Positive-case-for-the-Union update #12

Posted on February 09, 2012 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

(See here for the whole story.)

Like most people, we don’t pay a lot of attention to anything the Scottish Lib Dems say these days. But we always enjoy the reliably-petulant blusterings of their Nat-hating former leader Tavish Scott, if only because they never fail to bring to mind this picture from election night in May 2011. So we were sure to click on his column in today’s Scotsman, and thereby joined the tiny elite group who got to see these words:

“There is a desperate need to say why Scotland is better, stronger and more united as part of the UK. Make the case. Get the pro-Scotland in the UK side on the pitch and let battle commence.“

Now, we’re pretty sure Tavish is on that side. So we’re a little mystified as to why he didn’t just go ahead and make said case himself, rather than demanding that his team-mates did it. (Appropriately to his analogy, it’s a bit like the current Scotland rugby squad – nobody seems to want to take on the responsibility of picking the ball up and heading for the try-line, because they don’t appear to believe they can do it.)

Maybe he forgot, or a sub-editor deleted it by mistake, or perhaps he’d used up all his word count wittering on about Rembrandt and Canoletto to no obvious purpose for the first half of the article. We don’t know. All we know is, we’re still waiting.

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TIME ELAPSED: 32 years, 0 months
ACTUAL SIGHTINGS OF POSITIVE CASE FOR UNION TO DATE: 0
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Tags: the positive case for the union
Category media, scottish politics
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11 to “Positive-case-for-the-Union update #12”

Shirley says:

9 February, 2012 at 10:50 am

I've just discovered your site, and think it's a great. Today's piece about Tavish Scott is excellent. How can't people see that asking others to produce a pro-union case, while failing to do so themselves, is tantamount to admitting there isn't one?

Reply

Rev. Stuart Campbell says:

9 February, 2012 at 11:17 am

It’s quite the enduring mystery.

Reply

Morag says:

9 February, 2012 at 11:29 am

I think I read this page before, but I came across it again today. Have you covered it in one of your earlier posts?

State Papers on Scotland: Devolution: Economic Advantages to Scotland of the Union

Apart from generalities, the most promising line seems to me to be the argument that Scotland has done reasonably well out of the Union in her times of troubles and ought not to break it now that she has better prospects. This argument, if it can be established with convincing detail, will be a forceful one

Dated 19th May 1975. That seems to have been the best they had then, and the best they still have.

Reply
An Duine Gruamach says:

9 February, 2012 at 12:46 pm

Tavish isna faur aff : "desperate" is the richt wurd!

Reply
douglas clark says:

9 February, 2012 at 7:57 pm

Just mentioned your site on Al Jazeera. It is fascinating that no unionist has made a case for us lot staying in their union. It is a telling point that you make here.
Best wishes

Reply
Shodan says:

9 February, 2012 at 8:01 pm

@Morag

That has to be the most feeble and half hearted sounding case I've heard yet for something. And this is what they had planned to puff up and make a big deal out of? They are desperate indeed if that's all they had up their sleeves.

Reply
Morag says:

9 February, 2012 at 11:04 pm

There's a subtext, back there in the 1970s, and quite explicit in the McCrone report, that Scotland should be well treated and allowed to benefit from the oil bonanza. The thinking being that a country which was tangibly better-off as a result of the Union's management of the resource would be unlikely to pursue independence.

That might have worked, if it had been done. But it wasn't. The money was used in England for vanity projects like the Channel Tunnel, Portcullis House, the M25, the Jubilee Line and so on. And in Scotland to pay the unemployment benefits necessitated by Thatcher's deindustrialisation of Scotland. That's right, our oil revenues were used to turn us into a nation of subsidy junkies and benefit claimants.

That's water under the bridge. They've pissed the first 40 years of our oil revenues into the gutter, damn the lot of them. We need to do everything we can to stop them doing the same thing with the next 40 years. And the 40 years after that.

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John White says:

9 February, 2012 at 11:35 pm

Sorry for going off topic, but Alan Cochrane is going back to his favorite bete noire
link to telegraph.co.uk

Reply
Morag says:

9 February, 2012 at 11:38 pm

Bile. That's something he would know about, of course.

Reply
Shodan says:

10 February, 2012 at 8:54 am

I like how Cochrane is claiming that the SNP cannot handle dissent, despite the fact that they have put up with outright hostility in all media, including the BBC and ridiculous insults from politicians and hosts on TV.

Cochrane saying someone cannot handle dissent…that will be the man who was still deleting comments about his hypocrisy and links to here on a certain article not so long ago?

Reply
Jen says:

11 February, 2012 at 6:20 pm

I am sick of these politicians passing the buck to someone else to make the positive case for union. As a previous poster says, its cos their aint one.
I would love to see Salmond v Cameron in a show titled " Positive Case for the Union" he would wipe the flloor with that tory PM

SAOR ALBA

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