NICE TO see that the Mail on Sunday is getting its predominantly English middle class readers ready for Scottish independence when – as the Mail fondly believes – English people travelling to Scotland will have to take their passports with them, Clive Betts writes from the Assembly press gallery.
The paper as sold in Wales – which is word for word the same as sold in England despite the differences between the two countries – runs a page lead boldly headed, “English visitors flying to Scotland are told: Show your passports.”
Good on you, Mail on Sunday; tell the English what is really happening …
Wales never got a mention in the story. Which is par for the course, as the Mail group do not admit the country exists. I see even that all the Welsh rugby coverage has vanished in favour of a page for the English rugby premiership.
Perhaps, of course, the Mail has realised that when the Welsh travel to an eventually-independent Scotland they will be happily welcomed as fellow Celts and will have no need to show special identity papers …
The news story was concocted by the Englishman who is shadow home secretary for the Tories; Chris Grayling affected himself shocked. Of course, he’s going to do something about it …
As I have just done a similar trip, none of Mr Grayling’s affected rage worried me one iota.
Yes, you have to show an identity document. It doesn’t have to be a passport. In both Cardiff and Edinburgh airports, a bus pass was happily accepted.
But perhaps Mr Grayling is one of those Tories who never demean themselves with public transport. And the man himself is too young to have a pensioner’s bus pass while he wouldn’t want a rail season ticket identity card.
So this is yet another Mail group story which has been invented about not much.
Yet it has a tremendous value in teaching the English that their united kingdom, originally wrecked in 1916 by right-wing English Tories, is now rapidly disappearing down the pan.
Once the English have got used to passports for entering Scotland, we can start to teach them about passports at Chepstow.
Some Welsh people will then want to go further. They’ll start to argue that the country is full up, and there’s no room for any more English people – particularly in the West.
Much the same as is being argued by some right-wing Tories about England. After all, did not the Daily Express run a front-page lead a few days ago arguing that “England is full up” …
Comments
I’ve been saying (for as long as I’ve had an opinon) that we need passport checks on entry TO Wales. Good for the Scots – although I believe it is just a general airport security check, rather than border control. It’s coming though, and no problem with it at all! If I’m going to be a guest in someone else’s country (Scotland, England) then why shouldn’t I declare myself, same as if I nip on the chunnel to France or something. It’s common courtesty.
The great irony of this of course is that the Mail is a right-wing, immigrant-hating, xenophobic rag that obsesses about anyone coming into England, but gets outraged whenever anyone suggests that the same rules apply to England as apply to anywhere else.
Their recent front page articles about the ‘rocketing birth rate’ of immigrants from Eastern Europe compared with a ‘dwindling indigenous UK population’ was like something from 1930s Germany.
Anyone with a Daily Mail should be kept out of Wales, frankly.
Lots of foam-flecked Mail readers rant on Betsan Powys’s blog too – true welsh-hating boss-eyed xenophobes.
Actually if they bothered to check, they would find that you also need a piece of photo-id (passport or otherwise) to fly from London to Manchester…
But hey lets not spoil a good strory……
To change the subject a bit, that other Mail, the Western one. It’s owners are starting to desert the sinking ship. They are closing the local Neath and Port Talbot Guardian newspapers, I wonder what may be next.
On the Neath Port Talbot Guardian.
This is the second time they have said they will close the paper. Last time, there was such a row locally that the same businesman who later got involved with an attempt to start a rival to Llais y Sais was spurred into setting up the Neath Independent.
The response from Thomson – the same people as the current Trinity – Mirror owners – was ballistic. Was it a free-sheet they set up, using pretty dirty business methods, and the Independent eventually went under.
Trinity Mirror then turned their free-sheet back into the paid-for NPTG.
Recently however the company has again cut back in NPT. The local office has been closed – it was on the outskirts of Neath town centre. Apparently it was being run from an office in Bridgend. Probably pretty incompetently.
Now they’ve closed the paper yet again.
T-M has been criticised as a London-based company which is far more interested in its stock market price than in anything else. It has been listed as having not a single journalist on its board.
You might well ask what will go next. Apparently the Sais has closed some of its up-market glossy publications around Cardiff.
Unfortunately, they are unlikely to close or sell the Llais itself … looking for what is best for Wales is foreign to Trinity Mirror.
Funny, a thousand years ago I could have got from Llandaff to China without once showing a passport to anyone. Now I’ve got Welshmen telling me they’d like me to show one to go see my girlfriend in Hereford. Good thinking, guys. How about armed men in strategically placed tollbooths too?
hmmm good idea! Let’s have Welsh Guards who actually, you know, guard Wales, rather than fighting complete strangers half-way across the world.
(if it’s a problem, then you could move to Hereford. or she could move to Wales. It would save the environment too, all that to-and-froing can’t be good)
:p