Last week I was in the pub talking to a friend and we were talking about blogging. This person doesn’t know much about it, but he knows that I’m heavily interested in it. (NB. This person is a Labour Party supporter, which explains a lot.)

He asked me a really strange question. “So, who is it that’s in charge of blogging then?”

“What do you mean, ‘in charge’?”

“Well, there must be someone who’s behind it all.”

“What do you mean? No! It’s something that you do yourself! Anyone can set up a blog.”

I actually had to explain to him that there is no overlord that looks after the blogosphere. There is no official process. You don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to set up a blog.

And that’s the way it should be, right? Blogging — and, indeed, the internet as a whole — is fundamentally a medium of freedom. Blogging is about many of the things we value the most about freedom — of speech, protest, association. And for many oppressed people in this world who would otherwise not be allowed to express themselves, blogging offers the chance to speak out to a wide audience.

The day you have to ask permission to blog is the day you have to ask permission to express an opinion. (Of course, thanks to our friends in the Labour Government, you already do have to ask permission to express your opinion in this country — but that is a whole new blog post.) What amazes me is not just that some people think that’s the way it should be. It that they think it’s the way it already is and are so unconcerned about it.

Still, at least we know it’s not going to happen, right? Right?

Actually, no. Some poisonous person called Marianne Mikko wants to put a stop to all of that “expressing your opinion” nonsense. Marianno Mikko is an Estonian centre-left MEP. It would be someone on the left, wouldn’t it? If anyone asks me why I don’t see myself as being on the left, it is because the left contains people like this.

Here is what she has to say: “the blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them”.

Clairwil’s sarcastic response is the only sensible one: “Oh God! I hate ‘less principled’ bloggers!”

And the solution for stopping less principled people from having a blog? Why, red tape of course!

I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why.

It’s interesting that Ms Mikko thinks that the public trusts blogs, because it doesn’t seem that way to me. Take the aversion that many people have to Wikipedia. “You can’t trust that, you know — anyone can edit it,” they say. That is despite the fact that it contains few more errors than Encyclopædia Britannica does. You hear much the same things about bloggers. They’re not to be trusted. (Of course, the mainstream media is responsible and measured in all of its output!)

That’s just the beginning though. Here is what German ‘Liberal’ Jorgo Chatzimarkakis — a member of Germany’s “Free Democratic Party” — has to say:

bloggers cannot automatically be considered a threat, but imagine pressure groups, professional interests or any other groups using blogs to pass on their message.

Just imagine it! Imagine all those pressure groups. Imagine any other groups! All using tools to communicate with people! Isn’t it just shocking?

Mr Chatzimarkakis continues that blogs “can be seen as a threat”. A threat to what? His job? Then good! Honestly. If this is the sort of thing that comes out of Germany’s “Free Democratic” Party, I dread to think of the illiberal nonsense the other parties come out with.

The thing about it is that you are perfectly welcome to choose which blogs you trust and which you don’t. For me, there are of course some blogs that I trust more than others. I am happy with the decisions I make in this regard. And if it turns out I was wrong about a blog then I just change my mind. Easy.

So what on earth is this ‘quality mark’ nonsense all about? Do these people really think that we are unable to decide for ourselves what we can read on the internet? If these people get their way, soon enough the government will be telling us what to read. If the government tells me to read something though, that is a sure fire sign that I ought to steer clear of it.

Quality mark? Sounds more like skid mark to me.

This might be laughed off by some. But the fact that there are politicians even talking about this is enough to make my blood boil. How can these people have such scant regard for a fundamental right such as freedom of speech?

And, via the comments at The Devil’s Kitchen, it appears as though in Italy they are at an advanced stage of legislation requiring people to register their blogs. Not only that, they would have to pay a tax as well!

The Levi-Prodi law lays out that anyone with a blog or a website has to register it with the ROC, a register of the Communications Authority, produce certificates, pay a tax, even if they provide information without any intention to make money… the Levi-Prodi law obliges anyone who has a website or a blog to get a publishing company and to have a journalist who is on the register of professionals as the responsible director.
99% would close down.

Jesus Shite! Are we really headed down this road?

How Terry Wogan sees Europe

So, yet another Eurovision Song Contest, and get another round of chest-beating and sour grapes from people who think that the reason the UK came last was because of a Europe-wide conspiracy against us and in favour of any of those commies to the east. Every year the protests seem to get louder, and every year they annoy me even more.

