Gloating double standards over schadenfreude

When critics attempt to portray the reality of Alex Salmond's 'arc of prosperity' soundbite, a common Nationalist response is to raise accusations of schadenfreude in relation to the fortunes of the arc country concerned. However, this has perhaps been slightly muted this week in view of the news concerning Ireland's debt crisis, although there are still jibes about 'vultures', the UK exploiting the situation by assisting in the bail-out etc, and one correspondent to the Scotsman even had the chutzpah to state that "the Irish economy is fundamentally in better shape than that of Britain", with the usual mention of Norway as a comparator, but that country's exceptionalism and the letter writer's somewhat optimistic perspective on Ireland are pointed out in responses published this morning.

On the other hand, many Nationalist blogs and websites almost seem to regard critiquing the UK as their raison d'être. And indeed there is a lot to be critical about, but it's surely grossly hypocritical to accuse others of gloating in relation to merely stating the facts about other nations - are we just expected to meekly accept the 'arc of prosperity' soundbite and leave it at that?

As per my post a few days ago, I had a letter published in Scotsman taking SNP Holyrood list candidate Alex Orr to task for this, and said: "...it's a bit rich of Mr Orr to denigrate others for "talking down" and "knocking" Scotland and other nations when he often does the same in relation to the UK, an economic entity which the Scottish people have generally been content to be part of."

In response Mr Orr said: "I am not denigrating the UK as Mr Winton claims..."

However, if the following sarcasm in relation to economic performance and various other quotes doesn't amount to "talking down" or "knocking" the UK (and Belgium, come to that, which is quite a small nation) then what precisely does?: "To be fair, the UK does eventually feature in 20th place, immediately after mighty Belgium."

Of course, as pointed out in last week's post, I sent a response to the Scotsman pointing this out and that Mr Orr had ignored my argument about the unrepresentative nature of some successful small nations - like the glorified oil well that is Qatar - but this wasn't published.

However, the reason for raising this again is that since then the Scotsman has published yet another letter from Mr Orr along the same lines as his previous correspondence; indeed this is his fourth such letter published by the newspaper in around six weeks, not to mention almost verbatim versions of the same missives in places like the Herald and Telegraph, and goodness knows where else.

However, it will be interesting to read EU and euro enthusiast Mr Orr's latest offering, bearing in mind that only last week he said: "...despite the impact of the recession, small nations such as Iceland, Ireland and Norway are still performing economically better than the UK."

Indeed, but however selective the statistics employed to demonstrate that, unfortunately this week's news rather puts things in perspective.

But since the Scotsman didn't publish my original response to Mr Orr I didn't bother responding to his letter from last week, but today the newspaper has published my letter on the 'tartan tax'/SVR imbroglio, but because this is essentially a rehash of Monday's post there seems little point in repeating it on here.