"Our government must withdraw all funding and support for the R&A in its schemes to deliver golf to young people."

tells the world that a significant part of it remains backward and ridiculous. We permit Muirfield to be Scotland for a week or so and thus we tell the world that we treat women like second-class citizens.

The Observer's Kevin McKenna files what figures to be the first of many columns denouncing the Honourable Company Of Edinburgh Golfers and the R&A over their discriminatory membership policies, writing that the Open at Muirfield "tells the world that a significant part of it remains backward and ridiculous."

This was more interesting:

Our government must withdraw all funding and support for the R&A in its schemes to deliver golf to young people. Nor should government ministers, who are supposed to represent us all, be sharing platforms in the run-up to the Ryder Cup next year with officials who see nothing wrong with awarding golf tournaments and all the prestige that goes with them to clubs that refuse to treat women as equals.

Muirfield shames this country. Equally shameful, though, is how successive liberal administrations in post-devolution Scotland turn a blind eye.