I can’t say I’m surprised that an SNP candidate has pulled this old one out of the hat again. But it does amaze me that people constantly believe the argument without seeing the blatant inconsistency.

Julie Hepburn:

David Mundell’s comment sent shivers down my spine… Even if they don’t have a single Tory MP elected in Scotland… they still think they have the right to impose policies upon the people of Scotland that they have rejected at the polls.

Yes, but the only problem with this is that they do have the right to do that. A UK General Election is just that — a general election for the whole of the UK, whether the SNP likes it or not. That means the seats are totted up for the whole of the UK and whoever has the most seats forms the government. A pretty simple concept.

It’s the same concept that applies in elections to the Scottish Parliament. Seats are totted up for the whole of Scotland and whoever is in the best position to form an administration does so.

While the SNP are always quick to jump up and down to point out the Conservatives’ alleged unpopularity in Scotland (which isn’t really true, but I’ll let that slide for now), they are always a great deal more reticent about the geographical differences that occur within Scotland as well.

Images stolen from the Scottish Politics website

The above maps show the results of the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. On the left is the constituency result, while the map on the right shows how the regional votes were cast in each constituency.

It is pretty clear that there is a distinct difference in voting patterns between different parts of Scotland. Broadly speaking, the further north and the deeper into rural areas you go, the more likely the SNP are to win. This is especially emphasised in the case of the regional vote where voters are more likely to vote for the party they really support rather than tactically voting. Meanwhile, the central belt still heavily voted for Labour, particularly in the west.

Does this mean that the SNP is just a bunch of northerners foisting unwanted policies which have been rejected by voters in the lowlands? I don’t think so. But Julie Hepburn’s logic, all too prevalent among nationalists, would conclude this if only it was not so hypocritical.

As I said, the Scottish Parliamentary election is a Scotland-wide election and whoever gets a plurality of seats across the whole of Scotland wins. So it was right that the SNP ended up forming the Scottish Government. The SNP will quite cheerfully accept their right to govern the whole of Scotland.

By the same token, if the Conservatives win the most seats in the next UK General Election, they will be well within their rights to form the government for the whole of the UK. That would include Scotland, no matter how much foot-stamping the nats do. Neither case sends a shiver down my spine.

Meanwhile, the SNP often tries to make out that it speaks for the whole of Scotland. That sends a shiver down my spine.

I am not trying to say, as the nationalist logic goes, that the central belt and the south should pursue independence because of these geographical differences. Such differences between different parts of any area will inevitably form. Look at any election map for any country, no matter how large or small, and you will doubtless see certain trends. These could be along urban / rural lines, differences between coastal and inland areas, north / south divides, east / west divides, or whatever.

Is this an ideal situation? Far from it. Adopting a federalist structure can go a long way to mitigating these effects and that is part of the reason why I am a federalist.

Unfortunately, the SNP is not a federalist party. You can see this in their strange “local” income tax policy which could hardly be less local. Despite their rhetoric about bringing government closer to the people, the SNP is a centralist party. It wants to take powers away from other levels of government and concentrate them all in Holyrood.

The “problem” of having a party foisting unwanted policies in areas where those policies were rejected would hardly be solved by the SNP.

Last week there was a little stooshie over an interview in which Alex Salmond appeared to defend Margaret Thatcher’s economic policies. I’m not interested in discussing the merits or otherwise of Thatcher’s policies just now. What interests me about this story is that it is a perfect example of the danger the SNP is always in, having positioned themselves as primary political spokespeople for the nation of Scotland.

For a number of years in the past the SNP has used the slogan “Scotland’s Party”. You often hear them distinguish themselves from other parties by highlighting the fact that the other parties are “run from London” and so on and so forth. It is inherent in the nationalist ideology that there is a distinctively “Scottish” point of view. As the main nationalist party in Scotland, the SNP has to make sure it always represents this “Scottish” point of view.

Of course, it’s not unusual for a political party to claim to represent an entire group of people. For instance, the Labour Party would claim to represent working class people (or, in today’s language, “Hard Working British Families”). But it’s one thing to try to represent a particular sub-set of the population. It is quite another to try and represent an entire nation.

Of course, there is no “Scottish” point of view. However, the SNP often do a fairly good job of convincing people that there is. They will often tell you they are the only party standing up for Scotland’s interests, and I often think that some people south of the border really do believe that what the SNP says is an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion.

The danger for the SNP, though, is that they always have to make sure that they actually do provide an accurate reflection of Scottish opinion. This will often means that the SNP ends up doing what is popular rather than what is right (this probably explains why many of the SNP’s policies are so populist). A lot of the time, what is popular and what is right will be aligned. But what if they are not?

The thing about Alex Salmond’s interview was not that he said “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s policies so much.” The problem was that he said “Scotland didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic politics so much.”

