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Double standards and a speck of black

April 25th 2007 13:48. Updated: April 25th 2007 14:03

Got to laugh at the SNP and its supporters sometimes. When a celebrity who spends almost none of his time in Scotland says he supports independence for Scotland, he is hailed as some great braveheart hero.

When some footballers — some of whom actually seem to, horror of horrors, live in Scotland — announce that they back the union, they are derided as traitors.

When a businessman announces that he backs the SNP it is hailed as great evidence that independence is the only way forward. Even non-nats were impressed.

When a list of 151 businessmen announce their support for the union, it is all “Look how powerful and evil Tesco is”, “Let’s organise boycotts”, “Ha-ha, they don’t all support Labour”, “Who cares?” [not that HW supports the SNP, but he was impressed when RBS announced backing for the SNP, so what's different about Tesco?], “Can you say favours for honours?”.

It’s that last one that gets me. The SNP have always liked to point out how they are whiter than white, a stance which is greatly helped by the fact that they do not nominate people to enter the House of Lords.

But that doesn’t mean they are whiter than white. They can still do favours. Their biggest backer also happens to be Scotland’s biggest bigot (but, shh, don’t tell anyone about that and they might forget). And what is this?

[Update: Just discovered that one of the comments waiting in the moderation queue was someone else calling for a Tesco boycott. WordPress / Akismet thought it was spam but I have decided to let it through... Amusingly, they got here by searching Google for "snp blog".]

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  1. #1 Grant Thoms Gravatar
    April 26th 2007 11:06

    Duncan, isn’t this just called politics? Whether we like it or not, the yah-boo mentality of politics is bread and butter to our political culture. Just as independistas may cheer at the ‘coming out’ of a supporter for Alex or independence, so the Unionists deride them - Mr Bliar being the chief culprit lately over Sir George Mathewson. So it’s not just nationalists who go in for this, the Prime Minister of the UK you so obviously love, enjoys doing it too. Only aren’t political leaders supposed to lead by example? G

  2. #2 Holyrood Watcher Gravatar
    April 26th 2007 12:16

    Fair point, Dottore

    I might argue that the SNP needs business celebrity endorsement rather more than unionists, but I accept that sauce for the goose etc.

    But, more importantly, consistency is over-rated!

  3. #3 w.macvean Gravatar
    April 28th 2007 19:30

    Maybe its childish but i wont shop at tesco again.

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