Thursday 24 January 2008

By George it's Burley....


The last few days waiting are over - the most important job in the country has been filled. George Burley will be the man who has arguably more influence over the national psyche than even the First Minister, but I have to admit I'm not convinced. Burley doesn't seem quite as sharp as McLeish or Smith, and most certainly doesn't have a record like they did before taking over. Time will tell however, and we can only hope he'll be the man to take us to South Africa, and then Poland & Ukraine after that, lets hope the press give him the time to do so.

Campbell's soup...

The big news of the day? Who cares about the budget, Aileen Campbell was rushed to hospital today after scalding herself with soup from the Parliament canteen. After rueing the loss of some of that lovely, subsidised, parly lentil and tomato soup, I was glad to see she was indeed all well and able to get bandaged, and back in time to vote on the budget bill. It was also a reminder of the fact that the Aileen we've all got to know is now a VIP, or at least MSP, capable of making the news for spilling soup on herself! She'll be in No.1 (that being Scotland's premier celebrity magazine) before we know it...


We can only hope that's not all the media remembers her for, because it seems she's been very busy, and doing a lot of good work - Keep it up Aileen!

Tuesday 22 January 2008

The best small-minded country in the world...



Now, it is hard to argue with some of what John McTernan said in his email to that well known beacon of enlightenment, Karen Gillon: Scotland can be narrow, and it can alas all too often be racist. We are often content to sit on our laurels, and point to things happening doen south like the rise of the BNP, or the success of the Tories’ anti-immigration policies, as an example of our success in being so enlightened.

It seems we have come along way from the time when black footballers were roundly abused at matches – but we cannot say that they are no longer abused by a small minority, or even by their fellow players. Scotland, outwith Glasgow, and I could argue, outside Pollokshields and the surrounding areas, is still remarkably white. It is often the most striking thing that friends from the south or abroad notice. It is sobering when out canvassing, to come across the (thankfully rare) people who seem to have immigration on the top of their agendas, even if they live in provincial towns where you will be hard pushed to find a non-white face.

But that does not mean we are ourselves especially narrow – every country in Europe has had to deal with racism in some sort of way, and any comparison can only end up sounding shallow down the line. While Sweden has been far ahead of us in introducing a whole raft of progressive legislation, we do ourselves a disservice by forgetting that we are far ahead of other supposedly progressive places.

What McTernan’s musings do make me think, after the initial acknowledgement that he does have a certain point, is that the Labour Party fundamentally distrusts the Scottish people. Those Scots who have ventured south to work for Labour do tend to look back on those of us up here as the unfortunates, stuck in narrow, Presbyterian Scotland. Unionists, seeing the world as they do through their own narrow Atlanticist prism, forget that Scotland would be more than happy to prove them wrong, and that cutting ourselves loose from our current London-centric axis would allow us to rejoin the world on our own, broad, terms. If only the folk at the top of the Labour Party in Scotland were genuinely interested in creating the ‘One Scotland’ they liked to talk about so much, we would be closer to the day when an advisor to a Swedish Political party could email a member of the Riksdag to commend Scotland as a place to go.

And finally, what was that Presbyterian bit about? It may have been written five years ago, but I can’t for the life of me remember what seemed particularly Presbyterian about Scotland in 2003. A walk down any High Street on a Friday or Saturday night, or indeed Sunday, and a cursory knowledge of our woeful teenage pregnancy statistics would make anyone think twice about calling us Presbyterian - That and the fact that the Church of Scotland is largely impotent in the public discourse, and has been for years. For the fire & brimstone rhetoric around the issues of gay marriage or abortion, you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll be Cardinal Keith shouting loudest, and not whatever mild-mannered soul happens to be Moderator at the time.

Wednesday 16 January 2008

Cheer up Dougie Donnelly

Much as it gives me great pleasure to see Scotland's pre-eminent Clyde 'fan' removed from office, I was a little worried about the bad press it was giving the (very sensible) rationalisation of Sportscotland - until the man himself opened his mouth to say on the radio last night that the removal of his 4 days a month post could only jeopordise the chances of the Scottish Institute of Sport from producing the goods. Nae bother Dougie....

Sur les liaisons dangereuses…

In the spirit of not wanting this blog to be a simply concerned with gnats, I thought I’d write a bit about the story that has been interesting me ever-so-slightly-more than the Trumpgate yawn - According to the French press, Nicolas Sarkozy has only gone and got himself hitched to the Franco-Italian top-modèle Carla Bruni, with the distinct possibility that there may be a bun in the oven…

It is obviously a story that has got the UK press into as much of a lather as their neighbours from across la Manche, and has allowed even the broadsheets to revert to the default frog-bashing, while simultaneously getting a good wee bit of gossip on to the hard news pages – This after a good long campaign of being wee Sarko’s best friend, due to his insistence of a rupture with the cosy étatist consensus of post-War French politics, in order to turn the dysfunctional héxagone into some sort of Nouvelle Angleterre.

