Dear Orkney News,
The article by Iain Macwhirter in the Sunday Herald on the 27th of August has chrystalised a train of thought which has been brewing for a while.
Will Theresa May be judged by history as being the British politician who caused the most damage to the people of the 4 nations of the United Kingdom in the early 21st century? Given the competition from Blair, Brown, Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Gove and Farage to name but a few, this is quite an achievement.
Her single minded fixation on reducing immigration numbers using totally bogus figures is doing massive harm across the United Kingdom, and to our international reputation. Angela Merkel may be the target of brick bats for insisting that Germany take in a million plus refugees, but she will be shown to be on the right side of history. Compare her stance to that of Theresa May halting our token programme to take in unaccompanied children.
The latest example of the lack of common sense, decency and morality is the case of Chennan Fei. She was brought to the UK by her parents aged 13. After living in Scotland for 15 years, and graduating from Edinburgh University she is threatened with deportation to China. Currently the Home Office is licking its wounds after a Scottish court ruled that it has acted unlawfully. Along with the 100 letters supposedly sent in “error” to EU nationals telling them they had a month to quit the UK this is the work of a department of state implementing the bizarre fixation of the current Prime Minister and former Home Secretary, in a fashion worthy of Kafka.
I can categorically state that this is not being done in my name, and I doubt that many of my fellow citizens approve either. I call on our elected representatives in councils, at Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels to stand against and fight against the reprehensible actions being carried out against innocent people.
One way to do this would be to vote at Holyrood for all people resident in Scotland to be given the protection of Scottish citizenship and that Scotland decides who may reside here. Scotland is a sovereign nation with its own Parliament and judiciary, so reserved powers be damned. The other nations of the UK may think that they are full to bursting, but Scotland isn’t, and we should be proud to shout out that we both need and want new blood in our beautifully multifaceted country.
Jonathan Southerington, Orkney