A wee thing about seeing friends over the winter (pagan) holiday...
Yesterday, I picked up my best friend's oldest son to go skiing. Not in the Alps, but in Scotland.
And not at Cairngorm or even at Glencoe. We traveled to Glasgow, to the big indoor Fridge at Braehead.
...1/8..
Yesterday, I picked up my best friend's oldest son to go skiing. Not in the Alps, but in Scotland.
And not at Cairngorm or even at Glencoe. We traveled to Glasgow, to the big indoor Fridge at Braehead.
...1/8..
We were joined, amongst others, by a Dutch friend who has also lived, worked and married in, and to, Scotland since the 90s. Again, uncertainty for him as he also doesn't have British citizenship. 2/8...
On the way back we stopped off to see some other friends and their wee 15 month old son. He's Scottish, as is his German Mum - again, someone that's lived and worked here for nearly 20 years and now faces a situation where she doesn't know if she'll be allowed to stay here.
No British citizenship.
Tomorrow, I'll be meeting friends that moved to France last year for a bit of a 'lets try it' life change. They're back for a wee family holiday over Hogmanay.
He's Scottish, she's is too but again she's also French, they've been together for nearly 20 years and have two young now bilingual kids that have dual citizenship. Their Mum doesn't have that. No British citizenship. 6/12
All of these people are my closest friends. And they're all facing a ridiculous uncertainty of whether they'll be allowed to travel in and out of Scotland come April.
None of them are 'foreign', that's an absurd tag to place upon them - they're just my friends, they happen to be European, just like me. They are internationalists who have chosen to live in a particular part of Europe where they decided they wanted to make their home.
That's what the EU has allowed us all to experience; as good an internationalism that humanity has managed so far. We should be treasuring this, embracing this, not treating it with the insular disdain both Labour and the Tories are doing for very different reasons.
This British 'Exceptionalism' has no place in the Human future. The #SettledStatus announcement goes against everything valued in terms of European solidarity for the last 70 years, have we learned nothing from history?
It's fairly apparent now that the only way to resolve this for us locally, and ALL of my 'foreign' friends agree, is for Scotland to become an independent EU country. #indyref2 and no more Tories ever having any power in and over Scotland again when it never votes for them.
England: It's up to you, but you really need to Stop voting Tory.
I seem to have missed 1 of the tweet splits: My best friend, whose bilingual teenage son I took skiing yesterday, is also German with another 2 sons. The boys have dual citizenship, but their parents are stuck with 1 British & 1 German passport so their future is also uncertain.
