An island archipelago if you will?
Scottish independence - as an Englishman, am I "wrong" not to give a crap?
- Thread starter ca-nami
- Start date
An island archipelago if you will?
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
The positive case for the union is overwhelming. I have asked my MSP five times what the cost of a Scottish HMRC would be. She doesn't know (or is frightened to say).
The elements of government that are at present provided by the UK, but would need to be funded by Scotland alone are frightening.
Salmond is either telling outright lies, or is mentally ill. He has been told by all the major parties that there will be no currency union, yet persists in the lie that there will be. He has been told that there is no automatic membership of the EU, by the EU president, yet insists that there will be. As to other aspects of EU membership, such as Schengen, which is automatic for new entrants, silence.
The 'White Paper' is 600 pages of uncosted aspirational bullshit.
Anyone who feels that Scotland would benefit from independence needs a reality check. Vote 'NO' and stop the 'Little Scotlanders' in their tracks. From their utterances, a lot of the 'Yes' voters are xenophobic racists.
Edited to add:
I am not applying the term 'xenophobic racists' to all of the 'Yes' supporters. Just the significant minority that are.
Last edited:
weltweit
Well-Known Member
My mother was Scottish so I have Scottish relatives but I find it hard to keep in touch because, despite all the arguments that we are just one country, Scotland, especially the north, is a long way away. There is a sort of gap between England and Scotland just north of Newcastle. Anyhow I don't often get up there, from the "ease of access" point of view they may as well be in mid France.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
It can't be far off the same distance from London to Cornwall as it is from London to Scotland.
Looking at Google maps, 306 miles from London to Penzance, 307 to Carlisle.
Looking at Google maps, 306 miles from London to Penzance, 307 to Carlisle.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
An error of only 100% plus there. Well done.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
The island of Great Britain, containing England, Scotland and Wales is one island. Perhaps you know of the different name for the island. But I am not referring to the British Isles, which is indeed an archipelago.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
tbh what i had in my mind when i talked of conquests finishing in the island of great britain some hundreds of years ago wasn't the angles or the saxons or the jutes or the picts or offa or even the danes or the normans. i wasn't thinking of the battle of bannockburn or llewellyn or the battle of pinkie. i was thinking of the last great rebellion in this island, which would be, i suppose, the '45 which effectively ended at culloden nearly 300 years ago. at that point the island was known as great britain. and even if it wasn't we don't go about describing places by their former names in everyday speech, e.g. york as the city formerly known as eboracum. or most people don't, you might do. as for your ps about great britain not existing millennia ago, the island which was formerly nameless and is now known as great britain has indeed been about for millennia - even if you're one of those loons who believe - with bishop ussher - that the world was created in 4004BC it's been about for millennia.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
An old argument. Great Britain and Northern Ireland, IIRC is the correct term for the nation as a whole, ergo, Great Britain would indeed describe the 'mainland' part.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
formally the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland
formerly, well, a lot of other things
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Funnily enough, I was talking about Culloden with my grandson the other day. What brought it to mind was that I have a farthing, dated 1746, which could have been in someone's pocket during the battle. (Yes, yes, unlikely.
The lad will remember the date of the battle though, because of the farthing.) Culloden was not a battle between the Scots and the English. The following clans fought for Cumberland.
Clan Campbell
Clan Cathcart
Clan Colville
Clan Cunningham
Clan Grant of Freuchie
Clan Gunn
Clan Kerr
Clan MacKay
Clan Munro
Clan Ross
Clan Semphill
Clan Sinclair
Clan Sutherland
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Hell yes. Makes me laugh a bit when Scots bang on about their 'Scottish' ancestry. The Scots came from Ireland.
bubblesmcgrath
Well-Known Member
Glad you cleared up exactly which century you were talking about....pity you called me an ignorant twat for not realising it was three hundred years you meant and not longer ... seeing as you were talking about conquests hundreds of years ago.....
bubblesmcgrath
Well-Known Member
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
And in what way does that mean they do not have Scottish ancestry?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
if you had engaged brain you might have thought conquests in gb ended relatively recent you daft twatGlad you cleared up exactly which century you were talking about....pity you called me an ignorant twat for not realising it was three hundred years you meant and not longer ... seeing as you were talking about conquests hundreds of years ago.....
Has Northumbria fallen into the sea then? Fuck me, they kept that quiet
bubblesmcgrath
Well-Known Member
"Conquest" has a different meaning to " rebellion". You reference the battle of Culloden as the last conquest in GB. Yet it was a rebellion not a conquest in the sense you referred to in your earlier posts.
Frankie Jack
Not a bloke..
So Sass and bubbles are saying there wasn't a single human in the whole of Scotland, as was, until some came over the sea from Ireland. Yeah right.
bubblesmcgrath
Well-Known Member
No...read Sass post again.
The Picts inhabited Scotland before the Scots arrived from Ireland.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Well. When are we talking about? The Scots of Dalriada were Irish invaders. To save a lot of typing:
In the Early Middle Ages, Scotland had several ethnic or cultural groups labelled as such in contemporary sources, namely the Picts, the Gaels, the Britons, with the Angles settling in the southeast of the country. Culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Most of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least initially, the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts.[21] Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in south-eastern Scotland in the region between the Firth of Forth to the north and the River Tweed to the south. They also occupied the south-west of Scotland up to and including the Plain of Kyle and their language, Old English, was the earliest form of the language which eventually became known as Scots. Later the Norse arrived in the north and west in quite significant numbers, recently discovered to have left about thirty percent of men in the Outer Hebrides with a distinct, Norse marker in their DNA[citation needed].
