Given that I’m not a Scot, I’m not sure whether I have the right to express an opinion on Scottish independence. After all, how would it effect me personally if the scots broke away from the UK or not? I doubt my life would change much. Yet I have always had an instinctive feeling that nations should be coming together, not splitting apart; that humanity as a whole should be uniting, not dividing along essentially arbitrary lines. Granted, each nation of the world is different, and these differences have value. But if we are ever to solve our problems – global warming, depleting fossil fuel stocks, food shortages etc – we must work together as one people. That is why I see Alex Salmonnd as akin to the likes of Nigel Farage, perceiving things in the simplest of terms, valuing one group of people over another. To me, all groups of people have value, but we are also one group. Thus we should be working together, pooling our talent and resources, not reviving territorial divisions which last stood three hundred years ago. I know the scots are a proud people who have long suffered the barbarities of the English; that is why I will, of course, respect their decision either way. But I still see the bigger picture: we must work to come together, not divide and re-divide. As we are, we are just a bunch of (usually) bipedal primates squabbling over arbitrary territorial boundaries, but as one, we can go boldly where none of us could go before as individuals.