The Spirit of Bannockburn & The Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014

1. The Spirit of Bannockburn &The Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 This presentation will primarily be a discussion of the views expressed in Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence (Word Power Books, 2012), which is a collection of essays by 27 poets, novelists and playwrights where, as one of the contributors, Kathleen Jamie, puts it: “All have stated their case, vented their spleen, imagined what kind of Scotland they want and don’t want, decried the Scotland we already have.” (New Statesman, 7th February 2013) Jamie also notes: “It is a truth sometimes missed south of the border that many Scots distrust the Scottish National Party, including plenty who voted for it last time, and many of Scotland’s writers and artists. We know this because they say so openly.” There will be time for questions and comments from the floor.

2. “I was born in Glasgow in 1962. My ancestors are all Scottish bar one Huguenot on the run. I grew up in Scotland, breathed in its air, walked on its hills, swam in its chilly lochs, stared fascinated at the huge FREE SCOTLANDs painted on cliffs and city walls alike. I am Scottish. But I am classified as an Anglo-Scot because I received an English-style education in Scotland. I was surrounded by English accents while I grew up, and I normally speak English with an English accent. This means that when I meet Scots, they might say something like: “You’re English, aren’t you?” To which I reply: “No, actually, I’m Scottish!” Which annoys them. Because, while the majority of Scots can accept that the English speak English with an English accent, there are few Scots who can accept that a Scot speaks it with an English accent.” Duncan Gillies MacLaurin, An Anglo-Scot in Denmark”, The Chimaera, October 2007 http://www.the-chimaera.com/October2007/Expat/MacLaurin.html duncan.maclaurin@gmail.com

3. The title of the presentation and the photo below are taken from the article by Kathleen Jamie in The New Statesman, 7th February 2013http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2013/01/spirit-bannockburn A statue of the victor of Bannockburn outside Stirling Castle. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton Hibbert

4. Kathleen Jamie, “The Disunited Kingdom”, New York Times, 23rdFebruary 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/the-disunited-kingdom.html?_r=0

5. Unstated Writers on Scottish Independence (Word Power Books, 2012) http://www.word-power.co.uk/books/unstated-I9780956628398/

6. Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independenceedited by Scott Hames (Paperback) (ISBN: 9780956628398)

7. Over the past three decades, it is commonly argued, Scotland achieved 'a form of cultural autonomy in the absence of its political equivalent' (Murray Pittock) – a transformation led by its novelists, poets and dramatists. Why, then, is the debate over Scottish independence so much less passionate and imaginative than these writers or their politics?We are deluged by facile arguments and factoids designed to 'manage' the Scottish question, or to rig the terrain on which it is contested. Before we get used to the parameters of a bogus debate, there must be room for more honest and nuanced thinking about what 'independence' means in and for Scottish culture. This book sets the question of independence within the more radical horizons which inform the work of 27 writers and activists based in Scotland. Standing adjacent to the official debate, it explores questions tactfully shirked or sub-ducted within the media narrative of the Yes/No campaigns, and opens a space in which the most difficult, most exciting prospects of statehood can be freely stated.

8. Contributors:John Aberdein, Allan Armstrong, Alan Bissett, Jenni Calder, Bob Cant, Jo Clifford, Meaghan Delahunt, Douglas Dunn, Margaret Elphinstone, Leigh French and Gordon Asher, Janice Galloway, Magi Gibson, Alasdair Gray, Kirsty Gunn, Kathleen Jamie, James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Ken MacLeod, Aonghas MacNeacail, Kevin MacNeil, Denise Mina, Don Paterson, James Robertson, Suhayl Saadi, Mike Small, Gerda Stevenson, Christopher Whyte

9. Genre Informal opinion pieces with no footnotes. The notable exceptions to this norm are the pieces by Douglas Dunn, Leigh French and Gordon Asher, Tom Leonard, and Kevin MacNeil. The general slant If Scotland is to be independent, it should mark a completely fresh start. Very little pro-British sentiment is expressed. And yet, as Scott Hames confirms in the “Introduction” (p.6):“A qualified distrust of the SNP remains strong among the writers I’ve contacted in the course of assembling this book.”

