One Nation Under a Groove

bay_city_rollers

Do you view attachment to Britain as essential to Scotland’s cultural success? In the endless search for the winner of this contest – we may have a late entry winner.

According to John Major we can’t decide our own government in Scotland because we’d lose boyband One Direction.

Speaking yesterday  before a House of Lords committee, the 70-year-old former PM and dashing lothario John Major cited One Direction as one of the ­British exports which help give the country an enviable standing across the world. Downton Abbey plus Adele and Susan Boyle were also on his list of cultural successes which “reflect a rather favourable impression on Britain”. Alongside language, ­democracy, the rule of law, the monarchy, the BBC, the Financial Times and the City of London as a financial centre, they had helped create an unrivaled profile, he suggested.

Does anyone think it’s just a little bit insulting to, well the rest of the world to suggest that other places don’t enjoy ‘language’ ‘democracy’ the ‘rule of law’? It’s a kind of monstrous Anglocentric worldview dumped on the rest of us dressed up as thinking. It shows a complete hermetically sealed oblivion to the obvious crisis of policing, due process and state illegality that Britain has suffered in recent years and a bizarre and relentless deference to the institutions of finance that dominate our economics. No surprise.
Nor is it surprising that the idea of a ‘favourable impression of Britain’ is that cast up in Downtown Abbey by Julian Alexander Kitchener-Fellowes, Baron Fellowes of West Stafford DL (Conservative member of the House of Lords), where aristocratic values and a virtual cast system are championed.
But what’s really annoying about Major’s havering is that we bloody well invented boybands. Crank up the volume and get your Shang-a-Lang on … it’s Rollers for Indy time!

Comments (10)

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  1. Derek Coghill says:

    “…we bloody well invented boybands….”

    Except for the Monkees, obviously….

    1. Of all the inventions claimed on behalf of Scotland, surely the boyband is one we should be most embarrassed about. I know I was at the time.

    2. anon says:

      And the Beatles…

      1. bellacaledonia says:

        We probably should Paul …. are the Beatles a Boyband? Really?

      2. Screaming teenage girls everywhere they went, banal songs with lyrics like “love, love me do, you know I love you” – the Beatles are pretty much the archetype boyband!

        I used to have this argument with my Beatles-loving mates all the time. They’d say “but they played their instruments and wrote their own songs”, to which I always pointed to the Bay City Rollers…

  2. bringiton says:

    The British state is now no more than a facade.
    Obscene wealth on display in London thanks to a low tax regime which attracts foreigners to stay there.
    Hugely expensive weapons of mass destruction being paid for with borrowed money in order to maintain the image of a powerful successful state.
    A celebrity culture which attempts to export the ideas of affluence and success.
    All of which,of course,is threatened by an independent Scotland pulling down the facade and exposing the rUK state for what it really is.
    I am pretty sure that all this nonsense recently from Westminster about immigration is just a diversion to try and hide the fact that their huge debt mountain is getting bigger and that the UK state is heading for penury despite their recent attempts to inflate the housing market in the SE.
    We (Scotland) can’t afford them.

  3. andygm1 says:

    Hey! We’re going to be allowed to pay for a new nuclear weapons system AND a new runway for Heathrow. Happy days!

  4. Rob says:

    Now, if George Clinton had been the Rollers’ producer…

    1. Derek Coghill says:

      ….we’d have had our own Parliament years ago!

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