I’ve been away for a couple of days and from the internet so couldn’t post this before but it’s too apposite to miss.

The Minister and the Prostitute.

Sounds like a short story title, doesn’t it? (Maybe a fairy tale title if the last word in it had been something else.)

Yet aside from the natural amusement over the fact that yet another Tory has been swept up in a furore over his sex life the first thing the revelation that UK Culture Secretary John Whittingdale has had a relationship with a prostitute brought to my mind was Dorothy Parker‘s wonderful pun when asked to give a sentence with the word horticulture in it. “You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

Not that I like the derogatory connotations of the first syllable of the word in question as Parker used it but: did he lead her to culture, do you think?

PS. I also noted the use of the verb to withdraw by those who called for him to resile from his role in regulation of the press. Very Westminster, that.

No. Not the one on the EU. Last year’s on Scottish Independence. (For my immediate thoughts on its result see here.)

The subject of the consequences of the “no” vote were referred to once again in The Guardian, on Thursday, this time by Alan Bissett in which he mentions Alan Warner’s view that a “no” vote represented a schism between the voters and the writers, which I also mused on.

As followers of this blog will know I have been reading a lot of Scottish literature recently, both modern and otherwise. It is safe to say that there is such a beast as Scottish writing and its recurring concerns and themes do tend to differ – at least in emphasis and psychology – from literature emanating from elsewhere in the UK. Is this insular? The wider community certainly does not afford it the status of a national (or even regional) literature; perhaps because it is liable to be misunderstood or seen as parochial even where it’s not neglected.

Yet how parochial are the sentiments expressed in Rupert Brooke’s poem The Soldier – a poem widely considered as being serious in purpose (if nowadays also seen as just a touch wrong-headed, though not as wrong-headed as those in the same poet’s Death) and included in many an anthology of First World War poetry? To my mind it is impossible to conceive of a Scottish poet of those times writing such words about his land in such a way. And if he had (it would have been a “he” the times being what they were) he would most likely have been ridiculed, certainly not still being reprinted one hundred years later.

Bissett mentions the view that the 2015 General Election result in Scotland was politics catching up with Scottish culture. An alternative take is that the Scottish Labour Party failed to recognise that after devolution the centre of gravity of Scottish politics had shifted decisively to Holyrood (which it saw as a sideshow – and probably still does) and as a consequence neglected to pay it enough attention or put up for election to it sufficient numbers of its best politicians. That Labour in the UK has consistently failed to “protect” Scotland from Tory policies – even as New Labour which often felt like a mildly diluted Thatcherism – only compounded this mistake. It is possible that, for Labour, Scotland is gone, and is unrecoverable in the short term. Whether Corbynmania is enough to overturn that perception remains to be seen. Some Labour voters may return to the fold but once political trust is lost it is usually hard to regain.

Yet in many ways it is as if the Scottish people feel that the country did become kind of independent on devolution; or at least that the Scottish Parliament was an adequate reflection of their political desires. Yes they do know that Westminster holds sway on many of the most important aspects of political life but they feel it’s at arm’s length, divorced from them almost.

Bissett concludes that there can be no “schism” between Scotland and its artists. My reading of Scottish literature and its history suggests that, even if some may transcend such labelling, while the idea of Scotland and a distinct Scottishness persists writers will continue to reflect those origins in their stories and the characters they describe. As Scottish writers that is arguably what they are for.

I’ve been struggling to work out what the results of Thursday’s General Election might mean – apart from more years of cuts and austerity and demonising of the people least to blame for the country’s financial woes.

What we have just witnessed is an utterly astonishing all but clean sweep of seats in Scotland by a party whose main raison d’être, Scottish independence, was defeated a bare six months before and which by any logical reckoning ought therefore to have been on its uppers, gibbering in a corner; plus the near wipeout of Scottish Labour representation (a party which evidently has been rotting from within for years and has now simply crumbled away.)

One thing is now clear, however. In UK Parliamentary terms Scotland does not matter – if it ever did. Votes in England determine the result at Westminster and the make-up of the UK Government. Always have, always will.

Today, on the BBC’s Reporting Scotland, there was a clip of David Cameron, aka Mr Irresponsible, saying that he was to blame for many things (well you’re right in that at least, Dave) but that Labour’s collapse* in Scotland wasn’t one of them.

Really, Dave? How un-self-aware can anyone get?

It’s got nothing to do with the speech you made on the day after the Independence Referendum where you slapped down those who had just voted to remain in the UK with a, “We don’t care about you, we only care about England,” attitude? Could anything have been more likely to enrage both those who had voted no and those for yes? A clearer demonstration that Westminster politicians just don’t get it as far as Scotland is concerned would have been harder to find. To anyone who knows Scots what response could have been expected other than a rise in support for the SNP (who ought to have been set back for perhaps decades by the rejection of their key purpose for existence?)

