The Union Dividend

There is an old adage that Scotland punches above its weight because it is a part of the UK. Yet, for that to be true, Scotland would actually need to be able to compete on the world stage. Yet it cannot, because, paradoxically, it is a part of the UK. Scotland doesn’t “compete” at the UN or the EU (at least on a direct level). It also doesn’t compete at the Eurovision, or the Olympics.

In reality, Scotland can only compete on the world stage in sport and even then, only in a limited number of sporting events. It can, for example, compete in the Six Nations Rugby Championship (if only because a Great Britain team would result in the six nations becoming a pitiful four). It can also compete independently at football, although its case with FIFA for doing so may be considerably weakened with the all-English “British” team being fielded in the 2012 Olympics. It can also compete at the Commonwealth Games. Yet, this is really just the modern-day incarnation of the old British Empire Games and thus can hardly claim to be representative of the wider world.

Surely Scotland could at least have its own Olympic Team? Well you might think so, but speedy cyclist, Chris Hoy argues otherwise, and considers the idea to be “ridiculous”. Hoy states that he “would not have three gold medals hanging round (his) neck" if he had not been part of Team GB. Really? Would he have thrown the dummy out of the pram and ridden slower out of protest? No, argues Hoy, it is because Scotland doesn’t provide the resources that he requires. Which I’m presuming would be a bicycle, a bicycle pump, a puncture repair kit and perhaps maybe a velodrome.

The irony is that Scotland is actually currently building a velodrome and naming it in his honour. It will be called The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and is being built for the 2014 British Empire, sorry, Commonwealth Games. Yet, despite this, I wouldn’t expect Hoy to relocate back to Scotland anytime soon.

I suspect that the real reason Hoy does not want to see a Scottish team is because it would mean that his medals would have been won for a state that no longer competes in the Olympics (like Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia) - that somehow his achievements would be rendered obsolete.

Hoy states that he is "a proud Scot and a very proud Brit as well", stressing that the two identities are not “mutually exclusive”. Yet, during the Beijing Olympics the British team was referred to in the official Chinese (Mandarin) commentary as Ying Guó, meaning “England”. One wonders whether Hoy was aware that in China, the country where he won his medals, there is no “mutually exclusive” word for Britain and that, in the eyes of the host nation, he and his team were considered to be English? And, if he was, would he even care? Sadly, I don’t think he would.

The simple fact is that because Scotland is not independent and does not field its own Olympic team, it has not had to provide the resources necessary to support its athletes. Of course, if Scotland had been independent prior to the Beijing Olympics and sent its own Olympic team, it would no doubt have provided the resources necessary. Indeed the very reason it is currently building a velodrome is because the facilities are required. Yet, for the 2008 Olympics there would have been no point in duplicating facilities that already existed in England. Especially given the fact that England (with its considerably greater population) will always be providing the lion’s share of athletes in any British Olympic Team.

Essentially, the crux of Hoy’s argument is that Scotland punches above its weight by being part of the UK. Therefore, it would be worth considering some statistics. According to http://www.olympics.org.uk/, 26 out of the 311 Team GB athletes sent to Beijing were from Scotland. That’s about 8.3% of the total. Now Scotland has a population of about 5 million, which is about 8.3% of the UK’s 60 Million. So it would seem that Scotland is not so much punching above its weight, rather it is punching at it’s weight.

Except that it isn’t. And here’s why: at the 2008 Olympic Games, Ireland with a population of 4.4 million people sent 54 athletes; Croatia with a population of 4.6 million people sent 110 athletes to Beijing; New Zealand with a population of 4.2 million sent 209 athletes and Lithuania, with a population of 3.2 million, sent 74 athletes.

Yet leaving the Olympic Games aside, the cost of Scotland’s lack of independence is such that people throughout the world have no idea what exactly Scotland is. This is something that becomes all too apparent whilst on holiday and you find yourself having to explain for the umpteenth time that Scotland is not actually a part of England. Irvine Welsh summed it up nicely in Trainspotting with the line: “it’s shite being Scottish”. And it really is. Denmark, for example, is a country of 5 million people situated to the north of Germany. Yet do its citizens have to constantly explain that they are not German every time they go on holiday?

I came across an atlas being sold in LIDL recently. Like much of what LIDL sells, it was a German-produced atlas and made by a company called NGV. Out of interest, I looked for the map of Scotland. Now, most UK-produced maps will show Scotland’s border with England, albeit in a lighter shade than an “international” border, but there nonetheless. Yet this German Atlas did not show Scotland’s border at all, or even mention Scotland. It simply wasn’t there. All that it said was “Great Britain”, which in the wider world is as interchangeable with "England" as "Holland" is with "The Netherlands" (despite the fact that there is a difference) and to the way that the USSR, prior to its dissolution, was simply called Russia by so many. Obviously, I don’t have the resources to check every atlas in Europe, but I suspect that this particular atlas would be typical of most throughout Europe. And these are the countries on our own continent - God only knows what the rest of the world thinks.

Yet it really is little wonder that the world at large has no idea of Scotland’s existence, because, in modern day usage, the terms nation and state are really not “mutually exclusive” (to quote speedy cyclist Chris Hoy once more). To be a real nation you really have to be a state. And, as for talk about punching above our weight, it would seem that quite the opposite is true.