I will stop dropping in these French words, but first let me declare an interest – while living in France I did buy Miss Bruni-Tedeschi’s first album Quelqu’un m’a dit, as did many other people, and I must say I did enjoy it even if there was a slight whiff of fromage about it. I was astonished to hear the news in December that someone with such impeccable bobo (that would be a bourgeois-bohème to me or you,I couldn’t help dropping another one in) credentials could ever countenance stepping out with him…I was also almost pleased for Sarko, in a kind of ‘get-in-there-my-son’ type of way, for we do like a good bit of gossip every now and then. It really is quite an amazing story, and this illegitimate scion of a rather posh Italian family is not your typical political WAG . Here follows a rough translation of the second song off Quelqu’un m’a dit, ‘Raphaël’ (an excerpt of which can be found here)


Raphaël, Il a l'air d'un ange, mais c'est un diable de l'amour,
Du bout des hanches et de son regard de velours,
Quand il se penche, quand il se penche, mes nuits sont blanches…

Raphaël, seems like an angel, but he’s a devil between the sheets,
With the use of his hips and his soft eyes,
When he gets close, When he gets close, I stay up all night…


Hardly something you’d find coming out of the mouth of Sarah MacAuley now is it? The Raphaël of the title is, you may already know, the father of her infant son, and one of those celebrity – philosophers the French seem so fond of (and indeed do put on the telly on Friday and Saturday nights at the same time we have Jonathan Ross). The two met while she was having it away with his old man, the even more famous celeb philo (and journalist, among many other things), Jean-Paul Enthoven. Now, I just so happens that M.Enthoven Jr was at the time married to Justine Lévy, an author, intellectual, and daughter of yet another superstar philosopher, (in fact, possibly the biggest, he’s even famous here, well I’ve heard of him at least.) Bernard-Henri Lévy. Now Mme Lévy responded by writing a best seller about it. Its not the only time she’s managed to dig her nails into another woman’s husband – her and Jerry Hall apparently had a set-to once upon a time over her relationship with Mick Jagger. There are others, and these are well documented, including Eric Clapton, and Laurent Fabius, the former French PM, and Socialist éléphant.



Now, I must stop myself from getting all Glenda Slagg here, and apologies if you’ve heard it all before, but this collision of politics and pop-culture actually begs a very important question: should we really care what our politicians get up to behind closed doors? Now, obviously, Sarkozy has conducted most of his relationship with the popstrel in the full glare of publicity, at Disneyland, and on holiday in the Middle East. For many French commentators, with whom I’m inclined to agree, it marks a sad end to the days of mutual respect and reverence between the French press and the office of the President. We all know about Mitterand’s daughter, and Chirac’s many mistresses, but only after it has all happened. French journos chose not to make anything of it, because it didn’t really matter – the private and the public are two very distinct things, which need not impact on one another. The sixth President of the Fifth Republic has taken it upon himself to throw open the doors of the Elysée Palace, getting himself much cover space in the process in the likes of Voici, Choc, VSD and Paris Match, which before all this had to exist on a steady diet of the same gossip we get from our very own Royal Family.

To bring things a little closer to home, did it really matter if Jack McConnell played away from home before becoming First Minister? (although the fact that big Brigit did have two weans with a 70's rock star is as close a thing to the Sarkozy-Bruni story we may ever get) I think not. A popbitch reader like myself can’t help but read it and be enthralled, but I can’t say it really affected his leadership, although he couldn’t have got much worse. In knowing more than we need really know about the lifestyles of our elected members, we get distracted from the issues that really do matter, or so some would have us believe à propos de Sarko. His approval rating has plummeted 10% in the last two months, and all is not going well with his fabled reform plans, which is no bad thing really.


And so, while I will continue you be engrossed by any whiff of a sex scandal in our own far corner of Europe (and that, I must say, includes those involving fellow gnats), it is a sad day indeed when the French stoop to our level. Though, having given you a very brief synopsis of the Sarko-Carla love, well it must be love-dodecahedron once you factor in Cécilia and all the others, we can only marvel at what would be revealed should the French press ever be given free reign over their celebs.


A long first post indeed, but I could go on for ages more, I tell you!

Tuesday 15 January 2008

A first post...

I’ve wanted to create this blog for some time, since before the last Holyrood elections in fact. I’m glad I didn’t, because a lot of things I was thinking then turned out to be utter nonsense – I thought the Dear Leader was being foolhardy in standing in Gordon, for example, but at least in that I was not alone.

I am starting to blog now, because I find that while I enjoy most of the pro-independence blogs out there (namely the Tartan Hero and Mr Calum Cashley), I thought I maybe had a couple of things to say that they might not have picked up on. I can only hope that this blog can benefit from being a little more remote from the party itself – I am an SNP member, and have worked for the party, but am also uncomfortable with some aspects of its policy – namely towards the (non) joining of NATO, and its acceptance of faith schools within the state sector, two issues that I know make many other party members and sympathisers uncomfortable too.

AEDJT should hopefully be updated regularly, and also not be solely focused on Scotland and Independence - one of the Unionists’ favourite lies about the SNP is that we are simply one-dimensional little-Scotlanders, and it is our communal duty as nationalists to show that we are, if anything, better rounded individuals than they.