Regardless of whether Scotland will next year become an independent state, I’ve long suspected that inspired by pandering, vote-seeking politicians and a compensation-chasing legal profession, Scotland has already evolved into a nanny state where citizens are encouraged to mistakenly believe they have a fundamental human right of protection from even the most trivial verbal, written or pictorial stimulus liable to cause them upset by contradicting their particular notion of what constitutes an ideal society.
This theory was confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt by a recent newspaper article concerning a 77-year-old mural painted on the interior wall of an Edinburgh school. The mural illustrated scenes from the famous children’s book Alice In Wonderland, part of which depicted our young heroine in the company of a small golliwog – and therein lies the controversy. Apparently this colourful little scamp caught the eye of an adult woman visitor who, registering a formal complaint, declared it “racist and offensive in nature”.
It was at this point that responsible professionals should have intervened, by injecting a sense of perspective and healthy dose of realism into the proceedings. But, in fact, the very opposite happened. Edinburgh police took the woman’s complaint seriously and diverted our capital city’s forces of law and order from the pursuit of murderers, rapists and robbers to investigate this alleged hate crime.
I suspect that a reincarnated Alice, fondly remembering her former Mad-Hatter pal, would feel quite at home in a 21st century Scotland populated by characters who seem to have similarly lost the plot. Though in this particular example Scottish humanity’s loss is our bovine population’s gain.
An animal not renowned for its good sense or judgement, we are accustomed to hear and read reports of croft/farm cows wandering absentmindedly from familiar firm ground into deep peatbogs, or over a cliff edge, from which predicament the survivors have to be painstakingly rescued. But no matter how foolhardy the nature of their escapade, none of these wayward beasts can ever again be truthfully referred to as Scotland’s silliest cow.
Yours faithfully
Iain M Macdonald
PS: The reluctance of various newspaper editors to publish the above letter has proven its central argument much better than any further evidence I could have advanced. Thank you all for your cooperation.
I M M, Miavaig, Isle of Lewis
IMM and I may not agree on somethings, but on this occasion, I am in accord.