Yesterday's report of Ron Gould's comments on the veracity of the Scottish parliamentary elections should give pause for thought to anyone interested in democratic politics.
The media has been full of stories of rigged ballots in Zimbabwe and, though our poll certainly can't be compared to the violent process there, if people can't have confidence that their vote is counted and properly influences the result then we're in trouble.
Put together the terrible scenes in Manchester where some Scots went completely feral (drunk or otherwise) allegedly over losing a football match, a dodgy election result where thousands and thousands of votes were discounted and you get the sense of a third world country teetering on the brink ...add that to recent horror stories of a nation whose children are sodden in alcohol and our largest city officially recognised as the murder capital of the world...I don't see how that sits with media acclamation for a minority government relaxed and comfortable with itself...maybe it's time for the Scottish media to wake up and smell the coffee and for the Labour Party to start behaving like the real political opposition it should be.
Then I read that the First Minister is about to give way on Muslim demands for separate schools ...I won't pretend that I can't see the initial allure and facile logic of such a proposal...after all we have perpetuated faith schools through legislation and public finance and we've promoted Gaelic schools too. However, there is a significant difference which requires to be fully debated.
The truth is, like it or not, that the Muslim faith is seen to belong to other nations...and it's also clear that the majority of Sots struggle to understand the role of the Muslim faith in Scotland and see it as very different to Scotland's quasi secular ecumenicalism...
My view is we don't need any more 'built in' faith divisions...events referred to earlier make it clear we're a small nation already struggling with our differences...we should be trying to build on what binds us, not what divides...
If I were a Nationalist I'd say the point of unification was being Scottish...as I'm a Socialist I say it's common humanity. It's too damned easy to interpret a separate schooling system for Muslims as giving way to another kind of nationalism...but why should I be surprised?
Salmond is a nationalist who understands intuitively the need for people to divide themselves on the basis of that greatest accident of birth, cultural identity. It's his political raison d'etre.
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