10. With an Introduction by Scott Hames A critical, academic essay with 38 footnotes that explains why the title of the book is so apt • Two different meanings of the title, “Unstated”: • in the normal sense, i.e. “not voiced”. • in an ambiguous sense, i.e. “not belonging to a state” or “no longer belonging to a state”. Note the implicit neologism of a verb, “to state”, meaning “to make part of a state”. Note too that “state” can both mean “country” or “situation”.

11. Five different interpretations of the title: • 1) (thingsthat are) not voiced (in the public debate about independence). • 2) (peoplethat are) not belonging to a state (as in “a country”), i.e. “writers unable to align their nationality with an existing state – the un-stated…” (p.15) • 3) (people that are) not belonging to a state (as in “a situation”), i.e. people who claim “independence from the independence debate” (p.11). Since William McIlvanney’s notorious SNP ‘conversion’, which he himself stated was wildly exaggerated, “later writers have steered clear of party-political entanglement”. (p12) • --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • 4) (people that are) no longer belonging to a state (as in “a country”), i.e. a possible future epithet inasmuch as the referendum will decide whether Scots lose their British nationality • 5) (peoplethat are) no longer belonging to a state (as in “a situation”), i.e. a possible future epithet inasmuch as the independence debate will perhaps be over one day

12. “In the years following the 1979 debacle, it is commonly argued, Scotland achieved ‘a form of cultural autonomy in the absence of its political equivalent’, led above all by novelists, poets and dramatists.” (p.1) (Murray Pittock, The Road to Independence, London Reaktion, 2008, p.114) “In 1988 Christopher Whyte argued that ‘in the absence of elected political authority, the task of (p.2) representing the nation has been repeatedly devolved to its writers’.” (“Masculinities in Contemporary Scottish Fiction”, Forum for Modern Language Studies 34.2, 1998, p.284) He quotes and agrees with Pat Kane, who wrote: “Cultural autonomy has been a crucial substratum for political autonomy.” (p.5) (“Artistic Rage That Cultivates the Scottish Consensus”, Guardian, 6th February 1992)

13. “The one writer who is making an impact on the current debate is doing so via his estate, rather than his art. On his death in 2010 Edwin Morgan bequested (sic) nearly a million pounds to the SNP, which the party ring-fenced for a referendum campaign following its victory in the 2011 Holyrood elections. This direct alignment between literature and nationalism makes it all the more important to attend to the ambivalence of what Morgan actually wrote. In 1991 he penned ‘A Warning’ to jubilant ex-citizens of the Soviet Union, fearing that liberation might amount to no more than a retro-fitting of what came before, and the resurrection of forces ‘that never will grow freedom’.” (p.8) “There is an unembarrassed bias towards people actively engaged in the politics of Scottish culture.” (p.12)

14. John Aberdein http://www.thepointhowever.org/index.php/the-big-idea/124-new-writing-on-independence

15. His essay begins: “I have contracted an aversion to hype.” And (almost) ends: “I will vote to be in a better position afterwards to fight to keep the single greatest bedrock achievement of socialism and human decency we have: The National Health Service.” Scott Minto, “Why Only Independence Can Save the NHS”, 2nd December 2012 http://wingsland.podgamer.com/why-only-independence-can-save-our-nhs/

16. Allan Armstrong

17. A Republican and a Socialist who calls the proposed style of independence “Independence-Lite” (p.26) The first of many to suggest that the British monarchy should have no part in an independent Scotland “Just as the old Home-Rulers accepted the wider British Empire, so the present SNP leaders are keen to uphold the current global imperial order.” (p.27) “Failure to confront the SNP government will only ensure that, in the unlikely event of a referendum Yes vote being achieved by its chosen methods, power will be entrenched with a new Scottish ruling class.” (p.30)

18. Alan Bissett

19. His essay begins: “If there’s a single image that describes the transformation Scotland went through during my childhood it is this: the fences all got bigger.” (p.32) And ends: “In a recent interview, Shirley Manson, the Scottish lead singer of the band Garbage, said she was ‘vehemently against independence’ because ‘we should be tearing fences down, not building them’. Unconsciously, she’s on the right lines. She’s just misread the situation. The fences went up in the Eighties. Tearing them down is exactly what Scotland is trying to do.” (p.38) Interesting ironic rant on his website, 13th January 2012: http://alanbissett.com/2012/01/13/my-contribution-to-the-debate-on-scottish-independence/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-znkbMzi4A&feature=youtu.be

