end point. A chance to take a few pictures, thank all your supporters and finish the sentence with a resounding full stop. Job done.

I feel a tad jealous of people involved in this kind of campaign. The two charities I am involved in are not like this. Not remotely.

This month about 500 people will pitch up for emergency food parcels at the 25 collection points we have in Dumfries and Galloway. This isn't our fault. We haven't caused a single one of these 500 lives to crash and burn to so badly as to need a food parcel. Obviously it isn't. But what if they turn up in all good faith to get a food parcel only to find the cupboards are bare? Sorry, but.......

Would this be our fault? Of course it would. Oh, we could drone on about all kinds of funding pressures. Less Government money. Less Council money. Trusts overwhelmed by funding applications. Less donations from a squeezed community.

But moaning about how hard things are doesn't make a jot of difference to the 20 or so individuals and families who leave kitchens with empty cupboards and hope to return home with something to eat.

Thankfully this has never happened in the 16 years of First Base. Not once. We have been mighty close to the edge at times. Three weeks away. Two weeks away. Desperate enough to dive into frantic online funding campaigns. SOS campaigns.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is this. Of course it isn't our fault that 20 people have nothing to eat today. But it is absolutely our responsibility to make sure they don't go hungry. And if they go to bed tonight with empty stomachs, then we have to to take the blame for that. If 20 people go to bed with empty stomachs tonight, it is because we have failed to keep the balls in the air.

This is a day I dread. Lying awake and running all kinds of things through a racing mind. Could I have filled in more application forms? Were we right to extend our service over such a large area? Were there any costs we should have cut?

Like I said. It has never happened. And I hope it never will happen. But we would be utter fools not to accept the fact it might happen one day.

When we established our African charity, The Kupata Project, we thought it might be rather different. Our work at First Base is all about providing sticking plasters. Our role is merely to stop the bleeding. We tide people over for a week or two as they work their way through a crisis and get back on their feet again. We don't make any false claims. We can't solve all their underlying problems. We can't make the Westminster Government behave like decent human beings. We can't make the pound worth $1.50 again. We can't stop power companies from hammering up the price of gas and electricity. 

Instead, all we can do is react and hope things don't get a whole lot worse.

Kupata's work in Uganda is very different. We saw something which just wasn't right and decided to try and make things better. The problem? School girls miss 25% of their time in school because their families can't even begin to afford to buy them sanitary pads. So. A massive problem which is caused by human biology and an economy which provides very few with an income of more than £1 a day.

The solution? Easy. Provide sanitary pads. It's not like we're making like super clever people from the West who are turning up to teach Africans how to live their lives. They know the solution to their problem. Sanitary pads. They just can't afford to buy them. Which makes our job pretty straight forward. Raise cash and spend it on sanitary pads whilst at the same time making sure not a penny of the cash we raise is wasted on either overheads or corruption.

So. Simple, right? We have found a Ugandan based charity which makes re-usable pads. They cost about 70p each and we give the girls four per annum. £2.80 per girl.

Maths time. Lets say we raise £1000. £1000 divided by £2.80 = 357. So that's great, right? We can help out 357 girls and make a mighty big difference to their lives......

Except....

Because there is always an except. We're not building a well here. The 357 girls we help out will still need sanitary pads next year. And the year after. Which means we will need to raise at least another £1000 next year. What if our fundraising efforts flop? Then we have to make a horrible phone call. We know we said we would be there for you, but.....

And they won't be interested in our excuses. An economy smashed up by Brexit. Blogs sent out and not read. Rejection letters.

Instead they will have to go back to using old pieces of cloth or banana leaves. Which won't work. So they will inevitably go back to missing a quarter of their education.

And we will have done what Europeans have done for hundreds of years. Turn up in Africa. Make a bunch of big promises. Act big. And then let them down. Completely.

Which of course is the exact and polar opposite to what we are trying to achieve. So the best plan of attack is not to do that. Instead we are going to try and take a leaf out of the Chinese playbook. They have a different approach to the one we have adopted down the centuries. When they turn up in Africa and make a promise, they do something pretty unique: they keep it. When they say they are going to build a railway from the coast to the interior, they actually build a railway from the coast to the interior. Unsurprisingly, the Africans are kind of impressed by this. No wonder most of Africa now looks to Beijing when they are in the market for a trustworthy partner.

