Sorry folks, but you’ll not have me to kick around these next two weeks. I’m away to the Isle of Jura this week for Midge Fest 2012 (and the 62nd edition of the Ardlussa Sports). Thence to Ireland for a week of cricket as a member of Peter Oborne’s annual travelling circus. See you here next month.
Brian Monteith has revived his Think Scotland website and as part of all this I’m scribbling there on Tuesdays. This week I’m busy cheering the SNP’s march to sanity on defence policy. Angus Robertson, the obvious candidate to combine the jobs of Foreign and Defence Secretary should Scotland become an independent state and remain governed by the SNP, has been busy leading the party back from the brink of student union yahooism and towards some kind of sweet sanity. Hence his proposal to abandon the SNP’s longstanding anti-NATO stance. Scotia free and braw will join the alliance provided some deal is done to remove the nukes from Faslane. At some
I’ve written an article for the Scotsman today arguing that Scotland needs many more immigrants. Aside from all the usual arguments in favour of this kind of blood transfusion I should also have said that increasing the number of non-Scots in Scotland is a useful hedge against being governed by, you know, Scots should we ever get around to voting in favour of independence… Anyway, here’s the gist of the damn thing: Though polling data says Scots are about as immigrant-friendly as Londoners – and, therefore, likely to be more relaxed about immigration than people in other parts of the United Kingdom – that still means some 70 per cent
It is Armed Forces Day and army morale is low – according to the Telegraph at least. The prospect of a 20 per cent cut in personnel is provoking anger in the ranks, which the civilian can perceive dimly by looking at the posts left on the Army Rumour Service. Rumours of amalgamation and abolition have been circulating for some time in the run up to next week’s announcement. The Telegraph reports that historic English regiments are going to be remoulded, especially those that rely on foreign recruits (usually from the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands). Two of the so-called ‘Super Regiments’, the Yorkshire Regiment and the Rifles, are set lose
Lloyd Evans rounds up the highlights of this week’s Spectator debate on the future of the union. The motion was ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’. Margo Macdonald, MSP, opened on a friendly note and declared that she had no plans to fall out with anyone. She wants to preserve Scotland’s ‘social union’ with England. But her country can no longer ‘shackle itself to the shell of a declining empire’. Nor should Scotland send ‘broad-kilted laddies’ to fight wars in foreign lands, ‘using armoured vehicles that are more dangerous to our servicemen than to the enemy.’ England, she claimed, uses Scotland to maintain its ‘magic seat’ on the Security Council.
The Union is safe — at least if last night’s Spectator debate was anything to go by. The motion ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’ was defeated by 254 votes to 43. The SNP weren’t present (they demanded two representatives on the panel, and we refused), but independent nationalist Margo MacDonald opened the debate. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in a summary of proceedings. 1) Margo MacDonald (for the motion) focused on foreign misadventures: Scottish soldiers should not fight American wars with British guns that were a greater threat to their own side than to the enemy. Money saved would go to essential social security. She explained that
Past experience demonstrates that Rangers supporters won’t find anything funny about this: As I say, Rangers fans are immune, even at this late stage, to even gallows’ humour. Everyone else? Well, not so much. After all: If this – and sending Rangers into the stygian depths of Scottish football – constitutes success in the corporate restructuring world one scarcely dares contemplate the horrors of failure. [Thanks to JPT]
Nearly a decade ago, a book called He’s Just Not That Into You became what is termed a ‘publishing sensation. I don’t know if this attempt to explain men to women was persuasive or not (the odds seem against it being so) but its title seemed pertinent to yesterday’s launch of the Unionist campaign to preserve the United Kingdom in a more-or-less recognisable form. Why? Because of the man who wasn’t there. David Cameron didn’t attend the Better Together event held at Napier University. This was not a surprise but his absence was still telling. Perhaps the Prime Minister has been persuaded his presence in Scotland is more liable to
The Battle for Britain is heating up this week, with the pro-union campaign launched in Edinburgh this morning and a Spectator debate on the union on Wednesday. We have, as ever, a strong lineup – but the Scottish National Party is noticeable by its absence. I thought CoffeeHousers may like to know why not. We planned the debate ages ago, and from the offset wanted SNP to be on board. As Scottish separation would have implications for the whole of the UK we asked someone to make the case for English separation: Kelvin MacKenzie. And someone to speak up for the union: Sir Malcolm Rifkind. The Nats didn’t like this
The notorious splitters in the Free Presbyterian Church are at it again. The Wee Wee Frees (who should not be confused with the more numerous Wee Frees) warn that Scottish independence is a risky ploy since the Act of Union copper-bottomed the protestant faith and any change to that, however well-intentioned, risks wrath and much else besides. It could be ‘a provocation to God’, no less. It might be, you know. Though the SNP has devoted much time and effort to wooing the Catholic hierarchy, the fact remains that modern Scottish nationalism is an almost exclusively secular business. Indeed one could go further and suggest that though the nationalist revival
