Alex Salmond uses the Diamond Jubilee to reaffirm the Scottish government’s commitment to the monarch.
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Scottish first minister Alex Salmond this weekend used the opportunity of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations to reaffirm the Scottish government’s commitment to the monarch.
With many of the SNP’s critics accusing Salmond et al of failing to provide sufficient detail about what an independent Scotland would mean and look like, the first minister was clear in his call for the Queen to be retained as head of state.
Speaking to BBC Scotland on Tuesday ahead of the service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, Salmond said:
“Clearly for people, Scottish identity is becoming more and more powerful. There’s no conflict between that and having respect for her majesty, because her majesty will be Queen of Scots after independence and there’s no difficulty in that.”
And as if to emphasise the point further, he continued by calling on Scotland to make a much greater use of the Lion Rampant, the Royal Standard of Scotland as opposed to the saltire. He explained:
“Obviously people are very proud of the saltire but the flag being flown in Scotland, in my view, should be the Royal Standard, which is the Lion Rampant, which is very much in many senses the people’s flag as well as the monarch’s flag in Scotland.
“So my advice to any budding entrepreneur out there is to produce more Lion Rampants. I think you’ll find a very willing market.”
The remarks however are likely to cause some friction within the yes to independence campaign. Having called on the movement seeking separation to emulate the protests against the poll tax, the Scotsman yesterday quoted Scottish Socialist Party leader, Colin Fox, as having outlined his party’s “radical vision” of an independent Scottish Republic.
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Meanwhile, with much talk throughout the week of the Queen’s ability to unite, in Northern Ireland the signs are that her ability to bring people together could have reached historic proportions with the strongest hint yet that Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness is preparing to shake hands with the Queen.
Just over a year on from her state visit to Ireland, Her Majesty will visit Northern Ireland on a two day visit at the end of June. Already dubbed by Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson as an “historic” event, DUP first minister Peter Robinson this weekend seemed to suggest that it could be more historic than some might think.
Speaking to the Newsletter over the weekend, asked what discussions he and McGuinness have had on the subject, Robinson responded:
“I’ve discussed a range of issues… I don’t divulge what takes place in private conversations but you can imagine that both in conversations with the palace and in conversations with Sinn Fein those are issues that would have been spoken of.
“There are difficulties – Sinn Fein is a republican party, it’s a party that has no votes to garner as a result of Martin McGuinness shaking hands with the Queen.
“I don’t know whether Martin McGuinness will find this to be an appropriate occasion to shake hands with the Queen.
“But the one thing that I’m pretty sure of is that at some stage – now or later – such a handshake will take place and my own view is that it would be missing an opportunity if it wasn’t to be on this occasion.”
Meanwhile, the Belfast Telegraph chose to speak of the Jubilee as offering a “legacy of hope”.
Speaking of just one celebration in an area of Belfast the paper’s editorial yesterday concluded:
Protestants and Catholics at a Belfast interface take part in a joint Jubilee party. That is a sentence many of us who lived through the recent troubled past of Northern Ireland can scarcely believe.
But the festivities did happen and were the culmination of sterling work by many people on the ground in the Skegoneill/Glandore area in the north of the city to find a new way of respecting each other.
Those people have taken many personal risks to reach out to each other, to break down physical as well as mental barriers and to reach accommodation. It is slow work, but invaluable and an example to all areas where division still exists.
Congratulations to those who organised the party and to those who took part. They could be creating a legacy of hope.
However you feel about the monarchy, there is no denying the Diamond Jubilee offered some unity in otherwise troubled times.
31 Responses to “Jubilee celebrations offered a “legacy of hope” for Scotland and Northern Ireland”
Peter Dow
I think managers run the economy. University managers. Bank managers. Company managers. Government department managers.
All those managers have got lawyers. As soon as someone speaks up saying “Manager X is mismanaging and causing harm to the economy” then Manager X goes to his lawyer and the lawyer sues for libel or defamation.
The judge (and if there is a jury as well) are vastly out of his/ their depth and he/she/they has/have no idea if Manager X is mismanaging or not so it is clearly “not proved” as “mismanagement” and since the onus is on the person to prove that the statements made about mismanagement were proved to be true, the person speaking out loses the case and a gagging order against repetition of the so-called “libellous” or “defamatory” statements can be enforced and so the person has to shut the hell up about the mismanagement or go to jail for contempt.