The interview with Iain Dale in Total Politics sees Mr Salmond being his usual presumptuous self. He sees himself as speaking for Scotland. In fact, he is only qualified to speak for himself or, at the very most, for the SNP.

I suspect that if Alex Salmond simply said, “I didn’t mind Thatcher’s economic policies”, you wouldn’t have seen a fraction of the outrage. There might have been a few “Tartan Tory” jibes, but that would have been about it.

It was the fact that he was attempting to speak for Scotland — and he got it wrong. If you are going to be arrogant enough to speak for the whole country, you need to make sure your finger is right on the pulse. Make one little slip-up and you end up offending most of the country.

I have written before about how I struggle to understand how people feel ‘pride’ in their country at, say, sporting events. For me, being proud of your country is a bit like being proud of this week’s lottery numbers or something. I just don’t get it.

For whatever reason though, patriotism undoubtedly exists and it can be a major vote winner. Politicians know this and they take every opportunity to associate themselves with some kind of patriotic cause.

The Olympics is one of the worst instances of politicians engaging in this kind of blatant demagoguery. For instance, Kelly Holmes was given a gong a few years ago because it was felt that her achievements in Athens in 2004 should be “recognised”. Much the same sort of thing will happen this year — it has already been confirmed by Chief Nationalist Demagogue, Gordon Brown.

Mike Power put it best on Twitter: “Surely the achievments of the British Olympic medallists have already been ‘recognised’ ? They got f**cking medals! Jeez.”

A couple of weeks back Mike Smithson wrote about how dangerous it is for politicians to claim credit for the achievements of athletes:

But it’s dangerous stuff trying to claim credit in this way. Firstly it appears to detract from the performances of the athletes in Beijing themselves and secondly it raises the question - where did the money come from that has made this happen?

Obviously the SNP haven’t read this otherwise they wouldn’t have come out with this sort of claptrap. It is just a week or so ago that Alex Salmond was acting as though Chris Hoy was the only person ever to win a gold medal.

Chris Hoy’s dad was pretty quick off the mark, pointing out that a Scottish Olympics team would die on its arse because Scotland doesn’t have the same world-class facilities and funding that Team GB has. Want to decrease the amount of medals Scots get at the Olympics? Simple: rip them out of the GB squad.

Before any nats start jumping up and down and start accusing me of belittling Scotland or somesuch nonsense, let me just close that argument down straight away. What we are talking about here is a simple concept: economies of scale.

First of all Scotland would have to build three velodromes at £50m a time to match UK facilities. Then there’s world-class performance funding (£4m a year). And it takes eight years to get a medal. Multiply that across all sports, and Scotland would be facing a huge sports bill.

You had to have a heart of stone not to let out an almighty guffaw when Chris Hoy himself yesterday stated that a separate Scottish Olympics team would be disastrous (as noticed by Bill Cameron:

We don’t have an international facility for cycling and we don’t have the coaching structures in place. In fact, we don’t have anything in place, so the whole idea is ridiculous. I’ve not lived in Scotland for nine years because there is nowhere for me to train. I’m a Scottish athlete but I’m proud to perform in a British team.

That was added to by one of Scotland’s other most successful Olympic athletes, the canoeist David Florence:

It’s a non-starter and he should consult athletes first before he comments. Scotland would have to build a new slalom course first and they would have to build a velodrome.

I am very proud to be Scottish, to have been born in Aberdeen and have Edinburgh as my home town. But I am also very proud to represent Great Britain and everything that stands for, which is not just Scotland.

I’m as proud to wear the union jack as I am the saltire. I don’t have a problem separating my pride in being a Scot from being British at the same time.

This gets to the heart of one of the things that most irritates me about the SNP. While I am not a nationalist of any kind, it strikes me that one of Scotland’s special strengths is its ability to have a distinct identity of its own, and indeed a sense of national pride, without having to completely dissociate itself from a larger political entity, the United Kingdom.

One can say he feels equally Scottish and British without any sense of contradiction. Indeed, whenever the ‘Moreno question‘ is asked, the results show that the vast majority of Scots can feel at once part Scottish and part British. Now this approach is something that I can feel proud of. It is one that Scotland’s Olympic athletes exhibit, and it is very admirable. Unfortunately the SNP cannot be so admirable because it would undermine their very raison d’être.

Mr Eugenides has got it spot on. Using Chris Hoy for their own petty political ends was always going to be a risky game for the SNP to play. They tried to capitalise on his gold medal haul by saying that Chris Hoy’s success shows why Scotland should have its own Olympic team. Then Hoy himself bit them on the bum by pointing out that “I wouldn’t have three gold medals hanging round my neck if I wasn’t part of the British team.”

