A Minor Niggle at Lennoxlove House

Last week I went with my wife and some friends to visit Lennoxlove House, near Haddington in East Lothian.

Lennoxlove is owned by the Duke of Hamilton, and is a fine building full of fascinating paintings, furnishings, antiques and other artifacts, and with fine grounds surrounding it.  Vaut le voyage, as the Michelin Guide says.

It is also full of history and we were treated to to an excellent guided tour by an elderly English gentleman who really knew his stuff and who delivered his spiel with a nice touch of humour.

All great fun, except that every time he referred to British monarchs since 1603 he used the term the king or queen of England.

Why oh why, as the presenters used to say on BBC Points of View when reading out letters from exasperated viewers,  why oh why do such mistakes keep on slipping out?

Something to do with a super-anglo-centric history curriculum in the schools, I suppose.

Get Writing to those Local Rags

Now here¹s a fact I bet you didn¹t know:  Monday 3rd May was World Press Freedom Day.

I am indebted for this gem of information to the admirable Andrew Kerr of Jedburgh who has sent me a cutting from the excellent Borders local weekly newspaper The Southern Reporter.  (See www.borderstoday.co.uk)

TheSouthern as it likes to be called has been hailed by the Newspaper Society as the best local weekly newspaper in Scotland for the past two years running.

It quite rightly points out that local newspapers are the most trusted of all media by the public.

With reason, for readers of local papers generally know the writers personally, who can¹t get away with waffle when they write about local matters. Moreover, writers in local newspapers don¹t normally try to spin the facts, and if they do the readership knows the writer¹s particular prejudices and background.

So may I make a plea?  It is often very difficult to get a letter published in the national press, and most of these self-important newspapers have their own agendas.  If a letter is accepted by them, it¹s often edited, and can emerge with a different emphasis from the original writer¹s.

So try the local papers. They are usually fair, often desperate for ideas and arguments and it¹s a great way to get a really good political discussion going.

If we have confidence in our own beliefs and arguments we have nothing to lose.

(PS    Sorry for the condescending heading - it was just too eye-catching not to use!)

Are We Talking about the Right Things?

I¹ve recently been having some lengthy chats with a couple of friends of the silver-haired generation.  They are not SNP supporters but the conversations turned to Scottish politics and I was interested to hear just what their objections to independence and the Scottish National Party are.

Interestingly, SNP policies apart from independence did not feature at all.

But the discussion did come back to one two basic objections that I feel the SNP must address in its literature if it is to overcome some deep-seated attitudes.

Firstly, one friend said that he had once had many sympathies with the SNP¹s way of thinking:  our country is ruled from England, and that is why we are relatively poor.

Then he had travelled a bit, not far, just to Newcastle.  But it was far enough, for he noticed that many people there were just as poor as the Scots.  So the SNP¹s claim that we Scots are poor because we are ruled from afar began to have a hollow ring about it.

OK, so maybe his thinking is a bit superficial, but it does warn us that we should be very careful with the arguments we deploy, for they can come back to haunt us.

The second friend had again an argument against us that I hadn¹t heard for a long time:  look what happens when you have separate sects or religions, or separate nations - non-stop fighting and quarrelling, etc etc..

Again, the reasoning may be weak, but it¹s there in the thinking of many of our fellow citizens.  And we seem to do so little to combat it!

Poor Wee Country!

Here¹s a description of a wee European country in the nineteenth century.

Geographically, a basket-case.  Loads of hills and mountains, making communication a nightmare.

Twenty-five per cent of its area incapable of normal agricultural production.

Half the country occupied by high mountains which could not be used.

Riven by religious strife between Catholic and Protestant.

Huge language problems, dividing north and south, east and west.

A terrible lack of the normal resources that made other countries rich.

Fearful of the might of a powerful nation on its borders.

And it¹s not Scotland, for it didn¹t even have the advantages of a huge coastline, of seas surrounding it teeming with fish and of great ports to make trading with Europe and the world an easy matter.

Had the Scots been in this position, I sometimes think they would have been so brainwashed that they would have shrugged their shoulders, held up their arms in surrender and cried:  Can someone else please run our lives for us?

But poor as it then was, this was Switzerland.  And the Swiss, unlike a majority of present-day Scots, saw obstacles as hurdles to be jumped, and not as insurmountable barriers.

