Not for the first time, I find myself starting the morning in an open-minded, logical, evidence-based, train of thought concerning matters of state, only to open The Herald and find my thoughts expressed in a far more concise and eloquent manner by your regular columnists Mr McWhirter and Mr Bell or by your regular correspondents Mr Mann and Dr Saint-Yves.
I agree wholeheartedly with Iain McWhirter's analysis of the consequences of the over-centralisation (or, specifically, the metropolitisation) of BBC programming. Try centralising the BBC in Manchester or Birmingham and you will hear the metropolitan squeals at John O'Groat's. His article of July 23 in my view, complemented perfectly the revelations by the Sunday Herald and The Herald of the untruths at the heart of the infamous Paxman BBC Newsnight interview with Alex Salmond in May and the similarly disgraceful behaviour of Ms Wark (BBC Newsnight) towards Alex Salmond following the SNP election victory. Nick Robinson's antics on behalf of the BBC during the run-up to the election also merit filing in the small round container in the corner. The aggressive, mocking and patronising tone of Paxman and Wark gave the lie to the much touted but now increasingly frantic and narcissistic claims of BBC objectivity. Gain, compared to the conduct of representatives of the previous Scottish Government, specifically Tavish Scott and Cathy Jamieson, while being interviewed by Gordon Brewer, Alex Salmond has the highly commendable record of always having attempted to answer the question put to him. I use the word "attempted" because my recollections of the Paxman and Wark interviews are that both "celebrity interviewers" appeared to suffer from an obsessive compulsive need to interrupt him before he had completed a sentence.
The malaise of which Iain McWhirter speaks is, in my view, part of a chronic syndrome that affects not just Scotland but the whole of the United Kingdom outwith the magic circle of the M25. One only has to read The Guardian, The Independent or The Observer, the last bastions of "liberal" English journalism. I echo Ian Bell's query: what on earth has happened to The Guardian? Simon Jenkins' racist comments about Scots' values? Simon Hoggart's anguish that an MP from Dundee does not enunciate in Oxbridge tones? All the claptrap written about Gordon Brown, the first Scottish PM since Tony Blair?
The malaise is that the London chattering classes (London's "national" broadsheets and the BBC) recently defended by The Guardian's Simon Jenkins in mitigation of the BBC's foul-ups (as revealed to date) are interested only in their city (West End mainly), their peer group (Oxbridge, mainly) their immediate surroundings (the "Home" counties, mainly), their own sports (you guess) and their own summer retreats (Provence, Tuscany etc). The lives and habitats of those UK citizens who live outwith this enchanted circle (apart of course from those who venture forth and write patronisingly about the natives whom they refer to as "indigenous" Welsh, Scots, Irish, Yorkshire folk etc.) are regarded as peripheral at worst or "exotic" at best.
The answer is independence. Independence for London as a nation state in common with Luxembourg. just think: political organisation - monarchy, with hereditary House of Cronies; principal industry - buying and selling money; currency - American dollar with image of HMQ E(II)R; defensive capability - Trident moored on the Thames; health service - BUPA and a few poor houses; Natural resources - Thames water (thrice recycled) and, err, that's it; "national" broadcaster - BBC; Local Newspapers - The Times, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Independent, The Guardian, Evening Standard.
As for the rest of us, well, we shall just have to try to struggle along with our supplies of oil and gas, water, wind and wave power, agriculture, industry, empathy, democracy, free education, an independent press, rights to roam etc.
John Jamieson, Holeburn Road, Glasgow.
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