Posts Tagged ‘The Scotsman’
They Might Be Giants: The Old Firm’s Great Escape to England
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, September 4th 2010
Scottish football sells newspapers, fills the airwaves and carries a resonance way beyond the football field. It contributes economic benefits, social capital, the occasional feel good factor, and raises Scotland’s profile and reputation globally.
Scotland per head is the third most fanatical football nation in Europe after Iceland and Cyprus. It is also since the advent of the European Champions League the joint most uncompetitive senior football league anywhere in the continent – along with the Ukraine.
The two nations – Scotland and Ukraine – are the only two national leagues which have been won by just two clubs during the duration of the Champions League: the last eighteen sessions. It is 25 years since anyone other than Celtic or Rangers have won the league; that being Alex Ferguson’s classic Aberdeen side in 1985; even more horrifyingly only four times in the last 45 years have teams other than ‘the Old Firm’ won the league!
With all this it is not surprising that Celtic and Rangers are again dreaming of pastures new and the rich pickings of the English Premiership. Dermot Desmond, Celtic’s majority shareholder, has brought up the perennial issue of ‘Old Firm’ membership of the Premiership, musing that some day it will happen, driven by the potential pulling power of ‘the Old Firm’ and TV revenues. Read the rest of this entry »
The Age of Radicalism after ‘the Left’
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, August 26th 2010
Scotland sees itself as a centre-left country. We haven’t voted for the Tories since the 1950s, didn’t like Mrs Thatcher and her ism, and are supposedly more comfortable with collectivism than individualism.
The Scottish left has a rich and proud history – standing against exploitation and discrimination, for social justice and democracy, and filled with struggles, battles and personalities. There have been negatives; the lack of original thinkers and ideas, alongside a profound insularity and conservatism (for all the professed internationalism).
Such negatives are often put down to the dominance of the Labour Party and a certain kind of labourism, but the wider trade union movement and numerous other centre-left institutions and parties have shown similar characteristics.
The only real exception to this was the Independent Labour Party which until the 1930s was a hothouse of ideas and activities – political and social. And the Communist Party at points provided political education and an emphasis on building broad campaigns which Labour didn’t. Both of these groups were small in number – but given the inert state of Labour for much of its history, had influence way beyond their size. Read the rest of this entry »
The Scottish Potential of ‘the Big Society’
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, August 13th 2010
The prevalent reaction of many people I know in Scotland to David Cameron’s idea of ‘the Big Society’ is to pour scorn on to it, and dismiss it as window dressing for the forthcoming cuts.
This has a similarity to the haughty dismissal of ‘the Con Dem Nation’ prevalent in centre-left chattering circles. Whatever you think of the coalition, there is a smugness, self-satisfaction and unattractive sense of certainty in this mindset.
Politics often involves the knee-jerk, tribalism and the instant dismissal of opponents, but there is a huge danger in being too closed minded about everything which comes from the coalition government, and in particular damning the potential of ‘the Big Society’ out of hand.
‘The Big Society’ might not be completely worked out, and might well be part fig leaf for the tough times ahead, but it does have something interesting in it. There is even a degree of intellectual muscle derived from Phillip Blond’s eclectic ‘Red Toryism’ which has created a centre-right niche critiquing the failures of economic and social liberalism. There are weaknesses in ‘Red Toryism’, but it has managed to create something more interesting than left-wingers have for decades. Read the rest of this entry »
The New Religion of ‘The Spirit Level’
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, July 30th 2010
Sometimes books for good or bad define ages. Will Hutton’s ‘The State We’re In’ captured the hopes many people had before New Labour were elected. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ tapped fears of the Cold War and totalitarianism. And in the midst of the bubble, Malcolm Gladwell’s lightweight ‘The Tipping Point’ told people change was easy, simple and all about stories.
‘The Spirit Level’ by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett has reached these levels, but is a serious book by two epidemiologists. Its central thesis is that inequality hurts and that more equal societies work better for everyone.
It has been cited by David Cameron on the election trail, by Sweden’s Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin, and this week by a fawning ‘Guardian’ editorial which claimed that ‘to emerge from stricken times without breaking Britain, The Spirit Level’s inconvenient truths must be faced’.
‘The Spirit Level’ has aroused significant opposition and even a counter-thesis, ‘The Spirit Level Delusion’ by Christopher Snowdon, and a Policy Exchange pamphlet, ‘Beware False Prophets’ by academic Peter Saunders. These dismiss ‘The Spirit Level’ as the work of state loving socialists, are a bit short on subtlety and high on rhetorical abuse. Read the rest of this entry »
The British Crisis of Confidence
Gerry Hassan
The Scotsman, July 23rd 2010
Maybe it has escaped the notice of most Scots – worried about future public spending or the absence of summer weather for very long – but a deep malaise is festering at the heart of Britain.
It can be seen in the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster, the al-Megrahi case, and life generally post-crash, pre-cuts. It touches and magnifies what can be viewed as almost an existential crisis of the nature and purpose of Britain, amounting to a British crisis of confidence, after the hyperbole, self-importance and triumphialism of the Blair era.
Britain is struggling to find a role for itself in the modern world – after the age of Empire and the hubris and over-reach of New Labour. Recent evidence from Chatham House, the foreign policy think tank shows a sizeable difference between public opinion and experts on what Britain’s role in the world should be after an in-depth study of attitudes in both, and a yearning in elite opinion for a more nuanced approach.
The general public have a more traditional view of foreign policy than opinion formers. This can be seen in the different views of the possible threats facing Britain in the future each identify: the public prioritising international terrorism and the possibility that Iran and North Korea may get nuclear weapons, opinion formers emphasised economic issues such as concerns about the world economic system and energy security. Read the rest of this entry »
