I was thinking a bit today about the protests against the World Cup taking place in Qatar. Of course there's one very obvious reason why it shouldn't be taking place there: the bid was only won due to corruption on an epic scale. But if it wasn't for that, the issues would be quite complex and finely-balanced. If we completely bar countries with poor human rights records from hosting major sporting events, then countries covering perhaps one half or more of the global population would be automatically excluded, which would arguably make a mockery of the whole concept of "international sport". Some people would perhaps say that any awarding of an event should be conditional on changes in local laws, but in many cases the offending laws are very similar to ones that were in place in western countries as recently as a few decades ago. Arguably it's a form of colonialism to expect developing countries to conform to our standards of right now and to say that even our standards of five minutes ago won't be good enough.
And that thought process suddenly reminded me of something. Before I was banned from Stormfront Lite, I recall Tory posters repeatedly trying to brand Scotland a backwards, socially conservative country on the basis of the fact that male homosexual acts remained illegal here until 1980, more than a decade after the lifting of the ban in England and Wales in 1967. There's just one little snag with that narrative: 1980 was nineteen years before the introduction of devolution, which meant that all of Scotland's laws - without exception - were decided solely by the English-dominated UK Parliament. Exactly the same parliamentarians who decided male homosexual acts should be decriminalised in England and Wales opted to keep them illegal here. Of course, once you point that out there's then the inevitable innuendo about how Westminster was powerless to act against the face of unsophisticated Scottish public opinion. Hmmm. Have you ever actually noticed Westminster paying the slightest heed to Scotland-specific public opinion, as opposed to Britain-wide public opinion?
And who held the power of initiative to legislate on Scotland-specific matters prior to devolution? Why, that would be the Secretary of State for Scotland, who was not elected by the people of Scotland, but was instead handpicked by the British Prime Minister from the ranks of his own party, even if Scotland had voted for a different party. No matter which way you cut it, British fingerprints are all over this supposedly "Scottish" point of historical shame. Nor is this an isolated example of Scotland getting the blame for things that Westminster have done to Scotland - probably the most brazen one is the "Scottish deficit" we keep hearing so much about, which the Scottish Government has literally zero responsibility for due to a legal requirement to balance the books. If it can even be reasonably described as a Scottish deficit at all, it's merely a nominally-assigned Scottish portion of a British deficit run up by British governments.
What other examples can we think of?
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Drug deaths - policy on drugs is reserved. UKG have blocked Scotland trialling safe rooms a key step forward.
ReplyDeleteHighest tariffs for Scottish electricity generators to use national grid as we are far from London.
Poor broadband infrastructure in remote areas (broadband is reserved) which hinders regional development in Scotland. (you don’t need fast broadband when you only plan to shoot grouse?)
Rail network is reserved so much of ScotRail problems (e.g signal failures) require better funding from beyond Scotland.
Benefits cut for more than two kids.
Broadcasting controlled from London hence only 72 pc of licence fees collected in Scotland is spent in Scotland
I’ve got more but that’s enough. The UK is a hugely centralised state and. Scotland is very much on the edge of its priorities.
James - two other reasons the World Cup shouldn’t be in Qatar- the deaths of hundreds of construction workers working in terrible slave conditions and the colossal and disgusting waste of building massive stadiums in the desert which need air conditioned and will be useless to the population of 300k once the tournament is over. No wonder our planet is burning.
ReplyDeleteThe farce is a mirror of ourselves in the west. This is the tragedy of who we have become - greed is good.
Some estimates say thousands of deaths. The immigrant workers had their passports taken from them and could only leave Quatar with the permission of Quatar. Modern day slavery.
DeleteThe Quatar world cup was clearly awarded due to the high level of bribes. It's not just greed is good it is corruption and greed is good.
Strikes me that should still be enough to provide better programming than we get.
DeleteThe Scottish government being blamed for Westminster's mismanagement will continue because the British nationalist media will continue to spew out its anti-Scottish rhetoric and many people in Scotland will believe it - partly because they are unionists anyway but also because they are naive in their trust of British nationalist television stations, especially the BBC.
ReplyDeleteThe British nationalist media almost has a monopoly on anti-Scottish propaganda. If it wasn't for internet sites like this one, and The National newspaper, people in Scotland would be in total ignorance of alternatives to Westminster's anti-Scottish policies and propaganda.
Pro independence politicians should take every opportunity to denounce the British nationalist media. They should call for a boycott by people in Scotland of all British nationalist media.
" ...... denounce the British Nationaist media." You mean like Sturgeon saying the BBC is a key and valued institution.
DeleteIn what way could a referendum ever be deemed to be fair when the country England that wants to hold on to the golden goose called Scotland completely controls all the main media and the message it pumps out. In what world is this known as democracy.
DeleteJohn REDACTOR MAN Swinney blew the only chance of doing something about the blatant propaganda of the Britnat media when he bent over for the Britnats in the Smith Commission.
Crikey, even a WGD numpty agrees with me that Sturgeon has picked the wrong election for a de facto referendum.
ReplyDeleteWGD numpty jfngw outs themselves as one of the more sensible numpties by posting:- " It may be more sensible to force a Holyrood election where we control the voter franchise."
Of course being a numpty jfngw cannae bring themselves to say the obvious conclusion that Sturgeon got it wrong and that it is so obviously wrong that even a numpty can see it.
Charley boy is such a good egg. He cracked on with the job despite coming under a shocking barrage (4) of flying eggs. Just as well they weren't hard boiled. I doubt we will hear about it with the monotonous regularity that we had to bear when the original egg man Jim Murphy got egged.
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