Fairytale Land

Imagine broadcasting this.

Imagine watching this.

 

Apart from the dripping contempt, the weird editorialising, the inert audience, the complete lack of self-consciousness, one of the funniest aspects is the framing as Britain being all about The Queen. Paul Burrell, a daytime TV remnant of the Diana Cult is called upon for his constitutional wisdom and regales us with the news that:

“Nicola Sturgeon would love to read this, that Scotland would have devolution” (eh?!).

Jeremy Vine intones that Scottish independence: “That would hurt the Queen”.

Burrell blurts:

“… It would hurt the Queen, her Commonwealth and the United Kingdom is her life”

… as everyone nods sagely.

We seem to have slipped into an alternate dimension of English fantasy where Britain is reborn as a Ladybird Book, the Queen is a goodly woman fighting the evil witch in the north.

Then, piling stupidity on stupidity, Carole Malone proclaims that: “Ever time they do a poll, figures now are higher for staying within the union than they were at the time of the referendum … ”

[Narrator: “No, you moron the entire premise of the piece that you are discussing is that they are not”].

Then Jeremy pipes up: “Nicola would Boris tell Scotland to ‘Hop it”?

Nicola isn’t too sure.

Jeremy continues: “I’ve got no evidence of any interest that Boris Johnson has in Scotland whatsoever.”

“I’ve never even heard him mention it.”

“I think Brown might be right about that” says Jeremy “Boris doesn’t have an affinity with Scotland, he’s not a Scottish sort of person” he explains.

You can watch the whole shitshow here.

One one level this is just the dregs of moron culture and it’s as meaningless dross as the crap churned out from every orifice of shit media on many platforms.

But it remains an insight into mainstream English culture at some level that somewhere some producer booked these people and scripted this dire broadcast and that somewhere people were sitting taking it all in.

The Skintland notion of Scotland as a sort of blasted heath is a well-established trope in English visions – and here again it gets a run-out.

The problem is the sort of nakedly hostile, puerile contempt that is on display here has no parallels, and would rightly be condemned by everyone if it was to be parroted from the studios of Pacific Quay. It is still stunning to watch it unfold and worrying for the future if these attitudes are wider than then panel of Channel 5’s daytime output.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments (12)

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  1. Dougie Blackwood says:

    Just the normal, ignorant, knee jerk metropolitan nonsense. What would The queen of England do if she had to show her passport at the Scottish border?

  2. squiggly says:

    ….or have a compulsory purchase of Balmoral…might not purr then…..

    PS :Dae ye think they don’t like us..surely no…..

  3. Mario Bertolini says:

    First seen this wings however now cannot view it anywhere. It was unbelievable.

    1. Hi Mario – you can watch it on the embedded tweet in the article??

      There’s also a link to the whole programme in the article, here it is: https://www.my5.tv/jeremy-vine/season-2019/episode-126

  4. Richard Easson says:

    The Union of 1707 was the union of Parliaments and not the union of the crowns which was a bit earlier and seperate?

    1. Dougie Blackwood says:

      Yes the union of crowns was happenstance as the queen of England had no issue when she died in 1603. The union of parliaments was decided by a parcel of rogues that were bribed and threatened into agreement. Apparently the common people rioted but had no say in the matter. The quote from Burns picks up on it.

      What force or guile could not subdue,
      Thro’ many warlike ages,
      Is wrought now by a coward few,
      For hireling traitor’s wages.
      The English stell we could disdain,
      Secure in valour’s station;
      But English gold has been our bane-
      Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

  5. SleepingDog says:

    Having never watched Jeremy Vine until now, and almost never watched daytime television even when unemployed, I don’t have a reliable frame of reference, but I can see that Vine was trying to provoke some controversy in the show for obvious and understandable reasons. For example, earlier in the episode he argues that dogs are more deserving of seats on trains than humans because dogs are not responsible for evils in the world like the Iraq war.

    Also, the segment mentioned was in the final “stories today” look-at-the-newspaper-headlines segment, which suggest less scripting/preparation and more ad-libbing than the earlier segment where many people were criticising public expenditure on the royals. Given the ex-royal-butler on the panel, there was a bit of light monarchist-baiting. Vine mentioned the tourism counter-argument of the French killing off their royals and yet Versailles still drew in the crowds. I wasn’t convinced that the anti-Scottish-independence sentiment displayed was much more than a shallow reaction, with less preparation than the segment on elitism.

    It may be there is a cultural fear that the UK/England cannot sustain itself, not only its manufacturing outcompeted on price but on quality, its reactionary imperial courtly diplomacy in crisis, its backwardness only suitable for the tourist trade, its foreign policy increasing subjugated to the USAmerican Empire: and this fear is then projected onto Scotland. Combined with the dread of what even a moderately successful (republican) breakaway Scotland might mean for the decaying rump of the British Empire.

    1. Yes it is moron-culture clickbait tv. I was in two minds about whether to react at all but too furious not to.

      1. Gordon Benton says:

        Me furious? Nah! The whole programme – the abject ignorance of its speakers, the perfunctor, so-called argument-provoking questions, and the incredibly inarticulate audience left me without words.

  6. Boom Boom Bill says:

    More violent rhetoric from the state, now we are a physical threat to the Queen of England. The quicker we are out of this rancid stinking Union the better.

  7. James Mills says:

    This was a warts and all expression of what the majority ( perhaps ? ) of people down south , regardless of position , class or intellectual capacity think when asked
    ” What is Scotland for ? ”
    They have been continually swamped with the ”Too Wee and Too Poor ” ( jury is out on ”Too Stupid ” ) propaganda of the media and the Wastemonster elite that they genuinely do not have a scoobie of what goes on up here .
    Time for the Scottish Government to push some FACTS there way – perhaps on the sides of London busses – to dissuade them of the notion that we live in huts , eat haggis and deep-fried Mars bars for breakfast , lunch and dinner , and run about clothed in ”See you Jimmy ” hats and kilts .

  8. Alasdair Macdonald says:

    There is so much casual anti-Scottish bile emanating from so many people in the England (of course, it is nowhere near a majority) on programmes like this and in websites such as the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’. There is an unselfconsciousness exceptionalism about it: it is an example of “When Britain first at heav’n’s command arose from out the azure main”. WE )i.e. the ‘anglo-saxons’) can do what we like because we are not foreigners.

    This is particularly evident in the arrogantly self proclaimed ‘progressive’ media where it is axiomatic that Scottish independence is predicated on hatred of the English. The bombastic Martin Kettle trotted this out in the Guardian last week when supporting Bodger Broon’s ‘warning’ of the ‘break-up’ of the precious union.

    The argument is threadbare, because it has been rolled out so often since 2014. Yet, I still hear people in Scotland saying the same. I think – hope? – their number is decreasing and that it is an example of whistling in the dark to shut out the fact that the UK is falling apart

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