Sunday, August 12, 2012

Tony Parsons closes in on gold in the hypocrisy and humbug events

I've never previously felt moved to leave a comment on the Daily Record website, but then I hadn't seen an example of jingoistic hypocrisy quite like this before -

"This was a rotten fortnight to be a bigot. This was when the barriers that divide us came crashing down.

English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish fought side by side. The old joke about Andy Murray – British when he wins, Scottish when he loses – got left out for the binmen. At the sight of all those Union flags, the SNP’s Alex Salmond no longer looked like the cat who got the cream...

For two weeks we were all British, laughing and crying together...

The British ran an Empire that covered the world for three centuries – why did we doubt we could run a sporting event for two weeks?...

And as they united the nation in the way that we have not been united since 1945, these Olympics revealed the true nature of our people.

All of our people...

You can love your own country without hating somebody else’s."

This was my reply :

The part of this article I find most confusing is the phrase "by Tony Parsons". Presumably this will be the same Tony Parsons who disgraced himself a few years back by penning a ranting article that branded Andy Murray an anti-English bigot, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever other than a baseless rumour that Murray wanted the English football team to lose (which would scarcely have been a sign of bigotry even if it had been true). Oh, but wait, perhaps that vile article was one of the "jokes" Tony refers to here? Must be.

As far as this piece touches on Scotland, the implicit message seems to be "Scottishness = bigotry, Britishness = maturity".

Grow up, Tony. I say that for your own sake, otherwise you might end up feeling slightly queasy at the sight of all those saltires at the Commonwealth Games in two years' time, just weeks before the independence referendum takes place.

As for the point about Alex Salmond, you may not have noticed this from your vantage point in London, but he does indeed still look like the cat that got the cream, mainly because the unprecedented success of Scottish Olympic athletes has been a source of immense pleasure and pride for all Scots, unionist and nationalist alike. But I can understand how that might seem a touch baffling to a divisive Brit Nat zealot such as yourself.

6 comments:

  1. If todays Sunday Times poll ( in the Scottish edition)is to be believed then it raining on those trying to politicise the Olympics in favour of the Union. The tide is going the way. I don't have the actual numbers but the ST have tweeted that the Independednce numbers have gone up. PB Tories take note.

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  2. Perfectly put back in his box.

    The assumption that Scots cannot be proud of Scots who were obliged, whether or not they were happy with it, to compete under a UK flag is plain silly.

    Would Brit Nats not be proud of a Brit who competed under an EU flag?

    While I'm sick to death of seeing union flags on every third product in the supermarket, I'm none the less happy that Andy Murray and Chris Hoy have their medals. (I'm not sure that I am entitled to "pride" as I had absolutely nothing to do with their achievement; happy for them is a more accurate reflection of my feelings.)

    If Mr Parsons thinks that Scots will, because of a bit of flag waving and David Cameron milking the Olympics for political advantage, suddenly become unionists, then he underestimates the strength of feeling in the independence movement, and underestimating opposition is always a silly thing to do.

    The union flag waving of the Jubilee and the Olympics will be soon forgotten as the press moves on to other matters.

    Rumours of a lurch to the right in the Tory party in the upcoming reshuffle suggest that it will be even more imperative that Scotland escape the clutches of the English Tory Party before too long.

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  3. All the Union flag waving and pride in being British will have evaporated like Scotch mist by the end of September when the press will get back to their usual gutter tripe and the those proudest in their flag waving and most swollen with the jingoistic claptrap will wake up and realise that they are living in bankrupt pig sty with an odious right wing government that fully intends to hammer the poorest and most vulnerable thanks to a cack handed right wing agenda and a disastrous economic model. All the gold medals in the world will never gloss over the size of that turd!

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  4. In case anybody didn't notice the bronze medal match in the water polo was between Serbian and Montenegro, who didn't seem to want to reform their glorious union. Croatia are happily playing for the Gold medal without seeming to lament over the loss of Yugoslavia. The Olympics are contests between nations, with national anthems and national flags being hoisted. It is a festival of nationalism.
    Except of course that (Scottish) nationalism is bad so we can't possibly have anybody admit to the basic truth.

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  5. Normally I would sooner munch on broken glass than mention Hitchins or the Mail. But someone linked to his article on the Olymopics that has nailed it perfectly for me, there I said it!

    Linky: http://tiny.cc/o8txiw

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  6. Obviously I don't agree with all of the Hitchens article, but this bit -

    "And by the way, have Prince William and his wife forgotten that they are future monarchs of Australia?"

    - is bang on the money. No wonder Jamaica is planning to become a republic.

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