I Despair...

I've just come across this newspaper article in The Herald newspaper which was published a few days ago stating that a Scot had won a national poetry contest. Now, surely it would only have been newsworthy if the winner of this national poetry contest hadn’t been Scottish, given that it was, after all, being reported in a Scottish newspaper? Of course, upon reading, it soon became apparent that the “national poetry contest” in question actually referred to a UK-wide poetry contest. Yet it really brought home just how far Scotland is from seeing itself as a real nation.

Now The Herald has, since 2003, been an English-owned newspaper (owned by Newsquest, from Weybridge, England), yet I really do not think this had any bearing on the article. It is the Scots themselves, through careless use of semantics, who have talked themselves out of nationhood. I recently watched a Kevin Bridges DVD and grimaced every time he talked about “down south” and his ambiguous use of the term “country”. On Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow, Bridges even joked about the difficulties he faced with having a “regional accent on National TV”. Given that the “regional” accent he was referring to meant Scottish and by “national” TV, he meant British television, it became very hard to watch. Another comedian from Canada, called Craig Campbell, appeared on the same show. He talked about having Scottish ancestry (the show was being filmed in Glasgow), yet thereafter referred to everything Scottish as being British and talked almost exclusively about the differences between Canada and the UK (rather than acknowledging the fact that he was actually  in Scotland). I imagine it would be somewhat annoying to Canadians if someone from this side of the Atlantic, speaking to a Canadian audience, was too lazy to differentiate between Canada and the US and simply referred to North America.

Of course, I’ve blogged before about the issue of semantics in Scottish life (http://thisscotland.blogspot.com/2009/07/semantics-of-being-british.html), yet it seems clear that unless people start to become acutely aware of just how important the use of language plays in undermining Scotland’s sense of national identity, then we might as well give up on the whole notion of actually being Scottish in the first place. After all, I’m not interested in a Scotland whose only raison d'être is to participate in the Six Nations Rugby Championship. Especially given the fact that I don’t even watch rugby...

The Symbols of Statehood

Convincing the Scottish people that they are worthy of independence, after 300 years of English-led, pro-British propaganda will be no easy task. The English-controlled media has conditioned Scottish people to think of themselves as little more than a region of the United Kingdom.

The simple truth is that if Scotland wants to be recognised as a distinct entity separate from England, then it needs to start portraying itself as such. Only by doing so, will Scots find that they no longer have to experience that old “here we again” moment on holiday where they find themselves having to explain that Scotland is not actually a part of England. Scotland needs to understand that the wider world knows nothing of its “wee pretendy parliament" (as Billy Connolly once called it) and, in order to gain recognition abroad, it needs to start portraying itself as being a distinct and independent entity.

There is a well known American motivational speaker called Anthony Robbins who argues, amongst other things, that people who want to become successful should act as if they already are. Robbins argues that: “Acting ‘as if’ is most effective when you put your physiology in the state you’d be in if you were already effective”. Indeed, if Scotland started to act and look more like an independent country then its people would be more accepting of the actual transition towards statehood.

Perhaps one way to do this would be to emulate the political autonomy that the Isle of Man currently enjoys. As a crown dependency, the Isle of Man’s citizens are technically British, but their passports are slightly different, stating on the cover: British Islands - Isle of Man.

The Isle of Man also has its own constitution, mints its own coins and produces its own postage stamps. Indeed the island enjoys full self-government in respect of all internal domestic matters, leaving foreign relations and defence as the responsibility of the British Crown.

Certainly, there are two areas that Scotland could emulate from the Isle of Man. One is the issue of its own postage stamps where every letter and postcard sent overseas would promote Scotland’s identity throughout the world. Secondly, Scotland could issue its own car number plates. Indeed, Manx car number plates are fairly distinctive and capitalise on the island’s Celtic heritage, promoting the country not only to its own people, but also to the other countries of the British Isles.

Of course, it could be argued that the reason the Isle of Man enjoys such autonomy is that it is not technically a part of the United Kingdom and it's constitutional status is therefore different to that of Scotland. Yet, there is already a precedent for one part of the United Kingdom itself issuing car number plates separately from the rest of the UK: Northern Ireland. Indeed, not only does Northern Ireland issue its own car registration plates, it also operates its own version of the DVLA: the DVLNI.

Scotland needs to look distinct from England. Distinctive road signs and car number plates are one way to do this. At present, a tourist on a bus who slept past the “Welcome to Scotland” sign would barely know they were no longer in England when they woke up. The cars number plates would look the same and the road signs would look the same. Bilingual English / Gaelic signs would go a long way to addressing this. Of course the Unionists, like the broken record that they are, will predictably argue about the cost issue. Yet it could be legislated that there need not be a Scotland-wide wholesale replacement of existing road signs. Rather, that every new, or replacement sign be bilingual. Exceptions could be made for Orkney and Shetland, of course, where bilingual English / Norn (Old Norse) signs may be more appropriate.