Use of the Gaelic language spread throughout nearly the whole of Scotland by the 9th century,[22] reaching a peak in the 11th to 13th centuries, but was never the language of the south-east of the country.[22]
After the division of Northumbria between Scotland and England by King Edgar (or after the later Battle of Carham; it is uncertain, but most medieval historians now accept the earlier 'gift' by Edgar) the Scottish kingdom encompassed a great number of English people, with larger numbers quite possibly arriving after the Norman invasion of England (Contemporary populations cannot be estimated so we cannot tell which population thenceforth formed the majority). South-east of the Firth of Forth then in Lothian and the Borders (OE: Loðene), a northern variety of Old English, also known as Early Scots, was spoken.
The people of Scotland are a very ethnically diverse group.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
None of that matters you prat, once those peoples became Scottish anyone coming after can then legitimately claim Scottish heritage.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
They did indeed. IIRC St Columba met the Pictish king.
The Picts were a tribal confederation of Late Iron Age and Early Medieval Celtic people living in ancient eastern and northern Scotland.[1] The place where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from the geographical distribution of brochs, Brythonic place name elements, and Pictish stones. Picts are attested to in written records from before the Roman conquest of Britain to the 10th century, when they are thought to have merged with the Gaels. They lived to the north of the rivers Forth and Clyde, and spoke the now-extinct Pictish language, which is thought to have been related to the Brythonic languages spoken by the Britons who lived to the south of them. Picts are assumed to have been the descendants of the Caledonii and other tribes that were mentioned by Roman historians or on the world map of Ptolemy. Pictland, also called Pictavia by some sources, gradually merged with the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata to form the Kingdom of Alba (Scotland). Alba then expanded, absorbing the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde and Bernician Lothian, and by the 11th century the Pictish identity had been subsumed into the "Scots" amalgamation of peoples.
Pictish society was typical of many Iron Age societies in northern Europe, having "wide connections and parallels" with neighbouring groups.[2] Archaeology gives some impression of the society of the Picts. While very little in the way of Pictish writing has survived, Pictish history since the late 6th century is known from a variety of sources, including Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, saints' lives such as that of Columba by Adomnán, and various Irish annals.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
The language of Scotland is also diverse. There may well be an argument for a second non-English TV channel for Scotland, the number of Polish Speakers in Scotland according to the 2011 census, is on par with Gaelic speakers numerically, and Urdu speakers are not far behind. Despite this, BBC Alba, with a budget of £17m consumes 30% of BBC Scotland's budget. Rather a lot for circa 1% of the population. (Roughly 2% of the population stated that they had some ability in Gaelic, that would include me and Mrs Sas. I can read Gaelic fluently, but don't understand all that I am reading. I would not in any way regard myself as a fluent speaker.)
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
BBC Scotland's budget is about £60 million is it?
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I find it a bit confusing in that Wales has an active welsh speaking population yet does not seem to want independence, while Scotland has very few gaelic speakers and does.
I know the issues are unrelated, but still, there is a lot of national Welsh pride in their language.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Gaelic totters along. It will not die out, there are many enthusiasts, and of course it is spoken prolifically in the Islands. I lived on Harris for eight years, 5-13. When we first arrived, a lot of the pre-school children didn't speak English. There was no TV at that time; it didn't arrive until I was 12; and in a lot of households the wireless was only on for the news. (Lot of Wee Frees, a joyless sect.) A lot of the older people didn't speak English at all, or had as much English as I had Gaelic. It was quite funny, when a group of us were getting a bollocking from an adult, over some idiocy or other, it was delivered, first in Gaelic, then for my 'benefit', in English.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I met a Scot recently down here in England, they had recently retired from the army. They said joining the army, and their ensuing career, had been the best thing they ever did. What do you think Sass about the likely changes there will be to the army, and the lives people used to make in it, if independence comes about?Gaelic totters along. It will not die out, there are many enthusiasts, and of course it is spoken prolifically in the Islands. I lived on Harris for eight years, 5-13. When we first arrived, a lot of the pre-school children didn't speak English. There was no TV at that time; it didn't arrive until I was 12; and in a lot of households the wireless was only on for the news. (Lot of Wee Frees, a joyless sect.) A lot of the older people didn't speak English at all, or had as much English as I had Gaelic. It was quite funny, when a group of us were getting a bollocking from an adult, over some idiocy or other, it was delivered, first in Gaelic, then for my 'benefit', in English.
steeplejack
trapped lbw for a duck
what country in history has not "benefitted from independence", really? what makes Scotland so uniquely incapable that it cannot come up with and fund its own instituions of government?
I think the un-named Tory minister torpedoed Osborne and Beaker's ludicrous line that there will be no currency union. There will be. Why? business wants it and, from this government, what business wants, it gets.
As already discussed no one really knows what will happen with the EU and EU entry as it is uncharted territory. The idea that energy rich Scotland will be kept out because it refuses to put up a guarded border with England, or is reluctant to join Schengen, is laughable. The EU will want Scotland in and contributing.
I'd also like to see some evidence of the "xenophobic racism" of yes campaigners, please. That is a pretty serious charge. Quartz boldly tried a parallel tack a few pages back and failed miserably to make the case. I am sure you will do better.
(as for the weird sub-Spearhead ramblings about Picts and the "real Scots", who honestly gives a fuck? It is the 21st century and we are a mongrel nation like pretty much everywhere else on earth- and are all the better for it.)
Similar threads
