Scotland bans all small pleasures

...or will at some point. Read this SNP initiative and weep for the Jocks.

I'm not sure exactly why people who want Scottish independence should also be anti-human, joyless busybodies, but it seems to be the case every time.

I hate the Edinburgh Festival

Well I’ve never actually been to it, so that’s a somewhat absurd claim, but am I the only one whose heart sinks a little every time the Edinburgh Festival comes round to hog every possible spot in the arts and culture media? The more I read the reviews of tiresomely ‘innovative’ Fringe shows and the ‘look-at-me!’ competitive desperation of the stand-up comics, the less is my desire to actually go to the blasted thing. Anyone been? Am I being wildly unfair? Edinburgh itself is nice of course, always worth a visit during the rest of the year.

Damn right we'd be goin on n on n on about it

The Google-conquering post about Why the Scottish Hate the English continues to attract comments. Most are very poor fare indeed but I must draw your attention to this corker from Anonymous, who writes in a Comedy Scots accent:

btw that isnt even the proper reason y we dont like the english

1. if someone scottish wins an important event such as a gold medal at eh olympics or suhin hes british, as soon as he loses hes scottish again.

2. if england win anythin suddenly they are the best in the world and the media go on n on n on about it

3. yeez have yer heads shoved so far up americas ass

4. yeez think ye r superior to every other country

5. everytime the world cup comes around ye hink yer gonna win when ye always seem tae get put out after the group stage

6. yeez hink there is suhin wrong wae scottish money when its clearly legal tender

7. aw yer wee 'chavs' hink theyre ment

theyre is so much more a could say but a canny be arsed


I have to say it’s hard to take issue with any of the specific objections raised by Anonymous Comedy Scotsman. This is by some distance the most coherent and fair dinkum anti-English comment yet. Certainly point 5 is both topical and irrefutable, as our footballers prepare to head out for South Africa this summer.

Now, nobody can accuse me of lacking patriotism, but I’m also reasonably sane and like all true football-lovers I’m always much relieved when England have been eliminated from the World Cup or the Euros. The pattern (and I cannot put it more succinctly than did the Old Batsman: unconvincing progress to the quarter-finals before elimination on penalties to either Portugal or Germany) is inevitable, its torment blunted only by its sheer familiarity. Once Ingerlund’s players have gone - and with them our dim, embarrassed hopes of a scrap and scrape to undeserved glory - it is possible to relax and enjoy what remains of the sporting spectacle.

However, the comment above has lit a jingoistic spark. I hadn’t fully considered the implications of an England World Cup victory. For however much pleasure that unlikely event would bring us Englishmen, the pain for the Scots would be tenfold. We could suffer the insufferable triumphalism, the knighthoods (arise, Sir Wayne), the Trafalgar Square tickertape parades, and even the politicians’ bandwagon jumping, simply by reminding ourselves that on the wrong side of Hadrian’s Wall the Jocks are gnashing their teeth, tearing at their scarlet locks and praying for Armageddon. It is almost too much to hope for. Come on England!

Ancestry is largely a matter of personal choice

Over here, Quiet Reckoning responds thoughtfully and fully to a comment I made in my post about Rabid Scottish Nationalists. Amongst other things, he says:

Look at the numbers: Four and a half million Scots in Scotland, twenty million Scots in America, and twenty five million Scots spread across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a smattering of other former British Colonies. Only ten percent of Scottish people live in Scotland


Which I suppose is arguable, but relies on a pretty generous definition of ‘Scottish’ (far more generous, for example, than the definition of ‘Irish’ which Eire relies on for stuffing its team with mediocre English footballers.)

Genealogy, particularly as it exists for Britons and Americans, is a strange old business. I use the word ‘business’ advisedly, since selling tourists their family trees, tartans etc is a pretty sizeable industry. I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘scam’ because by and large it is literally true that the average American tourist can trace a line back to some Jock or other. But it does depend on a very selective way of looking at things.

I’ve discussed this before on blogs somewhere: let’s call it the 'Multiplying Ancestor Problem'. People who are interested in their genealogy tend to think of their line of descent as being much narrower than is actually the case; they have no notion of just how ‘bushy’ family trees are. Consider the exponential multiplication of great-grandparents as you go back through the generations. You have four grandparents and 8 great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents and so on. This doubling builds things up alarmingly: you only need to go back a couple of hundred years and there are 1,024 of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents pottering about the four corners of the planet. All of them are equal genetic contributors to you (though some are the same person, which is why this growth doesn’t go back forever but instead all human beings share a Most Recent Common Ancestor), but of course when studying genealogy people tend to focus on just the one with the surname they happened to inherit (or, if something interesting like minor royalty can be readily found a few generations back, on that one instead), as if he or she was more ‘significant’ to the 'making of you' than were the others.

Given the sheer volume of ‘direct’ ancestors, it is no wonder that genealogy-sellers can always come up with an interesting/famous/Royal/Scottish person in your family history. They’re not lying: it’s just that every other Tom, Dick and Harry has him in their family history too. All humans are far more complicatedly interconnected than is generally realised (I remember some supremacist plonker on TV claiming that he ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’. Of course it turned out on examination that just a couple of generations back there were all sorts of gypsies and other undesirables in his blood, and indeed, that if we were to expel from Britain everyone except those who ‘only had white Anglo-Saxon ancestors’ the population of these Isles would be reduced to precisely zero.)

I don’t dismiss identity-by-genealogy as complete nonsense. If being historically ‘Scottish’ is important to you and your sense of identity, sure, why not choose it? But it is a choice.