20. Jenni Calder

21. She starts by suggesting we turn the map of Europe upside down. “Scotland upside down shifts attention to her Scandinavian neighbours.” (p.39) And ends by saying: “Scotland small? Hugh MacDiarmid convincingly said no, but nevertheless there is a bigger picture. That bigger picture could be a federalist Britain, acknowledging regional identities and ensuring functional representation – bearing in mind that much of the north of England would be effectively disenfranchised by Scottish independence.” (p.44)

22. Bob Cant

23. Early on he identifies himself as “queer”. He doesn’t like the term LGBT. He prefers the term “queer folk”. (p.47) He rejects austerity measures, calling for a New Deal instead.“If a New Deal is introduced in Scotland, it will represent an opportunity rather than an entitlement. It will be an opportunity for Scots to work together to bring hope back into the everyday lives of the citizenry. For queer people, it represents an opportunity to participate openly in their own society; it also represents an opportunity for them to generate a profound cultural shift that does not tolerate prejudice. They can help to make anti-homophobic behaviour first of all cool and then normal.” (p.51)

24. Jo Clifford http://www.teatrodomundo.com/

25. She tells us she’s transsexual. “Creativity is a powerful force for the oppressed.” (p.54) “In my own work I consistently try to be unfashionably hopeful.” (p.55) “The truth is obvious: we are part of a disunited kingdom whose other title really should be Insignificant Britain. Mediocre Britain. Living delusionally in the past Britain. Suffering false memory syndrome Britain. Britain stranded in the geriatric ward of history. A terminal case.” (p.55) “How contemptible that no-one seems to be capable of coming up with a single positive reason to remain in the Union. The only arguments its supporters seem able to muster are fear. … Fear of change.” (p.56) “Can we really not find just a tiny bit of courage?” (p.56) Her online diary - 18th February 2014: http://diary.teatrodomundo.com/2014/02/the-pride-of-scotland.html”The Pink Scotland List: the pride of the nation”, Scotland on Sunday,16th February 2014 : http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-pink-scotland-list-the-pride-of-the-nation-1-3307671

26. Meaghan Delahunt

27. She reveals that she is an immigrant from Australia. “I understood /the Scots/ as a form of ‘cultural cringe’, something oddly familiar from the Australia of my childhood.” (p.57) “Generations of artists and writers before me had grown up with a sense of Australia not being important. They’d imbibed a colonial inferiority complex.” (p.57) “The ‘cultural cringe’ of a nation always stems from a sense of powerlessness, a lack of self-determination, a lack of true freedom. I see (p.58) this in Scotland, but I also see that it is changing.” She thinks Scotland can learn from recent Australian history. “Democracy and Constitutional Monarchy are fundamentally incompatible. The monarchy ties us to a class-riven, sectarian past and ensures that our relations with other countries (including Australia) are mired in that past.” (p.61)

28. English. A Scottish Essay by Douglas Dunn

29. The Community Charge was a poll tax to fund local government in the United Kingdom, instituted in 1989 by the government of Margaret Thatcher. It replaced the rates that were based on the notional rental value of a house.The cost of collecting the tax rose steeply while the returns from it fell. Enforcement measures became increasingly draconian, and unrest grew and culminated in a number of Poll Tax Riots. The most serious was in a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, on 31 March 1990, of more than 200,000 protesters. A Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing to pay his poll tax. This unrest was instrumental in toppling Margaret Thatcher in 1990. Her replacement, John Major, replaced the Community Charge with the Council Tax, similar to the rating system that preceded the Poll Tax. The main differences were that it was levied on capital value rather than notional rental value of a property, and that it had a 25% discount for single-occupancy dwellings. (NB Wikipedia doesn’t mention that the tax was especially unpopular in Scotland, where the tax was first introduced.) Douglas Dunn, Poll Tax : The Fiscal Fake, (Chatto & Windus, London, 1990) http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=8945493397&searchurl=curl%3D%2Fisbn%2F0701136332%2Fpage-1%2F

30. Form: 46 sestets in iambic pentameter rhyming ABABCC The poem begins:I didn’t choose you, nor did you choose me.I was born into a version called Accent.I haven’t lost it, nor could it lose me – I own it; it owns me, with my consent.

