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).
[calameo code=0003901718cdc4362fa2e? lang=en page=122 hidelinks=1 width=100% height=500]
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darwinsbeautifulidea
Are you for real, surely your at the wind up.
Now that Philvis is back on the scene and Ernie & him a bigging it together; now is the time to post my question regards the Yea or Nae protagonist’s.
So here goes.
I, like many individuals in the “Contracting” game…..have been trading as a Limited Company for many years. My Company is Registered in Scotland and all my accounts are prepared by a Scottish accountant.
Again, like many, my work is undertaken in England, where I commute early on a Monday morning & return later that week…(I earn an adequate sufficiency that means that 3 days are fine).
The question arises. How will my Ltd Company (and my employment) be effected by Scotland becoming Independent…..Can I set up a Ltd Company in England and take advantage of any Tax benefits eg Income Tax / Corporation Tax & also NIC…
It can de argued that by my work being undertaken in England, why should Scotland receive the benefit of my Tax Contributions…..
Sure more questions will jump out at me & others regarding this.
Now, as I have set the question in simple layman grammar, hopefully any response will so follow.
Paddy T
hebcelt
14:20 on
9 September, 2014
Why are the farmers being subsidised in the first place and why is it only the farming sector that’s treated this way? Hail Hail Hebcelt
————————————————–
Vote yes and the question is mute
A yes vote sees Scotland OUT of the EU.
philvisreturns
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Paddy T
are you Artur Numan ?
HH
The idea of us moving to another league and that it should influence how you vote in the independence referendum is fanciful and potentially dangerous.
The only way we will ever compete in a different structure is when UEFA decide to shake things up.
Why are we wasting our time on this kite flying so often when its clearly going to make absolutely no difference at all?
HH
Ok – As our leader has led the way with a half football / half not post, I will offer my opinion. Being an ex-pat and not allowed to vote, that fact alone (the 2nd) would lead me to a Yes vote. Why is a Scotsman not allowed to vote in such a crucial election? There are many examples of disparity in the UK when it comes to Scotland / England. This is a chance to create a level playing field.
On the football side, I did watch the Germany Scotland game live. First time I have watched a Scotland performance for many many years. I was very impressed with the way Gordon Strachan set the team up and really gave the world champions a scare. The referee was appalling. 3 decisions were good examples of poor judgement. Sending Charlie off, not sending Durm off, and not allowing us to take the corner before he blew for full-time. When the 3 min extra time board went up on 90 mins, one of their players was down injured. The treatment lasted a full 2 mins which meant the extra time should not have started until minute 92. The ref blew for time around 94:30, so around 30 secs was still on the clock. If Scotland can keep this up, qualification is a real possibility. Will Flower of Scotland be our ‘official’ national anthem at the finals?
Booker T
14:27 on
9 September, 2014
Yes it was in the 2011 manifesto –
http://votesnp.com/campaigns/SNP_Manifesto_2011_lowRes.pdf
Awe Naw…..Naw……………I’ve never received an EBT….and I’m not likely to do so.
You still tax dodging the Germans?
Paddy T
booker t
14:27 on 9 September, 2014
I found this:
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/243521-snp-launch-manifesto-with-50m-fund-for-young-scots/
I never read the SNP manifesto but if this can be trusted, then it looks as if they did.
There’s a classic TV sitcom in there Ernie Lynch and Mount Hairy.
PADDY TURNER
Income accrued in a country is subject to taxes levied in that country.
Unless yer Amazon,Apple,Google,Vodafone,Starbucks,or can otherwise afford a buncha lawyers and accountants to go to bat for you.
THE troubled Ibrox side have been granted leave to appeal in their court battle with their former commercial director.
RANGERS have today been granted leave to appeal the freezing of club assets by former commercial director Imran Ahmad.
The troubled Ibrox side, who recently launched a new share issue in a desperate bid for cash, had seen some £620,000 ring-fenced at a court hearing last Friday.
However Lord Stewart stated today at the Court of Session that granting Rangers the right to appeal will “facilitate the raising of fresh capital” and also “benefit both parties”.
