Dear Unionist

I imagine you don't like the title 'unionist' any more than I like being called a 'separatist,' but these seem to be the only words we have right now for the people on the two sides of the Scottish independence divide.

I'm not going to call you a 'Yoon' or write about 'Westmonster' or 'Wastemonster.' These are just silly terms. In return, maybe you could refer to the Scottish Government as the Scottish Government and not as the SNP. I would like it if you could accept that the movement for independence is not the Nicola Sturgeon show - or even more ridiculous, the Alex Salmond show - and the property of the SNP. I'm a Green and would like to be given my place as a supporter of independence, as I suppose my friends in the SSP would.

But I'm not here to talk about vocabulary. I really want to ask you two questions:

The first is: what do you see going on right now that makes you want to hold on to the UK? 

Me, well, frankly, I'm horrified at just about everything I see. The calibre of the politicians now running the UK government is shockingly bad. Last week, the Foreign Secretary took a few days off to write a 4,000 word essay about leaving the EU, in which he repeated the lie that gazillions of money would be coming back after leaving the EU and would be invested in the NHS. This was on the day when another terrorist bomb was set off (luckily unsuccessfully) on the London underground. But it seems Boris Johnston saw his career as more important than UK security.

In the same week, a group of Labour MPs decided to follow their conscience instead of the wishes of their electors and voted to support the Tory government in passing the repeal act that gives central government total power over the laws that govern the UK - even laws that have already been delegated to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland parliaments and assemblies.

At the Scottish level, the Labour Party has offered two candidates for leadership: a policy wonk from a trade union and someone whose only claim to fame is that his dad was an MP - and so was he till he lost his seat.

All in all, the UK looks like a basket case to me. Why would anyone want to hang on to their coat tails?

Secondly: what would it take to persuade you to vote for independence for Scotland? 

Like a lot of people, I'm watching what is happening in Catalunya. I first went to Catalunya when I was a student doing my year's residence in the Midi-Pyrenees. I was lucky enough to visit the Basque Country, Catalunya and Navarra - and saw at once that these regions existed on both sides of the border. It took no time at all to realise how different these areas were from Castilian Spain and how important it was to the people there that they could move about across borders, as they had for centuries. I'm pretty shocked to see 700-odd Catalan mayors being arrested, ballot boxes and election posters being seized and the Madrid government denying the Catalans the right to make their own decisions on their future.

Maybe my liking for diversity came from my time in that area. I do like diversity, mixing with people of different cultures. I like the idea of a Scotland with a wide range of people living and working together. To be honest, I never thought the UK should join the Common Market, as it was called 40-odd years ago. Not because I didn't want us to mix but because the Brits are not good at partnership. Never have been. The Brits need to be top dog, and so being part of the EU has just never been successful, although oddly NATO has...

Are there any assurances the pro-independence parties can give you that - for example - your pension will be okay under independence? The UK pension people assured us about that last time. Do you need assurances about 'soft borders' between Scotland and England? To be fair, that would have been a lot easier before the EU referendum but it can be negotiated. Do you need reassurance that Scotland can manage financially on its own? Whatever currency it uses? Well, that's kind of a stab in the dark, that one. Every set of figures produced by the UK predicts doom and gloom for Scotland. But the local view - as in the Fraser of Allander Institute - seems to suggest we could manage okay. And surely, if Malta can manage, Scotland can.

So I'd like to hear from you. I promise nothing a unionist can say is going to upset me. Not after my experiences with the independentistas over the past 5 years.