There is another aspect of the SNP’s argument that appears to be fundamentally flawed. Like I’ve said, I don’t think people should feel proud for other people’s achievements. But conceding that some people do, are people more likely to be proud of the team representing them winning 19 gold medals or 3 gold medals (all won by the same person)?

I don’t even have to be a big fan of the idea of nationalities measuring their penis sizes through the medium of sport to find it hilarious that Great Britain finished ahead of Australia in the medals table. Scotland couldn’t have achieved that. Splitting Scotland’s medals apart, they would be ranked 20th-or-so. That is admirable enough. But as Chris Hoy and David Florence pointed out, Scottish athletes relied on UK-sized facilities to get their medals.

Like Mike Smithson said, it’s dangerous for politicians to attach themselves to athletic achievements. The irony is that neither Labour nor the SNP could ever take credit for a sporting success. If anyone can take credit for Great Britain’s performance in Beijing this year, it appears to be John Major for setting up the National Lottery. The results have come through at just the right time. The first injection of lottery money will have come just at the time when most of the current batch of athletes were beginning to mature in their sporting development.

Whether you think that is a good thing that so much public money is ploughed into sport is another matter. Alex Massie says yes, Fraser Nelson says no.

I definitely lean closer to Fraser Nelson’s point of view. I don’t think public money should be spent on the arts or sport full stop. Of course you would expect schools to provide PE lessons, though having said that if one thing put me off becoming an athlete it was PE lessons. Beyond that, the athletes should be by themselves as far as I am concerned.

I just don’t see what advantage it is for a country to have lots of sporting success. If it’s a “feel good” thing, lottery and government cash would be better spent on cute bunny rabbits to be sent to every household.

This week there was a little stooshie in the media and the blogs about the “banning” of the Saltire during the Beijing Olympics. Jamie Hepburn noticed that the Olympic authorities in Beijing will be enforcing an age-old IOC rule which says that “flags of non-members of the Olympics” should not be displayed during the Olympics.

I suppose the reason why this is a particular issue now, as opposed to previous Olympic meetings, is the fact that the Beijing games enables the nationalists to piggy-back on the Free Tibet campaign (as you can see in the penultimate paragraph of the SNP’s press release). Is it just me who thinks this is particularly low?

It is not even as though Scotland is in anything like the same situation as Tibet. The reason Tibet is an issue is because freedom of speech and freedom to choose your own political beliefs is not an option in Tibet. Without these rights, the people of Tibet are left without a voice. That is the issue. The issue in Scotland is that we do have these rights. The problem for the SNP is that despite this great freedom to express a preference for independence, there is precious little clamour for it in Scotland.

Anyway, I agree with most — e.g. Scottish Unionist, Jeff Breslin, Malc in the Burgh — in that the IOC’s rule on flags is absolutely ridiculous. Stephen Glenn points out why the IOC’s strange rules are inappropriate for someone from his kind of background.

But I still think it is pathetic that the SNP even brought the subject up. As has been noted in some of the posts above, it is not even as though the rule is policed that strictly anyway. But as Political Dissuasion notes, all of Britain’s Olympic athletes agreed to take part as a member of Great Britain’s Olympic team so I hardly think it’s beyond the pale to expect them to stick to that commitment.

After all, could you imagine, for instance, a Scottish international footballer scoring a goal then taking his shirt off during the celebration to proudly reveal, say, a Celtic top underneath? Of course, he could be proud of being both a Scotland player and a Celtic player — but it’s just wrong to confuse the two notions.

As Political Dissuasion points out, this is just the sort of guff we have come to expect from nationalists. I don’t mind people expressing their opinion about this sort of thing, but this is blatant political point-scoring and for what? SNP people always come up with this stuff about the Saltire, whether it’s what flutters above Edinburgh Castle or what athletes fly at the Olympics. It’s just pathetic. Aren’t there, you know, important things to worry about?

It’s worth pointing out, too, that even if Scotland were to become independent this would still be an issue. Because while Scotland would enter an Olympic team, flags like this and this would still fall foul of the regulations. For some reason (*cough*oil*cough*) the SNP are quieter about these flags.

My attitude towards this is affected somewhat by the fact that I just don’t “get” flags in general. What on earth are they for? I certainly don’t know what the appeal is. Maybe it is because I’m not so insecure about myself and my identity that I don’t need to attach myself to these symbols. I might be a Scot, but I don’t go around the place grinning about it. First and foremost I am Duncan Stephen, and that’s what concerns me. I would still be Duncan Stephen no matter what nationality I was, so I just don’t see what flags are all about.

This is also one of the many reasons why I can’t stand the Olympics. The emphasis on the nation just gets me down so much. I have written before about why the notion that sportsmen represent their countries is just absolutely ridiculous. A follow-up post at the height of the media-driven rivalry between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso subsequently became the most popular post on this blog (according to post ratings).