When we hand pads to the girls, we also give them a postcard. This year the picture on the front is Edinburgh in the snow. Here it is.

On the back is a simple message. 

'To you from the people of Scotland'.

A big promise, right? Basically we're telling them we've got this. You can trust us. We're not going to be here today and gone tomorrow. We're in this for the long haul.

OK. We basically need a new plan. Before making a first delivery of pads to a new school, we need to be as near to 100% confident as we can we will be there for the foreseeable future.

Thus far, we have helped out the girls in one school. Kamuganguzi Janan Luwum Memorial school. When we first pitched up in November 2017, the school was home to 250 girls. The availability of sanitary pads has proved to be a pretty major pull factor. Now there are 410 girls on the school roll. This means the annual bill for providing sanitary pads is about £1200. If everything goes pear shaped and we fail to raise a single penny, then push coming to shove means Carol and I footing the bill. It won't be easy, but barring unforeseen personal disasters, we can manage it.

So. Box ticked. A promise we can keep.

The next two schools on the list are Rwesasi and Harambe. These are both very small rural schools, each with a hundred girls on the register. The annual bill for each school is about £300. £600 for both. Not a vast fortune but it would be hard for Carol and I to guarantee £1800 for three years should our fundraising efforts fall flat.

The solution? Look close to home. We put the idea of adopting school each to our two sons and thankfully they are up for the idea. Dyonne and his partner Louise are adopting Rwesasi school and Courtney is adopting Harambe. They will have their own funding pages and like us, they will make good on any funding shortfalls. It's great to see the young generation making this kind of commitment. 

This meant there was only on school left on our immediate list. Kigata High School. 239 girls. About £700 a year. Too much for Carol and I to able to confidently guarantee.

So I picked up the phone and made a call to a funder who has helped out First Base for many years. They also donated some money to the Kupata Project when we launched last year. I explained the problem and out fear of letting the girls down. Would they be interested in committing to ongoing funding....?

They would. They did. No written contracts of course. Just an over the phone handshake. More than enough for us.

So in a couple of weeks time we will pitch up at Kigata High School and provide 239 girls with sanitary pads for a year. And when we tell them we will do all we can to carry on providing them with pads for many years to come, we will be making a promise we are confident of keeping.

When I finished the call, the enormity of the whole thing hit me. One phone call and 239 lives in a country thousands of miles from Scotland were about to be transformed. 25% more time in school is a huge deal. Better education means infinitely better life chances. The chance to push away a forced marriage. The chance to get a job and a salary and the chance to transform the prospects of the whole family group. Money for school fees for brothers and sisters. Maybe a solar panel to bring some light into the long tropical nights. Thousands of lives made better over the years to come. And thousands of people in a land far away who will feel a warmth to the people of Scotland.

All because of one phone call.

In the midst of all the hateful sound and fury of Brexit, it is worth remembering we are more than capable of being a whole lot better.

If you would like to help make sure we keep our promises to every Ugandan school girl we help, please follow the link below to the Kupata Project online funding page.

THE KUPATA PROJECT ONLINE FUNDING PAGE

A FEW THOUGHTS FROM AN ENGLISH REFUGEE IN SCOTLAND

Our family moved from England to Scotland twenty five years ago. How would I have described this life change at the time? I guess I would have simply said we had moved. It didn't really feel like moving from one country to another. Instead it was more like shifting from one place to another.

Back then I was very much a Lancastrian. A northerner. And back then, the North of England and Scotland were very much shoulder to shoulder. We had suffered Thatcher in equal measure. Back then it was all about the North/South divide: and we were both the North. Or so it seemed to me.

With hindsight, I can see our move was something of a window into the future. My home town, Blackburn, was becoming increasingly toxic. Racism was both open and growing. Streets which in my youth had been Hovis advert friendly were now home to Union Flags, Dock Martins and snarling dogs.

It was no place to bring up our two mixed race boys. It was time to get out of Dodge.

We were fed up with living in town. In our last Blackburn year, my car was broken into twice before it was torched. Was this because we were a mixed race family? Who knows? The cops certainly didn't.

We wanted to bring the boys up in the countryside. Had we been able to afford it, I guess we would have moved somewhere in the Ribble Valley or Cumbria. But there was absolutely no chance.

So we headed across the border to a glen in Dumfries and Galloway where you didn't have to be a lawyer or a banker to live in the country.

