Peter Worthington has had an amazing life. And his obituary, which he wrote himself, certainly has an arresting opening line.
No other topic seems to get first year politics students riled like devolution. After a week of epic revision on the subject, I feel like a proper devolution expert, William Wallace style. And with all this talk of budget cuts and lack of economic growth, hero of the masses Jeremy Clarkson proposes a (radical, if not a bit tongue-in-cheek) solution to this problem and the devolution question. It's an entertaining read in the middle of humdrum revision, one that I think Tim, you might just oppose to the hills.
Spot on, Dan. Amusing as he is, I think Mr Clarkson should stick to torque graphs and steering geometry. He is an excellent motoring journalist, but less impressive as a constitutional analyst. The UK without Scotland would no longer be the UK. England's international interests would be damaged by divorce. National diversity would be diminished. Families like my own would be deprived of their identitiy. I am English. My wife is Scottish. We have four children, two born in London and two in Glasgow. If we are not British what, I wonder, are we? I don't like the idea of England without a seat on the UN Security council, reduced influcence in the Council of Ministers and entirely deprived of crucial military bases (e.g. Faslane). I wonder how the residual country would manage without the universities that train so many of its doctors (i.e Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews). Above all I worry about the cultural impoverishment that would occur on both sides of the border if we all sought to pretend that the culture that now creates Scottish writers including Ian Banks, Ian Jack, Denise Minah, Alison Kennedy and Liz Lochead is not intimately linked to the one that produced Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, Martin Amis, Jonathan Coe and Jeanette Winterson. England would be at least as impoverished as Scotland by any divorce.
We're only small, but we're feisty!
The thing is Tim, Clarkson would probably concede to you if you put those points to him - it's just that he hasn't thought about them/known enough to make them.
This is opinion for the sake of opinion, something we have far too much of. It's as if being contrary is a substitute for rectitude. We need dissent, of course, but it's not a virtue in its own right. The comment piece telling you that all the others are wrong is becoming a mainstay of our journalism. Why?
Is it just that it's hard to make your name, and so being an all-seeing eye revealing the fallacies of all other journalists is more noticeable (and therefore desirable) than saying something which may not stand out from the crowd, but is more honestly held opinion?