Ahmad left his role at the club under a cloud in April 2013 after allegedly posting a series of rants against former chairman Walter Smith and Rangers manager Ally McCoist.
He then launched a legal bid for outstanding bonuses totaling £500,000 that he claims are owed from commercial contracts that he negotiated while at the club, plus a further £120,000 in legal costs.
Fears for the future grew last week at Ibrox as Rangers announced a share issue with the aim of securing some £4 million in fresh funds while admitting that they would be unable to pay the club’s creditors if the bid failed.
Speaking in an exclusive Q&A with Record Sport’s Keith Jackson, shareholder Sandy Easdale admitted: “We can’t make the numbers work. So we brought the share issue forward”, highlighting just how little money is left in the coffers since the club reemerged in Scotland’s lower leagues following liquidation.
This was followed by Ahmad’s move to ring fence the funds, stating that “there is no concrete evidence that there is a saviour” ready to ease their cash concerns.
Lord Stewart today urged Rangers to come to a deal with Ahmad over security for the sum while the sides wait for the case to return to court – possibly in November.
The warrant freezing the cash has also been lifted while a date for the appeal is set.
The fallen Glasgow giants launched their appeal after claiming the judge had “erred in law” by freezing the cash and refusing to accept any supporting evidence from Campbell Ogilvie head of the SFA.
The club’s QC Alan Summers told the court that Lord Stewart had taken a different view to two other law lords who have already examined the case and found there was no “substantial risk” of the club going bust and was perplexed at his refusal to accept incontrovertible evidence regarding Rangers’s expected prize money.
He also questioned the decision to ring-fence the club’s assets when it claimed it would be in a position to pay any costs by the time the case is ultimately resolved in the new year.
But Ahmad’s lawyer Kenny McBrearty argued that Lord Stewart should ignore those claims because, by the club’s own admission, its financial circumstances had changed since the case was heard earlier this year.
In the end, it was Mr Summers’ claim that the decision to ring-fence cash may “inconvenience” this month’s share issue which persuaded Lord Stewart to grant appeal, although he stressed that decision in “no way” implied any judgement about the strength of Ahmad’s claim or the eventual outcome of the case.
The judge said: “The granting of the right to appeal may facilitate the raising of fresh capital through the upcoming rights issue and that would only benefit both parties.”
The appeal hearing, however, may not take place until November unless an earlier date can be found.
The full hearing for Ahmad’s claim to a 5 per cent bonus for setting up the club’s £10 million kit deal with PUMA is due to take place either that same month or in the following January.
Ahmad had twice failed to have the cash frozen while the club battles to keep the lights on at Ibrox.
But he was finally granted a warrant to ring-fence the money after the Scottish League One champions were forced to turn to shareholders in a bid to raise £4m after losing around 15,000 season-ticket holders over the summer.
And in new sensational claims it seems that PUMA Europe Ltd. have applied to the court of small claims. Claiming that Mike Ashley got for £3.65 what they paid ten million pounds sterling for.
ernie 14.25
like a politician you dont want to see my main
point, not about farming which i know nothing
about but that westminster kept money intended
for scotland.
anyway im off roon the doors with my wee blue
books
h.h
Paddy T
Me and the finanzamt are practically married. The wife is very jealous the hold they have on me ;-)
HH
Just been reading that Kris Boyd has offered to pay for no wages but might need an interest free loan of equivalent value.
PHILVISRETURNS
Congratulations on your new status as a Dad.
And a ginger at that,good man!
Does that mean you’ve chucked the fags,or have you invested in a man-cave/shed at the bottom of the garden?
Btw,were it me,still smoking and my new-born is banished to the man-cave.
weeminger,Tom Molach,
I stand corrected,just don’t remember much being made of it during the last election.
Maybe that was because it was on page 28 of the manifesto! :-)
As we head into the last week of voting the very LAST consideration I will make is how this referendum will affect my football team.
The notion that some of us might change our votes if No guaranteed our club access to the EPL is nonsensical, and frankly offensive.
Yes, no, maybe, don’t know, can’t be bothered voting … I am against us whoring ourselves for Sky’s TV money as it is … I am damned sure I wouldn’t even consider, for TWO SECONDS, trading in my hopes for country in exchange for it.