Of course any attempt to make Scotland a little more Scottish will meet with opposition from the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Unionists who fear that it threatens their sense of British-ness. They will always complain about money being spent to promote Scottish identity. Indeed, cast your memory back to the building of the Scottish Parliament and the very same naysayers were there day-in-day-out complaining about the costs. For many at the time, even the building of a garden shed would have been deemed too expensive and unnecessary. Yet one simply has to look at the architectural magnificence of Westminster to realise that it cannot have been cheap to build. Nor, for that matter, was London’s new Wembley Stadium, or it’s Olympic stadium. 

Only statehood can renew the pride of the Scottish people and, if Scotland is serious in wanting to bring this about, then it needs to start acting like it was a state of its own already and stop begging for scraps from the table of it’s masters in England.

A Scottish Internet Domain Name

There is currently a movement in support of Scotland attaining its own internet domain name (http://www.dotsco.org/). Scotland, of course needs its own domain code. Yet it needs to have a proper two-letter country code. This is the standard and is referred to as a Country Code Top-Level Domain. If a domain code has any more than two letters, then it is not a Country Code Top-Level Domain, but a Special Interest Domain.

The Catalan people have settled on .cat, which is classified as a Sponsored Top-Level Domain. This is, in essence, a special interest domain and is neither nationally nor territorially assigned. As such, .cat is a code for the Catalan language and culture rather than a code for Catalonia itself. It resides amongst other un-prestigious codes such as the hotel and travel industry (.travel), museums (.museums) and the air transport industry (.aero).

Unfortunately it seems that Scotland is heading down the .sco or .scot route. Personally I feel this would be a mistake as it would relegate Scotland’s status on the internet to being little more than a special interest group. Even the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey have their own internet country codes (.im,.gg and .je respectively) and there is no reason for Scotland to settle for anything less.

If Scotland were to go down the road of accepting either .sco or .scot, simply because they were easier to attain than an actual country code, it would be the equivalent of ignoring the old adage that if you buy cheap then you buy twice. For, when Scotland does attain its independence it is going to have to choose its own proper country domain code, lest it forever be associated with the likes of hotels and museums.

The Cost of Scotland Not Being Independent

Unionists have often argued against Scottish independence on the grounds that businesses would pull out of Scotland, damaging it's economy and resulting in a loss of jobs. Yet this argument is deeply flawed as the reality is that, with independence, many companies would actually choose to have representation in Scotland as it would be a sovereign nation.

There are a number of legal, financial, marketing, distribution and logistical reasons for this, but ultimately, the main reason that multi-national companies choose to have direct representation in those sovereign nations that they sell in, is to better market the products and services they provide. 

A case in point would be Ireland. Look closely at the labelling on most household products and you will see not only the UK (in most cases English) contact information, but also the contact details for the Irish market. The people based at these addresses are real employees and Ireland’s gain in terms of being independent translates into real jobs. Scotland, as a constituent member of the UK, has effectively ceded these jobs to England. Here are just a few examples from the likes of Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Johnson & Johnson, Kelloggs, Colgate and GlaxoSmithKline:

Even Northern Ireland, a constituent part of the UK, has some level of representation independent of the British market in a way that Scotland not. For example, Coca-Cola in Northern Ireland is bottled in Northern Ireland (Coca-Cola HBC Northern Ireland in Lisburn, Co. Down), whereas the Scots have to drink English-bottled Coke. And companies like Lidl also have representation in Northern Ireland:

Of course these are examples of multi-nationals, but what about the indigenous industries in Scotland? The sad fact is that Scotland’s place at the heart of the Union has seen its manufacturing industry decimated. When was the last time you saw any household product that said “Made in Scotland” on it. And for those few products that are actually made in Scotland (with the notable exception of Whisky), companies have a nasty habit of labelling them as “Made in Great Britain”, rather than Scotland. One example is Crabbies, who make a rather excellent alcoholic ginger beer. Sadly however, they show no pride in having being produced in Scotland:

Now, if you were to ask companies like this why they don’t market themselves as being Scottish-made, they will no doubt tell you that they are trying to appeal to a wider market. In essence, they believe that people will not buy their products if they say that they were made in Scotland. This is absolute nonsense. After all, the Chinese manage to sell their goods to the English extremely well without a “Made in Great Britain” stamp on them.

The irony is that “Scottish”, as a marketing brand, actually sells extremely well. It conjures up romantic images in a way that “British" does not. The Scottish Whisky industry knows this only too well. After all, “British Whisky” sounds pretty unappealing in much the same way as British Wine does. The simple fact is that “British”, as a marketing brand, in not in any way romantic. Yet “English” or “Scottish”, as marketing terms, are romantic. You don’t hear of British Lakeland poets, for example. Think of Scottish Cheddar and it conjures up an image of something that is pure and clean. Likewise, think of English Cheddar and you’re probably imagining the beautiful Cheddar Gorge, where the cheese originated. Yet, call it “British Cheddar” and before you know it you’re thinking of some mechanically-produced cheese from an industrial estate outside Milton Keynes.

“British”, as a marketing brand is for many people associated with failed industries from another time: car companies that no longer exist, ships that are now built by the Koreans, household products that are now manufactured by the Chinese and electronics that are made by the Japanese. “British” conjures up an image that is out-dated and unreliable. And if you’re looking for one company that embodies all of this, then think of British Leyland. And who are they, you might ask? Who indeed.

