Independence for Scotland will be pointless if we destroy our country with incinerators, fracking, deregulation and government acting in the interests of billionaires and big firms who only want short term profits at everyone else's expense

Unfortunately I didn't get enough votes to be elected ( I got 246 first preference votes and 353 votes - about 6% of those cast , including 2nd and 3rd and 4th preferences before I was eliminated). Not bad on 3 weeks campaigning and a budget of £600. (I was standing as a candidate to be a councillor in the Clydesdale West ward of South Lanarkshire Council).

I'd like to thank everyone who voted for me and campaigned for me and everyone who took the time to talk to me while I was canvassing. I will pass on all the issues you raised to the four candidates who were elected Councillors for the ward - Eileen Logan (Labour) , Lynsey Hamilton (Labour), David Shearer (SNP) and Pat Lee (SNP).

I want to thank retiring SNP Councillor Ian Gray for leading opposition to the incinerator on the planning committee and all the other councillors who voted against it, plus the AGADI organisers and volunteers and objectors and the Lanarkshire Green Party who also continue to campaign hard against it.

Though I was against Conservative councillor Alex Allison's vote in favour of the incinerator and have little time for his party or it's policies, residents in Crossford told me he worked hard for them on other issues, before losing his seat in this ward in the recent election.

I'd also like to congratulate Independent candidate Ed Archer, who was elected a councillor in neighbouring Clydesdale North ward, centred on Lanark; and who is also opposed to the incinerator and to the wind farm at Cartland.

I will be among many people launching campaigns to demand to know why the SNP Scottish Government, led by Alec Salmond, are not using the huge powers they have over council decisions, through control of around 80% of councils' budgets, to get Dovesdale and other wasteful, expensive, toxic, incinerators closed down and replaced with recycling and anaerobic digestion plants - and ditto on stopping fracking and on opening old railway stations (including in Law, where many residents asked for this).

The Scottish Government have demanded a Council Tax freeze from local councils in return for granting them funding (unwisely in my view) and could use the same kind of pressure to get Dovesdale and other Incinerators closed.

They have stepped in to over-rule local council planning decisions on Donald Trump's white elephant golf course (built over an SSSI full of endangered species and also including attempts to force people out of their homes by bully-boy tactics).

Residents in Kilncadzow tell me the Scottish Government also granted appeals to allow wind farms to be built at Kilncadzow and Cartland within 500 metres of peoples' houses, after the local council for once listened to residents and refused planning applications in each case. (Like the residents i'm in favour of turbines sited correctly - but not that close to houses.)

So Salmond and the SNP Scottish Government will intervene to help billionaires and big firms do things that are wrong and harmful, but not to cut funding to South Lanarkshire Council until it closes a toxic, over-priced incinerator? If so what's the difference between them and the other big party leaders?

I love my country and it's people. Alec Salmond and the other big party leaders say they love them too (whether they define them as Scotland or Britain). If you love your country and it's people why would you expose them to over-priced, deadly, wasteful incinerators ; to fracking which will poison our fresh water supplies (an increasingly valuable commodity worldwide with shortages growing in much of the worldwide) and our air and people ; and why would you over-rule local residents and councillors to let arrogant, incompetent billionaires like Trump get their way?

If you really love your country Alec, prove it. Close down the incinerators. Stop the fracking. Open the old railway stations. Regulate the banks. Listen to the people, not to big firms and billionaires who only want short term profit for themselves.

I'll also campaign for independence for Scotland when the referendum comes - i'm all for it to keep us out of Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe more Falklands and Iran wars and financial crises caused by deregulation in which ordinary people die or suffer for the profits of arms and oil firms and banks, and the careers of politicians; plus getting rid of tax havens that impoverish the majority to avoid the wealthiest and big firms paying their share.

But independence will change nothing if we become an independent Scotland destroyed for it's people, because it's run for big business and billionaires' short term profits at the expense of suffering for the vast majority. That would be no better than being part of a UK which is being destroyed in the same way.

Independents, Greens and socialists may not have been able to beat the big parties yet, but by god, if you big party leaders are in office and keep behaving like you are now we'll point up your hypocrisy constantly enough in one campaign after another (at elections and between them) that you'll have to change to more decent policies or else risk losing to one of the other big parties- and then do the same to whichever big party is in next until we get decent policies from them or else win ourselves and bring decent policies in ourselves.

I'll leave the last word to Dougie Maclean.

Predictions for 2011

There will probably be the beginnings of a double dip recession in the UK and the whole of Europe due to 1920s / early 30s style austerity programmes. Growing demonstrations and possibly even riots will take place against the cuts. As unemployment and poverty rise, support for right-wing extremist parties such as the British National Party will increase across Europe, though there will be some revival in the poll ratings of the radical and moderate left and Greens too. Support for pro-austerity conservatives like Cameron in the UK, Merkel in Germany and Sarkozy in France will erode further as cuts start to bite and they're squeezed between the left and centre left on the one hand and the far right on the other.

The SNP will no longer be the largest minority party in the Scottish parliament after the 2011 elections - Labour will be, due to the recession and the SNP being seen as the incumbents in Scotland (plus much misleading Labour, Conservative and media propaganda about Megrahi, who is almost certainly not the Lockerbie bomber and never had a fair trial).

Lib Dems will lose most of their Scottish parliament and council seats. As a result Labour, while taking some seats from the SNP and Lib Dems, will be unable to re-form its past coalition with the Lib Dems - and will be forced to rely on the Greens the way the SNP currently do.

The Greens will have picked up a couple of seats from the Lib Dem collapse on the second vote and from the ongoing civil war between the SSP and Solidarity (unless that’s been patched up by May, which seems unlikely) and will have more influence than they do now.

Labour will win the Oldham by-election with a greatly increased majority, with Lib Dem votes slipping away to Labour and the Conservatives.

Republican control of congress will make it impossible for Obama to get any further meaningful continued welfare support for the unemployed or economic stimulus through congress and put more pressure on him to be more nationalistic and belligerent in foreign policy.

The growing extremism of the Israeli government will make another Gaza style war likely - and wars with Lebanon, Syria or even Iran a high risk.

If the double dip recession spreads globally (with about the only thing currently militating against it being Chinese economic stimulus programmes and increased minimum wages) World War Three over disputes between the allies of the US on the one hand and China and Russia on the other becomes a bigger risk (e.g Georgia, the two Koreas, Pakistan vs India).

War between India and Pakistan over Kashmir or continued Pak military support for terrorist groups in Kashmir and India is also a serious risk.

NATO forces will begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan and an attempt to get a coalition government there, as they have no way to defeat the Taliban while our Pakistani military and Saudi "allies" continue to arm them, partly with arms and funds our own governments have given them - and cannot target the Pakistani military as they require its co-operation to get enough supplies through the ports and passes of Pakistan into Afghanistan.

This will not stop the US or its NATO allies continuing to sell arms and provide military aid to these supposed "allies" as a means of making profits for their own arms and oil firms.

Jihadist terrorist attacks worldwide will continue to grow due largely to the continued US and European policy of backing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Blockade in Gaza, their support for dictatorships in Jordan, Saudi, Yemen and Egypt - and US cruise missile attacks and US and British special forces operations in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.