In pictures : the opening day of the 2012 Glasgow Olympics (which is apparently also being partly held in London)

A couple of months ago, I suggested that it would be "every Scot's patriotic duty to show an interest in an Under-23 match between Egypt and Belarus". Well, I'm not actually sure whether I'll be taking an interest in that particular game, but in a sense I did follow my own strictures, because I went along to Hampden for the opening day of the Olympic football competition. There were two games - USA v France, and North Korea v Colombia. I'm an American citizen, so I supported France in the first game, and I'm a fierce anti-communist, so it was North Korea all the way for me in the second game.

One or two people raised their eyebrows when I mentioned that I was paying good money to watch women's football. But I must say that as a non-expert, the skill level in the USA v France game seemed pretty high. It was certainly an exhilarating watch - France took an early 2-0 lead, only for the US to come back to win 4-2.

You may have heard that there was then a slight interruption before the second game. There was, of course, no official explanation - we were just told that "the delay is due to a behind the scenes issue, which we are working to resolve". One or two people next to me started muttering that it must have something to do with Kim Jong-Il, apparently unaware that the Dear Leader is no longer with us. Someone else suggested that we might be in for a repeat of the Scotland v Estonia scenario from 1996, with one team taking to the pitch, kicking the ball for three seconds, and then punching the air with the joy of victory.

The crowd (or at least the hardy minority who stuck around) amused themselves during the unexpected hiatus by booing, hissing, doing the conga, booing, hissing, doing a Mexican wave, booing, hissing, singing Flower of Scotland, booing and hissing. For my part, I passed some of the time by taking a couple of 'self-portraits'. I include one in the collection of photos below, mainly in fond tribute to my new cap, which is now very much my old cap, because I later contrived to lose it during the short walk back to Mount Florida railway station (God knows how).

There were two little clues as to what was really going on. The announcer read out the names of the North Korean team approximately seventeen thousand times for no apparent reason, and the big screen featured a fixed picture of the (real) North Korean flag for about half an hour - presumably the thinking was "OK, we'll keep it up there for the rest of the bloody night if you want, now will you play?". Once the game finally got under way, the neutrals seemed to take their revenge by getting firmly behind Colombia - there were plenty of Come On Colombias from just behind me. I was sorely tempted to scream Come On The Democratic People's Republic of Korea! at the top of my voice, but I thought better of it.

At the start of the session, there was a pre-recorded message from Alex Salmond. He received warm cheers from the American and French supporters after wishing them well, but I winced slightly when he declared himself delighted that an Olympic event was taking place in Scotland for the first time ever. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall looking at the Official Report from the 1908 London Olympics, and spotting that the sailing event took place on the Clyde.

Actually, when I first got broadband internet, just about the first thing I did was download some of the Olympic Reports from years gone by (dial-up could never handle the job). I've always had a fascination for the Games, and that brings me to what I was doing at Hampden. I yield to no-one in my cynicism towards LOCOG, Lord Coe and the Brit Nat zealots at the BOA, but the Olympic movement is bigger than all of them. And with a little slice of the Olympics taking place in Scotland for the first time in 104 years, I think I was probably always going to be tempted to buy a ticket - even if Egypt v Belarus U23s had been the only thing on offer.

(Click the photos to enlarge)

Panelbase poll : Majority of men support independence

The predictable slant of the report in the Express on the latest independence poll is that supporters of "separation"/"the break-up of Britain"/"hell on Earth" have got a problem - this time a problem with women, because if you strip out the undecideds, 61% of female voters are planning to vote No. Fairy-nuffski, but by the same token it's only reasonable to point out that the No side have got a similar problem with men, because 51% of male voters (excluding undecideds) are planning to vote Yes.