The Language of New Labour and the Scottish Parliament

The Scottish parliament was never set up to reward Scotland for its 300 years of loyal service to the union, or to ensure that survival of Scottish identity in the 21st century. Rather, it was created with one clear purpose in mind: to kill Scottish nationalism stone dead. Yet the creation of a new Scottish parliament had to be done in such a way that it did not actually fan the flames of nationalism. Careful use of language in the new parliament had to be employed in order to ensure that the Scots did not get any ideas above their station.

There is a saying that a picture can paint a thousand words. Yet a word can paint a thousand pictures. Indeed, listen to any motivational speaker and they will all stress the importance of language in the framing of the mindset. This is why Labour employs terms like divorce and separation to scare people away from thoughts of independence (which linguistically is a positive term).

With regard to the creation of the parliament itself, Labour essentially renamed three key elements. Firstly there was the act of creating the parliament itself. Historically, this had always been known as Home Rule, yet this was ditched in favour of the considerably more obscure term, Devolution. The trouble was that Home Rule, as a term, would have likely been seen as a one-off event, with the potential danger that the Scots may have felt somewhat short-changed with the end result. Devolution, however, can be sold as a process and, as such, it gives the UK a comfort blanket – something to hide behind, because a process is forever ongoing and no eventual conclusion need ever be reached or even stated.

Secondly, the term Executive was employed instead of Government. There was a fear that by calling the Parliament’s governing body a Government, this would undermine the authority and status of the UK Government. In reality, what this did was to confuse people, with many unable to distinguish between the Scottish Parliament and its governing body. Thankfully, the SNP administration has now ditched the term Executive in favour of the term Government, ending a great deal of the confusion.

Thirdly, the term First Minister was used rather than the term Prime Minister. This is despite the fact that, from the years 1921 to 1972, there were actually two prime Ministers in the UK. One was the Prime Minister of the UK Government, the other was the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and people at that time seemed perfectly able to distinguish between the two. Sadly, because of Labour's insistence on using the term First Minister, historians now have to refer to Donald Dewar as being Scotland’s First First Minister, something that sounds like poor grammar.

The Semantics of Being British

The ambiguity of terms such as “Down South”, “The Country as a Whole” and “This Country” serve only to reiterate the notion that Scotland is not a nation in itself.

Since the Union was created, the Scots have, at least until recently, been willing to play the British game. The English however have just never played ball. When the Scots talk about “down South” they mean England, even though “down South” should mean Dumfries, Gretna, Galashiels or any southern Scottish town or region. The English don’t refer to France as “down South”, just as the Irish don’t refer to England as “over East”. Moreover, when the English talk about “up North” they mean no further than Carlisle!

The Scots would dutifully fill in “British” when asked their nationality on an official form, whilst their English counterpart would often tend to put “English” - not because they were making any kind of political statement, but because they really didn’t see any difference. Thus, when the Beatles sung about how “the English Army had just won the war” in A Day in the Life, they were not talking about any war prior to 1707. It was simply that, for so many people in England, “English” and “British” are interchangeable terms. Hence, they’ll order “English” food abroad, complain about how much it costs them to change “English” money and how the “English” weather is so terrible. The Scots, however, will say they’re from Scotland to anyone who asks, but will thereafter refer to everything “back home” as British.

The terminology that Scots themselves use reinforces their sense of being little more than a region. Aside from their misuse of expressions like “down South”, they use terms such as "national", "the nation", "the country" and “the country as a whole” to signify the UK. Perhaps a new low was hit by Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill on their show Still Game when, in a spoof television weather report, the reporter talked of “Scots throughout the country” rather than actually just saying Scotland. It was highly symbolic of just how ingrained the idea of Scotland as an inextricable part of Britain is for many people. This aside, it is interesting to note that the name Britain historically never actually referred to the island as a whole. Rather, Britannia was the name given by the Romans to what is today known as England and Wales*. Scotland, however, was called Caledonia and deemed to be separate.

* Modern day England and Wales were once inhabited by a Celtic people know as the Britons. They were the ancestors of the people known today as the Welsh. When the Anglo-Saxons (the ancestors of today’s English) arrived in Britain from northern Germany, they drove the native Britons westwards to what is now Wales and Cornwall. The name “Wales” actually comes from “Wealas”, the Old English word for foreigners, as the native Welsh were indeed foreign to the invading English. Other Celtic Britons fled to France, forming the region known as Brittany. It is for this reason that the language of Brittany, Breton, is so closely related to Welsh and Cornish.

