Modern TV is rubbish! Scotland can and should do better

I was watching a couple of TV dramas the other night by Dennis Potter and it occurs to me that if TV ever had a Golden age it is well over.

There are no challenging dramas today that come even close to the brilliance of Potter. It's all reality TV, news programmes (usually pretty biased and leading) or bad cop shows, bad hospital shows and shitty soap operas.

If we had control over our own broadcasting (as Labour and Lib Dems recommended in the Scottish Constitutional Convention for devolution!) we could make programmes here by local authors that reflect our people's reality here in Scotland. I don't want to watch news about mad plans to put a curfew on kids in England, I want to see strong stimulating educational interesting TV dramas, relevant documentaries and news from Scotland and I want an international perspective that nonetheless puts Scotland and Scotland's interests front and centre.

We can do a lot better. The new Scottish licence fee and a proper set of guidelines for the proper TV channels could bring our broadcasting back to the educational innovative standard that at one time the BBC and ITV were famous for.

We can definitely do better, we can't possibly do worse. When talented artistic individuals like the great John Byrne are being refused commissions by BBC Scotland to make distinctive Scottish drama it shows that something is deeply wrong. Going our own way can only make sense when British TV is so absolutely and utterly awful.

LONDON CALLING! CONFUSION NOW REIGNS OVER WHETHER LABOUR WILL SUPPORT 2010 REFERENDUM

London has called and Labour's support for an independence referendum is now looking decidedly dodgy.

Let's be clear about this the British Government DOES NOT support the sovereign right of the Scottish people to choose independence. The proof is here:
www.independence1st.com/comment/not_acceptable.shtml

Up till recently it seemed that the Scottish branches of Labour, Tories and Lib Dems didn't either because all refused to countenance a referendum on independence and yet this is the only point of genuine conflict.

Scottish Labour (if there is such a beast) in the shape of Wendy Alexander seemed to have changed their tune for a brief moment but they have rapidly returned to form with Brown now clearly pulling the strings.

All the parties would supposedly support more powers for the parliament, I say supposedly because the Tories simply cannot be trusted in this area as their last period in Government showed quite clearly.

If all parties support more powers then the SNP can easily accept the Calman commissions recommendations whenever they are published, but as they will still be far short of independence this won't resolve a thing.

We would also then have to rely on Westminster implementing any changes and not fiddling with the powers of the parliament in a detrimental fashion. In fact Labour have already fiddled the electoral system in the Welsh parliament so they can't be trusted in this respect either.

Gordon Brown has already signalled that he wants a number of inconvenient powers removed forom the Scottish Government, an obvious example would be planning rules which allow the Scottish Government to block new nuclear power stations.

The Blair Government ignored elements of the last broad based Scottish Constitutional Convention (this body which included the Liberal Democrats and 'Scottish' Labour recommended broadcasting powers be returned to Scotland but this power was removed at Westminster, also the bill suddenly gained lots of new bits where it was explicitly claimed that Westminster had full power over any future change to the constitution in Scotland even though this violates international law and specifically Scotland's rights to self determination).

Given that episode Westminster can easily ignore their own hand picked cabal of safe unionists whatever froth is recommended (in fact they are so pro-Government they will probably say the status quo is just fine!).

The only way to guarantee as much power as the parliament requires is by voting for independence. Those who oppose that choice don't support the sovereign right of the Scottish people to decide their own destiny and as such don't deserve one vote in Scotland.