31. Two deviations: • One line (mysteriously) short in the 25th sestet (l.5 is an extra B rhyme) • No final couplet. Instead, an extra couplet after the 37th sestet: In our new Parliament, our accents mixWith confidence – get that into our lyrics!No one’s branded by a vocal stigma,By mystical public schools or Oxbridge,By England’s creepy, sad, vocal enigma,That patronising sound of patronage.Now I hear children speak in a natural voice,Accented zest and cadence. If it’s choiceIt’s also nature. True to their time and place,They show their mums and dads up, oldster fraudsWho buckled when their teachers set the paceOn how to speak (‘properly!’), bawling the oddsBecause we spoke the parish dialect,Not junior BBC in our voice-wreckedPronunciation (so our teachers said).

32. From the “Introduction” by Scott Hames: “Douglas Dunn’s poem appeared previously in New Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, ed. Robert Crawford (Polygon, 2009).” NB The title of Burns’ first collection in 1786 was Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,and 2009 was the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth. The headline of a review by Robert Nye in The Scotsman, 22nd January 2009,of New Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, ed. Robert Crawford (Polygon, 2009) is: “An anthology of modern verse inspired by Robert Burns heads Robert Nye's pick of new Scottish poetry collections” “Douglas Dunn's long ‘English. A Scottish Essay’, a rhymed rumination on the advantages and disadvantages of growing up ‘to speak two ways, and write/ In more than one, plural, and impolite’, is without doubt the stand-out piece in the book.” http://www.scotsman.com/news/an-anthology-of-modern-verse-inspired-by-robert-burns-heads-robert-nye-s-pick-of-new-scottish-poetry-collections-1-755163

33. Elsewhere in the collection, Douglas Dunn’s ‘English. A Scottish Essay’ examines the language question explicitly and at length, but makes plain that the English language belongs to Scottish poets just as much as to those from south of the Border. Dunn rejects the kind of cultural ‘Chief Constables’ who hype ‘a long-deceased / National Bard as the forevermore / "Authentic" measure of the way to write’ – in other words, ‘the Robert Burns / Syndrome’, arguing firmly that his own Muse is ‘not a politician’. Later in the poem, Dunn celebrates the sounds of Scots, issuing from the lips of children growing up under a new Scottish Parliament with no sense of their natural, accented voices being somehow inferior, but his strategy is to evoke the oral language rather than to represent it on the page. Among the ironies addressed in Dunn’s thoughtful verse essay is that the use of the Scottish language, which Burns had used so skilfully to challenge received ideas, is in danger of becoming a new kind of imposition, forced on modern poets by prevailing cultural politics. Burns’s colloquialisms and local idiom had brought down barriers and invited connections, but in the hands of patriotic modern poets, Scots can be a means to self-definition and therefore, exclusion. While many of the poets in Crawford’s anthology demonstrate the rich artistic possibilities of the Scottish language, the celebratory volume also carries its own internal warning signals and shows that the challenges posed by non-standard language, though different in kind, are just as complicated in the twenty-first century as they were in the eighteenth. Fiona Stafford, “Lice, Mice, Bumclocks, Grubs: The Challenge of Regional Language and the Legacy of Robert Burns”, International Journal of Scottish Literature, #6, Spring/Summer 2010 http://www.ijsl.stir.ac.uk/issue6/stafford.htm

34. In ‘English. A Scottish Essay’, Douglas Dunn asks 'Who were these purer folk / Whose tongues absolved them from an "English" stain?'. For Dunn, Burns is the main symbol of Scottish literature’s parochialism and hypocrisy. He scorns what he calls 'The Robert Burns syndrome – just write, like him, and you’ll be true / To Scotland, when its good self returns'. Drawing attention to Burns’ cultural hybridity can act as a powerful panacea to such a syndrome. Above all it enables us to explode the nationalist myths that have confined both him and his antecedents. Doing so allows contemporary poets to escape the anxiety of Burns’ influence and enables writing from Scotland to evade the shadow of English literature, locating it /in/ a transnational and translingual context quite different from a national tradition. As Dunn observes, ‘we’ve got three sound tongues / In which to utter poetry’. Burns’ work can contribute towards Dunn’s attempts to ‘to triplicate our nationality’ by reclaiming English as ‘[a] site of rebel mimicry’ and forging a polyglot tradition. Alex Watson, “Thirteen Ways of Glossing 'To a Haggis': Disputing the Borders of Robert Burns' Paratexts, International Journal of Scottish Literature, #6, Spring/Summer 2010 http://www.ijsl.stir.ac.uk/issue6/watson.htm