Ed Miliband laid out his vision for Scotland today, which didn’t quite set the heather alight. But word reaches me about what David Cameron is planning. He has already said that if Scotland votes ‘No’ they’d get a special something as a thank-you. But he did not specify what that something was. A bluff, says Alex Salmond, the same lies that Jim Callaghan sold Scotland in the 1970s and the special something was 18 years of Tory government! But Cameron is working on an offer. Soon, the &”Scottish government” (as Salmond calls his half-government) will control 30 per cent of all money raised in Scotland. Cameron is thinking that, after
The most stirring sermon I ever heard was delivered by a company sergeant-major in the Black Watch to a cadre of young lance-corporals, barely 19 years old, who were about to experience their first deployment to Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Like an old-fashioned Presbyterian minister, he warned them of the dangers of the world, in this case roof-top snipers and stone-throwing rioters, and the temptation these presented to the unwary soul, in this case, as he put it, ‘to run like buggery’. But they would not succumb, he said; indeed, they would lead their sections looking such dangers fearlessly in the face, because they were armed with a greater
Political stocks can go down as well as up. Shares in Alex Salmond are hardly slumping right now but they’re off their peak and flat-lining. The market is becalmed. Perhaps the launch of the independence referendum campaign will reinvigorate the First Minister but it also carries the risk – unavoidable for sure, but still a risk – that concentrating attention on independence will remind voters that the SNP is, at heart, a single-issue party. And single-issue parties tend to run into trouble. There is a theory that the SNP have over-extended themselves. Even though they still hold more council seats than Labour (and so could claim their local election “failure”
It’s odd, but most of the English faces we see in our wee corner of the Scottish Borders are merely ‘stopping’ for a night or two on their way north. What is the point, they wonder, in driving all this way only to settle a hair’s breadth past that gaudy ‘Welcome to Scotland’ sign? If they must visit Scotland, they think, they might as well do the thing properly. The Borders aren’t really Scotland, after all — just that last tedious leg of the A68 on the way into Edinburgh. They are, of course, gravely mistaken. You will find as strong a sense of Scotland here as in the grimmest
Some of those who queued outside the Cineworld multiplex in Edinburgh for this morning’s Yes for Independence launch found it hard to contain their chortles. There, hanging above the door through which Alex Salmond was due to arrive was a huge poster carrying just two words — The Dictator. And if that ad for Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie wasn’t enough to send the First Minister into a fury with his PR team, there was more inside. One poster for the film Prometheus carried the tag line: “The Search For Our Beginning Could Lead to Our End,” while a series for the new Ice Age movie proclaimed: “Cranky and Clueless”,
The campaign for an independent Scotland launches today — but the date to really keep in mind is the 27th June, when The Spectator will hold its own debate on Scotland’s future. The motion is ‘It’s time to let Scotland go’. The venue is the Royal Geographic Society in London. The chair is Andrew Neil. And we’ve collected a great bunch of speakers to argue for and against, including Gerry Hassan and Kelvin Mackenzie on the ‘For’ side, and Malcolm Rifkind, Rory Stewart and Iain Martin on the ‘Against’. For further details — and tickets — click here. We’d be delighted to see you there.
This week the SNP will launch their campaign for Scottish independence. Or, rather, it’s the official beginning of what they term the ‘Yes’ campaign. Prefacing this, Joan McAlpine uses her column in the Daily Record to list ten reasons why Scots should endorse independence. It is an interesting list, not least because McAlpine, who is close to Alex Salmond, is one of the higher-profile SNP MSPs and someone to whom it is always worth paying attention. This is her list: 1. An independent Scotland would be the sixth wealthiest country on earth. According to the OECD, apparently. It’s the Black Gold, silly. This is a very dubious statistic. It relies
The death of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for their part in the Lockerbie Bombing, is a matter of some relief. It marks the end of one part of an affair from which few of the protagonists graduate with credit. As this is Lockerbie, however, you can expect the conspiracy fires to burn for some time yet. As far as Megrahi’s release is concerned I continue to believe cock-up rather more probable than conspiracy. Alex Salmond was stretching his case to breaking point yesterday when he pointed out that Megrahi had at least died of the prostate cancer with which he had been diagnosed. See, he really was
There are times when the SNP’s attempts to persuade us that there are no regrettable consequences to Scottish independence cross the line between worthy and absurd. The future of shipbuilding on the Clyde is one such case. According to the nationalists the suggestion that the Royal Navy (or what is left of it) might be less likely to place orders with Scottish yards is just the usual “scaremongering” put about by Unionist parties that want to put the frighteners on braw and brave Caledonia. Aye right. It is, of course, true that an independent Scotland might have modest shipbuilding needs. True too that the Clyde yards, if they remained open, could
Years ago, before government began to take its toll I remember reading an interview with young David Cameron published by the Dundee Courier. The paper wanted to know if the leader of the opposition (as he then was) had any plans to reverse the army reforms that bundled all the Scottish infanty regiments together to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland. As I recall, Mr Cameron (gently) suggested he was unlikely to be able to unpick that reform but stressed he was mindful of the importance of local afiliations and that he understood the depth and breadth of sentiment attached to the regiments in Scotland. Aye, weel, tht was then