The Olympics is just the place that shows all the worst aspects of national sport teams. Gibbering, gormless housewives stare at the idiot-box for hours on end watching events such as “discus”, “ping pong”, “yngling” and all manner of other sports that they would otherwise not touch with a bargepole. Yes, it’s great that minority sports get coverage during the Olympics. But they should be getting coverage anyway. At least, if you genuinely did like minority sports you would think that. The fact that it takes the Olympics to get badminton on the television is nothing to be pleased about.

Then when a representative of their country wins a medal, the housewives declare themselves to be “so proud”. Proud of what? They didn’t win the medal — the athlete did! All they have done is sit on their fat arses watching people throwing sticks around. This kind of nationalism only promotes supreme mediocrity and laziness.

And don’t even get me started on the “non political” nature of the Olympics. My hairy arse hole! The fact is that the Olympic Games are the planet’s primary platform for pathetic political posturing. What is the Olympic Spirit? I think it has something to do with Cold War willy-waving.

Then there is all the drugs. I bet you if the Olympics never existed, we wouldn’t even think about drugs in sport. All those countries with dodgy Communist governments come along and drug their athletes to the brim so that they can go around the world feeling smug about themselves for being 13th in the medals table. Yes, the Olympic Games are so noble!

Ah, and don’t forget the great selling-out when they decided there was more money in dropping the requirement that Olympic athletes be amateur. Because of course the pros don’t have enough places to rake in the cash already!

Bleeargh. I’m with Mr Farty. The Olympics can take a running hop, skip and jump.

As a fairly heavy user of trains, I was interested to hear on the radio this morning that Scotland’s trains are all going to be re-painted in a standardised Scotland-wide livery.

It sounds reasonably sensible to me. I never got why trains from the west used that old-fashioned maroon and beige colour scheme, particularly when (presumably for expediency’s sake) those trains were often used in other parts of the country. Mind you, it will be a shame in a way to lose the distinctive liveries of each franchise.

It does come just a few years after First Group decked out the old Scotrail trains in their own new colour scheme. Impressively, several trains and stations were made over overnight with the old stylised map of Scotland (I presume that is what it was supposed to be) being replaced with First logos left, right and centre.

(Incidentally, the First livery is a vast improvement on the old National Express Scotrail livery. Whoever decided that deep purple goes with peely-wally shades of orange and bluey-green must have been colour blind.)

At least the paint jobs will only be done when a train was due to be painted anyway. And it’s claimed that it will save money in the long run because if and when First Group lose their franchise the livery will remain the same. Having said that, what happens when Transport Scotland decides it’s time for a visual refresh as everyone feels like from time to time? I doubt much will actually be saved.

The reason this is a news story is that George Foulkes has been complaining about the new livery. You see, it depicts a Saltire. And because the SNP are in government this is a bad thing. Apparently it’s all part of an attempt to “brainwash people into independence”

The thing is, Labour also often used national symbols and there is nothing at all wrong with that. At least, you would expect it — particularly when Scotland has such a strong national identity. National symbols are perfect tools for governments to use in their materials / brands / propaganda / what-have-you. As Anseo over at Ideas of Civilisation points out:

What about when McConnell as First Minister had the Saltire adopted as the symbol for promoting Scotland - was this part of the plot?

How about the One Scot (Many Cultures) logo inspired by the saltire, started under the last administration…since that wasn`t under the SNP administration does this not count?

George Foulkes’s argument is further diminished by the fact that Transport Scotland have pointed out that the plans for this revamp began when Labour were still in power. Whoops.

As Ideas of Civilisation points out, this ought not to be an issue. George Foulkes is just frothing at the mouth for no good reason, as seems to be happening quite regularly nowadays.

Anyway, am I the only one who thinks the new design looks nothing like the Saltire? I mean obviously I saw what the design was getting at because I was told it was based on the Saltire. But it looks to me more like two arrowheads pointing at each other.

I mean, if that’s meant to be the Cross of St. Andrew, it’s not because it doesn’t cross. I know that there is a gap between the two carriages that messes it up a bit, but if you continue the lines across they don’t meet. Also, that shade of blue does not look like the official shade of blue of the Flag of Scotland which is Pantone 300. In fact, it looks suspiciously like First Group’s purple. I guess that saves on costs.

Anyway, given that I have now unilaterally established that the train looks nothing like the Saltire, I do wonder what George Foulkes is on about. I find it odd that the sight of something that vaguely looks like the Saltire would “brainwash” him into becoming a nationalist.

George Foulkes’s tie looks vaguely like the Saltire actually… Oh dear… He’s been brainwashed by his own tie!