NO ONE can doubt the great strides Scotland has made in becoming one of the most progressive and enlightened wee countries in the world. If it were up to me I’d have it emblazoned on the sides of the walls of all our major airports so that no visitor is left unaware of just how equal and diverse we are. “Welcome to Scotland… the most progressive and enlightened wee country in the world”. This slogan is so long that, with judicious deployment of images and emblems, it would run all the way down the Arrivals corridor until passport control and the outstretched arms of your waiting loved ones.

In my choice of pictures I’d mix the maverick and quirky with the straightforward and traditional. The snow-covered hilltops; the hairy Highland coos and the usual moody shots of clifftop castles would all be there, of course. Foreign punters simply can’t get enough of these. But I’d also include pictures of baby boxes and that one of the two big strapping, bare-chested Scots doing handstands and yoga in a misty Highland Glen. And there would have to be something depicting Scotland’s new minimum pricing of alcohol laws: a group of surly youths perhaps turning out the contents of their pockets and realising they now don’t have enough money to purchase that cheeky half bottle of vodka. Behind them I’d have a Big Brother type figure looming out of the gloom, watching over them all the time. This would be the Named Person, the ever-present sentinel for our young people. And running the whole length of the tapestry would be a lovely, bright big rainbow to leave no-one in any doubt whatsoever that Scotland is the LGBTI and non-binary capital of the world.

And, of course, there would be nice, happy pictures of Celtic and Rangers supporters, arm-in-arm going to the match together and singing songs like Do-Re-Mi and We’ll Meet Again. Oh wait, that won’t be possible now. It will be back to the fighting and singing songs about Ireland because the troglodytes wrecked our enlightened Offensive Behaviour at Football legislation, also known as the Say No to Beastliness and Unpleasantness Bill.

The problem is that very few ordinary Scots appreciate the gargantuan efforts that politicians are making on their behalf; ungrateful curmudgeons that they are. That’s the thing with ordinary, everyday Scots; they’re always first with the negative vibes and greet everything that’s being done on their behalf with cynicism. There you are straining every sinew to make Scotland a beacon of enlightenment and there they are whinging about dying young; visiting foodbanks; not being able to feed the weans; getting locked out of universities. No matter how often you try to tell them that you’ll get round to all of that in a minute they never grasp the importance of what you are currently trying to do. Don’t they know there are diversity awards up for grabs?

The Scottish Government, of course, is trying to build a legacy here; one which possesses at its core a ring-fenced network of protections to ensure that no minority group suffers discrimination and that we are all healthy and safe. In doing this, though, they have marginalised Scots who were already disadvantaged. The Named Person scheme was a ridiculous project that could only have been dreamt up by an out-of-touch middle class politician who had been attending too many academic seminars on human behaviour. It was always going to be targeted at poor people living chaotic lives while dealing with the effects of poverty. And perhaps, too, they were deemed incapable of meeting those sweet levels of caring parenthood set by some indolent and privileged politician.

The proposed anti-smacking legislation falls into the same category and it’s an admission of failure too. The same neighbourhoods in Glasgow that were among the poorest in Britain 150 years ago are still the poorest. These people are still dying 20 years earlier than the average and our top universities, with their obscenely over-paid principals, are still locking them out of their premises because a subjective value-judgment has been made about them. But, hey, let’s not concern ourselves with that – let’s penalise them for smacking their children.

Let’s not get too downhearted either at that new Oxfam report that says the UK’s most affluent 1% possess more than the bottom 50% put together. Or those surveys measuring social mobility which tell us what we have always known: that in Scotland and the UK you don’t get ahead by your own ability, or honesty or willingness to work but by the school and university you attended and the neighbourhood in which you were born. And let’s not look too closely either at our judiciary who are almost all products of this social gerrymandering, or the secret societies and rituals which determine your rank in the police. We haven’t been able to do much about that but what we can do is stop you getting drunk on cheap swally. In some neighbourhoods in Scotland getting howling on cheap swally is the only relief to be had from the absence of any action in alleviating their poverty or addressing the inequality that leads to it.

The Offensive Behaviour at Football legislation which is now thankfully in its death throes was just another way in which well-meaning, liberal Scotland was trying to salve its conscience. They have failed to do anything about addressing child poverty, wage poverty and fuel poverty in those neighbourhoods disfigured by these for more than a century but perhaps we can make them all be nice to each other. The truth here is that the SNP Government cares not a jot about sectarianism in Scotland. They have never understood sectarianism or its causes except that it’s got something to do with religion. They have never witnessed the patterns of deprivation and social exclusion which feed tribalism and the swollen loyalties that come with it. How could they? They are utterly disconnected to those communities where these passions and abnormal drinking and chaotic families are the norm.

And in the absence of anything radical to address the challenges these people face they penalise them by taxing their booze; their tribal loyalties; their snottery habits … before threatening to take their children away from them. It’s far easier than developing a real and sustainable programme for growth (to borrow their pet phrase) in these communities.