And for years I never felt like either an immigrant or a refugee. Fair enough, there was plenty of England/Scotland banter, but that's all it was. Thankfully our two boys got the chance to grow up with minimal levels of racism.

Then things started to shift. Once the SNP won control of the levers of Scottish power, it became clearer with every passing day that things were miles better north of the border in almost every way. Of course I had a front row view of this as a foodbank manager. When I got ill, I was treated in a brilliant hospital. When my dad got ill, he was treated in a succession of dire Lancashire hospitals which seemed Third World in comparison. Slowly but surely Blackburn sank further and further into a mire of racism until it was as divided as Portadown.

And then came Indyref. I wrote a blog explaining why I planned to vote 'Yes' and suddenly found myself on an accidental rollercoaster. I got an invite to give my views as an English born 'Yes' voter to a town hall meeting in Lockerbie. I guess there were only about thirty people in the audience that night, but well over 5000 watched my efforts on YouTube once Reverend Stuart at 'Wings over Scotland' posted the video.

It's her, in case you're interested.

MY DEBUT FOR THE 'YES' CAMPAIGN

My next few months were unlike anything I had ever known before, and as the poignant misery of the dawn of 19 September broke, everything had changed. By now I absolutely wasn't British any more. I guess I never had been. Not really. 

Now I was Scottish.

And I realised we hadn't merely moved. We had emigrated. And like immigrants throughout history, we had become fiercely patriotic. Not for the old country. For the new country.

And then things changed again as the same virus which had infected my home town of Blackburn spread like a contagion all across England. From Carlisle to Torquay. England became polluted by a new aggressive ugliness which found a home in the cult of Brexit.

And for the first time, I realised we hadn't been migrants. We had been refugees. We had been a Jewish family who had seen the writing on the wall in 1930 and legged it out before the approaching storm started dropping trees and ripping off roofs. We had been a family of Ugandan Asians who had taken one look at Idi Amin and sold up everything before he took it at the point of a gun.

Last week I was chatting with a fellow refugee. A fellow New Scot who has been here for as long as we have been here and has gone similarly native. We got to talking about Brexit. Of course we did.

I said I was conflicted. A big part of me welcomes the prospect of a Hard Tory Brexit as the final nail in the coffin on Unionism.

But I still have lots of family south of the border and I fear for them once the horrendous implications of Johnson's self inflicted wound start to hit the streets. A Hard Brexit England won't be a good place to be if you happen to be either old like my mum or the wrong colour like Carol's family.

The guy I was talking to was as appalled as I am at the course our old country is set on. He told me of family members he can no longer stand to talk to.

We both shuddered at the thought of still being there. In England. In the land which had once been our home. And we both thanked our lucky stars we had seen the writing on the wall and got out. Left. Fled. Refugees who didn't grasp the fact that were were refugees. Not then. Not a quarter of a century ago.

But we do now.

I was in Glasgow for a conference last week. The venue was the Royal Glasgow Concert hall at the bottom end of Sauchiehall St. Eleven o'clock meant a comfort break and the chance to escape outside for some fresh air and nicotine. The front door to the venue sits on top of a flight of concrete stairs and a statue of Donald Dewer. I got a long view down a gun barrel straight Glasgow street to the Clyde.

I leaned against the wall and worked my way through a rollie. And I people watched. A busker was doing Lou Reed and Bowie whilst the world walked on by him. And suddenly it hit me. It really was like the world was walking by him. As in black, white and all colours in between.

My mind wandered back to the early eighties when I once upon a time drove through the night to hit the Barrows market at dawn to buy second hand Tweed overcoats for a quid each. By nine o clock, my old VW Beetle would be stuffed full and we would head to town for fifteen hours worth of drunken mayhem. Had I stood on the same steps back then, every one of the faces below would have been white.

Then I got to thinking about more recent visits to second city of the Empire. How would Sauchiehall St have looked five years ago in those grey autumn weeks after the heartbreak of 19 September? Sure, there would have been may more brown faces than there were in the days when Souness and King Kenny ruled the roost. But nothing like this. Nothing like now.

So why does Sauchiehall St suddenly look like Oxford St or 5^th Avenue? Are these people all tourists? In Glasgow on a wet autumn day? Not very likely.

Or all they immigrants who have beaten a path to Glasgow from all four corners of the earth? I doubt it. The Home Office in London still has its snarling guards on the Scottish door.

