Rolled-up Trousers

Craig Levein, Scotland manager

Congratulations to Craig Levein on getting the Scotland job. Here's to a successful qualifying campaign for Euro 2012.

I was at Scotland's matches in France 98, the last time we qualified for a major tournament. Being with the tartan Army at the global festival of football that is the World Cup was unforgettable. It used to be that the big question was whether we could get past the group stage at one of the big tournaments, now it's just negotiating the qualifiers that would be an achievement. We'd all love to get to the big stage again.

I'm glad SFA chief exec Gordon Smith said that they were viewing the candidates for the job as widely as possible i.e. that the manager didn't have to be Scottish. I found the view of sections of the press that the person had to be Scottish as potentially xenophobic (not a new problem), and real baby-and-bath water stuff because it always harped back to the Berti Vogts era. Newsflash - just becase Vogts was rubbish, it doesn't mean every manager outside of Scotland is.

This is the mistake England made after Sven Goran Eriksson. They ended up with the dismal reign of Steve McClaren, just because he was English. They now seem to be enjoying the management of the decorated Fabio Capello. Another example not a million miles away is how Giovanni Trappatoni got Ireland within a Thierry Henry handball of qualifying for the World Cup next year. Partly no doubt these managers bring something additional to the party, but at some level, I'm sure the players must rise to their presence.

Apparently we don't have the money for someone of that kind of stature, and the SFA said they were open for the same kind of sponsorship agreement that Ireland have with Trapp. Maybe it is the case anyway that we need to have a manager that can do more with less. That is what we said about George Burley though. However, our players are not as bad as some would have us believe (I don't think Ireland for one are man for man that much superior) and he ran into problems with some of his better players precisely because they held him in less regard than their club managers.

I hope that Levein is given the respect which his post is due. My concern is that his lack of big match experience will count against him. I hope that fear is entirely misplaced. He was my pick for the job before Burley was appointed in 2008. Surveying the likely candidates for the job in Scotland, he is the one who shows the most potential. Let's get behind him and the boys.

Cringing Scots

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Alex Salmond for his Christmas card this year. It's terrific.

It has though come in for criticism from opposition parties because it has the Scottish flag on it.

I have never understood why unionist parties accuse the SNP of manipulating the saltire for party political ends. Every party uses their country's flag. Politicians in most states do so too, it's natural. In the US, they wear it on their lapel. It just so happens for Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems, that flag is the Union Jack (see pictures below).

The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that it is Scotland's flag itself that is being objected to.

The artist that did this year's Christmas card is Gerard M Burns. One of his paintings also has pride of place in the First Minister's office. The painting was actually commissioned at the time the Scottish Parliament opened in 1999 but was quickly banished till the SNP won in 2007 because the saltire on it was considered too big.

For the other parties, it seems the only useful purpose the saltire should serve is to provide the blue for the Union Jack.

In fairness to Labour though, Jim Murphy has been trying to convince his party to adopt the saltire. By trying to foist it like this on his troops though, it is as close as you can get to politicising the flag. The forced photoshoot with Iain Gray at this year's Labour conference is case in point.

It won't make any difference for Labour to be seen more comfortable with the saltire. They actually have to be able to come up with policies which are relevant to Scotland, and which will very likely have to be in the face of their counterparts in London. Are Scottish Labour capable of independent thought?

 

 

 

Mohammad Sarwar - extremist?

Anne McLaughlin MSP raises the issue of doublestandards when it comes to accusations of extremism between me and my Glasgow Central opponent.

Mohammad Sarwar MP serves alongside members of the Muslim Brotherhood on the board of Finsbury Park Mosque. They were put there deliberately by the authorities after Abu Hamza was booted out. They were seen as Islamists that could be worked with. Sarwar has also defended one of the board for his links to Hamas.

I've been dragged over the coals for much less, and for things in the dim and distant past. This is current. If I was in Sarwar's position, there would long ago have been demands for me to resign as a trustee and there would have been calls for my party to take action on me. Strangely, no thinktank has saw fit to send out a press release or alert about this, and it therefore has not been picked up by the press.

They've probably not even looked into Mr Sarwar, but devote copious energies on me. One recently said on this scrutiny that I "had better get used it" if I want to be an MP, but the reality is most MPs live in relative anonymity. Many people in politics have remarked to me that they find extraordinary the number of sad cases on the internet hanging off my every word for the slightest slipup that can be contorted.

The comparison with Sarwar is not of course a game I like, but the doublestandard is fascinating. I've said before that the smears and links by association can be played on any Muslim. It's what people actually do and believe themselves that matters and on that count, having heard Mr Sarwar speak many times, there is no difference between us when it comes to issues of democracy, pluralism and secularism. We're on the same spectrum as any mainstream politician you'll find in the House of Commons.

