jeebus!! some jerks will use any excuse for violence.
<!--quoteo(post=9216:date=Sun 25th Jun 2006, 04:43 PM:name=dapleb)-->QUOTE(dapleb @ Sun 25th Jun 2006, 04:43 PM)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}><!--quotec-->Yes well done.
http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2006/06/24/1694496.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--quoteo-->QUOTE<!--quotec-->[June 24, 2006]
Why Scotland is in danger of becoming the World Cup's biggest loser
(Daily Mail Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) IN Scotland, the World Cup should be of interest only to keen aficionados of football: otherwise, there is no national interest involved, since we are not competitors in the event.
But such has been the cack-handed intervention of politicians, self-advertisers and downright thugs that Scotland has been dragged into a climate of controversy in which we could end up the biggest losers of all, without even putting a team on the turf.
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It has become impossible to disregard the outburst of anti-English feeling that has now been generated. Too many disgraceful incidents have occurred to write them off as freakish. Two England fans assaulted in Renfrewshire; a Yorkshireman's window smashed in Coatbridge; a disabled man dressed in an England top dragged from his car in Aberdeen and beaten up; a sevenyearold boy assaulted in Edinburgh by an adult for wearing an England shirt - the catalogue of violence is shaming.
So much for the Scottish Executive's prissy One Scotland - No To Racism campaign. If blame attaches to any individual Scot, apart from the thuggish perpetrators of these attacks, it is surely First Minister Jack McConnell.
Never has any politician voiced more comment on an event in which his country is not involved.
First, he volunteered the information that he could not support England, but would be rooting for Trinidad and Tobago. Then he launched an intemperate attack on the BBC and ITV for being 'biased' in favour of England in their World Cup coverage.
If Scotland had been competing and had been discriminated against by broadcasters, that would have been a fair point. But whose interests was McConnell defending - South Korea's?
All that the First Minister needed to say was... nothing. As it is, he has given a patina of political sanction to anti-English sentiment. That is deplorable in an Executive minister whose duty is to reinforce the Union.
But the First Minister's populist, headline- seeking antics have done exactly the opposite. Scotland is now on the English radar and the attention is deeply unwelcome. Anti-English violence was raised at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday.
But the new agenda in English politics has nothing to do with football: it is about stripping away the benefits that Scotland enjoys, at the expense of English voters and taxpayers, which have become incompatible with the devolution settlement.
An answer is being increasingly peremptorily demanded to the West Lothian Question: why should MPs from Scotland be allowed to vote on English issues which have no relevance to their own constituents? The Tories were always against this anomaly. But now they have been joined by the Labour Left, infuriated by the spectacle of Scottish MPs voting for foundation hospitals and city academies in England, while Holyrood blocks similar developments in Scotland.
The Blairite fudge proposal was regional assemblies for England, but that crashed and burned in the referendum ballot box. Now there is an inexorable move to block Scottish MPs from voting on English business - namely everything except defence, foreign policy, social security and macroeconomics. That would not leave our MPs with much status or function.
Then there is the Barnett Formula, the almost incredibly favourable funding system from which Scotland benefits. Labour MPs from deprived areas such as Tyneside and Merseyside have had it in their sights for years. Now it looks a goner, which would mean serious belt-tightening in Scotland. If Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, it will be very bad news for Scots because he will bend over backwards to prove his pro-English credentials.
The likelihood is Brown will sacrifice the Barnett Formula and Scottish voting rights at Westminster to appease southern opinion. He badly needs to do so. A recent opinion poll showed 52 per cent of Britons (59 per cent in the influential South-East of England) believe a Scot should not become prime minister.
Another poll showed 67 per cent think Scottish MPs should not vote on English matters. Devolution looked like a free lunch, but the tab is about to be presented.
So little consideration is now given to Scottish opinion that the Tories have quietly dropped their pro-Scottish policy of withdrawing from the European Common Fisheries Policy.
Every straw in the wind, including frontpage articles in English newspapers and increasingly outspoken statements by southern commentators and politicians, indicates that Scotland's continued participation in the Union can be bought only by reduced rights and benefits.
We now have the worst relations with England since the immediate aftermath of the 1707 Treaty of Union, and suddenly there are more Scottish separatists south of the Border than north of it.
Devolution, warned Labour MP Tam Dalyell, was a one-way motorway ride to the end of Great Britain. Somehow we must leave that motorway, rebuild the Union - or suffer consequences that would undoubtedly make Scotland the biggest losers in World Cup history.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->