There’s a story in the Herald this morning that wouldn’t normally come within this site’s remit, dealing as it does with a specific aspect of Scottish Government policy unaffected by independence. It reports a Celtic fan acquitted under the Offensive Behaviour (Football) Act after admitting singing a pro-IRA song at a game between the Parkhead club and Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
For reasons we must confess ourselves puzzled by, a great swathe of the Scottish commentariat, on all sides of the constitutional debate, has set itself against the OB(F)A, apparently in the belief that existing laws had done such a good job of eliminating Scotland’s sectarian problem over the last 100 years that there was no need for additional action.
We expect this case will be used as further ammunition for their criticisms of it. But there’s a crucially important line buried three-quarters of the way down the piece.
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comment, culture, football, scottish politics
A FOREIGN POLICY
Margaret Curran should know the truth
Of engaging brain before opening mooth;
Using the word “foreigner”
Like a profanity
Offends large sections of humanity.
She should know better and be more carin’
Each one of us is a Jock Tamson bairn;
To hear an apology would be divine,
But don’t hold your breath – I won’t hold mine.
(c) M. Campbell, 2013
.
Tags: and finally
Category
culture, scottish politics
The No campaign makes for some unlikely bedfellows.
We’d like you to meet our new favourite patriots.
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Tags: britnats, cartoons, Chris Cairns, Douglas Daniel, light-hearted banter, RevStu
Category
comment, culture
It’s not the first time we’ve had to raise this subject. But as the rhetoric ramps up from an increasingly nasty and unhappy No camp, we have to ask again – just what is the Labour Party’s problem with foreigners?
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Tags: britnats, foreigner watch
Category
analysis, culture, disturbing, scottish politics, world
Below is a short extract from an interview between Margaret Curran and BBC Radio Scotland’s Derek Bateman on Good Morning Scotland last week.
The whole thing is very much worth a listen, but this bit jumped out.
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Tags: and finally, flat-out lies
Category
comment, scottish politics, transcripts, uk politics
Following our visit to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple of days ago, and today’s examination of the (non-existent) threat of border controls between an independent Scotland and the rUK, we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with a whistlestop tour of some more of our favourite international borders.
It’s perhaps worth noting that several of these are between EU and non-EU countries, or even between two non-EU countries. The one above, though, is Denmark/Germany.
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Category
europe, pictures
This week, as already noted on this site, we’ve seen another unwelcome deployment of the old “you’d need a passport to visit your granny in Carlisle once the border posts go up” fearbomb. It’s a simple argument that tries to play on both the aversion to borders in trade and travel, and also the fear of immigration.
The reality, as you may have come to expect by now, is rather different.
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Tags: project fear, Scott Minto, the positive case for the union
Category
analysis, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
12 months into the official independence campaign, if the mainstream media is to be believed the Yes Scotland campaign isn’t doing too well. On the few occasions when the organisation isn’t being assumed to be merely a synonym for “the SNP”, it’s to allow some comment to the effect that they are “on the back foot” or has suffered another “setback” of some kind.
To be fair, it’s not only the media who have been critical. Many committed independence supporters have expressed mixed feelings about the official Yes campaign, usually along the lines of it not being proactive enough or sufficiently vigorous is dealing with this or that. Is such criticism justified? Are the media offering a fair analysis of Yes Scotland’s management of the campaign?
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Category
comment, scottish politics
This, in case you didn’t see it on our Twitter feed, was on the front page of the Independent website this morning (and indeed still is). It wasn’t a mistake.
The piece featured the Scottish author discussing various pieces of news from the past week (the guest is different every Saturday). Topics included Ed Miliband’s suitability to be Prime Minister (or lack thereof), Stephen King’s objections to e-books, corporate tax avoidance and anonymity for people who’ve been arrested.
But while the paper chose to lead with Scottish independence for its headline, for some reason it didn’t carry a picture of Alex Salmond or Nicola Sturgeon or Blair Jenkins, nor even of Rankin himself, whose words the headline comprised.
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disturbing, media, scottish politics, uk politics
We were hunting through a load of 1980s issues of 2000AD earlier today, looking for something else altogether, when we stumbled across this. It seemed somehow timely.
We can’t think why.
Tags: and finally, cartoons
Category
pictures, uk politics
We don’t normally pick out individual stories from the Sealand Gazette and put them on the front page, but, well, you’ll see why we’ve done it today in a few seconds’ time.
The piece below is from the Ilford Recorder, a newspaper in north-east London.
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Category
comment, disturbing, uk politics
