Swiss-style Scots state? That’ll crash and Bern...
HEADPHONES on, laptop sparked up, a friend was working on a travel article when he realised his train had halted and someone in uniform was in the compartment…
There had been a complaint about noise leaking from his headphones and the guard had radioed ahead for backup. A fine was due and if my pal didn’t pay immediately, he could spend the night in the cells and tell a judge about it in the morning.
A Communist backwater? No – Switzerland. It’s all Alpine vistas, cuckoo clocks – and a machine-gun by every fireside, thanks to conscription, as well as enthusiastically enforced laws.
Yet the Best Countries report, which rates quality of life, has declared Switzerland No 1 for 2018.
Here, British Transport Police are like unicorns – you’ve heard of them but have never seen one.
None was around when I shared a carriage with two neds holding a lighter under tinfoil, inhaling drugs.
The ticket collector was as punctilious as his Swiss counterpart in that he checked my ticket before Paisley Gilmour Street, but there was no fine for my travelling companions.
Even so, would I really want to live in a country that has laws about iPod volume and even acceptable lawn lengths?
Best Countries put Canada at second, Germany third and the UK fourth. France was a lowly sixth.
It reminded me of the old joke about European Heaven and Hell. Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the engineers German… Hell is German police, French engineers and British cooks. Generalisations, but each country has its own familiar way of doing things and that is crucial to our happiness.
A friend in balmy Charlotte, North Carolina, emails when we are buffeted by storms to say: ‘There are no border guards holding you in, right?’
There’s not and even though I get as fed up with our standing order for murk as anyone, I love living here. I adore our quirks, from tattie scones to morning rolls; from ‘getting the messages’ to ‘getting a jag’. I worked abroad for almost a decade and missed it mightily.
I loathed a city’s dull views when at home I see snow-capped Arran and the ever-changing Clyde. Most of all I missed a street where I know my neighbours’ names and where I lock my door out of habit, not necessity.
BUT we must guard such simple pleasures jealously. The UK was in fourth place thanks largely to our education system. Here in Scotland, we are losing that fillip as we slide down those few literacy and numeracy leagues the SNP has not withdrawn from.
And Holyrood mints ever-more Swiss-style laws of questionable value.
We shake our heads at Bern’s pettifogging, yet we let politicians infantilise us over when we may buy alcohol and how much we must pay...
When we meekly let them demonise car ownership with emissions zones, next we will be letting the Nanny State dictate how loud our headphones can be.
Scottishness is a bit about scenery and a lot about intangibles.
But nothing is more Scottish than tolerance for individual foibles and a desire to be left to do things our way. And Holyrood intrudes on that at its peril.