Scotland: Creating the Hobby Country

Let’s face it, the Scotland you know today is little more than a hobby country. You wear a kilt at a wedding, you toast the Bard on Burns Night and you cheer on the team in the Six Nations. And that’s about it. Scotland doesn’t participate on the world stage because it can’t. It has no seat on the UN and its flag is not internationally recognised. The Saint Andrews Cross is actually only recognised internationally as a nautical flag (meaning “my vessel has stopped” - somewhat appropriate when you consider the state of Scotland's nationhood after 1707). Yet Scotland’s journey from being one of the oldest countries in the world to being that of a British region has a long history. It all started with that age-old tactic of divide and rule…

Divide and Rule
You would think that most countries would envy Scotland, bestowed as it is with misty mountains, loch-side castles and world famous whiskies. Scotland is a land steeped with a rich heritage and culture, and gifted with its own indigenous languages and traditions. Yet for centuries, Scotland’s very existence was under threat from an England hell bent on claiming the island for itself. Scotland, however, was a hard nation to conquer and, as a result, England resorted to one of the oldest military strategies known to man: divide and rule. In essence, turn the natives against each other.

The primary focus of this strategy stemmed on creating a Highland / Lowland fault line in Scotland. It was a manufactured split, but one which would work to great effect. Indeed, testament to the success of the strategy lies in the fact that, even today, Lowland Scotland is often distinguished from Highland Scotland as being a linguistically and culturally separate entity.

Attacking the Language and culture
Essentially, England focused its attentions on embracing the Southern Lowlanders as being their cultured and civilised brethren whilst castigating those in the Highlands as barbarous. And, by the start of the 15th Century, the distinction between Lowlander and Highlander appears to have become firmly established. By the 16th century, Lowland Scots had even started to refer to Gaelic as “Erse” (meaning “Irish”), even though Scots Gaelic as a language actually pre-dated the existence of Scotland itself! In reality, Scots Gaelic was not a Highland language but was in fact spoken throughout Scotland from Thurso in the North to the Rhins of Galloway in the far South. Indeed, in Galloway, there was even a very distinct variety, known as Galwegian Gaelic.

Next, it was the turn of the Scots language to face the firing squad. The particular method of attack was to downgrade its status to that of a dialect. Yet Scots is not just a dialect, but a language. It is branched off from early Middle English around the mid-14th Century in a similar fashion to the way that English branched off from German, or Norwegian evolved from Danish. Indeed, to say that Scots is a dialect of English would be the equivalent of saying that Norwegian is just a dialect of Danish, a statement that would undoubtedly be received poorly in Norway, to say the least. Yet, regardless of this, the Scots language was nonetheless demoted in status - a factor that ensured that the writing and speaking of Scots could be belittled as simply poor English grammar.

As usual, there was no shortage of spineless Scots eager to out-do each other with just how much they disdained their Scottish-ness. And, one by one, prolific Scottish writers in the 18th Century started to turn away from the use of Scots words (or “Scotticisms” as they were disdainfully referred to at the time) in their work. Indeed, renowned Scottish philospher, economist and historian David Hume even went so far as to publish a list of “Scotticisms” to be avoided in the Scots Magazine in 1760.

Yet language was not the only element of Scottish culture under attack. After the last Jacobite Rising ended in 1746, the Hanoverian government tried to obliterate all Highland Scottish culture and, a year later, the playing of the bagpipes in Scotland was banned by an Act of Parliament. Furthermore, the wearing of tartan and carrying of weapons were also forbidden. Coupled with this was the fact that, from the mid-18th to early 19th Century, Highlanders were cleared from their lands to make way for sheep.

The final nails in the coffin of Scottish nationhood
As the 18th century progressed, more and more lowland Scots, eager to embrace their new lords and masters since the Acts of Union, continued to turn their back not just on “Highland” culture, but on Scottish culture itself. With Scots Gaelic dismissed as Irish, Lowland Gaelic all but defunct, the Scots language dismissed as little more than bad grammar, “Lowlander” turned against “Highlander” and Scots customs either banned or ridiculed, it was pretty much game over for Scottish nation. Modern day writers and historians have often argued, through the likes of “Kailyard” Myths, the Kirk (Church of Scotland) and the continued existence of Scots Law, that Scotland retained key elements of nationhood after 1707. Yet, in reality, by the end of the early 19th Century, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars with France, the notion of a Scottish national identity distinct from that of England was almost laughable.

It would not be unreasonable to assume that it was the Highlands that lost most in terms of culture over the centuries, given that it was so often the primary focus of attack. Yet, in reality, it was the Lowlands that lost more. It had sold everything for the promise of English gold. It has lost its culture and its languages. And it has now lost everything that it traded these for in the first place: its place as the workshop of the world.

The Empire is long over and with it, the industries that lowland Scotland so depended on. Scotland’s biggest city Glasgow, once the so-called 2nd City of the Empire after London, no longer builds ships. Nor does it serve as a trading port of any importance. Rather, its people answer phones. And this is not because Glaswegians have an aptitude for this, or because they have “classless” accents, as is so often the reason given for the prevalence of call centres in these parts. Rather it is because they are a seen as a cheap source of labour compared with England.

Scotland today: the hobby country
There is a scene in the film Four Weddings And A Funeral when the character Gareth walks into the wedding reception, witnesses a ceilidh and shouts: “It's Brigadoon! It's Bloody Brigadoon!”. A harmless bit of humour perhaps, but indicative of the way that Scottish culture has come to be viewed in the UK. The so-called “Tartan / Shortbread” image, whilst endearing to so many people elsewhere throughout the world, is actually viewed by the Scots to be something of an embarrassment. The years of ridicule have taken their toll and Scotland today can sometimes resemble little more than a “hobby” country. It’s a place where people will wear a kilt at a wedding, pour a dram for the bard and cheer on their team when it plays the “auld enemy”. Yet, once the 90 minute game is over, they soon revert back to being unquestioning subservient Brits they’ve been for the last 300 years.

