Christmas Scandal: Bute House Edition

SUSAN HILL

As a Sassenach - albeit one conceived in Edinburgh - uneducated in these matters, can you explain why you are anti Independence sometime Alex ? I imagine the main three reasons are money, money and money.

ndm

Salmond should just have stolen that thistle from the masthead of The Scotsman. Although, maybe its not a thistle anymore - just a weed.

Jeremy

With (what I take to be) her Alice band, hairstyle, jumper and skirt, she looks very like an English girl of the late 1960s. Or perhaps that was - and remains - a British style.

For the reasons mentioned above, I think it's quite an interesting image - but more so for the girl than for the flag.

Snowman

The young girl’s looking into a swampy ground, is it what Alex Salmond’s vision for the future of the independent Scots entails? Surely, a river of single malt, a mountain of haggis or better still a towering oil platform would have done the job better, but a large bleak swamp?

and another thing: wrong skirt

Saltirethinking

It's an Xmas card.

Jeremy

Further to my previous post, I can't quite make up my mind whether or not the artist has painted the girl from reality (using her as a model) or whether he painted her from a photograph (which he might well have taken himself). The thing is, the background looks a bit too flat to me - it looks incongruous, almost like a back-screen projection. I reckon he painted the girl (either from a photograph or from reality) independently of the background and then put the two together.

Beer Moth

"I can never remember exactly when Jesus wept but..."

How deliciously risqué Alex. I salute your courage.

Now give us one of your Mohammed curl-downs.

Snowman

Beer Moth @ 10.19: will you buzz off

I welcome posts like this, they calm things down. Also, the other Alex’s posts, those with music video attached, did the job for me. Life ain’t just hammering at corrupt scientists, ethnic groups, and defenseless female Labour MPs and stuff like that.

Come on, reach into the well of your acerbic wit, and give us something to chuckle at.

Wilhelm

'' The girl is marching off to her doom and national folly.''

The ever eternal optimist, the life and soul of the party, arent you Alex ?

Wilhelm

If the girl was say a Somalian waving the Somalian flag, I doubt we would get all the snide, smug sneering comments, no, what we would get instead would be '' isnt multiculturalism simply divine, enriching and bleeding wonderous.'' Thats the liberal dinner party set for you.

Roy Smith

Most people hate politics because it is so damned boring. To talk about statistics, economics, health, education and tripe at the same time . . . takes a special type of person to play the game. To follow, decipher and interpret what the player is saying accurately is almost in the realms of impossibilities. Unless perhaps one has followed such things for some time, has developed a strategy of guessing or betting on an outcome. Then it becomes interesting not of the subject or a consequence of actions taken but of our betting instincts and the wonder of what tomorrow will bring.

Dennis Sewell

I think McLetchie has a point.

It isn't the saltire itself that's disturbing about this image. It's that the lassie looks set to burst into a rendition of 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me'.

Wilhelm

Denis me old son

Quite honestly I think you have a very fevered imagination.

A. MacAulay

Saltirethinking, I cannot than you enough! Exactly. Besides why should an X-mas card with a picture of a jovial Finnish beard-o on a sledge maltreating reindeer be the better choice?

Fergus Pickering

I think it is a very nice Christmas Card, particularly for what the great unwashed call the peados amongst us.

Subrosa

I couldn't see any sense in blogging about this when we have such problems in this country.

It's my understanding the girl in the picture is the artist's niece.

The background could be any part of rugged Scotland. As for it marshy? Looks snow-laden to me.

Aye being an art critic is interesting right enough.

Snowman

one thing's definitely missing in the picture purporting to be that of the land of the Scots - the midges

ndm

midges in winter
global warming here we come.

Beefeater

You call this a Christmas card? Let me assure you it is no such thing. It is one of those "thank-you for your business" cards which constitute the bulk of global mail content at this time of year. Mostly sent by insurance agents, newspaper carriers, and politicians. Tasteful winter landscapes, bare trees, snow. But bleak mid-winter does not a Christmas card make. Nor do polar bears. Getting a lot of polar bear cards recently from people who do not like summer.
True Christmas cards have nothing to do with nature. They are red and green, sparkly, with pictures of boxes with bows, firesides, holly, decorated conifers, St. Nicholas, robins, camels,palm trees, oriental potentates and a five-pointed star, and a smiling ten-month old baby inadequately dressed on a pile of straw.
To call yon picture a Christmas card is a perfect example of our cultural degradation.

Wilhelm

Fergus Pickering

What a very inappropriate remark, son.

Beer Moth

Wilhelm.

A Freudian gymslip.

Snowman

Beer Moth @ 9.25:

Like it, like it a lot

ndm @ 6.38:

get life, how do ‘ya know it’s winter? Ever been to the land of haggis?

Mrs Anne Gannon

The wee girl in the painting would have tears if she was amongst the thousands of forgotten Scottish children who are discriminated against simply because of when they were born. These children who were born before 4th May 2006 are not equal to children born after this date. An amendment to the Scottish family law which came into effect on 4th May 2006 bestowed equal Parental Rights and Responsiblities (PRRs)to unmarried fathers who signed their childs birth certificate on or after this date (all mothers, all married fathers and all divorced fathers already had them automatically). It was not made retrospective and it is not possible to be a father without them. The fathers of these margenalised chldren can only obtain PRRs by the will of their childs mother otherwise they have to resort to costly lengthy 'harrowing' (as ultimate power corrupts ultimately) procedures. Their children are often alienated from their dads for months if not years. Many fathers give up in despair as it is too costly for them to continue and too harrowing. There is an abundance of evidence that these parents of children born before May 2006 assume/ed they had/have equal Parenting rights and that it would only come to a fathers attention as a complete and utter shock perhaps only on separating from his partner. Children suffer the most from this gross error in judgement by the then executive. Despite there having been just under 200,000 joint birth registrations by unmarried parents in the ten years prior to May 2006 Mr Salmond choses to do nothing about this gross injustice. Perhaps he would be better interested if it were about equestrian welfare.