Then it hit me. These were almost certainly people like me. Internal refugees. People like me who have taken a ride up the M6 to a country which prides itself on the ability to still do common decency. People like me who's refugee journey involved Gretna services rather than Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty.

And of course there are no forms to fill in at Gretna services. No dotted lines to sign on. No oaths of allegiance to swear. No identity cards to apply for.

When a refugee flees up the M6 from England to Scotland, there is no official record. They just up sticks and move. There are no fences and watch towers and minefields.

How many are here already? And how many are planning to join the exodus? Old mates tell me it is already a common dinner table topic. Stay or go? How bad does it need to get? If my kids go to university in Scotland will they be able to get a Scottish passport?

As I stood and watched and smoked, I could see it right there in front of my eyes. It's here. It's now. It's happening.

Back in 1800 there were 10 million people in England and Wales, 8 million in Ireland and 6 million in Scotland. 24 million in total.

42% England and Wales. 33% Ireland. 25% Scotland.

Then shit happened. Lots of it. The Irish famine. The Highland Clearances. All the good stuff as London let us all know who's in charge. If shit hadn't happened, todays population might have looked something like this.

27 million people in England and Wales, 22 million in Ireland and 16 million in Scotland.

But shit DID happen. So now we have this.

England and Wales, 55 million. Ireland, 5 million. Scotland 5 million.

85% England and Wales. 7.5% Scotland. 7.5% Ireland.

We've seen this kind of thing before, right?

Montana 1800. Red Indians 100% White people 0%

Montana 2000 Red Indians 1% White people 99%

or

Vilnius, Lithuania 1940

Christians 60%, Jews 40%

Vilnius, Lithuania 1942

Christians 100%, Jews 0%

Thankfully our London rulers have never quite gone to such genocidal lengths to keep a grip on their closest colonies, though they came kind of close with the Irish Famine.

I guess this explains why we have so much space and not enough people.

Well after several hundred years worth of wall to wall shite, the boot seems to finally be on the other foot. The strutting Tories are like the bellowing bull and the governments of Dublin and Edinburgh are like the dancing matadors, delivering pain by a hundred carefully directed stabs.

All of a sudden people south of the border are waking up to fact that a better life awaits at the far end of the M6. And it seems like they are coming.

Like refugees.

Like I did. 

And very soon it won't just be people. It will be banks and businesses and and cash.

And by the time London notices, it will be far, far to late.

I'll make like the busker by the Donald Dewer statue and wind up with the words of Lou Reed.

“You're going to reap just what you sow....”

WAITING ON THE JUDGES WITH A SICK FEELING IN THE MY GUTS.

The guy in the picture?

Hans Achim Litten

I had never heard of him until last week. He came to me care of a BBC documentary charting Hitler's rise to power in the early 30's. The programme was OK. Nothing special. Most of the story rang distant bells from 'A' Level History. Schleicher, Von Papen, Hindenberg. A comedy of errors which set the dominos falling.

But Hans Litten was new to me. He was a Jewish lawyer from Berlin who called things absolutely right and absolutely wrong at the same time. He couldn't have been more right about Hitler and his brown shirted thugs. He saw them as a lethal danger. No arguments on that front. So where was he so absolutely wrong? Well history proved his unswerving belief in the rule of the law to be sadly misplaced.

His moment in the limelight arrived in 1931. By this time he had dedicated his professional life to putting Nazi thugs in the dock and shining a light on their brutality. He used individual cases to prove the orders for every murder and beating came all the way down from the top. At this stage, Hitler was still filling his days with photo opportunities with beaming kids and wholesome families. He was painting himself a Mr Nice Guy who's life's work was to go out and bat for the little guy. Sure he despised all the bankers and corportaions, but at heart he was just a nice patriotic boy from Linz who was determined to give good decent Germans a fair shake.

Litten saw right through the carefully crafted photo opportunities which were so slavishly reported by a doting right wing press. And so the canny lawyer came up with a cunning plan. He used one of his cases as a means to subpoena Hitler into the courtroom.

It was a pretty big deal and Germany's press were there in force to watch as the Nazi leader and young jewish lawyer faced off. Litten kept his target on the stand for three long hours, and slowly but surely he needled his way under the Austrian corporal's skin. For two hours Hitler kept the mask firmly in place. He held the agred party line. But finally Litten started to find a few chinks in the armour.

