The Sunday Soul-Search

Sunday night is random thoughts night:-

  • Still uncomfortable (to put it mildly!) with EU referendum result. If this is post-truth politics, where you win democratic decisions by lying longer and louder, then it stinks. Definitely Vote Jeremy to change that! Tired of people calling us bad losers. We just think the process was crap.

  • Probably can't change that without changing the first-past-the-post system, that's why there's no nuanced politics in England. First-past-the-post is obviously the best, the UK has had it for centuries, it's the way the Britain works. Can we have an explanation of why none of the devolved governments have it?

  • Sooner the Labour party splits, the better. At the moment we have two Labour parties anyway, the one the party memebers belong to, and the one the parliamentary members belong to. Guys in parliament are out of touch! (or as a Labour commentator on BBC Radio Four put it today, "the roots and the flowers", and what he meant was the flowers are over.)

  • Liam Furby, the SNP internet rottweiler, isn't doing the party any good. Last thing we need now, just when should be reflecting on where we stand before embarking on the next step to independence (whatever that might be), is Liam's brand of insulting and derogatory crap that merely slags off the opposition. Back to "lying longer and louder". Do we really want to commit the SNP to post-truth politics?

  • Curious view from Admiral Lord Alan West on Trident: "It's fine that NATO has an independent nuclear deterrent, but I really think that my country should have one too." There are 192 other nation-states in the UN, Alan - should each of them have one too? And if not, what's special about your country - which of its virtues gives it the right to nuclear weapons? Economic success, tolerance, parliamentary government, equality of its citizens, projecting force, killing 150,000 Iraqis? Oh, of course - its seat on the Security Council.

  • Amazing set of articles by Paul Kavanagh on Newsnet.scot about the languages of Scotland ("Scotland's Language Myths") and whether they matter or not. Why haven't you made yourself known to me before, Paul Kavanagh? All I've seen of you is your 'voice-of-the-people' column in The National speaking as Wee Ginger Dug. Your research is classy. Junk the "lying longer and louder", Paul, and tell it like it really is!

  • Listened with hope to the BBC Radio 4 series of five leading thinkers giving their personal view of the EU referendum. First up was first-class - Onora O'Neill on post-truth and the overweening influence of an economically all-powerful press. Then it got disappointing: three Brexiteers on the trot, all saying it was rather wonderful really (worst was Roger Scruton, a die-hard conservative who dies harder with every passing year, and talked about "us" as though it meant something), and finally Mary Beard, surely a Remainer with some solid concepts, who could only talk about all these young people mixing freely across Europe and enjoying Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy'. For heaven's sake! - where was the defence of diversity, the contempt for societies that turn inward and die, our obligation to support a peaceful Europe of 500m citizens, the acknowledgement that because we have many identities sovereignty is divisible? I don't think the BBC gets it any more. We need to explain it to them, carefully.

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