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| Old Map of Europe with far fewer countries |
The UN
states – ‘peoples have the right to self-determination. There is no reason for
a majority in a country to subjugate an unwilling minority. ‘The UN had 51
seats in 1945 and in 2017 now has 193. Change has been towards the smaller nation states.
The Kurds were divided up by Britain and France – as spoils of the Ottoman empire and the Provinces after WW1. This year both
the Kurds and Catalonians were recently voting for their independence. Shockingly
the Spanish government used brute force to try to prevent the Catalan vote. The
BBC was not reporting on this either. The difference between a "made-up country" and an "authentic nation state" is that the real nation is like a centuries old tree with deep roots and many branches.
A century ago a map of Europe in 1914 before WW1, there were far fewer countries in Europe – when three huge empires were shrunk in size - Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Germany had then included parts of Poland, France, Denmark, Belgium and Lithuania.
Dutch tycoon
Freddy Heineken in 1990 wrote of a ‘Eurotopia’ of small countries of between
10m and 5m.
In todays
Internet world of fast media and connections and improved communications (radio,
tv) and fast travel – and we don’t need
centralized control anymore.
Do we need empires anymore? The direction of travel today is towards the smaller nation states in a bigger trading block and away from `empire building.
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| Europe today with far more nation states |
Excellent letter in the National - saying the
difference in Catalonia is that they have control of their media, a truly
devolved region unlike Scotland. Compared to the problem here in the '2014
Scottish Referendum' - when Westminster controlled all the media, all th print press here and all the
unionist parties too. What hope had we? I remember my son saying, how could we
have self determination without any media? I met a Norwegian film maker in
Edinburgh, and I was explaining to him that Scotland, unlike Norway, has no oil
fund. He asked where did the money go - he may well ask!? I told him Shetland
has an oil fund though...
Is 'take
back control' really about - take back control to Westminster from the devolved governments