There is a lot though that divides Mr Sarwar and myself when it comes to the future of our country. What the Finsbury Park Mosque case firmly establishes is that the silly witchhunts on me till now have been party political. As far as the neocon thinktanks and media are concerned I am double trouble. Someone strongly opposed to their agendas in Iraq and in Palestine, while also a member of the SNP who are set to pull Scotland out of the United Kingdom.

A recent article by a Rob Brown in the Jerusalem Post is instructive on this count. He posits that Israelis should fight the SNP because Scotland leaving the Union would be bad for Israel. He finds space for a gratuitous namecheck for me in it. Leaving aside the accuracy or inaccuracy of his core argument (and the rights and wrongs), if I was to go around the world advocating a particular constitutional arrangement for Scotland purely on the basis of how it tenuously affected another people halfway around the world, I'd be labelled a traitor. But it's amazing the things you'll get away with if you're on side with the powerful.

Cybernattering

I should not be amazed at what can constitute news, but was still surprised to see an innocuous get-together that I partook in with fellow SNP bloggers in April being presented as some sort of conspiracy.

This high powered meeting featuring a "close confidante of First Minister Alex Salmond", was so much part of the SNP grand plan that one of the people at the blogger's breakfast was Labour's Yapping Yousuf! More on the meeting with the organiser SNP Tactical Voting

The internet is a nasty place. I know this possibly better than most. You need a thick skin in public life so am sure Jim Murphy didn't take too much umbrage to being called a c*** by the blogger formerly known as Wardog and didn't need the matter escalated to national attention.

It seems from this affair though, and the fate that has befallen Mark MacLachlan, that if you go after senior enough politicians and journalists, there will be comeback. 

As I've indicated above, this isn't just an SNP issue. I think the level of interest on this is because the 'cybernats' are so at odds with the SNP hierarchy (a phenomenon I think indicated in Annabel Goldie's comment in this article). My experience in seeing how the SNP press operation work is that they don't get anywhere near as personal and nasty as I've experienced from the sharp end of Labour HQ briefings. I'm not saying the SNP are perfect, just much better.

The unionist commentators taking so much exception to cybernat activity find them odd since they don't see nationalist views expressed commonly elsewhere. The SNP won in 2007 not just with no support from a single newspaper, but against the open hostility of a number. This has continued, and has led to the phenomenon you see at the bottom of online newspaper articles.

That said, unacceptable comments are unacceptable comments. I'm not a fan of anonymous blogging, and certainly you shouldn't say anything you don't want attributed to you later if you get exposed. Frankly, I don't really see any value in newspaper comments sections. Rarely is there ever a nugget in there, and the facility exists I suspect to keep online hit rates up. More on this with Joan McAlpine.

Overall, I'm not sure what to make of the Wardog and Montague Burton development given the kinds of things people say about me under the cover of anonymity on the internet. I suppose since they can be found out, they better watch out. Given the level of lunacy, obsession and incitement apparent in some of them, if they are in employment somewhere, they should probably be careful too.

And to the chap or chaps moving off the net to phoning people and organisations that know me warning them about my dangers - hello.

More on Awlaki

Since my last post on the Anwar Al-Awlaki issue, there were a couple of attempts to keep the story going.

Tom Harris, MP for Glasgow South, posted up a number of comments that Awlaki made in the last year or so, and tried to make something of the fact I’ve only spoken up now against him.

Simple answer to this – unlike Harris, I’m not an Anwar Awlaki anorak. I blogged briefly back in 2006 that his detention in Yemen seemed wrong. It was in the context of a time when there was regular news of Muslims being incarcerated in 'black sites' without trial. Al-Awlaki was actually then subsequently released after around a year I believe. The US has not sought his extradition on this 9/11 link either.

Just because I posted something years ago doesn’t make me part of his fan club, and I admit to not keeping an index of my old blog posts with anyone I’ve ever mentioned crossreferenced with their future utterings across all media, blogs and YouTube to keep track of who I should be making a point of condemning.

It’s all pretty cheap stuff, but what we’ve come to expect from Labour in terms of attempted smears (see attacks on David Kerr for being in Opus Dei for example). My record on terrorism is that I’ve always condemned it. No one can say otherwise. I’ve organised demonstrations against it. Harris doesn’t really make any point countering this except hoping mud sticks through innuendo.

Maybe Harris feels the need to do this given his constituency party has received funds from the Muslim Friends of Labour, run by my opponent Mohammad Sarwar in Glasgow Central. Rather than blogging about me though and worrying about the position in the next constituency, I’d suggest Harris concentrate on my fellow SNP candidate Malcolm Fleming who is similarly in a good position to beat him in Glasgow South. The SNP gave Labour a good pasting in his constituency at the Euros in June.