After Scotland regains its independence, British nationalist zoom blogger Effie Deans must be preserved for the nation as a national treasure. If we ensure that we have bilingual roadsigns pointing to her location, she’ll be so confused that she’ll never be able to move anywhere ever again and innocent towns like Fort William will never have to be burdened with her presence.
Well I say ‘she’. There are persistent rumours that Effie is in fact a male academic who for reasons of his own has chosen to channel the persona of a former schoolgirl from a posh Fife academy for young gerls who has become infused with the spirit Barbara Cartland. I have no idea whether this rumour is true or not. But then according to British nationalist zoomers on social media I think I’m a dog, so who am I to judge. But I digress, which is exactly what Effie did repeatedly on her journey to Fort William.
On Friday the ineffable Effie penned a blog article about her alleged travails in the Highlands as she attempted to drive from Aberdeenshire to Fort William, only to be confounded by those pesky bilingual road signs. In an anguished blog post, Effie bewailed how she was repeatedly confused by Gaelic road signs. So much so that she claims that it became extremely difficult for her to find her way to Fort William. This is quite remarkable, seeing as how Fort William is exceptionally difficult to miss. There’s one road in and there’s one road out. There is no by-pass. There is no snaidhm spaghetti, which is Gaelic for spaghetti junction, en route to confuse the unwary monoglot English traveller. (And that quip will probably set off some British nationalists jeering that Gaelic has no word for spaghetti without the slightest awareness that by the exact same standard, English doesn’t either.)
Of course the real reason for Effie’s complaint was to seek some excuse to attack Scotland for daring to be different from the rest of the UK. In so doing, British nationalism has now officially become indistinguishable from stupidity. You can only fail to find your way to Fort William if you are incapable of remembering to look for the A82. The town has a huge big mountain on one side, and a loch on the other. It’s really very difficult to miss it. But no amount of Gaelic road signs can divert a British nationalist who’s out to seek a victimhood complex.
We’re back in the 80s with idiotic complaints about the Gaelic language that really ought to have been put to bed decades ago. And we’re back in the 1980s with the casual racism about people from Scotland and Wales which is to be found in the English Conservative media. Today the Telegraph thinks it’s hysterically funny to publish a cartoon by its resident Empire loyalist Matt showing an airport test centre with a table displaying a leek, a rugby ball and some daffodils, with a caption reading, “We’re testing passengers returning from Portugal to see if they show any signs of being Welsh.” Oh how we laughed. There is quite literally no other ethnic group, with the exception of the Scots, about whom an English newspaper would be happy to publish a racist slur like that. Mynd i ffwcio chi eich hun, Matt.
It could just as easily have been a jibe at the Scots. We’re interchangeable for a certain type of English Conservative. But don’t dare complain about it. It’s just a bit of banter, and only a humourless Celt with a chip on their shoulder would find it offensive. Just wait a wee bit, there will be a sheep shagging joke and one about a tight fisted alcoholic Scotsman along any minute.
Can you imagine the outcry if The National had published a cartoon showing a table displaying a bowler hat, a bunch of roses, and a cricket bat with a caption saying “We’re testing passengers returning from Portugal to see if they show any signs of being English”? The paper would have been reported to Polis Scotland quicker than you could say Sean Clerkin. There would be an hour long special about it on BBC Scotland with Glenn Campbell looking really sad as he interviewed DRoss going on about the sickness at the heart of nationalism.
After many and repeated complaints by the Conservatives and their allies about Sean Clerkin’s banner which reads “England get out of Scotland”, Sean has been arrested. Reportedly he’s been charged with displaying an offensive banner and breaking a bylaw which prohibits the display of unauthorised banners at the airport. Whatever you think of Sean Clerkin, his banner is not as overtly racist or offensive as the cartoon which is appearing today in the Telegraph. That’s a cartoon which can only be interpreted one way – it is drawing an exact parallel between being Welsh and a virus which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and left untold others with long term debilitating illness. There is no other interpretation which can be placed on it. But it’s just bantz. Only a chippy nat would get upset about it.
Sean’s banner may be poorly worded, but in order to assert that it’s a racist call to remove English people from Scotland you have to actively interpret it that way. It could just as easily be interpreted as a call to have English politicians in Westminster removed from influence in Scottish politics. To be clear, I don’t approve of Sean’s banner. I do not think it was remotely helpful to the independence cause because all it did was to provide our opponents with ammunition to use against us. However if those British nationalist politicians who have been complaining about it to the extent that it was reported it to the police do not condemn that cartoon in the Telegraph with equivalent vigour, then they are guilty of gross hypocrisy.
Yet again we see British nationalism in its single minded pursuit of victimhood status while it refuses to confront the racism and bigotry which infests its own ranks. This is a repeated and persistent pattern of behaviour, and it’s one that we’re going to see a lot more of as British nationalists see that Scotland – and Wales – are slipping out of their grasp. British nationalism in Scotland is on the road to irrelevance. Put that on a Gaelic roadsign. Oh. I just did.
And finally. A wee message for Effie Deans, who has been complaining that she’s being attacked (there’s that victimhood martyr complex again) by Scottish nationalists who don’t even speak Gaelic : Tha thu ag innse tul-bhreug, Effie. Cha do thachair e. Oir ma thachair e gu dearbh, feumaidh tu a bhith cho dall gu bheil thu mì-fhreagarach airson dràibheadh – agus tha e gu SpecSavers an aon àite a bu chòir dhut a bhith a’ dol. Dè am fear a th’ ann?
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