Amid all the debate about oil, currency, pensions and a million other items, I’m surprised higher questions have not been asked about our cultural identity. I’ve never said I’m British in my life, I’m Scottish, but the full story is more subtle than that.
Despite being a football fan, a Scot and a Gordon Strachan fan, I watched another channel when Germany-Scotland was on. My sense of personal identity, the anthems I cherish, the emblems I’ve always worn, my ‘national’ community, is the one I share with you.
I know we have a large number of England-supporting, English-Celtic fans here, just as there are Ireland-supporting, Irish, and Scotland-supporting Scots, but some of us feel our strongest affinity among our urban, west of Scotland-based, Celtic community. This community will only ever march behind a green flag. There is nothing wrong or unpatriotic about this, finding your own identity is what multiculturalism is all about.
There are a thousand more national identities than actual nations, but why do many of us feel more like sons of Jock Stein, than Jock Tamson, or (cough) John Bull?
I don’t think there is a single British, or Scottish, cultural institution I feel an attachment to. I was really caught up with the whole Mo Farah/Jessica Ennis-inspired Super Saturday at the Olympics – delighted at the success of British athletes, but later that day, when Ki stepped forward to take the decisive kick for South Korea against GB, I punched the air with joy. The whole Burns Night thing feels like someone else’s party.
In fact, it’s worse than not having an affinity with a British cultural institution, our Celtic community is marginalised by competitors in the south. If Scotland, which is perhaps more bound-up in tribal football culture than anywhere on the planet, had EQUAL access to the UK’s cultural markets, would we feel so excluded?
I know there are many who are happy with the way sentiment is going right now, but if those intent on saving the union want to get busy on some urgent nation-building, they should set about removing the two-tier cultural divide which keeps our club, our community, from the top table. We pay an obligatory BBC tax to subsidise an England and Wales league, our non-tax-based pay TV money goes the same way. This is a distorted market, with Scotland obscured by an England-Wales cartel. As a result we’ve been drained of talent and financial muscle for a century.
Football is not controlled by politicians, but it can be, and is, influenced by them. Westminster is speaking with a more unified voice than I’ve ever known right now. Its voice should be clear: Scotland needs equal access to the UK’s cultural markets, including football.
Our exclusion is intolerable, unfair, has fermented disaffection and must end, irrespective of what happens next week. Why would Westminster politicians be unable to say this?
Let’s hear you.
The fantastic new edition of CQN Magazine is out today. You can read it, for free, here, at it’s dedicated site (don’t try to read on the graphic below).
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BT
I would have paid you a visit…but..unlike Marspapa I want you to get well as soon as possible,so get plenty of rest mate without interference from busybodies…….plus
I heard your garden shed has ran oot of beer.hh
Weefra, I would pay good money to see a Salmon or indeed any other fish fly the flag! ;-)
VP
no peroni in the gang hut I’m afraid….or the fridge… 8(
Anyhoos, desperate to see our newbies on saturday. 4-0 to the Hoops. KTF.
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
fieldofdrams
You mean a minister of fisheries, don’t you. :-)))
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Celtic Football Club @celticfc 1m
75 Dundee reduce arrears. Wighton heads into the far corner from Carriero’s inviting cross. 2-1
I think we can deduce that WM are sh@@@@@g themselves at the loss of OUR resources. Hell mend them for screwing us for the last century at best. KTF.
Weefra HH praying to We Oscar.
dd
I think Zaza looks a bit like you!
Minus the beard of course!
:-)
HH!!
Weefra, yep it’s interesting to ask why, if Scotland is such a basket case, the UK Gov is so keen to keep hold of us.
On another topic I do enjoy a good bit of fish punning on any scale.
Saltire refuses to fly over Downing Street: http://youtu.be/zIkLG9q7Kuw
Blindlemonchitlin
Foment indeed – you beat me to it. Plenty of that on here at the moment!
HH
embramike
That boy Wighton looked a very good player in the Scottish Youth team set up. There was another guy from Aberdeen- Scott Wright- who looked promising too.
fieldofdrams
You’ve always got Sturgeon, great caviar. :-))) KTF
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Celtic subject
With our new Scandinavian influence, I was having a look back at the success or otherwise of such players over the years. Is it a happy hunting ground or not?
On a basic Pass/Fail, my quick view is:
Larsson P
Mjallby P
Lustig P
Hedman F
Johansen P
Berget F
Brattbakk F
Riseth F
Rogne F
Edvalsson P
Rieper P
Rasmussen F
Weighorst P
Pukki F
Very un-scientific but we seem to do better with Swedes or Danes vs Norwegians and overall the jury is out on whether our lurch to the north east is a good move
Weefra
Parcel of rogues! That Alexander is serpent like, and morally lower than the serpent’s belly. That Lamont wummun is a waxwork drone. The three musketeers are comin up to put us pesky Scots in wur place. Would love to bump into sleekit Cameron tomorrow. He wants to listen to us. Hahaha
Delaney’s at 8.06, I’m certain that oor Paul used to refer to Sir Dodgy Dave of heehaw as Zaza.
I’ve now worked out Zaza scored for Italy tonight.
