The War on Scotland, cont'd

It was too predictable: a fortnight ago, Mark Steyn had followed the Niall Ferguson expeditionary force in the battle against Scottish nationalism, so today brings Kevin Myers in the Irish Times to do the mopping-up operations. There's not much point in excerpting the Myers column, since you've seen the key bits already in what Niall and Mark wrote, but here's the flavour (sub. req'd):

Sixty years of the welfare state have just about polished that magnificent culture off. Not coincidentally, the decline of Scotland went step by step with the death of the Scottish Tory Party.

Simultaneously has grown a pathetic Anglophobia, alongside a parasitic, cowardly but boastful pseudo-independence. It is now a national pastime for the Scots to complain about the very country which subsidises them ... The land which gave the world Thomas Telford and Sherlock Holmes is now the home of the pre-pubescent junkie, the deep-fried battered Mars Bar and plummeting birth-rates

So as not to be completely critical, we should note that Myers is aware of the conundrum all this poses for Unionism -- the one bit of the United Kingdom that broke away is the one (outside the metropole) that is booming:

English money has also debauched the North [Norn Iron]; the once vigorous Presbyterian linen and shipbuilding culture of Ulster has been subverted by state welfarism and its handmaiden, chronic dependency.

Something which no one ever predicted has happened. Catholic Ireland has, demographically and economically, overhauled its once-triumphant Presbyterian neighbours. A vibrant enterprise culture flourishes in a once priest-ridden, backward and dirge-filled land. Whine-Eire has been vanquished by Ryan-Eire.

We'll be charitable and ignore him assigning no role to the Troubles in the Northern Irish subsidy. But then he goes and ruins his lurch into sense with an embarrassing sequence of errors:

The transformation in the respective fortunes of our tribes was classically embodied in the conflict between Alec Ferguson, on the one hand, and Dermot Desmond and John Magnier on the other.

He gets the other Ferguson's name wrong, and confuses JP McManus with Dermot Desmond, although he could have spun a related point with the latter being the largest shareholder in Glasgow Celtic.

His conclusion:

It was a perfect allegory for the fortunes of the respective societies. We should engrave the lesson on our hearts: depend on the state for your wealth, and you will end up watching daytime television and drawing the dole, while your diminishing band of overweight offspring shoot up in their classrooms.

Actually, it's a dreadful allegory. Alex Ferguson has earned his success on merit, while that of Magnier and McManus comes from playing the tax system. But at the level of the nation, the respective fortunes of Bonnie Prince Charlie's two support bases do say something about the benefits of the ability to set your own exchange rate and tax policy (a crucial period of divergence being Maggie's strong pound policy in the 1980s). That perhaps will be the subject of a longer post down the road, when the hostilities against our northeastern neighbours have ceased.

UPDATE 21 JUNE: Niall Ferguson has drawn the logical implication from the relative successes of Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, even if Myers did not.