Prospects brilliant! Current situation desperate!

PROSPECTS BRILLIANT. CURRENT SITUATION DESPERATE: From The Province Of The Cat by George Gunn

When the Swedish playwright August Strindberg was asked how his career was going he answered, “Prospects brilliant! Current situation desperate!”  The same could be said of Scotland as we approach the election on May 7^th. One reason is that the country is being split apart by the political decisions taken by governments and agencies beyond our shores and borders and out with our control. The ever-growing rift between the rich and poor is a testament to this.

A recent report by Oxfam – “Resisting The Rule Of The Rich: Protecting Freedom Against Billionaire Power” – found that the wealth of billionaires increased by more than 16% in 2025, three times faster than the average of the past five years, to $18.3 trillion. This is the highest level in history. This is enough to eliminate extreme poverty, worldwide, 26 times over. This figure, according to Oxfam, is equivalent to the total wealth held by the bottom half of humanity, which is 4.1 billion people.

In Scotland, this inequality means that the richest 2% of households have more wealth than the bottom 50%. At the same time one in five people live in poverty. For a country with a population of 5,546,900 this is unsustainable economic madness. This is why a society constructed like this will fall apart. Such inequality cannot hold together. This is the current desperate situation. If the wealth created and generated in Scotland were redistributed then, like Strindberg, we would have “Prospects brilliant!”. Poverty in Scotland could be a thing of the past.

So the question is: why is this not happening? According to Oxfam one in four people, globally, don’t have enough to eat and half the worlds population lives in poverty. Most of these people, one way or another, have no access to a political process that could change their situation. We are living in what Oxfam’s report calls the “Billionaires Decade”. The number of billionaires in 2025 topped 3000 for the first time. Billionaires are 4000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, with a World Value Survey of 66 countries finding that almost half of all the people polled said that the rich often buy elections in their country. On both sides of the House of Commons sit those rule over us and 20% of them went to either Oxford or Cambridge Universities and as of July 2024, of the 58 prime ministers to date, 31 were educated at the University of Oxford (including 13 at Christ Church), and 14 at the University of Cambridge (including six at Trinity College). In Ukania private education buys elections. In Ukania the richest 56 people – all billionaires – have a combined wealth greater than 27 million other people combined, or 36% of the Ukanian population. In Ukania money buys elections.

This is the desperate situation Scottish democracy finds itself in. Increasingly, due to the pressure such extreme inequality exerts on society, it will be correspondingly difficult to preserve our democracy. Ultimately, no democracy can survive in this un-real and unnecessary reality. In a perfect world a country the size Scotland should have a thriving and robust democracy. But should is a big country with an even bigger neighbour: could. Scotland could have a thriving and robust democracy if we were an independent country. Scotland should be able to have a political culture that accounts for the wealth that exists and redistribute it equitably. Scotland could have a brilliant future if we had control over our natural resources. If the political will existed we would be able to create an equitable society that had a thriving and robust democracy because of economic equality. But this will be difficult. All the repressive and reactionary bills the Tories passed during their inglorious reign are still on the statute books of Westminster. Labour have done nothing to replace them In fact they have doubled down on many of them.

In one of his many brilliant essays, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney remarks that a poem is essentially made from two factors: one is story and the other is language. In the light of that what we have to decide on in Scotland is just what story about our country we want to tell? The language we use must, by necessity, as we move into a post-neo-conservative future, embrace the “Prospects brilliant!” principle of Strindberg. The story of Scotland must be a positive one. It has to be, in these insecure times, about the security inherent in a society that shares wealth, that values the welfare of its people and nurtures the natural environment. In fact, the very opposite of what SSEN (Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks) are busy doing in the North Highlands at the moment, which is trashing the environment and ploughing roughly over the concerns of the local population in pursuit of corporate profit. This is just a brutal example of the “Current situation desperate!” too frequently occurring in Scotland.

The real social security of our people, their welfare, is what an independent Scotland has to proclaim as our fundamental goal. We have to realise that economic inequality creates social emergencies. That it weakens the Scottish economy in general terms, fuels division and holds back progress on all fronts. Especially when it comes to renewable energy and the ugly, exploitative, unregulated environmental trashing machine that it has tragically become.

