THE VIEW FROM THE BORDER? INDEPENDENCE IS COMING AND IT IS COMING SOON.

Borders never lie. Instead they reveal inescapable truths.

On one side of a border you have one reality. Then you travel a couple of hundred yards and lo and behold, you find a completely different reality.

Am I being a bit obscure? Probably. Here are a few examples from my own scrapbook.

Early 80's. Snow everywhere. A sub zero Christmas card worthy world. The last town in what was then very much West Germany. Me and a couple of pals in my venerable VW Beetle gliding down a well gritted road of perfect tarmac. Shiny new houses built with no expense spared: German style.

A new Mercedes in every driveway: German style.

It was a million miles from the festering decay of Thatcher's Britain. The last town of the Western World. Reagan's world. Thatcher's world. My world.

The road brought us to the top of a shallow valley. How wide? Not so wide. Maybe 300 hundred yards. And in the crystal clear winter light, we could see the first town of the German Democratic Republic on the other side. A line of low rise concrete blocks looking like a set of stumpy teeth.

The invisible Iron Curtain ran along the bottom of the valley. What was very much visible was the razor fencing. The watch towers. The killing zone.

We glided down the smooth tarmac to the last outpost of our world where wryly smiling West German border guards waved us on our way.

Through the fence. Through no man's land. To the barrier where the hard faced East German guards waited. Park here. Get out. Passport. Bags out. Open them. And following advice from a mate, I had left a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label in clear view at the top of my rubbish packing. A glance. A shrug. And the bottle duly disappeared.

An angry thump of print into my passport.

Did anyone say "Welcome to the German Democratic Republic"?

What do you think?

We picked our way up the other side of the shallow valley. Potholes and potholes. We reached the top. The road pointed East. Four storey blocks of crumbling concrete. No pavements. A couple of bent old ladies. Beat up Trabants covered in snow. The place made Toxteth look like Hampstead.

I had never drunk the Kool Aid when it came to the Communist East. If I had, all my pipe dreams would have been shattered by one look at the blighted street.

The border didn't lie and nine years later the rotten to the core DDR collapsed like a pack of cards.

Early 80's again.

Ireland. The outskirts of Derry. Where the UK met the Irish Republic. No need for a passport this time. No actual border post. Instead a whole bunch of British soldiers armed to the teeth. Sandbag emplacements and bored stares.

The last few miles of the UK were a dual carriageway which could have been anywhere. Smooth tarmac and white lines.

The first change was the change of line colour. White to yellow. And suddenly there were potholes everywhere. Bloody deep potholes. Deep enough to make any speed above 40mph borderline idiotic.

And straight away there were six brand spanking new garages all in a cluster. Six garages, but no town. What was that all about? Ah. Check the prices. A gallon of Southern Irish fuel was 20% cheaper than a gallon of Northern Irish fuel. Cheaper enough for people of the North to drive miles to fill their tanks on the other side of the border. All of which made the last garage on the UK side seriously weird. It was selling a gallon of unleaded 5% dearer than other garages in the North.

25% more than the cluster of garages a few hundred yards into the South. 

What the hell was that all about? Then it hit me. This garages was for the Unionist nutters who would drive out of town to make a point of spending 25% more on filling up their tanks. To show their contempt.

So there it all was in a nutshell. In two hundred yards. A bunch of armed to the teeth squaddies proving there was serious shit going down. Smooth road one side, potholes the other. And a 25% swing in the price of fuel. Fair enough it wasn't the Iron Curtain. But it was a pretty big deal in its own way.

One more.

A few years ago I used to go into lots of high schools across Dumfries and Galloway to give drug and alcohol awareness presentations. I had a stump speech of sorts. It seemed to get the attention of the S4's who were on the brink of heading out down all the wrong tracks. And the tracks back then were as wrong as tracks could be. These were the days when 7% of males in Dumfries and Galloway were addicted to heroin or valium or both.

Part of my stump speech involved a bit of knockabout. The Buckfast culture. Crazy 'Buckie' fueled rituals played out in Friday night parks from Gretna to Stanraer.

Anyway. One day I received an invitation to take my stump speech to a high school in Carlisle. As in south of the Border. As in England. As in about five crow flown miles across the Solway from Annan.

When my stump speech arrived at the 'Buckie' section, I noticed a blankness on the faces of my audience.

So I stopped. Took a pause.

"Buckie? As in Buckfast? How many of you know what Buckfast is?"

A hundred in the room. Only two hands raised. The Buckfast culture was a Scottish thing. Only the week, before a client had shown me the truly epic Bebo page of the much vaunted AMP – the 'Annan Mental Posse'. There they all were, clad from head to toe in Burberry. About thirty of them. Average age of 15 or thereabouts. Each and every one of them was brandishing a bottle of Buckfast like a Claymore.

And yet here I was a mere five miles away across the border and out of a hundred kids only two knew what Buckie was.

In my book, that's a pretty serious cultural difference.

All of which brings me to now. To July 2020. To the same border. Scotland one side. England the other side.

Are there any armed to the teeth squaddies? Nope.

Are there super smart houses on one side and crumbling houses the other side? Nope.

Are there potholes one side and no potholes the other side? Nope.

So where is the unavoidable truth? Where is the chasm of difference?

Well it's a difference you can't actually see. Not in the flesh as you head south down the M74 through Gretna.

Instead we see the difference on maps in the newspapers.

It's a pretty major difference. As serious as a difference can get. We're talking the difference between life and death.

On one side of the invisble line is a country where a calm and sensible Government has taken a slow, measured grip on the Covid 19 crisis. On the other side of the invisible line is a country where an inept and corrupt Government has dished out multi million pound contracts to cronies like Deloitte and Serco and lost any semblance of control of the virus.

On one side of the line, trust in the Edinburgh Government is sky high. On the other side of the line, trust in the London government has withered and died.

Both regimes have the same amount of cash to splash on halting the spread. One Government has been pretty successful. One Government has failed more or less completely.

In 2014, a big part of my Indy stump speech was all about how governments of small countries tend to be a whole lot better than the governments of large countries. And it went down OK. But it was never close to being a game changer.

And we lost 55 to 45.

Well. The game has just changed. The border at Gretna has become a matter of life and death.

Death figures don't lie. Just like borders don't lie. And the people of Scotland are anything but stupid. They can read a simple set of numbers. They can see a screaming truth Covid 19 has crystal clear.

No wonder the most recent poll has Yes up to 54%

Once the dust settles on the London government's utter incompetence and corruption, the figure will be nearer 60%

Because borders never lie.

And our Independence is roaring towards us like a German train in the night.