Remind me what's good about living in Scotland?

[CoralPaperweight]

I moved to Scotland 25 years ago (central belt) and I've had a great life here but over the last year or so I've got increasingly itchy feet. May be a post-Covid or age thing but I'm not sure I want to stay in Scotland forever - it just doesn't seem to be as appealing to me, and even the cities seem a bit flat at the moment. Realistically, I can't disrupt DS education at the moment, he's very settled and happy so please remind me of everything that is fantastic about life in Scotland. I'm forever reading threads about people who are desperate to move to Scotland and I'm not really seeing why at the moment.

And yes, Scotland is beautiful. I feel really sad that it’s been taken over by this unpleasant culture- doesn’t feel like the country I grew up in. And so divided: shown again on here.

Where i am the public transport is fine but i can see your point if it isn't. Hopefully someone will have a plan to improve things..🤞

I'm not sneering. I'm offering a different viewpoint.

It's my experience. I've heard people use the word 'progressive' to mean adherence to a certain set of political views.

Bedroom tax mitigation is fine, yes. The baby box sounds lovely, but it's a showboat policy. The infrastructure and economy of the country is not being attended to. I don't want my tax money spent on working groups to explore nonbinary identities, I want the roads, schools and hospitals fixed. I want to be able to get dental treatment.

Free prescriptions sounds good, but I can't actually access a GP so it's worthless, right now. I'd prefer to pay for prescriptions and have a functioning health service, frankly.

Changing the subject a bit.. has anyone noticed comments are getting cut off at the bottom? I'm using an iPhone.

You are offering a different viewpoint in a sneering way using pejorative terms. Its completely possible to provide an alternative view without resorting to this sort of language.

Free prescriptions can arguably save the country money, although there are some issues to be sorted. The baby box is a lovely idea and has worked really well in Finland over a long period. The health service is definitely in crisis as it is in the rest of the UK to a greater extent. We are just beginning to come out of a pandemic which has put extraordinarily and unprecedented demand on the system. We have exceptional staffing difficulties in health and social care that have been caused by the pandemic, Brexit and our ageing demographics. I don’t think there’s an easy fix.

If you impute from straightforward statement that I'm sneering, when I say clearly that I'm not, then it's you reading emotion/intent that isn't there into my words. And nothing I've said is pejorative.

The issues with the health service run far, far deeper than anything to do with the pandemic. Cracks were already showing before covid even existed. I agree there's no easy fix - what worries me is that I see no will or intent to even try to address the issues.

Instead the government is pushing through yet more unpopular and possibly illegal legislation, and doing their best to avoid answering questions on difficult topics.

Carersmatter You are offering a different viewpoint in a sneering way using pejorative terms. Its completely possible to provide an alternative view without resorting to this sort of language.

If I may jump on this, are you suggesting that this perfectly ordinary use of language is wrong in some way? What "sort of language" is to be acceptable in Scotland?

Many people in many countries criticise their country, its government, the infrastructure, the politics, etc.. It is normal human behaviour. Why Scotland should be different is unclear.

Are you a fan of Big Brother?

Failing to see how @DomesticatedZombie's post was in any way sneering? FWIW I agree with everything said. And I'd use pretty much the same wording.

Good lord, when did we be able to quote multiple posts at once, as above? That blows my mind, i can't figure out who wrote what

I’m amazed by that too @ssd 🤣

You can still only quote one post. The response to the quote is after the quotation marks. It's not clear though.

The new formatting is terrible and confusing though, I'm viewing on the iPhone app and posts are cut off at the end. Wish they hadn't mucked about with it.

Yes. I've raised that issue on the site stuff thread.

It kind of feels like they've really buggered up mn doesn't it

I thought it was ok before 🤷‍♀️

The baby box sounds lovely, but it's a showboat policy.

Yes, that's all it is, while education, which should be giving children a better start in life, gets worse and worse, sadly.

Are you a fan of Big Brother?
😅

I was thinking about this thread. I think a big part of the problem with Scottish politics right now is that any form of dissent or disagreement is seen as 'sneering' and therefore discounted. It's not a healthy way to conduct a democratic society when politics is personalised - it's emotional, it's tribal. Anyone not in full agreement is seen as an enemy. So reductionist, and actually actively damaging.

Back before the referendum, when I was supportive of Independence, one of things I really valued was how open to discussion the movement was, how the whole country was respectfully debating the issues, how people would remind each other to keep discussions civil, etc. That seems like a long time ago, now. I'm not sure if I was just naive, or if the atmosphere has changed considerably.

We need to be able to discuss issues, and yes, even criticise the government, without people jumping to attack, surely?

What worries me about Scotland, is that any alternative to higher taxes and more regulation of things we were previously free to do is now generally seen as "bad". Whereas thats pretty much the normal thinking in many European countries. The agenda in Scotland, and the UK, is about using "poverty" as a reason to justify ever higher taxes and ever more restrictions on freedom. Then you can have no debate because examples are given of the great Finland, or Sweden, which are apparently heavily socialist but when examined in actual policy terms and expectation of individual responsibility, are much more right wing than Scotland.

And the taxes in Scotland are increasingly insidious. All that regulation comes at a price. It also creates nice little niche markets for certain people which wouldn't otherwise give them work. Imagine if the government made it a legal requirement to do something that gave you a massive amount of extra work, as did the mains smoke alarms in all dwelling houses requirement?

What other country has such a requirement anyway in peoples' private homes? Are we at much greater risk of fire than anywhere else in the world?

Agree with all of this.

The smoke alarms thing was supposedly because of the Grenfell fire. But that didn't have anything to do with smoke alarms.

What worries me about Scotland, is that any alternative to higher taxes and more regulation of things we were previously free to do is now generally seen as "bad".

Overall this type of framing as either 'good' or 'bad' is highly dubious, yes. It pits one viewpoint as the one with the moral authority and everyone else as 'the wrong side of history'. That's what I meant by 'right think'.

couldn't have put it better.

I could easily afford to pay for a prescription or some money towards a detail appointment or to pay a bridge toll. I’d much rather pay and have a service, than not pay but have a very patchy service (e.g. dentistry). It’s better than paying a big whack of tax into a black hole and having shit ‘free’ services.

Ditto for the free school lunches. It sounds great on paper, and I'm glad they are there for those who need them, but at the same time as introducing them drastic changes to the menu meant virtually no children chose to eat them. I think at one point there were three children taking the lunches in our school, out of over 200. I'd rather pay for a decent lunch than get an inedible one free, and let those who need to access free ones get the benefit.

And the same for all the 'free period products' - we had so much free sanpro the school ended up sending it elsewhere as it wasn't being used. At the same time: gender neutral toilets mean girls are doing all they can to avoid going to toilets at all while in school.

It's showering people with free stuff that they don't want or need in order to be able to say 'we give all this stuff out free!' instead of actually maybe asking people what they want/need and then trying to address those issues.

Yes, it is the state deciding what they think people ought to want or need, and taxing everyone to the eyeballs to pay for it.