Apparently it was inevitable that Russia were always going to benefit from “political” voting. So inevitable that I didn’t see anyone predicting it. Terry Wogan himself didn’t, except until Russia started racking up the points at which point it had become an obvious conspiracy.

The thing is, this is nonsense. As Chris Applegate has pointed out, this is the first time Russia has ever won the Eurovision Song Contest. So much for the inevitability of Russia’s success.

While so many wise-guys are quick to say after the event how predictable the result of the ESC was, I’ve yet to see so many people successfully predict who will win beforehand. Derek Gatherer predicts who will win, but only after the semi-finals have taken place. This is a bit like buying a lottery ticket once you know what the first five balls are. Even then, his prediction — Ukraine — was wrong (although close).

There were three specific countries that Terry Wogan said twice during the broadcast would benefit from political voting across Europe. He said this for each of the three countries during their turn, and he said it again during the recap while the phone numbers are displayed on the screen. (Check it on BBC iPlayer.)

The three countries that, according to Terry Wogan, were inevitably going to benefit from political voting? Romania, Albania and Poland. These countries finished 20th, 17th and 24th respectively — out of 25 countries in the final. If there was a conspiracy, whoever was behind it cocked it up big time.

Of course, Terry Wogan could have seen that his theory was bogus if he simply looked at the results of the semi-final (he did do that, didn’t he?). He would have seen that Poland only got through because it was chosen by the jury and did not finish among the top seven chosen by the televote. Albania also just scraped in, having come 7th in the televote.

The fact that Poland came joint-last in the final along with the UK shows just how hollow the ‘bloc votes’ theory is. It is certainly not as simple as “countries in the east are bound to benefit”. Poland’s paltry score of 14 was made up of points from just two countries — Ireland and the UK. The last time I checked, neither of these countries were in eastern Europe.

Furthermore, the past fourteen Eurovision Song Contests have been won by fourteen different countries. This is completely unprecedented in the history of the ESC (the previous longest run being eight). Incidentally, only 7 of those countries can be credibly described as “eastern European”.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the countries that make up the British Isles have been the most successful in the ESC’s history, Ireland and the UK having won twelve contests between them, including an incredible run of five wins in six years in the mid-1990s. The UK has also finished second 15 times, more than any other country.

Far from becoming predictable, the Eurovision Song Contest is more open than it has ever been. You can put this almost entirely down to the introduction of televoting in 1998. As Chris Applegate says, it is far easier to rig Eurovision when it is just a few jury members rather than the entire population of the EBU countries that have to be manipulated.

All of this is not to say that there is not political (or cultural, or whatever) voting going on. Incidentally, the cultural-similarity argument is quite strong, though not watertight. Even correcting for linguistic and cultural similarities, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania still engage in bloc voting.

Even so, this is a very small number of countries. As Ewan Spence points out most “blocs” consist of 5 or 6 countries.

In fact, Derek Gatherer’s Venn diagram shows that “blocs” are actually as small as two countries, or four at a push. Of course, the UK and Ireland have formed their own little bloc, which is what makes little Britishers’ protests all the more pathetically hypocritical.

As such, the fact that Russia won cannot credibly be blamed on bloc voting. In order to win the ESC, any country has to appeal beyond their bloc and gain votes from across Europe. For this reason, the idea of entering different songs for England, Scotland, etc. (or even full-on independence — any excuse to bring that up, eh? ) so that the UK could engage in its own bloc voting would fail.

The ESC Today website has analysed the votes of “western” and “eastern” European countries separately. What they show is that even in the western-only table, Russia came fifth. That’s not a win, but it is only 13 points behind the western winner, Greece. Also of note in the western-only table is the fact that Germany finished bottom and the UK also did very badly. Meanwhile, in the eastern-only table, Poland finish joint bottom with nul points.

Clearly, blaming the iron curtain as Terry Wogan does (hopefully in jest) is wide of the mark. Even locking the eastern Europeans out of the voting, eastern Europeans would still pick up plenty of points.

The thing about the “bloc votes” theory is that it’s just the sort of thing that becomes true if you just say it often enough. Ignorance has a lot to do with it.

