British Establishment Attitude to Scottish People

I had a flying visit to Donegal this weekend to celebrate my friend James' 40th birthday and whilst there I went walking with his brother Liam who lives in Australia. We got talking about politics and he was asking about Scotland and the campaign for Independence. He was stunned when I explained about the block grant we receive from Westminster. He genuinely couldn't believe that we operate in such a way that all our money goes down there and then we wait (as we are doing now) to see how much they'll give us back.


He used the analogy I always use of a family where the children never leave home and remain dependent on the parents.


I was aware when we were talking about the long battle with the British state the Independence movement has faced, that I was sounding a bit like a conspiracy theorist particularly when we spoken about stuff like this.


Had I known about THIS at the time I think Liam would have seen quite clearly that the conspiracies against Scotland are most certainly not imagined. To save you reading it, it concerns Baroness Deech, someone who has been named on different occasions as "the 107th most powerful person in Britain" (The Observer 1999) and "26th in the God list" which was Channel 4's list of the 50 most powerful people of faith in the UK.

This most powerful and influential (not to mention deeply religious) woman basically starts running down Scotland and Scots. It wasn't just her. Some guy who's in charge of The Centre for Social Cohesion (which I thought was about equality but obviously not) was enjoying the Scot baiting. Oh and it seems the audience was lapping it up!

And that's fine?!

Is it? Of course it isn't and if they were saying this sort of thing about any other nationality, they'd be getting done under the Race Relations Act. If you click on this link you can read the edited "highlights" and listen to it in full but to whet your appetite I will give you one example ...

"We're all subsidising them" says this wummin "I think, by way of benefits and all sorts of reasons and if they want to show how independent they are, ok, thank you and goodbye".

I'm going to be somewhat more mature than Mrs Deech and here's my message to her:

"If we want to run our own country, we will do that in the same way that the vast majority of other countries do. Even if it's not what your country wants, I hope we can still be friends.

"I'm not suggesting we live in each other's pockets and pretend that nothing's changed but that we form a new, more equal, possibly even respectful (if you can manage that) friendship with each other and stay on good terms.

"So, when we do go, Mrs Deech I will join you in saying 'thank you' but I won't say goodbye, simply au revoir."