Anyone who vote on the basis of this, frankly, has taken complete leave of their senses.
Don’t know any Marxist Fenians, Perhaps Nick could forward some names of those dastardly Irish revolutionary Marxists directing the Yes campaign. Seems to have his geography mixed up just a wee bit, a Scots Nat Marxist Fenian!!! the mind boggles lol.
Bawsman but what is the answer to the question. That is an answer but why do they receive subsidies? Hail Hail Hebcelt
Off topic – Aldi and Lidl came top in blind mince pie tasting for Which magazine .
Bought some yesterday and we scoffed the lot, I can confirm they are pretty damn good.
Paul67
I’m surprised that your point about the exclusion from the UK market of Scottish football has not been made loong before now as it is a most obvious challenge to the idea we are better together.
When I’ve made the point on the blog the answer was independence is way more important than football.
But what is independence for if not to improve the lot of Scots who are excluded from some of the benefits of being part of a larger market?
In Scottish football and in the way it has been governed you have the paradoxically worst aspects of better together and independence.
An industry that is failing because it is excluded from a larger market that it should, as a consequence of being tax payers in that market , be allowed natural access to via citizenship
But
A governance system accountable to no one and that makes up its own rules to suit it’s favoured own as a result. I appreciate an independent government would be much more accountable every five years but in five years a governance predisposed to favour one club over another can do a lot of damage to those not so favoured.
From a purely narrow football perspective what we want is a UK with a UK league that all Scottish clubs can find their level in but with a governance system that Govt should make more accountable that will not be so minded to favour one club.
So if BT have finally woken up at the English end of the operation and have realised our value to them, let’s be hearing a policy promise that the UK Govt (if that is the outcome) of whichever hue, will legislate if necessary to end the cartel that is killing the Scottish Football industry by sucking it dry.
Why the BT never pushed this line from the off I’ll never know, apart from complacency .
If ever there was an example of what can happen with unfettered independent governance to an industry it’s the SFA and Scottish football.
And there will be ways to keep the national team if the will is there.
Booker T
14:46 on
9 September, 2014
I don’t think much was made of it because it’s a ‘given’ in any SNP manifesto.
Paul67
I just went back and read your article from yesterday ‘Anchored by Foundation’ and then I have re-read your article from today ‘Scots clubs exclusion from UK market ferments disaffection’.
I am astounded of forehead at the contrast in parallel’s of your impressions of the Celtic support.
“It wasn’t football as you know it, but it was Celtic supporters doing what they do best – helping those in need.”
contrast with
“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.”
“The Foundation is not the club, it is you, me and thousands like us who believe Celtic is something greater. It works in four arenas:
Health
Equality
Learning
Poverty
There’s no obligation for Celtic fans to get involved, or to cherish any of the above, but I know many of us get a whole lot more out of Celtic by anchoring to these principles.”
contrast with
“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.”
So which is it? Are we a caring support founded in principles with a moral backbone or one intent on voting based on a bribe to play football in an over inflated environment were individual salaries on a weekly basis could wipe out the need of foodbanks in a heart beat?
Very dissapointed CQN’er today.
MWD says AYE
Bsr,
Not a word of a lie, I had to read your post 3 times before I realised you DIDNT say ‘blind mice’.
Glassesplease csc
Paddy T
Two polar outcomes. Either:
You’ll become an exporter overnight, lauded and supported by the new Scottish Government. Clever tax legerdemain will ensure that you’ll benefit from hidden allowances on both sides of the (new) border, allowing you to salt away vast swathes of cash for those rainy days in your new, renewably powered home, conveniently beside the heliport at Turnberry, and a short 90 minute flight to your major markets in central England.
Or
Access to English contracts will be blocked on account of you being a foreigner, down there to steal folk’s jobs, paying below minimum wage to Romanian subcontractors and bagging tax payers cash, repatriating it to renovate your (newly acquired) Highland hideaway.
