{"id":29573,"date":"2019-10-01T20:06:53","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T20:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=29573"},"modified":"2019-10-01T20:06:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T20:06:53","slug":"toxic-divisions-in-britain-is-pushing-scotland-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/toxic-divisions-in-britain-is-pushing-scotland-away\/","title":{"rendered":"Toxic divisions in Britain is pushing Scotland away"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Britain\u2019s adversarial political system with its customary gladiatorial exchanges across red lines on the floor of the chamber, two swords\u2019 distance apart, amid plenty of cheering and jeering, always seems peculiar to the uninitiated.<\/p>\n

Those of us, a little more familiar with the conventions of the Parliament, can explain the quirks and idiosyncrasies of it with being so deeply steeped in history.<\/p>\n

The House of Commons\u2019 web page<\/a> links the combative style to its chamber\u2019s adversarial rectangular pattern. In 1943, following the destruction of the Commons Chamber during the Blitz, the House debated the question of rebuilding. Winston Churchill wanted to keep the shape of the old Chamber, which he believed was responsible for the two-party system, the essence of British parliamentary democracy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us\u201d, Churchill said.<\/p>\n

76 years on, a crumbling Palace of Westminster is awaiting a multibillion-pound programme of restoration.<\/p>\n

But it is not only its iconic towers and grand halls, riddled with asbestos and mice, that are decaying.<\/p>\n

With the anticipated Brexit date of 31st October getting nearer, the political atmosphere in its debating chambers are becoming poisonous, too.<\/p>\n

Last week, after an increasingly heated and toxic debate around Brexit, a civility awards scheme for politicians was launched by members of the House of Lords and campaigners.<\/p>\n

Lord Wood, a Labour peer, one of the names behind the awards said that the politics in the UK was facing a crisis of trust and civility.<\/p>\n

On the day Prime Minister Boris Johnson was heavily criticised for using unparliamentary language inflaming hatred and division, a group of journalists from the Association of European Journalists<\/a> \u00a0(AEJ) visited the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

We were given a guided tour of the leaf-shaped building with a unique architecture, in steel, oak wood, and stone.<\/p>\n

Along with members of public and several schoolchildren, we sat in on First Minister\u2019s Questions in their debating chamber.<\/p>\n

Unlike the House of Commons, the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland where 129 MSPs sit around a semi-circular chamber, did not resemble a bear pit.<\/p>\n

First minister and the leader of the Scottish National Party Nicola Sturgeon faced questions from politicians of all parties, including on Brexit, a second independence referendum, climate emergency, whole life custody for serious criminals, the collapse of travel firm Thomas Cook and a possible ban of e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n

It was a vigorous but civilized debate.<\/p>\n

Afterwards, in a roundtable discussion organized by AEJ-UK, focusing on the impact of Brexit on Scotland, three senior members of the Parliament debated difficult issues calmly.<\/p>\n

One AEJ colleague remarked that the visit and the discussion \u201crestored his faith in parliamentary procedure and its dignity which took a knock from watching those despairing scenes from Westminster the previous night\u201d.<\/p>\n

Members of the panel, Joan McAlpine (SNP), Convener of the Committee on Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs, Donald Cameron, the Scottish Conservatives\u2019 Brexit and External Affairs spokesperson and Alex Rowley, the Scottish Labour Party\u2019s Brexit spokesperson had contrasting views about Brexit, its impact and a possible second Scottish independence referendum.<\/p>\n

You can read a detailed account of the round table discussion on the AEJ-UK\u2019s website ( http:\/\/aej-uk.org\/<\/a> ) . Suffice to say, all three have acknowledged a no deal Brexit would be damaging for Scotland.<\/p>\n

It was an informative, insightful discussion.<\/p>\n

My main take-away from the debate was that the growing parliamentary and societal incivility south of the border has been making the people of Scotland question whether the UK was the kind of country they still wanted to live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s adversarial political system with its customary gladiatorial exchanges across red lines on the floor of the chamber, two swords\u2019 distance apart, amid plenty of cheering and jeering, always seems peculiar to the uninitiated. Those of us, a little more familiar with the conventions of the Parliament, can explain the quirks and idiosyncrasies of it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[32,49],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29576,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29573\/revisions\/29576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}