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Steve Maclaren will get £2.5 million compensation and is sacked. Half a dozen English football players get that much each in six months, and they are the ones who win or lose games. Why not start sacking football players from national teams when they don’t perform – clearance sale in January?

More seriously, why should a man who tries to do his best, even if that in the end isn’t good enough, be treated as if he had betrayed his country by selling its biggest secrets, or undermining its economy? A football game was lost at Wembley and the manager is savaged. A football match is lost at Hampden and the manager is head hunted by Birmingham. The English manager is humiliated in the press, and the Scottish manager’s market value soars. But Scotland against Georgia were no better than England against Croatia.

I love football – but why the rancourous fervour and unforgiving pseudo-solemnity with which a man is sacked? 

I lived in Aberdeen for years, and knew Robert who was a big player in the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation. He used to talk about quotas, black fish, Brussels, the common fisheries policies, the way it was and the way it is. The balance between the needs of the industry and of the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on the sea, has been hard to maintain ever since the advent of factory scale fishing and declining stocks.

Today we discover that around 50% to 60% of catches are dumped as dead fish because they can’t be landed, and much of these are cod, one of the most threatened species in the North Sea. The chief fisheries officer in Europe says it’s immoral – which is about the least that can be said about it. I know the world is complicated, complex and that simple common-sense often doesn’t make sense when applied to the realities of modern economic activity. But in a world where millions are malnourished, on a planet already over-harvested, at a time when the proportion of world population to global food capacity is narrowing dangerously, to toss tens of thousands of tons of fish back into the sea, dead and thus unusable, is accurately described as an environmental crime. Theologically such required practices are a demonstration of structural sin; that is economic laws, national vested interests, technological power, market forces, and each of these driven and shaped by human activity, create a situation where such moral nonsense enables such iniquitous policies.

Somewhere around the glossy executive conference tables, in Brussels or elsewhere, decisions are made about the stewardship of our natural resources. In that hierarchy of arguments that are presented and debated, where is the weight placed – on scientific data, economic necessities, political constraints, social consequences or moral principles? And where in the entire debate is the idea of stewardship allowed to balance such ideas as exploitation, waste, ownership, market, national interest? Because only when stewardship means more than conserving in order to go on exploiting, only then will we be able to prevent the obscene spectacle of men feeding the seagulls thousands of tons of fish suppers.

None of us can claim to know the mind of the Creator, but in Genesis 1.26 when God said of human beings, ‘let them rule over the fish of the sea’, I respectfully suggest, as a consideration worth weighing, that it is probably unlikely and therefore a reasonably safe conclusion to draw, when due allowance is made for other viewpoints, that God didn’t have any of this in mind!

Scotland 1- Italy 2

Fair enough.

But just how good were Scotland today, and in this whole Euro 2008 campaign? Hard not to be flat after losing a goal at the end, and to a seriously dodgy refereeing decision. But not the slightest critical of a Scotland team who have given us some of our best footballing moments for decades.

Think ah’m gonnae buy a tartan tie – saw wan in yon Tie Rack at Braeheid, so they must be cool. In fact think ah might get a wee tartan tee shirt – no believe me. Here’s a wee photie o’ wan. Noo, kin ye wear a tie wi’ a tee-shirt?

Earlier this week I sat watching the evening news, and the report on the first SNP budget since coming into government. The ditching of the commitment to write off student loans rightly raised the temperature and deserved some serious debate. What we got was a slanging match, and the First Minister behaving like a yah-boo schoolboy. It doesn’t matter which party the First Minister represents, he or she represents the public face of Scotland and the pubic image of Scottish politics. Mr salmond was an embarrassment. So I emailed him, and so far have no response. But here’s what I wrote. Tell me if I am being unreasonably optimistic about the public role played by poltiicians who represent the Scottish people

Dear Mr Salmond

I have just listened to the TV coverage of your response to questions about non fulfilment of election commitments. Now I realise that there are ways of interpreting election promises, such as those made in relation to student debt. I work in academia and see first-hand the impact of debt on student morale and motivation. No doubt you have more substantial arguments / responses / excuses.

However my question is much more straightforward – are we to assume that the First Minister of Scotland, can only respond to opposition questions at the high intellectual level of worn out cliches such as over the moon, and sick as a parrot. The dignity of office, and the right of the Scottish Parliament to be taken seriously within and beyond Scotland, deserves better than this ranting rhetoric more suited to a playground show-off than one who aspires to lead this country to Independence. Funny it was not – embarrassing it certainly was, coming from a senior politician, and playing games with the disappointment of many of the young people whose commitment to Scotland will matter in our future

 

Yours with considerable disappointment,