Scotland's Real Shame

Last week there was an election. Yay for the democratic process! (The Liberal Democrats were all but demolished, boo for the democratic process). Chances are that if you take the time to read this you'll be Scottish and as such will know we had election last week. There were also elections for various councils in England, the Welsh Assembly and councils and the assembly in Northern Ireland (or "Norn Irn"). We should immediately be drawn to the assembly elections in N.I.

Northern Irish elections, since the power sharing deal was brokered, have tended to focus on sectarian issues - the stuff we're all too familiar with on the west coast (although without the serious, genuine negative feeling they have in N.I). This year was different. Most commentators have noted that this year was about the run of the mill issues. The "boring" ones that turn so many people off in our own country. The election was about the economy, the NHS; the election was about the bread and butter stuff. The people of Northern Ireland are moving on, learning to tolerate and even accept each other and their government is bound to work with each other.

Scotland's real shame is not some particular arbitrary group of football fans. Scotland's real shame is that, even as a land of genuine trouble is moving on, we cannot. We are stuck. We accept all too readily the bigotry of even intelligent and seemingly reasonable people. There are too many reasons to mention here, but it must be realised that people cling to this bigotry because it's easy to not challenge your peers; it's easy to gain the respect and acceptance of idiots by being an idiot and it's easy to forget all your other worries when all you care about is hating people. The bigotry of Scotland is not historic which is a shame since we can move past history and the bad feelings it causes - they're doing it in Northern Ireland. That they can move past it there, while we are stuck, shows that the causes of the continuation of those feelings are not the same in both places. As such we must make an effort to identify and tackle those reasons that make bigotry so appealing to a substantial chunk of the population of our country.