35. Unfortunately no credit is given to the poem’s first appearance, in: Archipelago: Issue Two, Spring 2008http://www.clutagpress.com/archipelago

36. Clutag-Archipelago Poetry Prize We are pleased to report that Douglas Dunn was awarded the first Clutag Press / Archipelago £1000 Award for Poetry on the evening of 8th November 2012, at All Souls College in Oxford. The judges: Alan Jenkins of the TLS; David Norbrook, Merton Professor of English, Oxford University; Katherine Rundell, Fellow of All Souls; Fiona Stafford, Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford; James Macdonald Lockhart, writer and literary agent; and Andrew McNeillie.

37. Dear DuncanWe awarded Douglas our £1000.00 one-off prize, as you see on the website. We had accumulated a surplus and I wanted to acknowledge Douglas who for me should really have succeeded Edwin Morgan as laureate. Indeed he should have preceded him. So I wanted especially to mark his achievement. When and if we ever have a similar surplus we'll look to another recipient. We are proud to be independent of all subsidy, especially from State sources. But it means we have to be prudent. I'm afraid I have not yet caught up with Robert's anthology and I don't know Unstated.I will get them both. Why Archipelagois acknowledged in neither as the first place of publication of 'English: A Scottish Essay', I don't know. I suppose Douglas forgot to say, or they ignored it if he did. These things happen. I suppose it serves to emphasise the marginality of our venture, which is not entirely a bad thing.Douglas deserves far more attention than he currently enjoys. I don't know why he doesn't get it. Perhaps others are pushier. None in Scotland is currently his better, not remotely.… Andrew McNeillie

38. Margaret Elphinstone

39. “We’re not the only country in Europe to have lost political and economic autonomy for long periods. The consequence (p.73) seems to be a nostalgic longing for an imagined, long-lost community, internally unified and hermetically sealed from the outside world. Although such nostalgia is a recurring feature of national narratives, a truly homogenous society untouched by external influences would be a disastrous cultural predicament. It’s no accident that our greatest poets, writers, artists and musicians have operated in international forums, and derive their creative charge from internal contradictions.” “The institutions of declining capitalism and vanished empire are the last places to look for radical alternatives with which to face the unimaginable future.” (p.74) “It is through art that we can question our story.” (p.75) “Words like ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’ signify nothing if we don’t know what we need them for.” (p.76) She thinks independence will work only if “we create visions of what we could be and how we could get there.” (p.76)

40. Leigh French and Gordon Asher

41. This is the only essay apart from the “Introduction” to have footnotes (and there are nine of these). Under these it says: “A longer version of their text is available at http://groundleft.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/crises-capitalism-and-independence-doctrines/” That version has 28 footnotes. As anarcho-communists, they have a huge distrust of the SNP agenda: “We argue that political, economic and social transformation (p.81) has to be communicated, contested, struggled for – transformation is not inherent to ‘independence’, and will certainly not be achieved simply by campaigning for a ‘Yes’ vote.” “The appeal to nationalism involved in the construction of a nostalgic and mythical, homogenous ‘Britishness’… is replaced by a terribly similar ‘Scottishness’. As such, it’s a sterile nationalism, remaining firmly within the dialectic of coloniser-colonised, portrayed as a wish ‘to throw off imperialist rule in order to assert already established national identity, whose only flaw is to have been contaminated and repressed by the presence of the colonialists’.6 It hardly needs spelling out that this mirage denies both local and global realities.” (p.81) (In Terry Eagleton’s words, according to note 6.)