Recently I had the misfortune to catch an episode of The Paul O’Grady Show where Terry Wogan was a guest talking about the ESC. He mentioned in passing that Azerbaijan were participating for the first time — to hoots of laughter from the audience. “Azer-ban-jan?!”, yelped O’Grady. “I’ve never even heard of Azer-ban-jan! Is it even in Europe?” I hope O’Grady was joking (though there’s every chance he wasn’t), but I just know that some of the laughing audience members were thinking exactly that.

I think for a lot of people, the Eurovision Song Contest is perhaps the only time of the year they discover a Europe beyond, say, the EU-12 or the iron curtain or Mediterranean holiday resorts. In a contest of 41 countries, and with many well-known western European countries (Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg) declining to participate, the chances are high that the winning country will be one that many people couldn’t point to on a map. It might be as if “eastern Europe” is just one big country for these people.

If a country people can’t point to on a map (or those dirty commies in Russia) wins the ESC rather than a country a stone’s throw away from the UK, people jump to conclusions and start concocting the conspiracy theories. So if Russia wins, it’s political voting because eastern Europeans don’t want Russia to shut down the gas pipe. If Serbia wins, it’s the Balkan bloc voting that did it. If Finland wins, it’s the Scandinavian bloc vote. And so on.

Well here is a radical idea. Perhaps the countries that win the Eurovision Song Contest do so because they write songs that appeal to a wide variety of European countries and performed well on the night.

The real reason the UK tends to do so poorly in the ESC these days is that its entries are so mediocre. The UK seems to alternate between entering a song that is overtly camp and too knowing and / or stupid to be taken seriously (Scooch, Jemini, Daz Sampson) and insipid, bland, instantly forgettable dross (Javine, James Fox, Andy Abraham). It’s no accident that the last time the UK won the ESC back in 1997, it was with a song that was actually quite good (and incidentally holds the record for the largest winning margin in the ESC) and performed by a well known band and not some reality TV reject?

I mean, really, what can the UK expect if it enters someone like Andy Abraham? The man lost at The X Factor for crying out loud. What made anyone think he would win Eurovision?! As for the performance, it was nothing to write home about was it? Terry Wogan said he liked it, but I seem to remember he said the same about Jemini’s notoriously bad performance.

Blaming the UK’s loss on bloc voting when there are more sensible explanations just reflects badly on Wogan and all the others who bring up this red herring. It comes across as sour grapes.

I suppose the question is, does the UK really want to win Eurovision? The ESC is seen as trashy kitsch by most in the UK. This helps explain why most of the UK’s entrants these days are desperate reality television losers. Some countries may see the ESC as a joke, but others are clearly passionate to win the contest. Russia in particular tends to enter more famous artists. Their performer this year, Dima Bilan, is one of the country’s biggest pop stars who is on the verge of making a name for himself internationally.

It seems to me as though there are many countries who want to win the Eurovision Song Contest much more than the UK wants to. So why not let them win rather than throwing your hands up and shouting “conspiracy”?

As for Terry Wogan’s hints that he may quit Eurovision, I do hope he calls it a day. I can’t stand his commentary. The man is not a fraction as funny as he thinks he is. He mistakes rudeness for wit. He has been past it for as long as I can remember. If he quits, I hope Paddy O’Connell get the job. He has always done a fantastic job at commentating during the semi-final. He is witty but not cynical, and obviously still likes the ESC, unlike Wogan.

For what it’s worth, my favourite song was France’s — ‘Divine’ by Sébastien Tellier. I think France should just be given bonus points for entering a song containing non-French lyrics for a change!

Oh dear. SNP MSP Christopher Harvie has found himself in a spot of bother for comments he has made about Lockerbie and the Scottish yoof.

On getting to Lockerbie, I discovered that the place is a dump - it was Tescotown. It should really have a certain attraction of a rather sombre kind as a place where something terrible happened; there are, after all, places on the western front and that sort of thing that have such an attraction for families who have lost people there.

There are a few things about this paragraph that are a bit off for me. I might be completely right to say that Lockerbie is a dump. I have never been, but frankly it wouldn’t surprise me. There are plenty of dumps around the place, and Lockerbie isn’t exactly known for its beautiful beaches or rolling hills.

Jeff is right when he says that if Lockerbie is a dump, Christopher Harvie should be able to say so. It should not be exempt from analysis because of the fact that it is the scene of the country’s worst terrorist atrocity.

