Scottish Independence and Andrew Neil

God, the comic Hardiph Singh’s take on Scottish Independence on This Week was so irritating it deserves a blog on its own, to tell comics to stick to what they do. Why, in a world that needs more responsible connection, is Alex Salmond pressing the Independence issue, on what Bill Bryson defines a ‘small island’? The ‘political experiment’ that left one Tory MP there was not the Tory Party’s alone, but Labour’s too, in Tony Blair’s playing the game. As for Scotland always being an ‘Independent Nation’, as Singh claimed, it rather ignores the Stuart reign in England, or the deep irony of Henry VII’s banning, in a partly Welsh dynasty, the Welsh language and so throttling Wales. Besides, the Scottish enlightenment had much to do with many threads that also lead to central chambers like Westminster, the oldest parliament. That is not to trumpet the arrogance of Westminster, in ignoring vital and creative identity, it is to say, that especially with the problems in Europe, and aid agencies handing out food and medical care in Athens, why are ‘we’ even speaking of breaking apart? To us Alex Salmond may be a brilliant politician, but he is a little man, who has no stature as a world statesman, but perhaps that is the regionalising crisis of little Britain. Is it only about regionalised money and power? Incidentally, the show’s host Andrew Neil’s purchase of the literary agency PFD, for £2 million, when authors’ rights alone bring in £1.5m, is perhaps the end of times, in the effective rents gleaned from all those authors’ blood, sweat and tears. Although he is still strangely good himself, if much too flip with words and his own much enjoyed celebrity.