The Absorption of Scotland into a Greater England

Virtually every article you read on The Acts (and subsequent Treaty) of Union will talk of the fact that both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England were dissolved and replaced with a new Parliament of Great Britain. In reality, however, England never actually abolished its parliament, it just absorbed Scotland’s. The “New” Parliament just happened to based at Westminster, somewhat conveniently the “former” home of the English Parliament.

The fact is that the Westminster you see today is the same parliament that started life in 1097, over 600 years before the Acts of Union. Furthermore, its traditions and procedures stem from before the Acts of Union. For example, the tradition that each sitting of the house begins with prayers can be traced back as long ago as 1558. The position of “Black Rod”, the usher who summons the House of Commons to the State opening of Parliament, stems from as far back as 1522, although the office itself dates back even further to 1350.

Indeed, if one thing truly highlights the case that this was, and remains, an English Parliament, it is that when the “new” parliament came into being in May 1707, with the addition of Scottish MPs, it was not even considered necessary to hold a new general election. It simply continued on as if nothing had changed.

Former Foreign Secretary, the late Robin Cook (a Scot, apparently) in a key speech to the Social Market Foundation in London in April 2001, talked of Britain having a thousand years of history. Other politicians, political parties and historians, including the UK Independence Party and highly respected and prominent historian Simon Sharma, have also talked of Britain having “a thousand years of history”. Yet Britain has only 300 years of history (or, at the very most, 404 years, if you consider the Union of Crowns in 1603 to be a more pivotal point).

It is not hard to understand the confusion, when you realise that the Union was only ever seen as a Greater England. The United Kingdom’s central bank is still called The Bank of England and treaties with other states are prefixed “Anglo” (Anglo-Irish, Anglo-French etc) even though this clearly means “English”. Either way, as the English would say, it’s just not cricket.

The “Marriage” of Scotland and England

Terms like divorce and separation often used by the tabloid media in Scotland to scare people away from the idea of independence. They are used because they are perceived to be negative conations, yet in reality they are highly misleading. Their usage implies that the Union with England equates to something akin to a marriage. Yet the concept of marriage generally implies an equal partnership, something that Scotland with a population of only 5 million could hardly boast when saddled with a neighbour ten times its size in population terms. Furthermore, whilst the percentage of Scots living in England stands at under 2% (according to the last census), the English-born population in Scotland is nearly 10% and rising. That’s a sizeable proportion of the population in Scotland who would vote against Scottish independence, regardless of any coherent argument put in its favour.

The Tabloid Arguments Against Independence

Leaving aside the tired old argument about the economy, as regards the issue of Scottish Independence, there are those who express fears over some of the more basic aspects of life. Whether they are of a social or vocational nature, or are concerns over current leisure pursuits such as watching television, they are the sort of arguments you might hear in the pub, or in the letters page of the Daily Record. Here are just a few:

I would never support Scottish independence - I have friends and/or family in England.

Applying this logic, it would therefore surely be absurd to have friends or family in Canada, or Ireland, or Denmark, or France, or Australia or indeed anywhere outside of the UK. There are huge numbers of people from the Republic of Ireland living in England and plenty of English people living in Ireland. Yet Ireland has been independent since the early 20th Century. Likewise there are huge numbers of Canadians living in the United States and vice-versa, yet the two remain separate countries. There are equally large numbers of New Zealanders living in Australia and vice versa. Furthermore, it has been estimated that up to 2% of New Zealand citizens are resident in the United Kingdom at any one time, yet the two states remain sovereign and independent of each other.

My son works for the passport office (or the Civil Service), surely he would lose his job?

Scotland, like all other independent countries, would have its own passport office and civil service.

I watch EastEnders. They wouldn’t show that on TV here if Scotland gained independence.

People in Dublin watch EastEnders. In fact, EastEnders is aired around the world in many English-speaking countries, including New Zealand, Australia and Canada. It is also shown throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Furthermore, wih the age of digital television truly upon us, the idea that your viewing pleasure would be in any way seriously affected is highly unlikely.

Britain’s Leaders on the subject of Scottish Independence

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned that everyone in the United Kingdom would suffer economically and culturally if Scotland voted for independence, arguing that the economic futures of Scotland and the rest of the UK are inextricably linked. Well that’ll be lucky for us then, as the UK sinks deeper and deeper into recession. Gordon Brown, of course, is the man that promised us no more boom and bust. We might now be bust, but, to be fair to old-man Brown, he certainly ensured that we here in Scotland never did see a boom, as thankfully our oil revenues have continued to line the pockets of those in London - something they have done since the 1970s.