On the other hand Ukania has proven that it cannot, is not interested in providing, economic equality and opportunity for the majority. Each consecutive Westminster budget shows that no matter who is in power the interests of the rich are protected as are the financial assets of an elite, and that they have no sympathy with the idea of social justice, preferring the profitable inequality of “market” capitalism and the financialisaton of services and infrastructure. Also Ukania is isolationist when it comes to Europe, too eager to suck up to the USA, and chauvinistic and hostile when it comes to asylum seekers. Conversely, Scotland must be willing to enter into social, economic and political agreements with other countries, especially our near neighbours, and to be open to those refugees seeking sanctuary from oppression.

Devolution within Ukania has meant decline within Scotland. What the possibility of independence represents is the chance for progress. The energy Scotland produces must benefit the people of Scotland and that can begin with pricing. The nationalisation of land and electrical generation are other pre-requisites. As part of Ukania our energy is exploited for private profit outwith Scotland. As is our land.

All progress hinges upon political desire and desire is linked to consent. This is the quandary, the paradox of the independence issue. Our desires are infinite in their pretensions but limited by the energy from which they proceed. The question is: do we desire to be a normal independent and democratic people, or are we content to give our consent to another power so that they can control us?  Or, to put it another way, are we content to amass our individual gold while the nation is stripped of its wealth?

In the social space it is difficult to get a meaningful dialogue going. The BBC and the media generally in Scotland display, embrace and employ the same tactics in relation to independence as Donald Trump does to truth. They create a meaningless void and then fill it with noise so that any discussion is impossible. Our mental faculties are stripped of reason from the contradictions broadcast from on high. Our mistake is in not recognising  this as wretched: it is inhuman.

But we are all compliant in this wretchedness. The media moguls, Trump, Starmer, the billionaires do not recognise human wretchedness. If they did it might inevitably lead to them believing in something other than their own preservation and enrichment. And it is here the language used to inform us of reality fails us. So it follows that Scotland refusing planning permission for the building of new nuclear reactors on Scottish soil is spun as denying people work. Assembling a confederacy of gangsters to profit from the genocide and the defilement of the dead in Gaza is hailed as a contribution to world peace. These are the pincers of contradiction that we are asked to grasp. These are the horrors we are expected to accept. And all the while we are asked to stay passive, to suspend our reason, to avert our attention, to refuse to recognise reality, to stay weak and silent, to disappear into our smartphones.

Meanwhile in the real everyday world of politics and poverty we have to, within our society, accomplish the possible. If we can do that then we can reach out and try and touch the impossible. If we remain paralysed, as we seem to be at the moment, we will accomplish nothing. For example, if I was a stranger to Caithness and I was thinking of visiting or even coming to live, and I picked up a copy of the John O Groat Journal or the Press and Journal, and read them then I would not be overly inclined to either visit or settle. These newspapers are examples of paralysis. They are stuck in a time warp of lairdism, inferiorism, royalism, unionism and militarism where everything that is wrong with the North of Scotland is the fault of Inverness or Edinburgh and most certainly the SNP, but never Westminster. London is serious politics. Edinburgh is not. Within the pages of these blatts some magic notions abound: that all social ills and societal failures will be miraculously set right by a visit from the King. The late Queen Mother was their royal deity of choice. Well, at least she had the appropriate hats.

All this does is to generate a sense of knowing your place in the social strata. It is the editorial mantra of the totalitarian parish. This artificial, enforced false duty will kill us all. It robs us of our sense of self and our ability to reason. Of course, the editorial mantra of the totalitarian parish is a dream. It does not believe in the reality of the present. To break free of this freezing influence it is necessary to accept that it exists, that it is finite and that it is pointless. If we are to live in the future, where the prospects are brilliant, then we must be relentless in our belief in a better, more equitable world. It is preferable to hope for a moment than to despair indefinitely.

©George Gunn 2026

Image Credit: Fergus Walker