Monday, June 05, 2006
If They Won't Stock Our World Cup Shirts We'll Bounce Their Monthly Cheque
Charlie Whelan lives in Inverness. He might like to take up THIS story with his local Matalan store. And if he doesn't get very far, he might like to give his old boss a wee tinkle. Gordon could threaten to withdraw the Scottish monthly subsidy cheque!
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12 comments:
You get more attractive with every word you type, Ian. I nominate you for Broon's job.
here's how they welcome the English over the border (keep you eyes on the scarf, though or you'll have nightmares)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHSOLf2Bb80&search=scotland
This is a Matalan corporate issue - using it at as an opportunity to bash the Scots as a whole is cheap, petty and bigoted, and certainly does nothing to engender mutual respect.
The Barnett formula and the West Lothian question certainly need to be addressed, but neither of these are situations that should be blamed on the Scots people - the culprits of this divisiveness are Blair, Brown and the rest of the Labour party, who have, characteristically put their own self interest before that of our country as a whole - it is they, and they alone, who deserve your ire.
As was said by Joel Barnett himself recently, speaking on the BBC, it may well be that there are parts of Scotland that merit greater public spending - just indeed as there are plenty of parts of England that merit such spending, either due to deprivation or sheer sparseness of population or both. Again, this is something for the Labour government to address - a government that has, it should be noted, and noted well, far more English Labour MPs, than those from Scotland and Wales.
Using Google I've just found this excellent paper on the WLQ and the Barnett formula - it is very interesting and covers a lot of ground in relatively straightforward terms:
www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/Politics/papers/2005/BarnettandtheWestLothianQuestion.pdf
Do read it. Do appreciate the issues, the historical background and, as ever with constitutional matters, don't underestimate the complexities of addressing and resolving them. And do please stop the bigotry.
And if you don't appreciate the above points Iain, try imagining how you would feel, as a gay person, if heterosexuals were busy castigating all gay people for something that was say, solely the fault of gay Labour MPs. Not much fun, eh.
P.S. This proud Scot, and proud Brit, long term English resident and taxpayer will be supporting England in the World Cup - little Englander bigots notwithstanding.
P.P.S. To follow on from your own analogy, if Scotland were to become independent (the logical conclusion of many of the apparent solutions to the WLQ), it's the rest of the UK that'll be having it's Scottish oil subsidy cheque withdrawn - even after so many years of enjoying its support - as revealed in Secret papers show oil cash fears - "The Scots have really got us over a barrel here", indeed :-)
That would be the Italian border, eh, Tyke. The world might be a better place if drunken English footie fans were to adopt the same high-spirited approach instead of their more usual re-fighting of WW2 across Europe :-)
P.S. I bet they were McDonald's - a load of Big Macs with large shakes to take out... the stuff of your nightmares indeed ;-)
Since you brought up the subject of the world cup etc see the following which has the usual thought that England = Great Britain.
http://diack.blogspot.com/2006/06/mars-day.html
Boycott of "Mars / Believe" well in progress in Scotland, though I now believe Mars have belatedly said that in Scotland it referred to the qualification for 2010 World Cup.
Andrew, do you not have a sense of humour? Obviously not...
Today's The Whip column in The Sun uses your David Davis quote from the other day
Iain
Your advert above is just misleading:
A unique visitor does not equate to a different individual. It is a simply a PC which has not logged on for 6 hours. So if you had 114k unique visitors in May and I log on once a day at home and once at work I am 60 of them. See similar comments on thread when Guido made the same claim. You are undoubtedly a better read than the speccie but the stats you use do not stand up.
Agree with Andrew to a certain extent, Iain. Why do you use the Labour Party's disgraceful treatment of England as an excuse to bash all Scots in general? If you see yourself as MP material shouldn't you be smarter than that?
Your right to bring this up Iain. I used to live in Scotland and got very tired of the Anglophobia there. Scotland's a great country - its people a tremendous too (I even married one of them !) but the ingrained Anglophobia is a real stain on the nations good character.
Andrew - you keep believing the NATS North Sea oil ploy if you want to but remember its not earned money, its running out and the curse of clydeside socialism would ensure you wasted it all anyway even if it was all yours ( check out which oil fields are actually in English waters and the impact of Shetland independence if you think its all such a good idea).
And lets not forget to blame the Lib Dems for the constitutional mess - they are just as guilty as Labour north of the border.
Having ranted all that I should be fair - I did once see a video of famous English Football victories over Scotland for sale in Aberdeen's Woolworths. (It was clearly not selling well as it was reduced in price.)
Certain stores up here are slashing prices on England shirts, but to no avail. Even in Edinburgh, they can't give them away. This is one area where the free market ceases to operate. Basically, anyone who wants an England shirt already has one.
Though I won't, I must say, be supporting England wholeheartedly, I don't have any objection to you doing well, and fully expect the likes of Gerrard and (if fit) Rooney to grace the tournament. However, I've never noticed my English friends weeping too voluminously when Scotland have got humped and sent home early in previous tournaments, so I won't feel guilty about abandoning my Unionist principles for a few weeks.
Either way, I think I'm entitled to take the view that Mars can take a running jump if they think that they can offset the effect of their rather irritating and jingoistic World Cup marketing campaign by putting up billboards showing the rebranded "Believe" bars against a Saltire background with the subtitle "Believe 2010". I'm not an idiot; I'm aware that someone has come up with this to save them the hassle of stopping the rebranding at the border, and it irritates me.
good does that mean you will return our oil money or the fishing rights you swapped for your eec rebate
Richard Littlejohn in today's Daily Mail reports that tennis star (?) Andrew Murray says he will be wearing a Paraguay shirt and cheering on England's opponents in the World Cup.
As Littlejohn says, it is to be hoped that he won't be too disappointed if English tennis fans decide to support whichever foreign star he comes up against at Wimbledon.
Too bloody right we will!
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