You may take our Scottish Parliament. You may take our devolution settlement. You may take our membership of the European Union. But so long as 100 of us remain alive we will never consent to you taking our tablet. I think that you will find that although politics are rarified and boring for the majority, Scottish people get very exercised about our favourite sugary snacks. Nemo meam tabletam impune lacessit. Wha daur meddle wi ma tablet. That’s an indyref trigger all by itself.
Personally I am devastated. My mother used to make tablet for us kids when I was a wean. Amongst other things she’d make tablet, blackcurrant jam from the berries we picked from the bushes that grew beside the burn at the end of our wee back garden, and pies from the rhubarb my dad grew in a wee patch. All of which involved industrial quantities of sugar. There was me thinking that it was a labour of love, and now it turns out that she was just trying to kill us. She votes SNP. It all makes sense now.
Compare and contrast, Ruth Davidson goes on a telly show and puts large quantities of sugar and other unhealthy ingredients into cakes and the Scottish media blows smoke up her self-regarding arse. The Scottish Tory leaderene could drown kittens live on national TV and the Scottish press would only go and publish a story about how Ruth Davidson is so talented and resourceful that she can make a nourishing and protein filled soup out of the most surprising ingredients. But SNP childrens’ minister Maree Todd makes a traditional Scottish sweetie for kids in care and all of a sudden it’s the worst SNPbad scandal since the last one. Which was only the day before yesterday. There was me, writing in this blog just the other day about the blatant and obvious double standards of the British nationalist media in Scotland, and then within the week they helpfully illustrate their mendacity through the medium of confectionary.
Sometimes you read the Scottish press and weep. Sometimes you wonder why it is that people are losing faith and trust in the traditional media. Sometimes you worry that the world is going to hell in a handbasket held by the tiny little hands of Donald Trump and egged on by swivel eyed Brexiteers. Then you open a Scottish newspaper and read an article about complaining about tablet written, without any obvious sense of irony, by a paper’s head politics honcho about Scottish Tory deputy leader Jackson Carlaw criticising Maree Todd because of a tablet recipe, and go, “Oh … Right. Well that explains a lot.”
Maybe it’s all just some sort of joke. Perhaps the press hacks in the British nationalist press in Scotland are really engaging in some sort of competition to find the most ridiculous and trivial subject to turn into an attack on the SNP, and by proxy the campaign for independence, and are trying to see how schtupit they can get before getting slapped down by common sense. But they destroyed any semblance of common sense a very long time ago. And now we’ve got tabletgate. This is how civilisation ends. It ends because our political masters in Westminster are engaged in an epic act of self-destruction, but the Scottish press is more concerned about recipes for tablet.
Oh my god! Thatessempee! They’re giving weans tablet! Never mind Brexit. Never mind the destruction of the devolution settlement. Never mind the constitutional crisis. Never mind the harm that’s going to be wrought on the economy and the UK’s standing in the world because of the Conservative government’s infighting and confusion. Never mind that the Tories are hell bent on taking the UK out of the EU at the very time that Donald Trump is sparking off a global trade war. An SNP politician has been giving weans sweeties! That’s the real story of the day. Will no one think of the children! Tablet, it’s the Scottish nationalist chemical weapon. Over the weekend the UK government will put out a press release saying that they are testing the Salisbury area for traces of tablet.
It was Napoleon who reputedly said that you shouldn’t interrupt your enemies when they’re making a mistake, but I’d just like to say to the wee bubble of the Scottish press, take a wee step back lads (and they are, overwhelmingly lads) and take a good hard look at yourselves. Because you appear to have lost the ability to see yourselves as others see you. Here’s a wee hint to help you out. See when you repeat petty and pettit lipped Scottish Tory attack lines without any apparent sense of self-awareness, it’s you who are left looking ridiculous. We know that Jackson Carlaw is ridiculous. Any man who apparently believes that Gaelic road signs cause potholes lost any right to be taken seriously a very long time ago, but it’s your job as reporters to put politicians into perspective. In the case of Jackson, that perspective is somewhere in the very far distance, underneath a Gaelic road sign looking for potholes while the rest of us look on with tablet, ju-jubes, soor plums, and Highland toffee.
It’s a pity that the Scottish press hasn’t been capable of finding the same energy and enthusiasm about investigating and publicising the Scottish Conservatives’ dark money scandal as they have investigating and publicising Jackson Carlaw’s childish attack on a Scottish children’s favourite. Incidentally, that’s the same Jackson Carlaw who once promoted a tablet company which was run by a Tory friend of his. Tory tablet good. SNP tablet bad. All you’ve got to do with Scottish tablet is to stick a union fleg on the packaging and call it British, and all of a sudden sugary stuff is good for you. That’s the Conservatives for you, drowning Scotland in a vat of Brexit treacle and telling us that they’re doing it for our own good.
To be fair, some representatives of the press in Scotland are at least trying. The National has been banging on about the Scottish Conservatives’ donations scandal all week. On Friday, Gary Roberston of the BBC tweeted that in the entire UK, there is not one single representative available in the Conservative party to speak about the Scottish Tory donations scandal, that’s because their representatives are far too busy speaking about tablet. Maybe if the Scottish press should tell the Tories that they want to ask them about tablet and then slip in some questions about the Electoral Commission’s investigation of the dark money affair.
Now we’ve got a new symbol for the independence movement, faced with a choice between traditional sweet Scottish tablet or the unpalatable Brexit fudge being served up by Theresa May, it’s an easy choice.
Mapa Gàidhlig na h-Alba / Gaelic Map of Scotland
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