But here is the thing. Christopher Harvie seems to be saying that Lockerbie should be positioning itself as a potential tourist attraction to help rake in the money from fans of disasters. As Mushkush implies, the idea leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

Following that he turns his guns on the much maligned youth of the country. They cannot get a second of peace from the establishment’s whining about the yoof.

They are a demographic that literally cannot win. If they spend too long indoors playing their Xboxes they are criticised for not getting enough exercise and causing an “OBESITY EPIDEMIC“.

If they do the opposite and dare to go outside to get some fresh air and happen to commit the heinous crime of wearing warm clothing they get called names like “hoodie” and “yob”. And everyone points at them and says, “Why are you standing on the street corner? It is so intimidating.” As though just standing around is intimidating.

If they are not on the corner but are standing in the vicinity of a shop some ridiculous person comes along and installs a discriminatory device that is deliberately designed to cause youths pain. And people wonder why today’s young people are disaffected.

Anyway, Mr Harvie has added himself to the long list of poshy snooty types criticising yoof fashions. You know, fair enough on that front. Some people do wear horrendous clothing. But why is he attacking Tom Hunter for it? I thought the SNP were meant to be aligning themselves as a pro-business party. But Christopher Harvie’s comments are about as anti-business as it gets.

It must also be said that the most immense fortune that has been made in Scotland in the past few years - that of Tom Hunter - has arisen from selling people what must be the ugliest clothes worn by anyone on the entire continent.

Tom Hunter is one of Scotland’s most successful businessmen. If Mr Harvie’s theory is true, then Mr Hunter has done the country’s people a great service–selling people clothes that they want. He spotted a gap in the market. It is what great businessmen do best. It should be celebrated. But Christopher Harvie just looks down his nose at it.

There are also echoes of this anti-business sentiment with his dismissal of Lockerbie as “Tescotown”. It is the most successful business in Britain, which makes it the butt of ill thought out jibes like this. What does it even mean to be a Tescotown anyway? My town has a Tesco as well–does that mean I should just go and top myself now?

Anyway, back to fashion. What clothing would Christopher Harvie prefer people to wear? Knickerbockers. Goodness me. Apparently his personal preference is for plus fours. And look at that awful check jacket. Holyrood Watcher rightly takes him to task.

For me, this whole issue highlights a problem with the electoral system currently in use for Scottish Parliament elections.

Christopher Harvie was the SNP’s candidate where I live in Kirkcaldy. During the campaign he began to get a bit of a reputation as a “mad professor” among some locals. From today’s comments it looks as though he earned that reputation.

Even Brian Taylor has used slightly colourful language on his blog to call Mr Harvie ‘The Nutty Professor‘. And according to Kezia Dugdale, “Rumour has it the SNP were waiting for an episode like this but were surprised it has taken so long.” In addition to Christine Grahame, it looks like the SNP has its second major loose cannon.

Prior to Mr Harvie’s campaign, I was considering voting for the SNP as an anti-Labour tactical vote (not that it would have done much good anyway). But I did not want to vote for Christopher Harvie. He lost in Kirkcaldy. Yet, today he is an MSP. He got in through the back door on the list vote.

No-one voted for him to win his seat. People only voted for the SNP as a party–or Alex Salmond For First Minister, as they were known on the ballot papers. What a shock those voters will have got, thinking they were voting for Alex Salmond and instead getting Christopher Harvie!

The problem with the list system is that it gives voters the minimum amount of power possible. Voters have no control over the candidates. Positions on the are determined internally within the parties. This makes the MSPs accountable not to the voters, but to internal party structures. This allows too many poor candidates become MSPs and fills the Parliament with lackeys. The Scottish Parliament needs a heavy dose of Single Transferable Vote to weed out these people.

One last thing. I really don’t get this quote from Jackie Baillie on Christopher Harvie’s comments.

“He represents a supposedly pro-European party but displays the worst kind of euro-phobia.”

He singled out Scotland’s youths for criticism, and said they were the worst in Europe! How this is supposed to be a display of Euro-phobia beats me.

Unfortunately, this does not tie in with my theory about the inadequate list MSPs. I have to conclude that Dumbarton is one of Scotland’s many Labour rotten boroughs.

