Wings Over Scotland

Don Paterson is a celebrated Scottish poet, writer and musician. The essay below comes from a new anthology of Scottish writers called Irish Pages: Scotland, and is reproduced with his permission. 

Remember The Vow? Most of us have tried to forget it. This was Westminster’s Hail Mary as polling day approached in the 2014 referendum; a vote that Yessers – people tend to forget this part too – initially had no real expectation of winning, until an inspirationally positive campaign saw the polls draw neck-and-neck.

Then lo! There it was, splashed across the Daily Record: a fancy-font promise from Westminster party leaders that if Scotland voted to stay within the UK, we would enjoy new devolved powers. There was some other waffle about defence and opportunities and having an equal share in the UK’s prosperity. But the message was clear enough. We would be listened to.

Aye, right.

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Well, Shauny‘s knocked it out of the park.

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In the modern political world, you don’t get anywhere without a movement, and movements don’t get anywhere without a flag. So we’ve decided it’s time to take action and stand up for a very large group of people who are genuinely discriminated against and significantly disadvantaged in our society.

Here’s their symbol.

Today is July 1st, and we officially, on behalf of all our oppressed kinfolk, declare this to be People Who Aren’t Eligible For A Railcard Pride Month.

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Holiday Boy has of course chosen the general election campaign to spend the next three weeks feeding stray cats somewhere sunny, so here’s a cartoon by the brilliant webcomicname that summarises the Baillie Gifford story for anyone joining us late.

Because, y’know, idiots.

As a writer, feminist and literary events organiser in Scotland, I’m regularly sent links to information someone thinks might be of interest to me. This week it was a document commissioned by one of Scotland’s leading and most powerful publicly-funded literary organisations, Literature Alliance Scotland (LAS).

Nobody, of course, objects to transgender writers being included or supported, but the content of the guidance raises several extremely serious and concerning issues.

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As of last night, the Hate Monster campaign page on the Police Scotland website looks like this:

(Archive version here.)

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He’s the cuddly, lovable character all of Scotland’s talking about, but what do we really know about the Hate Monster? Where did he come from? What’s his backstory? Well, the diligent research team at Wings have been hard at work, and we’re thrilled to bring you this rare archive footage of not one but BOTH of his parents.

Both were in the arts. Here’s his mum, Ruda (originally from Eastern Europe, escaping to the West before the Iron Curtain came down) starring in a 1952 Bugs Bunny short:

And this is his dad, in one of several collaborations with the Scooby Doo team in 1976 under his former wrestling persona of The 10,000-Volt Ghost:

Our boy was born for the stage. No wonder he’s made such an impact.

Following on from that unforgettable summer:

We’re sure that, like us, you can hardly wait.

I’ve always been obsessed, in cultural terms, with pivot points: the precise moments at which something significant changes irreversibly.

They can be a goal that ushers in a football team’s golden era – for me, Alex McLeish putting Aberdeen level in the 1982 Scottish Cup final. They can be a twist in a movie, like (first example that comes to mind) the shocking revelation of the bad guy in LA Confidential. They can spring out of nowhere, like the latter, or be something that was visibly on the way but finally crystallises, like the former.

There are some great examples to be found in the world of pop videos, like the one 3m 40s into Pulp’s epic mainstream-career-ender “This Is Hardcore”. But for my money there isn’t one more spine-tingling than this:

(Warning: some adult content.)

Robbie Williams here is played by Humza Yousaf.

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Scotland’s biggest cultural problem famously used to be with its alpha males: hard-working, hard-drinking men, often sexist and openly sectarian, with an easy propensity for violence. (The archetype cut right across every social class, from shipyard workers to high-ranking police officers and everywhere between and beyond.)

But times change, and thankfully those characters are now almost entirely a thing of the past. Less happily, though, they’ve simply been replaced by a breed that’s every bit as unpleasant, just in slightly different ways. Readers, meet the Beta Bullies.

Not literally, obviously. Nobody wants that.

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Slacky The Holiday Boy is off for the next THREE weeks, gallivanting around the globe on the clearly excessive wages we’re paying him. We hope he does actually come back, because his home city is becoming a poisonously hostile place for the creative.

Around 300 years ago, Edinburgh was the birthplace and residence of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable period of intellectual and scientific accomplishment built around “the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority that could not be justified by reason”, and which led to the city being famously dubbed “the Athens of the North”.

But those days are past now.

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Just for a change, let’s have a Friday-night competition!

Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that former First Minister Alex Salmond is staging a show in the Spiegeltent at the Edinburgh Fringe next month, from 4-13 August.

You may even have seen a bit of online criticism from certain po-faced pseudonats about the fact that Salmond is sharing a platform with – gasp! – a Yoon, in the shape of the “last of the traditional Tories”, David Davis MP.

Almost like a debate or something.

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