Likelihood though is that there would be little change in early course, but clearly from a certain point onwards there will be aspects related to tax (and VAT) that will require adjustments for contractor and customer alike, and I think, the culture of business will change too, which might be more negative than positive.
Disnae matter whether you trade from a Scottish reg’d company or an English one, subsidiary or otherwise as I expect there will be some grandfathering to adjust for new realities, but over time it’ll be little different than doing business in Ireland or Holland etc.
TBB
weeminger
If it is a ‘given’ why was there not an indy ref after 2007?
Dear God! No you an aw Auldheid
See when you finally shuffle off your mortal coil to meet the big banana…
If he asks ‘What about the time you had a choice to say no to the avarice and gluttony of the tax collectors but you opted for a shinier version of a fitba team?’
Is there a spreadsheet you can pull out to bamboozle the big yella deity?
j67
14:42 on 9 September, 2014
‘ernie 14.25
like a politician you dont want to see my main
point, not about farming which i know nothing
about but that westminster kept money intended
for scotland.’
###
The reason, as I understand it, is that Scottish farmers on average get £9,0000 more per year than farmers in other parts of the UK.
Of taxpayers money.
Interesting that all you’re worried about is that the English are stealing ‘our’ money.
Such is the folly of the nat.
STEINREIGNEDSUPREME
Wee article for your pleasure.
Ooooops,wrong band.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2014/sep/08/queen-backstage-at-the-rainbow-in-1974-in-pictures
A scenario for you..
In the USA, the right wing of the Republican Party (I know, I know) calls itself the Tea Party. It’s main strategy is to do everything it possibly can to discredit those that it opposes and so remove them from office. The opposition are always Obama and any democrat, but at times also include any moderate Republican who refuses to embrace the Tea Party platform.
The Tea Party strategy is simply to make the country, state, district appear to be ungovernable under the incumbent that they oppose. The incumbents lose the confidence of the gullible electorate, are voted out and replaced by nice people that the Tea Party support.
Just saying
“For those of you watching in Black and White – Spurs are in all yellow”
John Motson
MWD
“So which is it? Are we a caring support founded in principles with a moral backbone or one intent on voting based on a bribe to play football in an over inflated environment were individual salaries on a weekly basis could wipe out the need of foodbanks in a heart beat?”
Maybe it is the framing of the question or the lack of effort towards resolving the dissonance you see, that is at the heart of your angst.
What is to stop us joining a larger football market (in England or elsewhere) and earning the riches available there AND continuing to host charity and fund raising activities which raise money for those that need it? Even if you just donated the same proportion of income, you would be giving a larger lump sum away.
After all, by your logic, we should refuse a CL invite because our players will get a bonus for getting there, taking that bonus money away from being available to The Celtic Foundation. And then, we could reduce our money spent on player wages by playing in the West of Scotland Amateur League, and all our gate money could go directly to charity once expenses were deducted.
Right from the start, Celtic has had to compromise from the Walfrid intention and those of John Glass and others.
So if BT have finally woken up at the English end of the operation and have realised our value to them…
——–
Auldheid, I don’t think there is any evidence for this?
And as such, is this not another example of the desperation from the No campaigners? Vote No and theres an outside chance we might federate your clubs even though its unlikely we can deliver on that?
Its such a fanciful idea I don’t think ‘Better Together’ have even suggested it, unless you have a link?
Are we expected to wait until their product comes a cropper and they need something to boost the figures again? Is that when they’ll ‘let us in?’
HH
booker t
15:00 on 9 September, 2014
weeminger
If it is a ‘given’ why was there not an indy ref after 2007?
—-
Simples mhate. They didn’t have a working majority the first time.
HH jamesgang
Paddy Turner .
Tax ?
As things stand in the European Union
You pay tax in the country where the money is earned .-but –
If you earn money in one European country and live in another , the country of residence has the right to tax any earnings you import there ..
You can avoid paying tax in 2 European countries by having a Dual Taxation Certificate which gives you the right to choose which country you prefer to pay tax in .
One more of those it will be all right on the night or it will be a f****** shambles things
Any prospect of Celtic playing in any English league will be gone forever if it’s a yes vote.
I think that’s very clear.