Arrival in Scotland

Well we arrived in Edinburgh, Scotland yesterday. The program set up a policy study visit for us at the Scottish Parliament. The train ride was extremely beautiful because we traveled directly north from London and got to see a lot of the English countryside. I have yet to see any towns in the North and we passed right through Newcastle (Northern-most town in England). Scotland is a much different place than London. I have only been here a day and I have already talked to some locals that are extremely nice. In London, most people are too busy getting to work or somewhere specific to talk to you. Anyway, when we arrived a bunch of us set off on a journey to see the sights. The first area we were interested in seeing was the world famous Edinburgh Castle.

When we finally found it, I could hardly breathe. The castle sits a top an enormous hill in the center of the city. It was built around 3,000 years ago. The castle was used to defend the Scottish from invading countries. On top of the hill where the castle lies, you get a 360 degree view of the city. The Atlantic ocean is in the distance and it excites because I live on the east coast in NH and I always look out and wonder what's beyond the horizon line... Well I certainly got my answer. In addition, to viewing the castle, we went out to a local pub and watched a football game (Barcelona vs. Chelsea).

Here I was able to talk to a local named Graham. I really had a great discussion with him about Scottish identity and culture. Since I have been working in the British Parliament and have talked mainly to the British about Scotland, I was shocked to hear a lot of things he had to say. The British generally see themselves as the caretakers of the Scottish because so much of their tax dollars go towards funding the welfare state there. I had also heard that since Scotland is part of the UK, they don't have much of an identity towards Scotland. This just shows you not to believe everything you hear because it couldn't have been more of a false statement. Graham told me that the Scottish take great pride in their identity (bagpipers, William Wallace, Rugby, etc...) and have a huge amount of respect for their country. I also had a chance to talk to him about how they as Europeans view the United States. He said the general opinion is that Americans are ignorant and don't care a lot about the rest of the world. Once again, I was happy to try to change his mind by being kind and engaging in conversation. He was quite surprised by the end of our talk that I knew so much about Europe and the rest of the world. He said that he was surprised that someone of 21 could have a conversation of such a political nature (but little did he know, that's my specialty!). This is one reason I am on this trip... to get more of a feel for how the rest of the world works.

Today we had a series of lectures from the Head of the Scottish Law Society, a Scottish Member of Parliament, and a right-wing Media Man. That gave me a good feel for how the Scottish Political System works. The Scottish Parliament was created out of the Scottish Act of 1998 passed in the Westminster Parliament (where I work). This is generally referred to as devolution. In this act, Great Britain created the Scottish Parliament and devolved specific powers to them in order to allow for more independence in decision making matters. However, Great Britain kept all of the important powers (taxation, defense, etc...) and left the Scottish Parliament to argue over remedial matters such as the tail docking of working dogs (what they were arguing about when we viewed the chamber). It was useful to be able to juxtapose Westminster with Holyrood. This really helped me to understand Scotland's relationship to the UK political system.

The right wing man who runs the largest paper in Scotland, The Scotsman, was hilarious. He believes the European Union is enslaving many countries and forcing them to adopt many economic measures that are largely incompatible with their economic capacity. For example, Scotland has the same tax rates as Britain; a country constantly out performing the economies of Scotland and Wales. He also believes that Scotland's economy has some serious problems and that they need to be addressed ASAP before the lifestyle of every Scot is increasingly affected.

There is much more to see in the next 4 days. I could not be more excited.
-Signing off!