Jonathon, that’s not the English flag! I wanted the English flag! I know THEY think it is the English flag but that’s the one for the UK. No, the UK and England just seem like the same thing but not everyone agrees they are. I give up.
In the Herald today from Features Writer, Mark Smith:
Happy birthday to me (messages of goodwill c/o The Herald in the usual way). I hope you’ll also allow me to summarise the five political decades I’ve lived through. The 1970s: chaos. The 80s: the necessary revolution of Thatcher. The 90s: the necessary revolution of Blair. The 2000s: the necessary revolution of devolution. And the 2010s: chaos. In describing the last decade as chaotic, what I mean is chaos in a constitutional sense. For a long time, most Scots (including me) took the constitution for granted. Independence was a minority interest and many Scots (including me again) would casually vote SNP for various local or strategic reasons without any sense of independence being a threat – in fact, we’d vote SNP without independence really crossing our minds.
That last bit is just rubbish. Where’s your evidence? Who voted SNP without wanting independence? You might well argue that a considerable number do now, with opinion polls putting SNP support around 5% ahead of support for independence but back in one of those earlier decades you mention, my impression is that people voted Labour because they still believed in them then and wouldn’t have dreamed of risking a Tory win by ‘wasting’ a vote on the SNP, unless they were utterly committed to the idea.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
“The necessary revolution of Thatcher.”
Until today I had not heard of this journalist or read anything by him. That’s enough – no more.
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Yes, I forgot to say something about his periods
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Sam,
You’ve missed nothing. The quality of Features writing on the Herald has been on a downward path since the sad and untimely death of Ian Bell.
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“The report argues that “Thatcher’s governments wilfully engineered an economic catastrophe across large parts of Britain””
Here’s the link to the academic bit. The link to the Liverpool University review is first.
https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2014/02/12/thatchers-policies-condemned-for-causing-unjust-premature-death/
Click to access Scott_Samuel_etal_IJHS2014_The_impact_Thatcherism_health_well_being_Britain.pdf
“Dr Alex Scott-Samuel and colleagues from the Universities of Durham, West of Scotland, Glasgow and Edinburgh, sourced data from over 70 existing research papers, which concludes that as a result of unnecessary unemployment, welfare cuts and damaging housing policies, the former prime minister’s legacy “includes the unnecessary and unjust premature death of many British citizens, together with a substantial and continuing burden of suffering and loss of well-being.”
Excess deaths
Speaking about the figures, Dr Scott-Samuel said: “Towards the end of the 1980s we were seeing around 500 excess deaths each year from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. We also know that there were 2,500 excess deaths per year as a result of unemployment caused by Thatcher’s policies. And these premature deaths represent just the tip of an immense iceberg of sickness and suffering resulting from Thatcherism.”…..
……Whilst the NHS was relatively untouched by Thatcher’s policies, the authors point to policy changes in healthcare such as outsourcing hospital cleaners, which removed “a friendly, reassuring presence” from hospital wards, led to increases in hospital acquired infections, and laid the ground for further privatisation under the future Labour and Coalition governments.
Dr Scott-Samuel said: “The policies of successive Thatcher governments are at the heart of the attacks on the NHS, the welfare state and local authority services by the Coalition government. It is clear that Thatcher’s wholesale changes to the British economy created massive regional and social inequalities which are continuing to have a direct impact on people’s health at the present time.”
At the present time the poor and those with underlying health issues are most at risk of death by covid19. We can thank Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Clegg, May and Johnson for that.
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Sam, you missed Major from your Rogues Gallery in the last line, but that’s excusable as most of us have forgotten his name and his record in office. Thanks for the link to the Liverpool paper, which I’ve saved.
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Five decades and still a wee bitter hack…
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Mark Smifth is rubbish just like the Herod. I can’t imagine paying money to read it.
Obviously we live in a polarised society. Is that job done for the UK’s media in Scotland.
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