London's UK-based media consistently ignores Scotland

“Is there anybody else? Are there any other callers out there?” The silence was ominous.

“ OK, no callers just yet. Something has gone a bit bonkers here.”

Anand was suddenly faced with filling air time without any contributors. She had to fill and fill and fill, not even knowing if her voice was even getting out. “I hope you can still hear me,” she said as she rattled through what politicians had been saying on Any Questions the night before.

“Obviously all of you listeners to this programme know I’m buying time because something is not working right now,” she continued. “Waiting for guidance on whether I will get any more of your calls in.”

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She rattled through a few texts and then repeated the phone number in the hope that someone might be able to get through. You could hear the edge in her voice, but she filled admirably until caller Russ suddenly appeared. “You’ve been having technical problems, I think,” he said.

“Russ, I think every so often they do this to test if my blood pressure is going to blast through the top of my cranium. And we’re getting close, I’ll tell you that much. Russ, thank God you’re there.”

The main topic of discussion for the rest of the programme was the UK’s “first-past-the-post” electoral system. Most people were looking for it to change. There was talk of the EU voting system, as well as the Dutch, Italian and New Zealand systems of proportional representation.

The fact that PR operates in Scotland and in Northern Ireland for Holyrood and Stormont respectively didn’t get a mention, though. So often, the political conversation in the UK forgets that Westminster isn’t the only place politics happens here.

Members of the Tartan Army - before the inevitable defeats (Image: free)

Monday morning on Good Morning Scotland on Radio Scotland was all gloom after Scotland’s latest footballing disaster the night before.

Reporter Phil Goodlad was in Stuttgart talking to members of the Tartan Army and the mood was inevitably downbeat. All the more so, Goodlad suggested, because Scotland’s opponents Hungary were there for the taking on Sunday night.

Were they, though? Even if they were, watching the game Scotland didn’t look anywhere near good enough to take advantage. (I wasn’t even convinced the penalty claim near the end was valid.) There’s always a danger that journalists turn into fans with typewriters on such occasions.

To be fair to Goodlad, he admitted as much. “Do we as fans need to change our attitude?” he asked at one point. “The attitude of, ‘We’re brilliant supporters, we back the team no matter what.’ It almost feels like the party comes before the football,” he concluded.

He seemed to be asking the Tartan Army to be more like England fans demanding their team wins all the time. “We don’t really have that winning mentality,” one of the fans he spoke to concurred.

Except, of course, England doesn't win all the time. (Let’s see how far they get in this competition). Which suggests that the English fans’ desires have little or no bearing on how well or ill the team does.

These circular conversations are just a marker of the what ifs of life as a Scotland fan. Of most football fans, let’s be honest. Football, to go all Reverend I M Jolly on you, is a bit like life itself, isn’t it? Joy, when it comes, is fleeting. But, mostly, our existence is a 1-0 defeat that happens again and again and again. Until the final whistle.

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Radio does go on outwith elections and the Euros, of course. On Monday night on Radio 3’s The Essay folklorist and singer Steve Byrne returned to his native Arbroath to talk about the local songs written by Mabel Skelton who died in 1988.

Byrne wanted to take the songs back to where they came from. “In some ways it might sound a bit nostalgia-bound or nativist perhaps,” he admitted, “but I would really rail against that because I think that’s an old-fashioned way in itself of looking at this, because the power of being able to help people understand the value of local ways of life and culture and what’s called ‘local distinctiveness’ … is something we think gives people a sense of place and identity and confidence in quite a disarming way.

“We’re not standing up waving flags. We’re saying, ‘This is my wee story. This is my wee song from my wee bit of where I come from.”

Everything - even football and folk songs - is political in its own way.

Listen Out For:

Sunday Feature - Cinema City, Radio 3, Sunday, 7.45pm

This mini documentary reflects on the fact that Glasgow was once home to more cinemas per person than any other place in the UK. Alistair Fraser explores what happened to some of them.