There’s a pertinent example of this in my own family. My paternal uncle and his wife, both English, moved to Edinburgh when my cousin was an infant. My cousin, now in his thirties, therefore has a strong Scottish accent, supports the Scottish rugby team, wore a kilt for his wedding etc. Despite being precisely as ‘English’ as me from an immediate genetic perspective, he feels patriotically Scottish. He wants to be, and is, Scottish. Which is fine. But it has led him deep into the confused web of wishful genealogy. He and I are Nixons, and there was, according to some old historical documents or other, a bunch of notorious Nixons back in the legendary/mythical clan-days (border-raiding cattle-thieves or some such). It has therefore become his life’s work to try and connect himself, via an unbroken ancestral line, with these notorious Nixons and therefore to prove that he is, by genetics as well as upbringing, a bona fide Scot.

He hasn’t managed to do it yet (which doesn’t stop him claiming them of course). But there is no doubt whatsoever that, if he followed any line in his hugely bushy ancestry, he could get to Scotland – perhaps a Campbell or McDonald or both – somehow and soonish. All of us Britons, Aussies and most Yanks could, since if you define it generously enough, we’re all ‘Scottish’. We’re also all English, Norman, Roman and ultimately (and this last applies to literally everyone on the planet, even Norwegians and the Welsh) we’re all ‘African’.

So anyway, going back to Quiet Reckoning: of course it’s his right to choose to identify himself as a particular kind of Jock, to feel pride in that and so on. No problem there at all, it’s a valid option. But, for myself, I can’t see the point in getting angry about any of this genealogical Anglo-Scottish stuff, when the ‘side’ you’re on is such an arbitrary matter.

Rabid Scottish Nationalists

Long-term readers may recall my mentioning that Think of England has a very high google ranking for several variations on the phrase “why the Scottish hate the English”. Like this.
Indeed, this is by far the most common Google referrer to the blog (others include “incident in public shower” (perverts presumably), “noseybonk” and, amusingly, “james cracknell wanker”).

The consequence is that a steady stream of angry Jocks, seeking justification for their anti-sassenachism, find their way to this page. Occasionally one will leave a comment. Most of these I delete because they are eye-wateringly foul-mouthed rants or threats of physical violence or both. It will give you some idea of the general quality when you see the ones I’ve let stand. It’s well worth popping over there if you have a few moments to kill on a Friday, but meanwhile here’s a comment left yesterday by one 'Jacobite':

I am proud to have been born in Highlands of Scotland and have always had highland anscestors, I havent ever had any interest in Wallace after all he was a lowlander that spent most of his life in Europe.I hate the english for what their Royalty ordered in 1746.they werent just happy to have a battle against Jacobites and beat them 4 to 1, but they created genocide all the way back to other side of River Forth.They killed,raped and tortured men women and children many who hadnt anything to do with Jacobite Causeand all in name of King George and his son Duke of Cumberland(Stinking Billy)English Royalty.The aftermath of the battle was biggest shame the so called British army ever had and werent allowed any battle honors for Culloden.I will always hate them for that,then in 1800s we had Highland Clearances again get rid of the Scots of the North to make way for sheep,and the landowners sell their honour for English Royalty gold and a knighthood.and right up untill the 20th century Scottish Culture wasnt allowed to be learnt by our children.Scottish History was banned in Scottish schools , even I myself can remember being told we need to learn about Battle of Hastings and Magna Carta and nothing else.even today Scots Gaelic isnt recognised on British government forms but various asian and welsh, Polish,etc languages are all catered for.Many of the Royalists of England would rather have Scotland staying quiet

This remarkable essay throws up so many interesting questions. What, for example, does it mean to “have always had” Highland ancestors? One imagines a fantastically inbred descendant of some sort of McAdam and Eve. Who does he mean when he says he will “always hate” the English – does his net of loathing catch, for example, offspin bowler Monty Panesar, or is it just the white ones who have “always had” English ancestors? And so on - I can’t possibly cover them all here.

But in more general terms, the following question occurs to me: is there anywhere in this world a more striking example of wilful self-delusion than the Scottish nationalist idea that the English are oppressing them?

The underlying narrative is the notion that the English are somehow imprisoning them, and that if we’d just cut the chains of bondage the Scots would at last have their rightful FREEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMM to go forth and sing and dance and play bagpipes in the heather.

So powerful is this Mel Gibson-induced trance that it can survive even in the following circumstances:
- The Scots can make their own laws but the English can’t
- The British Prime Minister was elected to Parliament by a Scottish constituency, and not given any electoral mandate at all to be PM
- For the last billion years, the Chancellor has been a Scot
- Scotland regularly sends down a bunch of socialist MPs to Parliament, by whose policies their welfare-bloated country is funded by the taxpayers of, mainly, south-east England

I expect Scottish nationalism was fun when independence was a long way off, and when the Scots felt that the English were opposed to it. In fact, the above circumstances plus incessant SNP whining means that the English no longer really give two hoots about keeping the Jocks in the Union, and, by and large, we’d be quite happy to let them go off on their own. At least we’d have no more Gordon Brown, and no more Jacobite guilt trips about what our Royalty ordered in 1746.

And the final irony of independence would be that without the English to fund them, the Scots could no longer afford to be socialist: they’d have to become radically, tigerishly Thatcherite to compete on the global stage. Yes, I think that, on the whole, rabid Scottish nationalists who spend their time googling why they hate us, are amongst the most braindead, unlikeable jerks one could hope to find. Let them have their way, I’d vote for them.