Former Prime Minister, Tony Blair has previously said that "Independence would be a disaster for Scotland because it would wreck its economy”. In keeping with Unionist tradition, Mystic Tony gave no date or time-frame for this period of economic woe. Unless he meant that Scotland’s economy would be permanently wrecked, in which case his powers are greater than previously thought: he can see till the end of time. His lucky numbers for this week are 19 and 28 and Tony believes that a chance encounter with a stranger could bring good fortune. Known to be an admirer of Thatcher, Blair once echoed her opinion on Scottish Independence when, on 16th January 2007, he described Scottish Independence as “Crazy”. So there you have it: the Scots are too stupid and crazy to run their own country. You’ve been told!

Pro-Union and no friend of Scotland, Margaret Thatcher described Scottish independence as "stupid". With the discovery of North Sea Oil in the 1970s, Scots had the perfect opportunity to stand on their own two feet, yet when push came to shove they were too spineless to leave the Union. As a consequence of this, they were rewarded with Margaret Thatcher and 18 years of continuous Tory rule. During this period, Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were taken on a “boom and bust” economic rollercoaster ride. Other highlights of the time included the risking of life and limb to Scottish soldiers to protect some colonial sheep farmers off the coast of Argentina from the horrors of having to accept an Argentinean Passport. And then of course, there was the Poll Tax. Rule Britannia!

Whilst Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone claimed that London was subsidising Scotland. And was this before, or after you’ve taken into account the oil revenues that Scotland has provided you and your city since the 1970s, Mr Livingstone?

Clairvoyancy and the Economy

In October 2006, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a press conference in London that "Independence would be a disaster for Scotland because it would wreck its economy… and take the country backward”. How exactly does he know? Can he see into the future? Furthermore, he omitted two key points essential to the argument, namely: when and for how long exactly?

One of the core arguments put forth by those against Scottish independence has been the tired and fundamentally pointless statement that Scotland would be worse off under independence. This is quite a sweeping statement to make, especially when no one is prepared to put any sort of time-frame for this predicted economic malaise. Exactly when will this tale of economic woe take place and for how long precisely will it last? For all time?

Nobody can predict what the economy of the UK (or for that matter, any country) will be like in 10 or 20 years time. We can do our best to plan ahead but we don’t know. Gordon Brown certainly didn’t foresee the current recession before it arrived. Yet, despite the fact that we cannot predict the future, there are those who continue to make sweeping statements that Scotland is stronger and better-off being part of the Union.

Was it in Scotland’s interest to be part of this strong and “better-off” United Kingdom back on “Black Wednesday” on 16th September 1992 when the British Government was forced to withdraw the Pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after it lost 15% of its value overnight against the Deutschmark? Soon after this, approximately one million householders faced repossession of their homes during a recession that saw a sharp rise in unemployment. The UK Treasury later estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.

Source: Wikipedia

Unionist Propaganda

One of the Unionists favourite tricks is to try and link the nationalism of peaceful self-determination with the aggression and genocide carried out by 1930s Germany and 1990s Serbia. They will tell you that nationalism, as a concept, is dangerous and might lead to something akin to the horrors of the Balkan war. Indeed the term “Balkanization of Britain” has, on many occasions, been used in this regard. Yet the irony is that the Balkan war was actually the result of Serbia (the largest nation in multi-ethic Yugoslavia) attempting to extinguish the self-determination of its neighbours.

Likewise, Germany’s attempts to extinguish the self-determination of its neighbours in the 1930s led to the Second World War. If anything is to be learned from history, it is that it is not the independence of nations that causes wars, but rather a lack of respect for the self determination of small nations by larger, more powerful nations.

That British Unionists’ attempts to tarnish Scottish nationalism by linking it to the aggressive and genocidal nationalism of Germany and Serbia shows just how desperate they really are. The independence of Iceland, Norway and Slovakia, for example, all happened peacefully and the world hasn’t stopped turning. Likewise, Scottish Nationalism has always been a peaceful political process.

British Unionists know a thing or two about spreading misunderstanding and fear through the use of propaganda. The careful use of semantics plays a huge part in this. For example, they talk of Balkanization, separation and divorce, all terms with negative connotations, to spread fear amongst those who dare stray towards believing in an independent Scotland. Of course, one can’t be too hard on them for doing so. After all they’ve been doing it for centuries, being as it is an absolute necessity for the building and maintaining of an empire.

The British Unionist will tell that small nations can’t survive, citing Iceland’s recent economic difficulties as an example. Of course, they never mention Denmark, another country of 5 million and with a land area smaller than Scotland who seem to be managing rather well without being politically united to their southern neighbour, Germany. Then there’s Norway (4 million), Switzerland (7 million), New Zealand (4 million) and Ireland (4 million), who despite recent economic woes, is still better off than its Celtic neighbours who remain part of the UK.

Then, of course, there’s Luxembourg, an independent country surrounded entirely by larger neighbours, with a population of less than half a million people, yet who happen to have the highest GDP per capita in the world. British Unionists tend to avoid mentioning that one, of course.

Perhaps the greatest irony of those who proclaim loyalty to the Union, whilst decrying nationalism, is that the very existence of the UK is a result of hundreds of years of aggressive English nationalism. Wales was conquered and absorbed into the Kingdom of England. Ireland was colonised and Scotland, for its part, was essentially bribed into the Union when its ruling class were offered very generous titles, land and cash in exchange for closing down the Scottish parliament. The English coupled this with the removal of the threat of war – a war that Scotland could not have stomached at the time, given that it in the throes of trying to recover from the Darien Disaster.

