Irrational hate
I read an EU-related comment in the Telegraph last week. I’m again and again struck by how it’s alright to rant about the EU in the UK in a way that would never be the case for other subjects, at least not in mainstream media. To demonstrate, let me try to alter the article very slightly:
I start to imagine a similarity between our relationship with our masters in London and that of an abused woman with a wife-beating husband.
One hears of these ménages and wonders why the woman stays.
The answer, usually, is that she has become inured to degradation and, through loss of self-esteem, fears a life away from it.
I must presume that that is largely why there has not – so far – been an ear-splitting public outcry about the outrageous suggestion that the name of our country should be removed from the Scottish passport.
In case this disgusting story has passed you by, let me oblige.
Your passport currently says, as it has long done, that you’re a Scottish citizen.
The idea from our masters – although denied by the Secretary of State for Scotland – is that from 2010 this should be replaced by a formula stating that the bearer is a citizen of the United Kingdom.
A cry went up, remarkably spontaneously, in my heart when I read this, as I feel sure it did in the hearts of millions of my fellow countrymen.
I am not a citizen of the bloody United Kingdom, except on a technicality. I am a Scotsman. I intend to remain that way, and when I go abroad I wish that point to be made abundantly clear on my passport.
I do not wish to have what remains of my national identity, of which I am inordinately proud, subsumed into the sovietised British empire by these menacing Orwellian bureaucrats whom I have never elected and who have never had the manners or the decency to ask me what I feel about these important matters.
…
The anger Britain stirs up reminds us why Mr Brown wants to avoid a referendum on the new devolution agreement, a document unacceptable to this supposedly free and democratic nation.
Would even the fiercest Scottish nationalist use this kind of language in public, I wonder?
well I imagine my dad would write it like that shd they want to call him English on his passport!
And the newspaper he sent it to would most likely not publish it because of the inflammatory language, no?
You bet your sweet life I would !
But they know better than to try that on us Scots 🙂