I have been a loyal SNP voter for over 25 years, and briefly a member post Brexit, but that membership came to an abrupt end when Nicola Sturgeon’s government rode roughshod over the local planning process and the recommendations of its own experts to push through the luxury housing development at the Park of Keir near Bridge of Allan — I could not, in good conscience, be a member of a party that showed so little concern for the environment, had so little grasp of the twin environmental crises. Nevertheless, in the years that followed, I held my nose and, overlooking the shallow CO2 reductionism of its environmental policies, continued to vote for the SNP in the interest of the Indy cause. No more.

Given the SNP has no plan whatsoever how to take us to independence, never mind a one that would actually be credible (not that anyone currently does), the least we should be able to expect of them while in government is acting in the interests of the people of Scotland and of the Land. The decision of John Sweeney’s government to, yet again, ride a roughshod over local planning decisions and push through the Flamingo Land project on Loch Lomond fails on both counts, and, as I see it a government unable to do the right thing in such an obvious case cannot be trusted with the responsibility for Scotland’s land and natural resource as a whole.

What that means for me personally is that I am now fully politically disenfranchised. My belief in the need for Scottish independence is stronger than ever, for in recent years I have come to understand that the changes that need to, and could, happen in Scotland for both the sake of the environment and our personal wellbeing cannot happen while Scotland’s resources continue being exploited to maintain a status quo south of the border, and the unionist parties kowtowing to their London central offices are enablers of this exploitation. That leaves the Scottish Greens, the only other pro-independence party in the wee pretendy parliament, but they have proved themselves to be a bunch of incompetent fools that I have even less confidence in than I have in the SNP.

And so I am forced to face up to what I have deep down understood for some time now, but was reluctant to accept: that the mainstream political processes will not deliver what Scotland, both the people and the Land, needs. We’re doomed for the foreseeable future; it’s time to start thinking through the personal implications of that.