It would be fair to say that the existence of the United Kingdom did not come about though a harmonious coming together of peoples. It is a product of war and the divide-and-rule aggressive nationalism of by-gone times and as such, it is an anachronism; a fading remnant of the empire building of past centuries.

Her Britannic Majesty's Realm or the European Union?

Scare stories about the horrors of the European Union have been commonplace in the tabloid newspapers since the 1990s. If those Johnny-Foreigners aren’t threatening to ban the Prawn Cocktail crisp or the double-decker bus (both of which, mysteriously, still seem to exist), they’ll be meddling with some other pillar of British life, at least according to the English tabloids. Yet the fact is that the English-dominated Westminster parliament has been controlling, regulating and generally poking it’s nose into the “nooks and crannies” of Scottish affairs for 300 years now and we’ve never complained anywhere near as much as the English have over Europe in the last 30 years.

The European Union was founded over 50 years ago in 1958 with the formation of the European Economic Community. It started with 6 member states and has since grown to 27 members, with countries still on the waiting list to join. In comparison, The United Kingdom, with its 300 year history, has not had one single country even expressing an interest in joining*. Indeed, since Ireland left in 1921, the only concern has been not who should be allowed to join, but in who will be next to leave.

*On 10 September, 1956, the French Prime Minister, Guy Mollet, is said to have raised with the British Prime Minister the possibility of a union between the United Kingdom and France. Crucially, however, he did not propose joining the United Kingdom itself, rather a union with it. Regardless of this, no record of the proposals is thought to exist in French archives and it seems unlikely that he had the backing of the French Government.

Scotland c/o The United Kingdom: the invisible country

One of the main reasons why Ireland can attract investment is because people know it is there. Scotland, on just about any map printed outside the UK is labelled as Great Britain, the United Kingdom, or worse: England. Ireland, however, having attained statehood in 1921, shows up as a nation: it is there to be noticed.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of people throughut the world view Scotland as being nothing more than a part of England. Indeed, there are even people actually living in Scotland who are not even aware that it exists. True stories such as Nigerian women overheard on a train talking about their new life living in England when they were in fact living in Scotland. Or, of a Swiss traveller telling a fellow guest in a Scottish hostel that it was the furthest north he’d ever been in England. Or how historian Norman Davies recounted in the Sunday Times of how a fellow traveller spoke of his "English passport" when no such document exists and how a Polish friend received a letter addressed "…Edinburgh, Scotland, England".

Of course the Polish are by no means alone in this confusion. A simple search on the internet revealed numerous sites that have no apparent knowledge of Scotland being anything other than a region of England. There are countless examples, of which here are just a few:

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a service of the U.S. Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, who list the Department of Cardiology at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh as being in "Scotland, England": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1693201

Language-Programmes.net, a German website who list Glasgow as being in England:

http://www.language-programs.de/sprachschule/89/446/ableenglish_school_glasgow.htm

BRICS, an international PhD school, hosted by the Universities of Aarhus and Aalborg in Denmark, who list the address of Edinburgh university as: University of Edinburgh, Scotland, England". http://www.bric.ku.dk/seminars_and_symposia/seminars/seminars_2008/

And is it really any wonder when Scotland simply looks the same as England. Drive from England to Scotland and nothing really changes. Yes, there’s a sign that says Welcome to Scotland, yet it might as well have said Welcome to Rutland for all the difference it makes. The road signs remain the same, the car number plates are the same - it simply looks the same.

Scotland:the poorest oil producing country in Europe

There are 5 key oil-producing countries in Europe: Norway, Scotland, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Of these, Norway and Scotland are, by far, the biggest producers of North Sea Oil. Yet whilst Norway, per head of population, is the 2nd richest country in the world, Scotland’s wealth per head of population lags behind every other oil producing country in Europe. Indeed, it lags behind practically every other country in Western Europe, whether oil-producing or not – including the UK as a whole! Quite how Scotland actually benefits from the Union remains something of a mystery…

Norway, a country of 4,610,820 people (July 2006 est.) had a per capita GDP in 2005 of $42,800*. It is the 2nd richest country in the world per head of population. Yet Scotland, with a comparable population (5,094,800, according to the 2005 estimate) and sharing the same North Sea Oil field as Norway has a per capita GDP of only $25,546*. In other words, your average Scot is only 60% as wealthy as their Norwegian counterpart. Then again, Norway doesn’t gift its oil wealth to its more populous neighbour, Sweden…

Yet, Scotland doesn’t just lag behind its oil-producing counterparts. It is, in reality, despite its vast natural resources, one of the poorest countries in Western Europe. Indeed, treating Scotland separately from the UK, it would rank behind every one of the following European countries (listed in order of wealth per head of population): Luxembourg, Norway, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, San Marino, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (as a whole), Germany, Sweden, Italy, France, Monaco and Andorra. In fact, Scotland actually ranks only 19th in terms of GDP per head of population, seven places behind the United Kingdom as a whole.

Source: Wikipedia