Living the dream

My wife Judith and I have just returned from a short break near Inverness. When I was paying the bill, I commented to the owner that I was disappointed that I couldn’t get BBC Scotland on the TV in our room (you could only get London news) as I particularly wanted to watch Reporting Scotland to see what they had to say about Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a second Independence Referendum. He asked me if I was an Independence supporter and when I said yes, he said that he’d voted No in 2014 because he was worried about how it might affect his business but now with Brexit he wasn’t so sure.

I’m not quick witted enough these days to immediately follow up on such comments so having paid the bill I cogitated on our conversation. A short while later, while I was packing the car, the owner walked by. I approached him and said,
‘I hope you won’t take offence and I’ve never done this before but I’d like to try to persuade you towards Independence’
He looked at me warily and nodded, ‘oh alright’ he said.

I then outlined to him my view that the difference between Scotland as it is now and how it could be after Independence was rather like the difference between being an employee and being self-employed (I reasoned he’d understand this analogy, being self-employed himself). To an employee I said, however conscientious they may be, work is just a job and when not working they’ll rarely think much about the job. By contrast I went on, being self-employed sharpens one’s awareness so that you’re constantly tuned in to opportunities and threats to your business, what your competitors are doing, price comparisons and in his case, how tourism trends might impact on his business and how he might take advantage of any changing trends.

I concluded by saying that I saw an Independent Scotland as being akin to the whole Nation being self employed, that it would make all of us more aware of the factors that impact on Scotland and how we can make the most of opportunities and minimize threats.

He responded by saying that was very good, that he’d never heard it put like that before and that I’d make a good politician! He may have just said that because I was a customer, however he also said he’d been afraid of taking the risk in 2014 because they’d managed to carve out a decent living. I commented that he must have taken a big risk when he left his steady job to start his new business and had it been worth it? To which he replied that it had.

I offer this anecdote as a potential gambit to use with anyone you might know who is self-employed and is currently undecided or a soft-No voter. By the way, I’m not the least bit interested in being a politician. I think it must be one of the hardest jobs in the world.