Independence (no politics involved, honest!)

I promise you this isn't a political rant!

I've been enjoying watching the reaction of the TV, twitter and press people to Scotland's 2014 independence referendum. I don't mean the people at the Scottish end of things but the big beasts from London. (Although I think the TV station in Scotland that's got a handle on the issues is STV and I never thought I'd say that in my lifetime.)

At first, it was good fun watching Jeremy Paxman on BBC2 and Krishnan Guru-Murthy on C4 News staring mystified at Alex Salmond. They had no idea what to make of the referendum at all. But now the Channel 5 and Sky people are also struggling to get their heads round what's going on in Scotland. The only thing that stops Politics Now having a laugh at Scotland's expense on BBC2 is that Andrew Neil looks as if he'll headbutt the first person that tries. As for BBC 1's Question Time from Falkirk last Thursday, what an embarrassment that was - that panel was picked by a London editor and it showed. And frankly, the Have I Got News people need a damn good shake after last Friday's show. Message to HIGNFY's director: a bit of respect if you don't mind - we pay the licence fee too.

The twittersphere has, sadly, fallen into the hands of trolls who seem to have little to do but insult Scotland all day long. Log in and search under @indyref for oft-repeated stories about how England is being bled dry by Scots living on benefits, drinking Buckie and eating deep-friend Mars bars; how the Spanish PM will 'block' Scottish entry into the EU - as if he could - and no mention that Rajoy said that as a message for his own revolting Catalans; and how the Welsh first minister says we can't keep the pound - well, he's Labour - he would say that. Whether you plan to vote yes or no in the referendum, how do you feel about being roundly insulted by the likes of Katie Hopkins, whose sole achievement seems to be she was sacked by SirAlan on the Apprentice. 

London-based newspapers and magazines are no better.The Guardian is even more anti-Scottish than the Telegraph - and that's saying a lot - with its jokey wee articles about Scotland lowering its corporation tax so much after independence that the whole of the north of England will implode. New Statesman has sort of tackled the independence issue: this week there's an editorial (no prizes for guessing which side NS comes down on) and the front page cover has a wee tiny drawing bottom right hand side that I think might be an actor from Braveheart.

But the referendum is happening outside London, init? And although we claim we live in a union, what happens in Scotland isn't likely to affect what happens in the south east.

But how about this? The ignorance of the media people is not limited to events in Scotland. In terms of news, we are very badly served by TV, radio and newspapers which never seem to tell us anything about what's happening in the UK outside the south-east of England. I exempt from that the BBC's news website, where you can at least get a bit of news from such far-flung places as Northern Ireland, although you have to remember a lot of the BBC's news comes from the police and court reports, so you might get a fairly biased view of what's going on. As for Europe, well, forget that. If it isn't a story about the EU banning curved cucumbers and encouraging the populations of Romania and Bulgaria to emigrate to the UK, the press, TV and radio won't give it a mention at all. The only place for European news that most of us in Scotland have found is Eorpa - in Gaelic, with subtitles.

But if it's news of the USA you want, you'll find plenty of that. Which is a pity, really, since the US is just a holiday resort for most of us. Our closest neighbours and trading partners are in Europe and the far east. Not that you could tell from the UK media.

And it's worth remembering that, whatever the result of the referendum, we'll all still be living on the same island and we'll all be trading as well as living together. And the world is bigger than London. It would be great if our media could remember that too.