Wednesday 15 October 2008

Whose Cap Will Be The Next In Their Hands?

The bus contractors such as Arriva and Stagecoach?

The private schools?

The private health insurance companies?

Or the institutions that the sort of middle-class Scots who wind up at Holyrood rather than Westminster hold in the same awe as they held the unquestionable Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland: the Church of Scotland, the Scottish educational system, the Scottish legal system?

All the last are very dear to the heart of Dr Brown QC, son of the manse. And why not? But their problems would probably not be financial. The Edinburgh Establishment types, who (as has lately been shown so spectacularly) can't really see the difference between affection for and over-deference to anything sufficiently bourgeois or aristocratic and with the word "Scottish" or "Scotland" in its name, will somehow find themselves on the brink of killing one or more of these institutions with kindness, by once again allowing it to have whatever it likes and asking no questions.

Then the hated London Scots will have to step in and save the real or purported essence of Scottishness. Again.

Meanwhile, what price should be demanded throughout the United Kingdom for bailing out the bus contractors, or the private schools, or the private health insurance companies? And why?

2 comments:

  1. "Meanwhile, what price should be demanded throughout the United Kingdom for bailing out the bus contractors, or the private schools, or the private health insurance companies? And why?"

    I wasn't aware any of these had held out the begging bowl...and leaving aside any personal prejudices, why should they?

    Bus companies,for example, usually benefit from mild recession and the family's inability to stretch any longer to that second car...

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  2. Most of them are so heavily dependent on public subsidies that it hardly matters how many people do or don't use their services.

    The private schools and the private health insurances companies are no doubt even now writing their "if we go bust, then the state schools and the NHS will have to accommodate our people" begging letters.

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