Martin Kelly writes:
It seems that the SNP is seeking to grasp control of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland, the Mental Health Tribunal for Scotland, the Scottish Commission for Human Rights, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and the office of the Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner. This would, of course, castrate these bodies' powers to do anything which might not conform to the SNP's agendas.
As they strip the willow to a Canadian barn dance with a wee dram and a folk song, the most committed Scottish Nationalists will say that this is a Good Thing. They are wrong. Their soi-disant, ersatz 'Scottish Government' is nothing but a minority Scottish Executive. It has no claim to the title 'Scottish Government', and it is a catastrophic failure of Unionism for any Unionist to use this title. I have written before that the SNP has an acute problem with both law and the rule of law, and this is a classic example. In a society with an independent judiciary, political seizure of the means of appointing judges is a recipe for tyranny - and a tartan-tinted tyranny is just as much a tyranny as any other, and anyone who proposes doing such a thing should be viewed as being a potential tyrant, no matter how good his golf handicap or his length of service on the Kirk Session.
Like all nationalisms, Scottish civic nationalism proclaims the virtue of the nation, while both hating the people and reflecting all that is most rotten in the culture. Got a mental health problem, and need someone to speak up for you? Guid Scots who dance the Gay Gordons and recite Tam o' Shanter don't have mental health problems.
The Americans got this sort of thing right by finding the form of words 'We, The People'. The Scottish civic nationalists show how they get this sort of thing so horribly wrong by proclaiming 'We Are The People'. The SNP is increasingly beginning to resemble what you might get if you crossed an Edinburgh lawn bowls club with The Legion of the Archangel Michael. It is a most unattractive, and actually quite frightening, spectacle.
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Aye, the Scots government is a minority one, but that is because all the unionist parties failed to form a govt but thought they could isolate and depopularise Alex Salmond by blaming him for what was then the coming recession.
ReplyDeleteIt is failing. The SNP is doing quite well in the polls, still in the lead even after the media came after them for the Libyan affair.
All indications are that Scotland is better governed than it was under Lab-Lib and with less BS.
Oh, I'm the first to blame the Unionist parties. The Election was fought on the Union and the Unionists won hands down. But what did they do with it?
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