Scotland's Shame? Not In My Name.

There are many Scotlands and they’re all dreadful. That at any rate seems to be the message from the Scottish government’s anti-sectarianism ‘taskforce’. We’re all in denial about sectarianism and the shadow it casts over Scottish society. Of course it’s hardly surprising that those people who spend their lives ferreting for evidence of sectarian behaviour conclude that sectarianism is both more broadly found and more deeply ingrained in Scottish society than your own experience may suggest. What do you know anyway?

Conveniently, of course, such conclusions also demand that more public money be spent educating the poor, bigoted, people of Scotland to change the way they think and act. Then again, sectarianism has been defined down to farcical levels. You will recall, I am sure, that there was a moment when government ministers could not decide if singing the national anthem constituted a ‘hate crime’.