Scots are dizzy today. Everyone seems to believe that the Scotland football team will be able to beat the World Champions today.

Of course, it’s very possible. Scotland has a tendency to do well against stellar opposition. One of the earliest Scotland results I can remember is when they drew with the Netherlands in Euro 96. Since then they have beaten Germany and France… and they have probably held our own against other great teams that I have forgotten.

But we have also disgraced ourselves against the Faroe Islands. Our last game, against Georgia, was a disaster. There is also the small fact that we are Scotland.

In the pub yesterday, we were talking about predictions. Those who said Scotland would draw were dismissed as pessimists. I was the only one who said Scotland were going to lose. We are bound to lose given the amount of hype surrounding the build up.

If they lose, Scots will nevertheless be happy with what their football team has achieved. They have already done more than I predicted when the draw was made. To be flying this high in a group with three of the World Cup semi-finalists is great. But I think this fact has got people too exited over the slim prospect of beating Italy.

I don’t normally follow football that closely, which is probably just as well. I will be working when the match is on, so I will miss it. Probably just as well.

As I said, this kind of follows on from my last post. But I know a lot of you just skip past the Formula 1 posts, so I will briefly summarise the relevant bit here:

ITV’s Formula 1 coverage sucks, partly because it is fixated with hyping up mediocre drivers because they are British.

As it happens, there is a debate about sport and nationality in Scotland at the moment. It appears as though Alex Salmond has called for Scotland to enter a separate team in the Olympics. Apparently the media have acted surprised, although I’m not. It seems to be quite a common view held by a lot of nationalists, so indeed it would be surprising if Mr Salmond wasn’t in favour of it.

It seems to bit a bit of an overblown media story (ho! This blog is becoming a bit one-note). But it has nevertheless sparked a bit of a debate, so here is my view on it.

Often I don’t care where a sports person is from. My interest might be coloured by media coverage. That just means that I end up being more interested in whatever I hear about on the radio. But that’s just because I hear it on the radio. This can go either way, because obviously if I’m pissed off with the media coverage I will suddenly have a burning hatred of whoever is flavour of the month.

Take Andrew Murray for instance. At first I was interested because he was young and Scottish and sounded like he had a lot of talent. Then whenever I heard him being interviewed he turned out to be a sour, sullen, ungrateful little whiner. So now, while I would marginally rather see him winning than losing, I am more ambivalent than anything else.

Similarly, whether or not I feel like rooting for England in cricket or football mostly depends on how bearable I find the media coverage. During the football World Cup, it is easy to get sick of England. At other times I wouldn’t mind seeing them win.

Obviously in football I would root for Scotland first and foremost. An obvious choice because I was born here in Scotland. But here is where the whole thing falls to bits, because I am actually not very interested in football so it doesn’t really affect me either way. I like to see Scotland winning, but you certainly wouldn’t catch me sitting through ninety minutes of it at a time.

In fact, the only sport that I am really interested in is… well, take a guess. That one, and snooker (if I can be bothered). And cricket is okay too. I couldn’t tell you why I was interested in any of these sports. As Richard Thomson says, there is nothing rational about this sort of thing. It’s just the way you turn out.

But I do have quite firm beliefs about nationality and sport. Like I said, I usually support Scotland if they are playing. But that wouldn’t stop me from supporting any British team. And neither does it preclude me from rooting for England. And here is why: nationality doesn’t matter a jot. Not to me as a spectator, and not to a sports person either.

A couple of years ago I saw part of a documentary about Ben Johnson. A relative of his was asked a question about whether or not Ben Johnson let down his country by taking performance enhancing drugs. The response was very firm: “Don’t be so stupid! He wasn’t running for his country. He was running for himself.”

While I don’t doubt that there might be the odd athlete who gets a real kick out of performing for their country, at the end of the day you have to be realistic about athletes’ real motives. If we are talking about professional athletes, we are also talking about careers. They want to win for the good of themselves and their own career, not for the good of their country (whatever that means).

Most sports people might say that they are very, very proud to be representing their coverage. But I think this is probably mostly, once again, for selfish individualistic aims. Saying such things helps get the media off your back and gets the general public supporting you.

Crowds at home matches are less hostile, giving you the confidence to perform. Merchandise sales skyrocket. You can make tons of money appearing in adverts. And once you get old you might even become a TV sports pundit. All by playing the game correctly, by playing up to the image of a “plucky Brit” or a “gritty Scot” or whatever.

