Choking on our polluted politics? Perhaps it’s time for some fresh air
ON spying a louse roving in the finery of a lady’s bonnet in church in 1786, Robert Burns wrote one of his most enduring couplets.
‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us!’
Almost two and a half centuries on I’m beginning to think the gift isn’t coming. Seeing ourselves as others see us is a talent which continues to elude us – and all attempts to put in some practice at it are furiously condemned if they so much as hint at talking Scotland down.
Take the other day when the Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser wondered aloud in the vicinity of Nicola Sturgeon why migrants seemed less keen on settling in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK.
‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us …’ the First Minister could have trilled, eyes a-twinkle at a literary reference which would have put a smile on the chops of her predecessor, for this was a question all about how others see us.
Instead she took the easy way out and went bananas. ‘What a disgraceful thing… what an utterly disgraceful thing.’
You can guess the rest: hang your head in shame – check; talking Scotland down – check.
What’s so wrong with talking Scotland down anyway? I have been doing it ever since Peru put their third past us at the World Cup in 1978 and found an inner peace almost immediately. Talking Scotland down helps many of us get through the day and I intend to do some more of it before this column is finished.
But the key point about Mr Fraser’s question on our low rates of immigration is that few of us truly know if or why Scotland is an unattractive place to live. I have lived here almost all my life. I am institutionalised – and can no more imagine seeing Loch Lomond for the first time as an overseas visitor than hearing Billy Connolly as a foreigner telling funny stories in an unfamiliar dialect.
We may struggle to offer wisdom, then, on Scotland as an unattractive place to live but I find myself well qualified to comment on whether it is an attractive place to leave. Sure it is. Often. And increasingly so.
IN fact, it is now four months since I set foot outside the place and I am starting to climb the walls. Scotland, if you listen too closely to its political discourse, is like a pressure cooker with a rattly lid.
So precious has it become about its politics that mere disagreement no longer feeds the beast. It must be outrage and those who demur can no longer simply bile their heids, they must hang in shame.
When Scotland’s political undergarments start to show, when the manufactured hysteria becomes so normalised that even the manufacturers forget they are doing it, it could be time for a few gulps of clean air away from the place.
When the sight of your own nation’s flag no longer gladdens the heart but confirms its theft by a political party for political ends it may be time to be somewhere that Saltires do not fly. Canada, for example, where the maple leaf flag means it’s great to be Canadian – no more, no less.
When I hear the most popular choice for our national anthem and think, ‘Really? We’re still all about teaching the English a lesson?’ that’s another time I start to wonder if Scottishness is a delicacy best enjoyed from afar.
And when I then behold the righteous fury of professional Scotsmen frantically directing me towards the Sassenachs’ insult in verse six of God Save the Queen I do more than wonder.
Has anyone ever actually heard the line ‘rebellious Scots to crush’ sung in a football stadium?
We tour the sports arenas of the globe with a small man syndrome song about the time in 1314 we got one over on our much larger neighbour and sing it in countries which have problems of their own. To see ourselves as others see us indeed.
In Dundee, a street called Ballater Place emerged this week as the least British in the UK, with only one per cent describing themselves as such and 91 per cent identifying as Scottish. It’s because of the English, said one householder. ‘The English think we are lower than them.’
‘I feel Scottish because I was brought up in Scotland,’ said another. ‘We fought for our freedom.’
AND again, a week or three abroad, some form of reboot, seems sorely in order. Ignorant English people may well think we are lower than them but wouldn’t it be something to chart our future on the basis of what the wise say rather than the fools?
And we haven’t truly fought for anything like freedom since the 1940s – when rather more of Ballater Place households, I feel certain, would have identified as British.
So I fly away on Saturday – this time just for a few days to unclog the airways of the worst of the encrusted tartan grievance matter. Think of it as a spa weekend, as personal growth space. Think of it as I’m out of here before I say something I regret.
And I will think of it as practice for retirement – many years away yet – when I intend to be away long and often enough to love the place with all my heart again.