On the very fabric of the Scottish Parliament – specifically its Canongate Wall, across the road from a building curiously called “Watergate” – are inscribed 26 quotes, carved into stone hewn from every corner of the country, about the sort of Scotland that the building and those working inside it are supposed to stand for and aspire to.
One of them, from the celebrated author Sir Walter Scott, reads thus:
“When we had a king, and a chancellor, and parliament-men o’ our ain, we could aye peeble them wi’ stanes when they werena gude bairns – But naebody’s nails can reach the length o’ Lunnon.”
It’s a phrase that’s hard to interpret as anything but a paean to stern accountability. Should our representatives, it says, fail to live up to the standards that we expect and demand of them, they should be pelted with stones.
Now, we must assume – for this is the 21st century, and public stoning is a barbaric act limited to but a few of the UK’s allies – that said stones were intended by the architects to be understood as metaphorical ones, presumably in the form of harsh criticism.
It’s alarming, then, that so many of the people currently trying to get elected to that Parliament apparently instead believe that any criticism of them should be a crime.
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