Here are the overall results for all voters -

Yes 36%
No 45%
Undecided 20%

That isn't much use for showing changes in support, because the headline figures from the last Panelbase independence poll I can find (from February) excluded undecideds. Based on my own calculation, here is the direct comparison -

Yes 44% (-3)
No 56% (+3)

The figures are actually more like 55.5%-44.5%, but rounding produces the above effect. So a slight increase in the No lead, but this is self-evidently still a very close race with more than two full years of campaigning ahead of us.

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UPDATE : Even better news from the SNP website - the same Panelbase poll has voting intention figures, which show a whopping lead for the Nationalists.

Holyrood constituency vote :

SNP 47%
Labour 32%
Conservatives 12%
Liberal Democrats 6%

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UPDATE II : I see from my stats that at 1528 BST, this blog received a visitor from Tucson, home of Kevin Baker. At 1534 BST, the blog that Conan linked to in the comments thread on Saturday received the following anonymous contribution -

"If you've actually seen the latest Batman film, you might want to note that (SPOILER ALERT!)

Catwoman blows Bane away with THE CANNON MOUNTED ON THE BATCYCLE - and suggests that Batman may need to rethink his "no guns" philosophy in the face of almost having his head blown off by Bane with a 12 gauge double-barreled sawed-off shotgun."

Coincidence? Seems unlikely. I posted this response -

"Alternatively, he might want to persevere with the no guns philosophy to ensure that Bane doesn't have the 12 gauge double-barreled sawed-off shotgun in the first place.

Just a thought."

Democracy and the rule of law : the difference between the two

Six days from now, Romania will stage a referendum on whether to impeach the country's centre-right president, Traian Băsescu. This is the culmination of what many in the European press see as the left-wing government's attempts to entrench and expand its authority by extra-constitutional means. There have even been some dark murmurings about the possibility of a "soft dictatorship" re-emerging in one of the European family of nations. However, the EU's success in persuading the government to reverse its previous decision to set aside the rule requiring a 50% turnout for the referendum result to be valid is being hailed as a small triumph for democracy and the rule of law.

Now, obviously we must be careful not to judge the Romanian government by laxer standards simply because it's left-of-centre, and many of its actions do seem pretty outrageous. (For example, they tried to replace democracy with "good old British first-past-the-post", and it doesn't get much grimmer than that.) Nevertheless, the EU's enthusiasm for enforcing the minimum turnout rule is a classic example of a fixation with a single important principle (the rule of law) rendering people incapable of seeing the wood for the trees. Scrupulously legal it may be, but the 50% rule is in fact profoundly anti-democratic. Indeed, it's even worse than the notorious 40% rule from the 1979 devolution referendum, which merely put an unequal onus on Yes supporters to turn out and vote. The Romanian rule actually gives supporters of the president a clear and perverse incentive to abstain rather than actively vote against impeachment - because they know that if they do so in sufficient numbers they can thwart the will of the majority, however overwhelming. Not so much "if you stay at home you are voting No" as "if you don't want to vote Yes, don't vote".

Just goes to show that, while adherence to the rule of law may be an essential prerequisite for democracy, it isn't the same thing as democracy.

* * *

Although in principle I agree with Peter Curran that the SNP's potential policy reversal on NATO is regrettable, I have to say that I think he's getting the whole thing several light-years out of proportion. One thing is for sure - Scotland will not be leaving NATO for as long as it is part of the United Kingdom. So the first priority for any opponent of NATO membership is to get Scotland out of the UK, and the SNP is far and away the best vehicle to achieve that. A pro-NATO stance on the part of the SNP does not preclude the possibility of an independent Scotland leaving NATO, any more than a continuing anti-NATO stance would have precluded the possibility of us staying inside the alliance.

This is an issue that will be settled democratically after independence - either by a parliamentary vote, or more ideally by referendum. Whatever our individual feelings about NATO, knowledge of that fact ought to be more than enough to ensure that we don't lose sight of the bigger picture now.

No, Virginia, America hasn't gone bat**** crazy - and here's the proof.

