Scotch myth
From Robert Westbrook
Sir: Andrew Neil’s lament at the decline of the so-called ‘Tartan Raj’ (‘The last days of the Tartan Raj’, 20 August) is a Scottish view of what, to the rest of the country, is a non-phenomenon. Englanders aren’t looking jealously over their shoulders at Scottish success, and never have done.
Gordon Brown will be a wildly unpopular leader, not because he is Scottish, or Scotland-educated, but because he is surly and tax-happy, more concerned with shafting his ‘Scot-lite’ boss than doing his own job. Brown might resent Oxbridge, but Oxbridge is broadly indifferent to him. If the Raj was really as all-powerful as Neil suggests, then why didn’t it do anything to arrest the decline in elite education in Scotland and elsewhere? The preponderance of Scots in the broadcast media in particular occurred because the Scottish accent is classless to the English ear, not because a generation of would-be Scottish TV presenters got off their backsides and decided to exploit a post-war meritocracy.
Robert Westbrook Trinity College, Oxford
Previous page