I suppose it could all be part of a diabolical (yes, I know it means of the Devil) plan to undermine the Labour party in the UK as a whole but I don’t believe Cameron actually is as cunning as all that. (His sidekick Gideon Osborne, aka George, is another matter, though.) I realise the Tories have more than something of the night about them but I doubt in their wildest dreams could they have deliberately conceived and implemented a coherent, rather than accidental, strategy to reduce the influence of Labour on the Westminster Parliament.

Labour having conspicuously failed over the many years of my lifetime to protect Scots from governments they have not voted for, many people seem to have come round to the view that only a large bank of SNP MPs at Westminster will ensure that Westminster cannot treat Scotland off-handedly.

So yes, Dave. I do blame you.

BTW: I suspect that Labour won’t lose quite so many seats in Scotland as the polls at present predict. There are still many “always been Labour” voters around.

I watched the first episode of The Stuarts on BBC 2 tonight.

It seemed, like on its first showing on BBC 2 Scotland earlier this year, an odd decision to start with James VI (or James I if you prefer.) There were no less than eight Stuart monarchs before him. In the year of the Scottish Independence Referendum that could be interpreted as a slight, another piece of English ignorance/dismissal of Scottish History.

That the first episode dwelt on James’s desire to unite the two kingdoms as Great Britain might also seem like a dark Better Together plot as the Guardian noted today.

Yet (some, though not all, of) James’s ancestors were spoken of in the programme so the ignorance/dismissal angle can on those grounds be discounted. And the differences between the two countries that then existed (of religion principally,) and in some respects still do, were not glossed over but I was left wondering who on Earth thought broadcasting this was a good idea now. It can only lead to accusations of bias

I had another such disjointed TV experience with the BBC recently. Janina Ramirez in her otherwise excellent Chivalry and Betrayal: The Hundred Years War – on BBC 4 last week, this (and next) but also a programme that has been screened before – kept on emphasising how the events she was describing played a large part in how the country “we” live in now came to be as it is. (Note also the “us” on Dr Ramirez’s web page about the programme.)

Yet that country was/is England. Ramirez seemed totally unaware that her programme was to be broadcast not on an England only channel but one which is UK-wide. Indeed that the country all the BBC’s principal audience lives in is not England, but the UK. [Except for powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies legislation at Westminster is for the whole of the UK. No English elected body oversees the equivalent powers to those devolved elsewhere (arguably there ought to be one;) it is the UK Parliament that performs that function.]

Two parts of the UK share none of the history Dr Ramirez was outlining. Wales (having been incorporated earlier) was involved directly in the Hundred Years War but neither Scotland nor Ireland were. Yet she spoke as if that circumstance didn’t exist.

This sort of thing does contribute to a feeling among many Scots (and I suspect Welsh and Northern Irish viewers too) that the BBC is a broadcaster with a mind for England only and too often forgets the three other constituent parts of the UK.

I’ve been puzzling over the quite stunning result of the Scottish Parliamentary Election yesterday. How to explain the sudden deluge of votes for the SNP? An overall majority which the structure of the parliament was expressly designed to forestall?

Partly of course it’s the uninspiring nature of Labour’s Scotish leader, Iain Gray, a man with little charisma or presence. Also the lack of big Labour names on the ballot papers – though this did not prevent them taking the usual swathe of seats at the last such election four years ago. There may too this time have been a feeling that Labour took its vote for granted. The minority SNP administration also made a reasonable fist of its past four years in power, with not too many cock-ups.

The major difference, though, might, for the first Election since the Scottish Parliament was set up, be the fact of a Conservative led government at Westminster (which Scots by and large voted against – as did most of the rest of the UK, to be fair.) The Labour vote in Scotland at the UK General Election last year, as in all General Elections since the 1970s, was about attempting to protect Scotland from the effect of Tory depredations. In this it signally failed – as did the “safe” option of voting Lib-Dem – whose MSPs (and English local councillors) paid the first price for the deal with the devil their UK Parliamentary Party made on going into coalition with those loathed Tories.

At least until the next UK General Election (due in 2015) Labour will be unable to fulfill that protecting role as their UK Parliamentary presence is an irrelevance; and so too could their Scottish hegemony be ignored.

An SNP majority in the Scottish Parliament, an unfettered SNP administration, is a statement of another kind. The calculation may have been that the SNP will fight for Scotland more, or better, than Labour – or that it will be able to secure more concessions from the Westminster coalition than Labour could ever hope to achieve.

Whatever else the vote was, it wasn’t a vote for independence. Most Scots do not wish to be separated from their neighbours and friends – in many cases families – and are happy to remain part of the UK so long as said friends and neighbours don’t shaft us too much.

There is a warning there for the Westminster coalition – but also for the new Scottish Government.