Far too much nonsense is spoken on this side of the pond every time someone in the US commits a mass murder with legally-obtained firearms. There seems to be a genuine belief among some commentators that less guns would somehow make incidents like this less likely to happen. What poppycock. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Just like the civilians of Hiroshima weren't actually mass-murdered and irradiated by an atomic bomb - if Harry Truman hadn't had a nuclear weapon handy, he could just as easily have got the job done by bashing people over the head with a police truncheon, one-by-one.

As you know, at moments like this I much prefer to turn to Kevin Baker and his Fan Club over at The Smallest Minority, an oasis of non-paranoid thinking in an otherwise communist world. And I'm so glad I popped over there today, because it turns out that the real problem in this instance is not that there are too many guns in American cinemas, but that there are far too few, and that in any case the noble minority who sensibly have a firearm in their pocket as they're munching on their popcorn haven't given anything like enough thought to the logistics of shooting someone in the head in such challenging terrain -

"I took my grandson to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on its opening weekend. When we got to the theater, I took my Kel-Tec PF9 out of the center console (in a pocket holster) and put it in my pants pocket. He saw. "You carry a gun in the theater?" he asked. "It's my job to protect you," I replied.

Now I have to practice head-shots with the thing. Maybe I ought to get the laser..."

Also worthy of note is the first reply to Baker's latest inspiring attempt to make the world a safer place -

"I felt it important enough to break my silence here and note that violent crime continues to drop in this country and world wide, making incidents like this outliers. Of course the media will cover this story to the point of nausea and make it seem like it happens everywhere all the time which it does not."

Nothing very surprising there, you might think, until you discover that this was Markadelphia, regarded by the KBFC as the blog's resident liberal "Antichrist" figure. And that usefully illustrates America's real problem - it's not that there are millions of gun zealots out there, it's that the so-called left are too cowed to face them down directly, and indeed that many on the left buy into the gun free-for-all ideology themselves. How else can we explain that the first response of a 'liberal' to a blogpost about defending yourself in a cinema with guns talks about anything other than the fact that the post is just utterly unhinged? I mean, if this incident is such an 'outlier', Mark, don't you think it might have been worthwhile to point out that the belief that it's too risky to take your grandson to the cinema without a lethal weapon may just be a tad disproportionate? Or if it isn't disproportionate, that it might be more rational (and fairer on others) to just forego trips to the cinema until such time as the whole unspeakable mess is sorted out?

In truth, of course, while a 'newsworthy' event like this is certainly an outlier, the daily toll of routine gun deaths in the US is anything but. 81 Americans per day die from firearm violence - and the per capita death rate is almost twenty times higher than Scotland's.

YouGov poll : Labour least popular in Scotland

This has happened before, but I thought it was worth noting that in the regional breakdown in last night's UK-wide YouGov poll, Scotland was the place where Labour had its lowest vote share.

Labour's vote share by region :

North of England 57%
Midlands/Wales 48%
London 45%
South (excluding London) 32%
Scotland 31%

That may well be a sampling quirk, and tonight's poll may show Scottish Labour in a healthier position. Nevertheless, the fact that such results are even possible is an illustration of how fundamentally the politics of this country have changed.

For what it's worth, there were two polls yesterday (YouGov and Ipsos-Mori) that showed the SNP ahead in the Scottish subsample, in spite of the fact that Labour were well ahead throughout the UK. And that of course is for Westminster voting intention - the Nationalists' weakest suit.

Why there should be a referendum on NATO membership, but not on equal marriage

I'm not an SNP Kremlinologist, so I can only guess at the significance of the deferral of a decision on legislating for same-sex marriage. However, given that we now know for sure that there will be a verdict by the end of July (ie. in less than two weeks), it seems overwhelmingly likely that we are still heading towards marriage equality, and that all the cries of betrayal and foot-dragging will look pretty silly in short order. I certainly hope so.