42. They tend to agree with Allan Armstrong. Not least when they say: “Having the political class closer to home doesn’t necessarily make replacing them any easier, never mind challenging the idea of a political class per se.8” Note 8 is a link to “Independent and free? A Glasgow anarchist’s take on Scottish independence”: http://libcom.org/library/independent-free-glasgow-anarchists-take-scottish-independence) Other links from the book: http://www.gerryhassan.com/uncategorized/we-need-to-have-a-one-question-referendum-it-is-that-simple/ http://reidfoundation.org/portfolio/the-silent-crisis-failure-and-revival-in-local-democracy-in-scotland/ http://www.scribd.com/doc/56913989/The-Antinomies-of-the-Postpolitical-City-In-Search-of-a-Democratic-Politics-ofEnvironmental-Production http://www.variant.org.uk/39_40texts/berlant39_40.html

43. Janice Galloway

44. Echoing the Jantelov, she begins: “Who do you think you are? The phrase that clanged like an iron bar through my childhood is still waking me up at night, wondering if it’s overstepping the mark to conjecture seriously who I think should run the country I live and work in. … The word chippy springs to mind: me, Andy Murray the whole bloody lot of us may well be too chippy to be trusted with David Hume-style rationalism.” (p.88) “Most of us are confused by the separate responses of heart, head, gut and memory on the subject of secession.” (p.88) Basically, she points out that Scotland and England are very different, and that the parting of ways is inevitable. On page 94 she recommends Joyce MacMillan’s “skewering of Creative Scotland” in The Scotsman, 25th May 2012:http://joycemcmillan.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/three-deadly-sins-of-creative-scotlands-bad-funding-review-column-25-5-12/

45. Magi Gibson

46. She sees Scotland as the woman in an unhappy marriage with her husband, England, and references Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “classic feminist short story”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. “So why doesn’t she leave?FEAR.” (p.96) “In ‘Harlot Red’, a short story I wrote at the time of devolution, the woman tells her partner she’s being stifled by their relationship, she needs to leave. As she stands in the doorway with her packed suitcases, he says: ‘You can’t be serious. You’ll be back in a fortnight. You’ll not be happy on your own. Who’s going to look after the bills? Who’s going to fix the heating if it breaks down? Who’s going to get up in the middle of the night if you hear a strange noise? You’re fooling yourself. You need me.’ Does he really believe she needs him? Or is he psychologically manipulating her so that she is too scared to go it alone? How many women have had these words said to them over the years?” (p.96) “Her husband, meanwhile, has been set free to forge a new and different sense of self too.” (p.99)

47. Settlers and Colonists by Alasdair Gray http://www.word-power.co.uk/viewPlatform.php?id=610

48. “Immigrants into Scotland, as into other lands, are settlers or colonists.” (p.104) Caused a storm in the media for being anti-English, but it was equally anti-American and anti-Creative Scotland.

49. As Kevin McKenna wrote in The Observeron 23rdDecember 2012: Indeed, there is very little in it that could even be construed as criticism of English "colonists" in the arts, the sector of which Gray has most experience. Instead, he reserves most of his disgust for those Scottish local politicians and municipal chief executives who have deemed no Scots to be capable of administering our most significant arts institutions. If WB Yeats and Lady Gregory had displayed such a high-handed dismissal of native talent when they established Dublin's Abbey theatre in 1904, argues Gray, it is doubtful if Irish art and culture would be anywhere near as vibrant as it is today. Perhaps the fiercest criticism of Gray has arisen from his decision to cite Vicky Featherstone, the outgoing director of the National Theatre of Scotland, as a salient example of an English "colonist". Featherstone has been a splendid chief of this body during her six-year tenure, in which she has been responsible for staging work that has resonated globally. Yet her post makes her a high-profile figure and she is simply being naive if, as she revealed in an interview last week, she felt "embattled and defensive" at previously aired criticism of her perceived lack of enthusiasm for Scottish work. She is an admirable and gifted woman who will get over it. Gray is not suggesting that all of Scotland's top administrative posts must be filled by Scots. Indeed, a senior appointee who has not emerged from the turbid waters of Scotland's cultural expanse will thus arrive bearing no malice nor be compromised by tribal loyalties. He is simply asking why so few Scots have occupied the plum positions and expressing a preference for English candidates who want to stay for the long haul.

50. Kirsty Gunn