{"id":471,"date":"2007-09-16T22:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-16T21:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.widmann.org.uk\/?p=471"},"modified":"2007-09-16T22:44:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-16T21:44:00","slug":"irrational-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/irrational-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Irrational hate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Union Jacked<\/a>
Originally uploaded by stevec77<\/a> <\/span><\/div>\n

I read an EU-related comment<\/a> in the Telegraph last week. I’m again and again struck by how it’s alright to rant about the EU in the UK in a way that would never be the case for other subjects, at least not in mainstream media. To demonstrate, let me try to alter the article very slightly:<\/p>\n

I start to imagine a similarity between our relationship with our masters in London and that of an abused woman with a wife-beating husband.<\/p>\n

One hears of these m\u00e9nages and wonders why the woman stays.<\/p>\n

The answer, usually, is that she has become inured to degradation and, through loss of self-esteem, fears a life away from it.<\/p>\n

I must presume that that is largely why there has not – so far – been an ear-splitting public outcry about the outrageous suggestion that the name of our country should be removed from the Scottish passport.<\/p>\n

In case this disgusting story has passed you by, let me oblige.<\/p>\n

Your passport currently says, as it has long done, that you’re a Scottish citizen.<\/p>\n

The idea from our masters – although denied by the Secretary of State for Scotland – is that from 2010 this should be replaced by a formula stating that the bearer is a citizen of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

A cry went up, remarkably spontaneously, in my heart when I read this, as I feel sure it did in the hearts of millions of my fellow countrymen.<\/p>\n

I am not a citizen of the bloody United Kingdom, except on a technicality. I am a Scotsman. I intend to remain that way, and when I go abroad I wish that point to be made abundantly clear on my passport.<\/p>\n

I do not wish to have what remains of my national identity, of which I am inordinately proud, subsumed into the sovietised British empire by these menacing Orwellian bureaucrats whom I have never elected and who have never had the manners or the decency to ask me what I feel about these important matters.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The anger Britain stirs up reminds us why Mr Brown wants to avoid a referendum on the new devolution agreement, a document unacceptable to this supposedly free and democratic nation.<\/i><\/p>\n

Would even the fiercest Scottish nationalist use this kind of language in public, I wonder?
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Union Jacked Originally uploaded by stevec77 I read an EU-related comment in the Telegraph last week. I’m again and again struck by how it’s alright to rant about the EU in the UK in a way that would never be the case for other subjects, at least not in mainstream media. To demonstrate, let me try to alter the article very slightly: I start to imagine a similarity between our relationship with our masters in London and that of an abused woman with a wife-beating husband. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,159,130,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-en","category-politics","category-scotland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}