The fact that there isn't going to be a referendum on the subject is scarcely a surprise, but it was still a good idea to slap down Cardinal O'Brien's demand so firmly. However, I do think the Equality Network's widely-reported suggestion that a referendum would be "un-Scottish, unfair and a colossal waste of taxpayer's money" was slightly misjudged. The term 'un-Scottish' has a fairly obvious McCarthyite ring to it, while any recourse to the notion that a democratic vote is a waste of money is pretty much always disingenuous. The No to AV campaign, for instance, notoriously lumped in the cost of the referendum itself as part of the supposed "price of AV"!

In truth, there's a perfectly respectable theoretical case for having a referendum on this sort of topic. Of course, in an ideal liberal democratic world, we'd accept that equal rights for citizens (including marriage rights) are sacred, and should not be subject to a veto by majority vote. But we don't yet live in that ideal liberal democracy, and for as long as individual freedoms are at the mercy of a majority vote, it's no more irrational that the vote should be conducted among the population at large than among their elected representatives in parliament.

No, the question is instead one of consistency. There is simply no precedent in this country for a referendum on anything other than matters relating to the constitution, or changing the form of government. The only possible example I can think of is the 1994 Strathclyde water referendum - but that had no official standing, and in any case was 'constitutionally motivated', ie. it was intended to show that a Conservative government in Westminster had no mandate to act in Scotland.

It would be different if we lived in Switzerland, or even Ireland, which has held referenda on very similar 'social' matters such as abortion and divorce. But while there's much to be said for Swiss-style semi-direct democracy, in my view there's even more to be said against it. The fact that Switzerland didn't allow women to vote until 1971 (entirely as a result of the referendum system) tells you all you need to know. So the tradition we're developing in this country probably has the balance just about right - while referenda are not necessarily a bad thing, they should be strictly limited to vital constitutional matters.

Which brings me to my second point - that NATO membership is just such a vital constitutional matter, and that proposing a referendum on it would not only be justified, but would neatly solve the SNP's dilemma on the subject. I personally don't see the need for the change in policy on NATO - even if it's true that an anti-NATO stance is scaring the horses somewhat, the obvious antidote is to point out that it's simply one political party's stance, and that the people will choose whether Scotland remains in the alliance at the first post-independence election. However, there's an argument that the electorate are bound to wrongly equate SNP policy with "what will automatically happen under independence", in which case a referendum pledge is surely the way to square the circle. A straightforward flip from an anti-NATO to a pro-NATO stance is simply going to dismay and demotivate as many voters as it reassures.

If gerrymandering won't work...

David Cameron's reported reaction to the possibility of the Lib Dems vetoing boundary changes -

"I thought I had a plan about how to win the next Election – now I’ll have to think of another way."

Ballot stuffing? Scottish independence? Increasing the minimum voting age to 63? Bonus votes for anyone called Felicity or Tarquin?

We can probably rule out electoral popularity as forming any part of the Cammo masterplan.

* * *

Michael Moore in Scotland on Sunday -

"This process of further devolution must be conducted in this way. It must be designed to meet the needs of people in Scotland, not to serve as a get-out clause for a Nationalist cause that has lost its nerve."

In other words, it must be slooooow. And it must certainly play second fiddle to the tribal urge to "defeat" the SNP for the sake of it - an outcome which would of course make further devolution far less likely to happen.

The Lib Dems : passionate Home Rulers, except when there's something more important to be getting on with. Like playing Tetris.

Photos on Friday : Cumbrae and sunshine

No long-distance shots of unelected Heads of State for you this week.  Instead I've got something far rarer - a visual record of bright sunshine right in the middle of "The Year Without Summer".  It may not have been the most exotic of locations (I've been to Cumbrae/Millport umpteen times before), but when I saw on the BBC forecast that approximately one square inch of Scotland was going to be enjoying good weather, I felt compelled to make a beeline for it.

