LAST week I watched the Europe for Scotland broadcast hosted by Lesley Riddoch. One comment caught my attention. The French contributor, who works in Erasmus+, said one of the great losses of our removal from the programme was for European educators who wanted to see Scottish schools because, as she put it, what they are doing is widely admired. Let’s remember that the next time someone tries to talk down our “failing” schools!
I was also struck by the quote from Michael Russell in the Sunday National saying the case for rejoining the EU should be cultural as much as economic. I wholeheartedly agree.
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Back in 1971 I was privileged to take part in the International Summer School at Oslo University. I got to mix with students from all round the world, but especially Americans and Europeans, and made friends with many. This was before we joined the EEC as it then was. It struck me strongly how much we shared in values and attitudes with European countries, as contrasted with the USA in spite of our supposedly shared language. There was also already awareness of Scotland’s separate identity: a Dutch friend pointed out that as he came from Brabant, to call it “Holland” was like calling Scotland part of England.
This shared European identity was not confined to Western Europe. I got to know three Hungarian students who were very open and relaxed, and we had some good conversations. I remember one of them saying that he knew there were things wrong with their political system, but by being in the Communist Party (only reliable members would be allowed abroad at the time) he planned to work for reform from within. I thought (a cynical 20-year-old!) it was more likely that the system would change him rather than the reverse, but it came back to me in 1989 when the Hungarian Communist Party (unlike others in Eastern Europe) rebranded itself and called multi-party elections.
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Later I briefly lived and worked in Denmark. I felt immediately and comfortably at home there, in a way (dare I say it) I have never felt in England. I have a friend, Unionist, who insists that Scots and English are really just the same. If that’s true, I have to wonder why they keep electing such appalling governments!
On a more trivial note, in the late 70s I was in Angers (north-west France) with a group of agriculture students. In a bar one night, drink having been taken, the boys at the bar were getting louder. I was at the other end of the bar with a friend, a charming and interesting Englishman. A group of French locals were muttering about the noisy Scots, and my friend rashly said “I’m not Scottish, I’m English!”. In an instant they turned on him and told him French and Scottish people were always good friends, but the English...
Putting it simplistically, I can’t help feeling that before the Union, Scotland’s relationship with mainland Europe was through trade, while England’s was by going to war. England has never really identified itself as part of Europe. It wasn’t just the ruling classes either. Years ago I read somewhere that a French diplomat appointed to Elizabeth I’s London was warned to be discreet going about the streets because if the common people identified him as a foreigner they would abuse him, if not worse.
Robert Moffat
Penicuik
WHY are Westminster politicians and the media afraid to mention Brexit when they try to explain rising prices, workers’ pay strikes, the cost-of-living crisis and the looming recession?
Apparently only the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine are to blame, according to the imploding premiership of Boris Johnson and his dysfunctional government.
The fact is the disastrous UK Brexit deal has increased costs and the ability to do business with the world’s largest single market on our doorstep, the EU. Yet the misinformed and lied-to millions still cry “freedom from Europe”, except in Scotland!
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From possibly the worst Prime Minister ever to a Tory party we did not vote for and being dragged out of Europe, only pessimism and negativity are on offer from the Unionist No campaign, with promises and lies an added bonus.
Scotland must leave this damaged (beyond repair) union with England and carve once more its own name in the world as an independent British Isles and European nation.
Grant Frazer
Newtonmore
WATCHING Johnson having his brain and temper gored by Chris Mason on Monday was tragic, if not amusing, as the PM’s shirt collar tightened and face reddened as if a wee laddie caught pinching sweets at lunch time, mumbling through his teeth as the remnants trickled down his chin.
He doesn’t recognise fact from fiction, truth from lie, but only whatever passes for a response from a man busy doing little more in life than pleasing himself and saving his skin while supposedly averting a war.
Is there anyone in the Tory party with a backbone enough to see him removed?
Tom Gray
Braco
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