I am under no illusions as to what a sports person’s motives are. They want to win, and they would want to win no matter where they happened to be born. So I don’t buy into the nationalistic hype that surrounds sport stars.

That is also why I am somewhat sceptical of the idea that entering a separate Scottish team would, overnight, turn Scotland into a sports-mad nation, driven on to win because of national pride.

Richard Thomson says:

…the idea that our athletes would win fewer medals than they would as part of a UK team is utterly risible, epitomising all that’s worst about the ‘awww, we’re rubbish!’, ‘expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed’, loser mentality that stifles so much talent and potential in Scotland.

But it is just a matter of numbers. With a smaller pool of talent to choose from, Scotland’s sports teams would wilt. At least as part of TeamGB, any talented Scots there are can be part of a bigger, more talented team that has a better chance of winning a medal.

As Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting says,

…would a Scottish relay sprint team, or rowing team, or badminton team even qualify to the Olympics proper without the undoubted benefits of competing with our English/Welsh/Northern Irish brothers and sisters. One could argue that the benefits of extra places is cancelled out by not being able to qualify for half of the disciplines.

Some people find this difficult to believe, but I watch Formula 1 as a neutral. I don’t have any particular favourite drivers or teams (although I used to quite like Jordan). I have some drivers and teams that I prefer to others, but this certainly doesn’t run along nationalistic grounds.

For instance, I cannot stand that smug (even though he has nothing to be smug about) Jenson Button. “Plucky Brit” he may be, but this is just code for “talentless fuckwit”. As I said in my post below, he is utterly incapable of winning a race unless everyone in front of him breaks down.

Even worse, he seems to be quite a dodgy individual, as he has twice signed contracts with teams which he has subsequently tried to wriggle out of. So he is a slippery character as well as an average racer.

What about that fine Scot, David Coulthard, you ask? I actually quite like him — but not because he is a Scot. I admire him for the fact that his career is still going strong after so many years. I also think he is quite a likeable personality, quite engaging and funny when being interviewed.

But I lost a lot of respect for him following the 2001 Monaco Grand Prix, where he was unable to overtake Enrique Bernoldi, an inferior driver in an inferior car. In a way, this is understandable because the Monaco circuit is very difficult to overtake on due to its narrow and twisty nature. What did it for me was when after the race he complained, saying that Bernoldi should have just let him past. Err, no. It’s motor racing — the point is that you have to overtake him if you’re good enough.

If I was held at gunpoint and asked to choose my favourite F1 team, I would say McLaren. And there has been an interesting row about the “nationality” of that team in recent months. German newspaper Bild tried to claim that McLaren is a German team because it is partly owned by DaimlerChrysler under the guise of Mercedes-Benz. As such, a fuss was caused when McLaren won a race and the German national anthem wasn’t played.

But McLaren is “officially” a British team, and the British national anthem is played when a McLaren driver wins a race. It has been like this for many, many years. And why not? After all, it is based in Britain, Chairman Ron Dennis is British and I would guess the majority of employees are British.

But the story doesn’t end there. You see, Bruce McLaren, the founder of the McLaren team, was a Kiwi! So if anything, surely New Zealand’s national anthem should be played when McLaren win a race!

Many teams face this dilemma of having multiple nationalities, particularly when their parent company is based in a different country to where the factory is based. Is Renault British or French (the team is based in Britain, the parent company is from France and the car is built in both!)? Is Honda British or Japanese. Is Toyota German or Japanese. Is Spyker British or Dutch? Is Red Bull British or Austrian? Is Toro Rosso Italian or Austrian? Is BMW Swiss or German?

The point is that it doesn’t matter what national anthem gets played. McLaren is McLaren is McLaren, whether it is British, German, Kiwi or Cloudcuckoovian. And I guess if they were to officially change their nationality, it would not have a single bearing on the race result.

And the controversy over McLaren’s nationality? Nothing to do with national pride or any tosh like that. It was in fact stirred up by BMW for their own self-interested ends.

At the end of the day, you might have guessed, I don’t really care whether or not Scots perform as part of Scotland or as part of TeamGB in the Olympics. Really, who cares? After all, the medals table (more a reflection of population size than anything else) has only ever been useful for Cold War propagandists.