In case you're wondering about the recent spate of photos, it's just the novelty of finally joining the 21st Century with a digital camera - I've been getting by with disposable cameras for years.  I wish I'd had it in May, though - I got about 98% of the way up Goatfell on Arran, before having to turn back to avoid missing the last ferry of the day (again), and the views were spectacular.  However, you can see Goatfell in the distance in some of these pictures - you can also, rather incongruously, see Hunterston nuclear power station.

(Click the photos to enlarge)

Would you like to "upgrade" from Scot to Brit, sir?

This unwittingly revealing contribution from a Scottish Tory stalwart on Political Betting raised a smile in the early hours of this morning -

"Never mind poor Andy, well done Andy Murray for being first Brit to make it to the Wimbledon men's final in 74 years! Who said this guy was a dour Scot who didn't have any charisma, he really wanted to win this today, and for all the right reasons. And that was clear in the emotion he and family showed at the end when he lost. A Brit didn't win Wimbledon today, but Murray very clearly upgraded himself from that dour Scotsman to a true Brit as the loser on the day."

Note the effortless assumptions that Scottishness is a negative, that "Britishness" is a virtue, and that going from Scot to "Brit" constitutes an "upgrade". Pretty much the Tory mindset in a nutshell. When this was pointed out to her, she hastily redefined what she meant -

"Dour unsuccessful Scotsman = negative
But a fully committed if unsuccessful Scotsman and Brit = positive"

So adherence to the Tory version of "Britishness" is now merely an essential prerequisite for a Scot to be happy and "fully committed". Well, that's progress, I suppose.

As I touched on in my previous post, the spectacle of the last few days is a textbook example of how what the London media call "Britishness" is in reality Greater Englishness. How else can we explain the assumption that Andy Murray's success was somehow part of the same sporting canon as the English World Cup victory in 1966, and the English Rugby World Cup victory in 2003? A few weeks ago, Ed Miliband claimed that "it stands to reason" that Scots could no longer be British in an independent Scotland. The obvious inference to draw is that he takes it as read that "Britain" is whatever country London happens to be capital city of. Hardly surprising - many do.

In many ways, then, the independence referendum will be more about reclaiming Britishness than about reclaiming Scottishness. It'll be about decoupling Britishness from "state that London is capital city of" nationalism, and insisting that Britain belongs to all Britons. It isn't a London brand name - an independent state with its capital in Edinburgh will be every bit as much a British nation as an independent state with its capital in London. Norway didn't cease to be a Scandinavian nation when it declared independence from Stockholm.

Scotland salutes you, Andy

Well done to Andy Murray for giving it a right good go today. I was a bit worried that the match was going to be another anti-climax after the huge build-up, but no-one can doubt that Murray stepped up to the mark this time. And although it's not much consolation at the moment, I've always felt that in an ideal world it would be more fitting if he won his elusive first Grand Slam at Melbourne or New York, well away from the annual circus of trying to bludgeon him into maximal "Britishness" (aka Greater Englishness). I literally burst out laughing when the TV coverage commenced with Kenneth Wolstenholme's commentary from the 1966 World Cup final - I trust even some of our unionist friends were raising their eyebrows at such a grossly inappropriate choice. Admittedly there was a compilation of Scottish sporting highlights later, but it felt tokenistic in comparison.

Murray is of course a British player - Scottish players are registered as British for every tournament other than the Commonwealth Games. But that could change. After what happened with Peter Nicol a decade ago, we perhaps shouldn't make any assumptions about which country Murray would choose to represent in a post-independence scenario (he does have an English granny, after all). If he did go with Scotland, however, what a moment of pride it would be for this country as he stepped onto the Centre Court of Wimbledon in 2016 as a fully-fledged, Scottish-registered player.

Last but not least, congratulations to Federer - it hasn't been mentioned much yet, but among the other records he's broken, he's just become the first player over the age of 30 to win Wimbledon since Arthur Ashe in 1975.