I finally tuned into that festival you were at in Spain. Few hoops tops on display when Fran ‘i’m no Grizzly Adams’ Healy & Travis did why does it always rain on me.
Great line up at the festival including the now very healthy living Mr Weller. He went off the swallay & ciggies last year.
Welcome back Phil after your swanning about being a da. Well done that man.
Let’s hope our bhoys return from international duty with each man ready, true and steady for the northern neds on Saturday.
estadio
Good to see that Scotland’s rebel instinct extends even to its cloth :)
Looking forward to the backward OO making a collective tit of themselves, and of all elements of the religious bigot spectrum at the weekend and sealing independence for Scotland.
The London elites have been taking massive dumps over the past few days, it’s been a brilliant watch, loving every minute of it.
:P
I will never forget when the tories were discussing the winter heating allowance in the 80s, I think, when it was questioned whether Scotland should get it. One MP stated, “they don’t need it, they’re used to cold weather”.
Weefra HH praying to Wee Oscar.
Anyone getting excited about the game against Aberdeen at the w/e – how many of the new signings will start ? I’m guessing Scepovic and Wakaso may start ? Bench for Guidetti ? The options in midfield – McGregor and Johansen start is a given, I presume. Broonie not quite ready to come back ? at the back, would love to see young Jason Denayer getting the nod, after his debut at Paradise – so much to contemplate
Sweepstake on starting eleven ?
Gordon, Lustig, Denayer, VVD, Izzy, Johansen, McGregor, Wakaso, Mulgrew, Scepovic, Berget… Subs… Zaluska, Ambrose, Guidetti, Matthews, Griffiths, Commons, Kayal
No Stokes, no Bitton, but…. there you go…. and the assumption is Forrest and Broonie are still out
Ideally, I’d like to see the injury list later in the week, but hey, there you go
HH
weefra- The UK government policy is they have no economic or strategic interest in a Northern Ireland and if the population there want a constitutional change then they will readily agree.
However in Scotland they do have such an interest, hence the desperation to hold on to Scotland at all costs.
The Tories only want access to our natural resources.
Labour only want to save their own political skin in Westminster.
None of them want the people of Scotland.
weefrathetim @ 20.46 – I remember that too – ignorant and scandalous comment
George Monbiot in today’s Guardian
A yes vote in Scotland would unleash the most dangerous thing of all – hope
Independence would carry the potential to galvanise progressive movements across the rest of the UK
Of all the bad arguments urging the Scots to vote no – and there are plenty – perhaps the worst is the demand that Scotland should remain in the union to save England from itself. Responses to my column last week suggest this wretched apron-strings argument has some traction among people who claim to belong to the left.
Consider what it entails: it asks a nation of 5.3 million to forgo independence to exempt a nation of 54 million from having to fight its own battles. In return for this self-denial, the five million must remain yoked to the dismal politics of cowardice and triangulation that cause the problems from which we ask them to save us.
“A UK without Scotland would be much less likely to elect any government of a progressive hue,” former Labour minister Brian Wilson claimed in the Guardian last week. We must combine against the “forces of privilege and reaction” (as he lines up with the Conservatives, Ukip, the Lib Dems, the banks, the corporations, almost all the rightwing columnists in Britain, and every UK newspaper except the Sunday Herald) – in the cause of “solidarity”.
There’s another New Labour weasel word to add to its lexicon (other examples include reform, which now means privatisation; and partnership, which means selling out to big business). Once solidarity meant making common cause with the exploited, the underpaid, the excluded. Now, to these cyborgs in suits, it means keeping faith with the banks, the corporate press, cuts, a tollbooth economy and market fundamentalism.
Here, to Wilson and his fellow flinchers, is what solidarity meant while they were in office. It meant voting for the Iraq war, for Trident, for identity cards, for 3,500 new criminal offences, including the criminalisation of most forms of peaceful protest. It meant being drafted in as political mercenaries to impose on the English policies to which the Scots were not subject, such as university top-up fees and foundation hospitals. It meant supporting every destructive and unjust proposition advanced by their leaders: the brood parasites who hatched in the Labour nest then flicked its dearest principles over the edge. It’s no surprise that the more the Scots see of their former Labour ministers, the more inclined they are to vote for independence.
So now Better Together has brought in Gordon Brown, scattering bribes in a desperate, last-ditch effort at containment. They must hope the Scots have forgotten that he boasted of setting “the lowest rate in the history of British corporation tax, the lowest rate of any major country in Europe and the lowest rate of any major industrialised country anywhere”. That he pledged to the City of London “in budget after budget, I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers”. That, after 13 years of Labour government, the UK had higher levels of inequality than after 18 years of Tory government. That his government colluded in kidnapping and torture. That he helped cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands through his support for the illegal war on Iraq.
He roams through Scotland, still badged with blood, promising what he never delivered when he had the chance, this man who helped unravel the social safety net his predecessors wove; who marketised and dismembered public services; who enriched the wealthy and shafted the poor; who pledged money for Trident but failed to reverse the loss of social housing; whose private finance initiative planted a series of timebombs now exploding throughout the NHS and other public services; who greased and wheedled and slavered his way into the company of bankers and oligarchs while trampling over the working people he was elected to represent. This is the progressive Prester John who will ride to the rescue of the no campaign?
