No, you’re right Douglas, the fall of the Iron Curtain and Tito’s death were not what I had in mind.

It just bugs me to see so much intellectual talent and energy wasted on such crap. People often need, particularly young people, a rallying cry to stir the soul and lift the spirit, but if this sort of stuff gets people angry and passionate, more fool them.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/scotland/story/0,,1937975,00.html

but oddly less in favour of voting for the SNP (32%) – now the SNP are in power but only 49% in favour of ful independence.

The examples you give are all of subsumed nation states, Catalonia, Scotland, probably the Welsh too. They may well have the characteristics you refer to, although I can’t say I’d noticed much of it up here.

But there are nation states that have in recent memory become independent, even within Europe. Eire, Norway and the split of Czechoslovakia come to mind. I do not think your comments could be fairly applied to them.

I, sort of, agree with Shuggy that identity is not a zero sum game, but my identifiers are probably nearer those of Gus Abrahams’, in as much as I see myself as Scottish and European rather than British. Which is obviously not what Shuggy was getting at at all!

In any event, the dark horse in the race is people who see themselves as citizens, Planet Earth. And that, I would suggest is likely to be a growing trend.

Gosh who appointed Shuggy as spokesman of the Scots?

True it’s a minority in favour of independence but it’s a substantial minority. Denying their existence doesn’t make them go away.

Typical Labour, trying to rewrite reality.

The reality Shuggy is I just don’t feel “British” and I know few people of my generation who do. Sorry if this offends you somehow, I just feel Scottish and European.

What’s wrong with that?

“I think the word is panic. Last week the prime minister, chancellor of the exchequer, home secretary, defence secretary, trade secretary and Scots ministerial expatriates galore travelled in a posse north to a Labour conference in Oban, like a bunch of Spanish hidalgos racing back from the fleshpots of Madrid to quell a revolt in their home province.
Their objective was to suppress one man, Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National party. An opinion poll had shown support for Salmond’s crusade, an independent Scotland, rising to 52% of the electorate. Those regarding themselves as Scottish had risen from half to three-quarters in 25 years, while those saying “British” had halved to just 20%.”

Im not sure why you find this fact so threatening.

The point I was trying to make is that people have multiple identities – European, Yorkshireman, Gael, Anglo-Irish, Aberdonian etc and these are shifting. Amonmgst these shifts is increasing awareness of national identity amongst the Welsh, Scots, and English – and a result ‘Britishness’ seems an artificial construct.

The nationalists won an election against a backdrop of electoral farce, all the evidence is they would have won more seats if it hadn’t been for Dougie Alexanders polling nightmare.

I’m sure your right and Brown will have few worries about Scotland at a Westminister election – precisely the sort of smug self-satisfied attitude that just meane they lost power for the first time in 50 years.

And the problems for nationalists such as yourself are too numerous to mention, so I’ll restrict myself to two of them:

1) I think most people listening to Gordon going on about Britain think the boy doth protest too much. Nevertheless, people like yourselves always assume that identities are a zero-sum game; one can only feel ‘more Scottish’ at the expense of being British and vice versa. For some reason people with your simple-minded mentality dominate what passes for a debate in Scotland. It’s quite sad.

2) The nationalists – not even able to get a majority in Holyrood – do less well in Westminster elections. So why is there any particular reason for him to worry about Scotland? It would be refreshing if just once some nationalist would concede that they don’t speak for Scotland because all the available evidence suggests Scots don’t want independence.

Both were chosen to take part in the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (now known as the British-American Project) which was described by the journalist John Pilger writing in New Statesman back in 2003 as “a masonry of chosen politicians and journalists conceived by the far-right oil baron J. Howard Pew and launched by Ronald Reagan and Rupert Murdoch”.

Wow, I didn’t know that. Interesting. So not only are Douglas and Wendy amongst the ugliest looking Scottish siblings — and there is fuck of a lot of competition for that title — but they’re hideously ugly on the inside too.

As regards the title, living in England — although, thankfully I’m taking a well earned break away from the place and going back up to Glasgow for a week — I realised just how Scottish I am and yeah how little I care much about Britishness.

It’s not overnight.

I think the ’substantive grounds’ are about looking forward, not short term policy – though arguably we wuld be paying for nuclear power and Trident for a very long time.

Of course the non-Scottish people share the simple response against neo-conservatism etc, but as the policy merge now seems complete (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2532459.ece) we maybe have an opportunity to build a better society than Tebbit envisaged.

I am really not getting it. If you are saying that the Scots are only now taking exception to being run by a metropolitan elite with odd and backwards views about warfare and Trident and neo-conservatism, are these not issues that also exercise a lot of the non Scottish folk that write and comment here too? Are we going to throw the dummy out of the pram just because we can?

And why now? Is it because we’ve seen devolution and we quite like it and want more?

Personally, I think an amicable divorce between Scotland and the rest of the UK is well overdue, but I’d like it to be on more substantive grounds than those you have given. Constitutional change of this magnitude should not be based on short term policy issues.

I dont see nationalism or republicanism or cultural revival as being a step back from the world or universal values but a step into the world. What’s fuelled Scottish drive for independence (with the suppport of Scotland’s forst Asian MSP – Bashir Ahmad) is a rejection of the war in Iraq, the need fo new Trident and the neo-conservative agenda of New Labour.

I happen to believe you are right. Surprise!

Seems to me that there are trans national groupings around now that – despite what Leon said in the Burma thread – did not have the leverage only a few years ago. And that is where I’d prefer to set up my camp, with like minded people who think an atrocity in Burma is just as important as an atrocity just up the road. Where we give up a sentimentalist attachment to our physical neighbours and start to think more closely about our world wide chums, folk we’ve perhaps only ever met virtually. Yet, with whom we may well feel closer affinity than, say the drunken chav outside..

And you are most certainly right to point out that the world is too small for petty nationalism, unless we want unending resource wars.

*tips hat*

TFI

anyway i’ve said ‘enuff, and said all this before. but politics seems to always be rather petty, doesn’t it.