By Mike Small, editor of Bella Caledonia
WE LIVE in a democracy of double standards.
Je Suis Charlie and all that, but Steve Bell’s cartoon is just racist. Worse than that, it’s not funny.
A relentless anti-Scottish rhetoric has become mainstream. To protest is to be ‘chippy’. To complain is to be ‘precious’.
But the test is this. Can you imagine a Scottish newspaper publishing an equivalent cartoon about the English? You can’t and I’m so glad you can’t. It would be thought outrageous and bigoted. You can’t imagine someone coming on your television and arguing that the English language should die. You can’t imagine a vastly paid BBC presenter calling someone a ‘one eyed English idiot’.
We don’t need to rest on the English alone to peddle this sort of stuff. We have our own bigots here.