Where, in Scotland’s Labour party, are the Keir Hardies and Jimmy Reids of our time? Where is the vision, the inspiration, the hope? The shuffling, spineless little men who replaced these titans offer nothing but fear. Through fear, they seek to shove Scotland back into its box, as its people rebel against the dreary, closed future mapped out for them – and the rest of us – by the three main Westminster parties.
Sure, if Scotland becomes independent, all else being equal, Labour would lose 41 seats at Westminster and Tory majorities would become more likely. But all else need not be equal. Scottish independence can galvanise progressive movements across the rest of the UK. We’ll watch as the Scots engage in the transformative process of writing a constitution. We’ll see that a nation of these islands can live and – I hope – flourish with a fully elected legislature (no House of Lords), with a fair electoral system (proportional representation), and with a parliament in which only representatives of that nation can vote (no cross-border mercenaries).
Already, the myth of political apathy has been scotched by the tumultuous movement north of the border. As soon as something is worth voting for, people will queue into the night to add their names to the register. The low voter turnouts in Westminster elections reflect not an absence of interest but an absence of hope.
If Scotland becomes independent, it will be despite the efforts of almost the entire UK establishment. It will be because social media has defeated the corporate media. It will be a victory for citizens over the Westminster machine, for shoes over helicopters. It will show that a sufficiently inspiring idea can cut through bribes and blackmail, through threats and fear-mongering. That hope, marginalised at first, can spread across a nation, defying all attempts to suppress it. That you can be hated by the Daily Mail and still have a chance of winning.
If Labour has any political nous, any remaining flicker of courage, it will understand what this moment means. Instead of suppressing the forces of hope and inspiration, it would mobilise them. It would, for instance, pledge, in its manifesto, a referendum on drafting a written constitution for the rest of the UK.
It would understand that hope is the most dangerous of all political reagents. It can transform what appears to be a fixed polity, a fixed outcome, into something entirely different. It can summon up passion and purpose we never knew we possessed. If Scotland becomes independent, England – if only the potential were recognised – could also be transformed.
——
Cyber pint to that man.
Tallybhoy
My daughter Paula just agreed wi you. :))
Wee
“Our resources” ” screwing us for the last century”?
Who do you think bought all our coal,steel, ships, trains etc?
Here was me thinking all that business came from the empire which Scots help expand and exploit!
The notion that Scotland was dragged kicking and screaming in to the enterprise is just so much tosh that it has to be challenged!
I ask again where do you get this notion that an independent Scotland will be any fairer than the UK currently is?
Salmond and the SNP represent the agricultural parts of Scotland that used to vote Tory -in an independent Scotland that will not change
What makes you think these people will be any more generous to the poor of the west of Scotland?
Add that to the frankly disgusting scare on the future of the NHS and you have to wonder if there is anything that they will not promise over the next few days to garner votes!
HH
Squire Danaher at 20.50, very worthwhile post. Cyber pint to you as well.
squire danaher
20:50 on
9 September, 2014
good post sir
Coneybhoy
What abour Ulrik Laursen? he wasn’t a bad player!
squire danaher
But is the guy a Nat because a we all know it is only Nats who support Independence.
croppybhoy
the NHS scare is not bogus.
If Scotland remains in the UK then the NHS in Scotland becomes fair game to privatisation as a result of the TTIP. The TTIP or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to give it its more snappy title allows foreign companies to expand their services in areas of public service already, partly in the hands of private companies.
Now, some of Scotland’s NHS is already handed out to private contracts, e.g. cleaning, canteens, etc. but in England, all services can be contracted out to private companies (including A&E, cancer treatments, operations, health insurance, and so on), therefore if Scotland remains in the UK, Scotland will become subject to the same legislation as rUK.
The SNP claim is far from bogus and is very real indeed.
Good evening from a lovely evening in marmaris…and the bhoy from Turkey – he say YES (postal vote sent).
Estadio @ 20:35
Haha! #Yes
Celtic Football Club @celticfc 10m
FT CELTIC 2-1 DUNDEE The Bhoys have their first three points of the season after a hard-fought victory at Cappielow.
OFF TOPIC but can anyone recommend a small hotel (or any hotel, could equally be big) in or near Sorrento?
Squire,what are the odds on an admin event over at the bigot dome and a yes vote on the same day? The day that dreams are made of:-)
TTIP extends to all areas of public life, partly in the hands of private contractors, therefore, and in this case I do challenge the SNP, that for instance the opportunity of the re-nationalisation of Royal Mail within Scotland which is 1/3rd owned by the Govt will be subject to full privatisation and the SNP claim of full ownership is a bit dubious.
croppybhoy
20:52 on 9 September, 2014
—————————
Hush. You’re bringing realism in to spoil a perfectly crafted utopian fantasy.
Snake
1 1..
Good evening friends.
41 years after my first ever game there, tonight I finally broke 90 at Torrance House golf course scoring 88 including a list ball at 17! 18 holes in 88. There’s something subliminal in that.
When I sank my last putt I yelled out YES!