The other kind of letter writer to the
Berwickshire is the Angry Scot. With a large chip and an equally large inferiority complex looking for offence and evidence of anti Jock tendencies all over the place. I think Burns did rather well with a 40 minute (
40 minutes for goodness sake) children’s Cookery programme (Haggis and chips?) on his Day. Shakespeare’s birthday is rarely marked by anyone never mind the BBC and not many English correspondents seem to reach for their quill and bottle of vitriol to protest at such an oversight. . And when our more militant Scottish cousins are enraged about being constantly kept in a state of grovel and subservience why do they only harp on about Burns and Wallace? There are other great northern Gaels: Baird of TV fame, the guy who invented Tarmac, Gordon Brown and most of the rest of the cabinet, the man who outed the Gordons, Eric Liddell, the Scottish Rugby side of 1954, David Steel, Duns Scotus, Philosopher Hume, Douglas - Home (pronounced Hume) Hutton (no relation) The names just keep coming. Anyhow here is the letter in question.Enjoy.
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While I suspect thousands of Burns clubs and pro-Scottish clubs world-wide were recently celebrating the bard’s birthday in convivial company, we should raise our voices to applaud the efforts of BBC Scotland Television for helping us to commemorate the life of the man in appropriate fashion. They pulled out all the stops to make January 25 a memorable occasion.... I wish! A 40 minute cookery programme for children was all I could find to mark the date and make it special.It makes you wonder if somebody, or some body, in the corridors of power in Edinburgh would prefer it if the Scots didn’t get too acquainted with their culture and history; any increase of interest in that direction might have us thinking: “Hey, how is it that other small nations, without many of our advantages, aspire to run their own affairs while the Scots are happy to grovel and languish in subservience?”Who knows, under independence we might even have still had a steel industry, a coal industry, a ship-building industry and at least an opportunity to defend our dwindling, beleaguered fishing industry; and I doubt if we would have turned a blind eye to the piracy of 6,000 square miles of Scottish waters between Berwick and Arbroath.Burns was a patriot who did for Scotland with words what Wallace, Bruce, and countless others who went unsung, did with deeds.I wonder what they would make of the sorry plight Scotland finds herself in today.Mind you, we have a ‘patriot’ in Holyrood never averse to championing our cause whilst decked in a pinstripe kilt!Our First Minister claims Scotland is one of the greatest small countries in the world; I can’t help thinking that is the way he would like to keep it ... a small country!
Oh yes Did I not read that Britain’s largest war ship built in recent years has just been launched at the Govan (on the Clyde)ship yards. I doubt if that would have happened in an independent Scotland.
