No, he's right; we are all cunts.
Seriously, I can actually sympathise with some of the sentiments here. The anti-English thing, for a start, is particularly embarrassing now we've (and I'm aware that I'm aware that I still think of myself very much as 'not English' despite increasingly thinking of myself as 'Londoner') got our own parliament - which has successfully chucked out Section 28, fox-hunting, etc., etc. It's a little sad that so many of us still define ourselves in slightly passive-aggressive 'oppressed by the English' terms. I guess that'll take a generation or two to disappear.
I was reminded of this during the World Cup, when all my work colleagues were seriously getting into it, I joked that, as a Scot, I was contractually obliged to support whoever was playing against the English. 'Course, ZoCher informed me that, north of the border, the same theme was to be heard everywhere, but in deadly seriousness...
And Irvine Welsh? Well, yeah, he's well past his sell-by now. He's done pretty well with his slightly limited exploration of the 'schemie' male psyche - and he's illuminated some dark corners of male sexuality - but his carnival grotesquerie has been sounding depressingly one-note for a while now.
I'd take issue with the 'Scots are unfriendly' argument, though. Miserable, yes, and often unfairly snarly with the English, but not generally misanthropic. Abroad, it's always nice to introduce oneself as Scottish rather than English; distancing oneself (however artificially) from the snooty colonial / whinging Pom stereotypes invariably guarantees a better reception. Scots seem to be relatively good at assimilating themselves into other cultures too; I've yet to hear of a 'Scots ghetto' (of course, this could be because we export 'bessshhht mate' West Coast drunks all around the world instead...).
So, uh, yeah. What was I saying?
We're all cunts. Yeah.
*plink*
CRUNCH. |