The police use violence on behalf of the state. So you are against all police action now are you, given that you don’t want to be seen as a “violence advocating nut”?
I am not asking you to believe anything I have said. I am simply trying to get you to understand what it is I am saying. Currently you do not understand.
If you understood and disagreed, I would consider that progress.
There is no conspiracy. There is stupidity.
Anonymous
Managers? Capital runs the economy. Capital wags the corporate dog, rather than the other way around these days.
So, who did you try and sue and lose to? I’m kinda surprised you’re not on the vexatious litigants list, your rant’s quite similar to several people who ARE on it.
I don’t support either the current defamation laws or the police, but the kind of violent froth you’re throwing up is simply that. Neither of the issues has the least bit to do with the Monarchy.
(And I’m not a “monarchist”, my support comes from reading an interesting cost/benefit analysis a few years ago. It’s *pragmatic*)
Of course there’s no conspiracy. There’s people screwing the heck up. THAT’S something I’ve said for a long time, and yet you keep on talking as if there WAS a conspiracy.
Peter Dow
Well “capital” is managed by bankers. Also a certain institution can have a set amount of capital to work with. The question is who manages that capital? The institution’s managers.
Now, if a person criticises the management of an institution then those who hold the capital may be thinking of whether or not to change the management. Agreed. But it is precisely to avoid that scrutiny that managers will run to their lawyers to get accusations of mismanagement silenced before capital takes flight.
I didn’t sue. I was sued. That is how libel and defamation works. You the critic say – “it’s being mismanaged” and they sue you for defamation.
Who sued me? Click the link to an image of a scan of a couple of newspaper clippings – http://img282.imageshack.us/img282/1408/studentfacesprison6du.jpg
Note the threat of imprisonment is what I faced, and still do face. Being on a list is not the issue. There is no freedom. That’s the issue.
Well the United Kingdom is enforcing defamation laws and police you don’t support. How’s about not supporting the UK which doing something you say you don’t support?
Those issues are to do with the monarchy. If instead there was a republic with a good democratic constitution and a good president, such defamation laws would be struck down by the president as unconstitutional. Judges and police enforcing such unconstitutional attempted “laws” would be in danger of arrest by the army on the orders of the president.
I repeat I am no more violent than the violent police. In fact, I have never arrested anyone, successfully anyway.
Neither a Federal UK, nor the SNP’s “independent” Queen’s kingdom of Scotland address the issue of the lack of a proper constitution or more particularly the lack of a head of state who can be relied upon to guarantee constitution rights.
The cost of the monarchy is enormous. Take the Dunblane Primary School Massacre in which the defamation laws acted to deter publication about concerns about the gunman being allowed to hold a police firearms certificate before the massacre.
READ – http://scot.tk/dunblane.htm Dunblane Primary School Massacre Inquiry Cover-up Revealed
The mismanagement of the economy cost us the bailing out of the banks. The wealth per person of this country is considerably less than the wealth per person of republican USA, and a number of other republics are richer too.
No there is the stupidity of people thinking that when someone like me talks about people being silenced by defamation laws that is misheard or misunderstood as conspiracy talk.
Anonymous
Yea, you keep blaming the Government’s issues on the Monarchy. You’re out to violently overthrow the government, in practice, it has nothing to do with the Monarchy when it comes down to it.
You ARE a conspiracy wingnut. Even America has Posse Comitatus to prevent PRECISELY the control of the system by a dictator that you want.
Peter Dow
The government after all is called “Her Majesty’s Government of Scotland.”. The PM and Scottish FM do swear to serve the Queen.
There would be different governments in power if the head of state was a president who would have never allowed David Cameron or Alex Salmond to be PM or FM.
The government is out to violently impose its will on me.
No conspiracy, obviously, but you are stupid to think that I think that there is or might be.
The US constitution has means to remove a president who violates the constitution yes, who threatens dictatorship yes.
I seek only a democratic republic. If the Queen appoints someone, American or not, to be one of her judges to rule in the USA I can assure you the president is fully authorised by the US constitution to arrest said Queen’s judge.
Well it would be interesting to see a full on confrontation between the US president and the US Supreme court over who was violating the constitution. lol