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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Cmon on Ernie just vote yes.
If you are a good boy we’ll let you keep catholic schools.
Geordie Munro
12:04 on 10 September, 2014
Davidopoulos,
Crushed either way?
Are you Stewart Regan?;)
—————————————-
DOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMED
They have tried to FLATTER us.
They have tried to CAJOLE us.
They have tried to BRIBE us.
They have tried to THREATEN us.
Finally, they are trying to FRIGHTEN us.
They seem not to realise that has been SCOTS who have dominated their military, their politics, their commerce, their engineering,.. indeed every facet of their greedy Empire for over 300 years.
That last tactic is the one which will finally open the flood gates.
Geordie Munro
11:59 on 10 September, 2014
Well something can occur once in a generation, which is reckoned to be about 25 years.
Or it can occur once in a lifetime, which in, say, Banff & Buchan, is probably about 80 years.
So something can occur once every 25 years or once every 80 years.
It can’t be both. They are mutually exclusive. They do not cohere.
Hence incoherent.
It’s called logic. That might account for your inability to understand the point.
new article posted.
Kilbowie Kelt will vote YES
12:05 on 10 September, 2014
Sounds like you think the Scots are genetically superior to the English.
Which is pretty much where the SNP started from.
Mind you it wasn’t the English they wished to differentiate themselves from back then, it was the Irish.
PMQ’s has turned into a Scotland love in by Harriet and Hague,is anyone going to actually ask a question?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Olg6N7hcvGE. Check this guy out warning swear words
ernie lynch
11:03 on 10 September, 2014
philvisreturns
10:59 on 10 September, 2014
‘If it’s a Yes, a lot of people are going to be bitterly disappointed when the reality of life in Scotland doesn’t live up to the sunny predictions of Mr Salmond.’
###
That’s where the real danger lies.
There would be a large part of the lumpen element of the nationalists looking for a scapegoat.
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Aye, blaming the No voters for not doing enough to ensure a victory, therefore it’s the No’s fault it has gone tits up. I am still undecided, but have to agree the Yes side have bullied more.
ernie lynch
10:57 on 10 September, 2014 “nats” (again)……….yawn…..
and
ernie lynch
11:03 on 10 September, 2014 ” the lumpen element of the nationalists” ……..yawn…….
Scroll………………….scroll……..
Jakey Rowling Inc
have to agree the Yes side have BEEN bullied more by the Bullingdon Boys & Co.
Music : : thumbs up ::to the. Best of prodigy
Hail Hail