Running to catch up
There's been so much happening lately that we can barely keep track of it, let alone attend to such trivial matters as real life as well, so let's see if we can get up to speed on the most interesting stuff quickly. It seems like everyone's talking about Scandinavia at the moment, as the SNP revealed that they're keen to see a future Scotland align itself in a slightly more Nordic way than a European one.
The Guardian, Caledonian Mercury and Scotsman have run a fascinating variety of perspectives on the issue lately, and this blog is certainly very comfortable with the idea that an independent Scotland might choose to run its society along such lines rather than follow the neo-liberal path that's done such a good job for Europe lately.
Hamish McDonnell's article in the CalMerc perceptively points out the conflict between the high-tax, high-quality lifestyle of the Scandinavian nations and the low-tax Ireland-style model the SNP have previously advocated, but Donald Adamson writing in Bella Caledonia comes in with a timely piece, ostensibly focusing on some election-result analysis but which ends by suggesting the SNP might stand to gain significantly by making exactly such a move towards the more social-democratic positions occupied by Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
Back in more conventional territory, arch-Unionist Labour MP Brian Wilson takes time out from furiously demanding that Old Firm supporters be allowed to continue soiling Scottish football with songs of ancient Irish wars, to pull a spectacular example of what tabloid newspapers call a "reverse ferret". After decades telling us Scotland couldn't afford to be independent, in the light of the recent Scottish Social Attitudes survey showing that most Scots would vote for independence if it made them even slightly better off, Wilson suddenly exhorts the electorate to rise above petty financial concerns, and stick together in the fight against fascism. (Nope, us either.)
Wilson pleads with the voters to preserve shared British institutions like the NHS, seemingly not having noticed that Scotland and the rest of the UK already pursue very different policy agendas in that field, and that indeed it could convincingly be argued that dissatisfaction with the UK's direction of travel regarding the Health Service is one of the main drivers of support for independence.
Just to please the ever-diminishing Unionist crowds, though, Wilson resorts to type at the end and once again plays the old "too poor" bogeyman card – claiming yet again that an independent Scotland couldn't have bailed out the banks – while throwing in an ill-advised Olympics gambit too, echoing the Tories' Ruth Davidson and the Lib Dems' Willie Rennie and perhaps not having noticed the anger in Scotland at the financial penalty Scots are paying for London's party.
So far, the Olympics seem to be the sum total of the oft-cited, never-detailed "positive case for the Union" that the three opposition parties are relying on to defeat independence. We trust they're going to come up with something slightly stronger before the end, not least because the Games will have been over for at least two years by the time the referendum comes round.
A fairly dull FMQs on Thursday was enlivened only by a pretty good joke from Ruth Davidson and a small glimpse of an alternative and better reality, when Labour's Richard Simpson and Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon offered a serious and mature exchange over NHS whistle-blowers which was all the more welcome after the unedifying spectacle presented to the viewing public earlier, as Iain Gray threw out a few disingenuous and limp attempts at point-scoring over cuts while the Deputy FM batted them back uninspiringly with lists of transparently cherry-picked stats which did nothing to either defend the government's position or expose the astonishing hypocrisy of Gray's attacks.
And on that dispiriting note we'll leave it for now, as we've got some Christmas shopping to do before the economy collapses altogether. More later.