As the three hour mark drew near, he smashed through the veneer and Hitler went full on Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men'. He totally lost it and went completely loco. Yelling, frothing, screaming. Hook, line and sinker to the quietly smiling young lawyer who had so skillfully walked the great man to the end of the branch.

And for a while things played out in the way Hans Litten had hoped. The German papers described the tantrum in lurid detail and the German people stepped back and took time out for some second thoughts. It seemed like Hitler's moment had come and gone. At the next elections the Nazi vote caved in and the Austrian corporal seemed like yesterday's news...

Except he wasn't of course. The petty ambitions or a few petty men played out and the countdown to genocide duly began. Within two years the Reichstag had burned to the ground and the Nazis drove through 'The Enabling Act' which did away with Parliament altogther. As in they closed it down.

You could even say prorogued.

Forever. For the duration

Litten bet the farm on the rule of law. On courts and judges and due process. 

He bet his life on it.

He was one of the first to be awoken by banging on his door at two o'clock in the morning. They came for him on the very night of the Reichstag fire.

He never got his last day in court. Instead he was imprisoned without trial. For the next five years he endured a hell tour of concentration camps – Spandau Prison, Sonnenburg, Lichtenburg, Buchenwald and finally Dachau where his will to resist finally ran out.

On 5 February 1938, he hanged himself.

I guess you know where I'm going with all this.

Normally I wouldn'd have taken a huge interest in last week's Supreme Court case. The reason I was so tuned into the proceedings has nothing to do with political geekery. Anything but. As I mentioned in my last blog, one of the QC;s who was front and centre of the thing is an old university pal of mine. I wish this blog was all about how Big Jim is a Hans Achim Litten for the twenty first century. That would have been nice! Sadly Big Jim wasn't lined up on the side of the angels. Well, not my angels. Instead Big Jim was batting for the opposition and telling us all how the forces of the rule of law should stay out of politics.

Or else?

After watching the story of Hans Litten, it was hard to put feelings of unease to one side. In 193,1 Germany was still very much a functioning democracy. It's fragile constitution was creaking, but there were no real signs of what was about to come next. 

In 2019, our fragile constitution is creaking. At least Hans Litten was able to summon Hitler to court and put him on the witness stand. Our lawyers had no such luck with Prime Minister Johnson. He refused to even sign a witness statement.

By the time Hans Litten ended his misery at the end of a rope in 1938, the world was waking up to the unfolding German nightmare. By then, the evil genie was all the way out of the bottle and 50 million would die before the genie was finally killed off.

How will last week's court case look in seven year's time? Will it be a half forgotten footnote in the dismal hitory of the Brexit fiasco? Or will it be seen as one of the last chances we had to stem the tide? To slam the stopper into the bottle before the eveil genie had the chance to get out?

Hans Litten's heroic story got my mind wandering to some pretty uncomfortable places. It took me back to one of my long drives to the continent to buy cheap tobacco. I stocked up in Luxembourg and took a night drive down to Bavaria.

To the museum at Dachau. 

To memories of indescribable horror. I'll never forget the display of all the newspaper front pages reporting on the grand opening of the camp where Hans Litten ended his days. It was trumpeted by the strutting Nazis. They were in no mood to keep the place secret. Instead they threw open the gates and preened themselves for the cameras. Within a few days of shutting down parliament, the Nazis rounded up tens of thousands of potential troublemakers and packed them off to the new concentartion camps. Socialists and communists and trade union leaders and acadmics and lawyers and bothersome journalists. Thorns in their side. Stones in their shoe.

And had there been an internet back then, they would have certainly had a berth in Dachau waiting for those writing blogs like this one. Even Nazi goons can use Google. I don't suppose it would have taken them very long to put my front door through in the early hours of a Scottish night.

Our Blackie is a heck of a guard dog, but he ain't that good....

So now the rain falls and the Indian Summer has breathed its last. Winter is coming. Sometime in the next couple of days the Supreme Court will announce their judgement. And all of a sudden it feels like a horribly big deal. All of a sudden the lights seem to be going out. And all the while we tell ourselves it really isn't the same as it was back then. The world has moved on. Things like that can't happen again. Not here. Not now.

Can they?

Is the rule of law still a thing? Or are we all about to learn the same hard truth Hans Litten learned in 1931? 

Sorry Jim, but I really hope you lose this one.