So, with very few resources to exploit, they exploited their greatest asset of all - the talent, imagination, brains and persistence of their people.

No coal or iron to make ships?  OK, import steel, turn it into the highest quality, manufacture the world¹s best watches, and then move on to precision machinery.

Can¹t get your dairy products to the inaccessible markets before they go off?  OK, turn your milk into cheese or into milk chocolate and sell to the world.

Isolated?  Certainly, but not involved in European wars either, so a safe haven for banks.

Neutral and unwilling to take sides?  A great place for international agencies, with all the wealth and activity that they bring to a country.  

Too much wood for home consumption?  Use the skills of your people to make souvenirs and cuckoo clocks.

Mountains that produce nothing?  Fine, so tell folk that they are great to climb, and great to ski down, and great to take photographs of, and soon you find that you have a tourist industry that needs hotels, and restaurants, and chefs and waiters, and chamber maids, and guides and makers of skis and ski instructors, and a thousand other occupations that need people to take them on.

Yes, you could go on for ever about how the Swiss have learned to see obstacles as challenges and by using the talents of their people have overcome their difficulties, added value to basic resources by changing them into high quality goods, and become one of the most economically successful nations in the world.

But the question still remains - will the Scots ever learn from them?

Another Book

I can¹t say that I¹m a religious man but recently I¹ve been reading Professor William Barclay¹s commentary on the Gospel of Mark.

Some of you may remember Professor Barclay who used to take a fifteen minute TV slot and expound various aspects of the Christian faith - face-to-camera, rather in the manner of that great historian-cum-TV performer A J P Taylor.

Well, I can recommend Barclay¹s commentary on Mark: absolutely full of interest, full of knowledge, and full of worldly (and no doubt Christian) wisdom.

How about this commentary on Mark 12: 1-12 as a lesson for modern Scots:  If people refuse their privileges and responsibilities, they pass on to someone else.

Just about as good as reading the essays of Montaigne!  There can be no higher praise.

Events, Dear Boy, Events!

Harold MacMillan was once asked what was the most difficult thing to control and replied:  Events, dear boy, events!

I know what he means.  Just as I was coming to do the last few items in this weeks Flag, our phone line began to do all sorts of odd things.  Sorting it out took me an hour or so, and then through a stupid mistake of my own I lost my draft of the Flag for another hour.

So it has been a wee bit of a rush and a mix-up.  Hope you are not too disappointed.  See you next month.

EU enlargement and economic growth

Although the SNP welcomes EU enlargement we also recognise that it means Europe is about to become even more competitive than it is now. Ten new countries are set to join the EU in May creating a market of almost 500 million people. All of those countries will be using every power at their disposal to catch up with the established EU nations. In that environment it will be clearer than ever before that no-one owes Scotland a living.

Without the powers to compete on an equal basis, the risk is that Scotland will be left behind. The SNP wants to give Scotland the competitive edge we need to succeed, by taking on the full economic powers of Independence, so that we can grow our economy in a sustainable way and rise to the challenge of the new Europe.

Economic growth is not a side issue. It is the most fundamental problem facing our country today.

Low growth means low living standards. Low growth means low wages - which is why on the government's own figures one in three Scottish children STILL grow up in poverty. Low growth also means low pensions - which is why so many Scottish pensioners still live in poverty. And low growth means family separation as more and more Scots are forced to leave Scotland to get a job.

SYNOPSIS

LANDLOCKED COUNTRIES TO GET EU FISHING CASH

In his letter, Mr Salmond said:

I refer you to the article in the Sunday Times today by Mr Martin Sixsmith, former Director of Communications with GEC, and subsequently agovernment communications director at the transport department.

The article states that, under pressure from the Scottish National Party in the election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, the Government changed its policy and reversed its opposition to a merger between the defence arm of GEC and BAE, in return for an agreement to buy the threatened Govan shipyard.

I would ask you to confirm or deny this story as a matter of urgency, so that the people of Scotland can learn the truth of this extraordinary matter.

Commenting on his letter, Mr Salmond said:

The behind-the-scenes deal that Martin Sixsmith describes lays bare the true nature of New Labour.

But it also illustrates the influence the SNP has in protecting and promoting the Scottish interest.  When Scotland backs the SNP, the government in London is forced into defending Scottish interests out of electoral fear.