All content is my personal opinion and I am always happy to debate on the issues that I write about. No need to be kind, but a constructive approach is greatly favourable rather than negative criticism!!

Friday 6 April 2012

I'm offended when you call me Anti-English.

Ok, I'm being blunt here, but it's true.  If we've got two years to settle this Referendum for me this is something I want off my chest and out of the way before we go much farther.
Yes, I am Scottish and do not identify with the word British except as a geographical and historical concept.  I certainly do not choose to conflate it with the word English.  I find many connotations of the historical aspect of the word British abhorrent, in much the way I find the British National Party abhorrent.  The jingoism and the superciliousness I associate with the BNP and the colonial British Empire are things I would not like other people to associate with me.  I apologise if you personally associate with those words in a different way and my stance is offending you, it would be hypocritical of me not to.  Can we choose to understand it as a dispute of linguistics, and not of personal Identity?
Yes, I have voted and will continue to vote for the SNP.  Just because it is simple to switch an S for a B on paper does not make the two parties similar in pretty much anything else.  Weren't the BNP recently forced to change their party membership rules  because they were blatantly racist?  By contrast, our Nationalist Party have a fundamentally inclusive philosophy in their politics.  It's Nationalism isn't about birthright, it's about living in the country of Scotland.  In fact, if you go have a look at this New Statesman article you will read that:

 according to Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde University, these attacks are odds with the reality of contemporary nationalism. In his recent study, The Scottish National Party: Transition to Power, Mitchell argues that the party's understanding of national identity is perfectly consistent with the standards of 21st Century liberalism. He writes,the SNP is civic in the sense that its policies are among the most liberal of any party in the United Kingdom on citizenship, emigration and multiculturalism. Additionally, very few of its members would define Scottishness in exclusive ethnic terms. The SNP membership accep! ts a plurality of ways (being Scottish)." In other words, for the majority of SNP members, Scottishness is something an individual chooses, rather than something he or she has foisted on them by birth or through the bloodline.
Yes, I would be willing to call myself an SNP activist, or perhaps, worse still, a cybernat, but just as the good professor explains above, that doesn't actually have to make me anti-english at all!  I do what I do because I can see their is an opportunity to be seized upon here, a chance to make things better for Scotland and the folk who live here simply by allowing ourselves the freedom to make all the decisions about Scottish affairs here in Scotland.
And finally, yes, I will be voting Yes in 2014.  This has got nothing to do with wanting to cut Scotland adrift at Hadrian's Wall so we can physically isolate ourselves from the English.  Actually, if that were possible and we could row Scotland to the Caribbean for better weather, then I'd want to take the English with us too, frankly.  We're all a bit pasty and lacking in vitamin D here in the British Isles.  Can someone give Ireland a tow too while we're at it?
Oh, wait, I've ticked all the anti-English boxes there, haven't I? I've said Yes, I'm Scottish, not British. Yes, I am an SNP voter.  Yes, I am even an activist  and I will vote Yes in the Referendum. I've made my Declaration of Scottishness and declared common ground with the anti-English party.  You may now feel that you can now be at liberty to call me anti-English with impunity,but that really does offend me, because a fundamental part of what I believe in is an all-inclusive society.  In fact, I want the charge of anti-Englishness put to bed now so we can get on to real reasons why we would want to go down this path.
There could be some vision in someone's head, doubtless, of an SNP conference gathering sounding like something out of Monty Python's Life of Brian, but in the negative.  In this hypothetical head, the cry will be imagined "What have the English ever done for us?" to be followed by some horrendous list of charges of stealing all our oil, our industries and dumping their toxic waste on us. But that's not reality, sorry.  For starters, nobody in Scotland truly lays the blame for these things at the feet of the English people, we know exactly who is responsible for them.  It's the Government in Westminster at fault for these things, and I most certainly do not conflate the Westminster Government with the English people.  England is a wonderful country actually, with a fascinating,  parallel, history to our  own, a long history too, with a deep culture and a wonderful language for expressing all of that in.
So, in honour of one great bastion of Englishness, the aformentioned Monty Python, here is my own little list of "Things the English have done for us."  It's by no means comprehensive, and it's largely based on my own tastes, but I hope it proves my point!

Pink Floyd
The Beatles
The Sex Pistols
Association Football
Robin Hood
JRR Tolkien
Alan Turing
Tim Banners-Lee
The internal combustion engine
The Micro-chip
James Dyson and the Dyson
The corkscrew
The magnifying glass
Sir Isaac Newton
The small pox vaccine
The first motion picture camera and projector
Stephen Hawking
Comics
Seth Lakeman
Black Sabbath (and Ozzy Osbourne)
Withnail and I
Watership Down and Richard Adams
The Rollling Stones
Richard Dawkins
Richard Attenburgh
Brian Cox
Jackie Morris
Stonehenge
The Swinging Sixties
The Word
Ready Steady Go!
Leicester
Shakespeare
All my English family and friends *hugs*
Stephen Fry
The Mighty Boosh
League of Gentlemen
Blackadder
York
Alastair Crowley
High -Tea and Sandwiches
Romantic Poets and Artists
Siegfried Sassoon
Lewis Carroll
FC Barcelona


And I could go on, but this is more than enough to start with!  Thank you, England, I love all of these things you've given us, but I'm sorry but I still think I'm going to vote yes.  Why? because you gave these things to the whole world, and I just want my wee northern nation to be part of that whole world.  And, I'd like to see you become part of the whole world too, because I think you secretly want to be able to just call all these wonderful things English and be done with it, and I'm entirely behind you on that one.







8 comments:

  1. All very good but I think Stephen Fry was born as an American.I would say that 90% of the "English" are in fact the same as us,when those Saxons and then later the Jutes and the Angles they only knocked off the few at the top the ordinary Celt farming just carried on farming,changed his name in keeping with the new leaders,so it all looked good.Stonehenge? now that surprises me,as the largest Henge is out in the Western Isles and has been ignored by the English academia and the only reason I can think of is that it is the biggest in Europe,and it was the most important as well,but alas not in England,I'm not gripping I am way past that just pointing a couple of things out,and while I am at it what about the Antonine wall? just as great a feat as Hadrians wall never gets a mention,the Romans also spent 300 hundred years in Scotland and we got the benefit of their "Sophistication" same as England did.Notice how the Romans left after 300 years? but we did have to throw them out,this is history repeating itself.Now I hope that has amused you a little and informed you also.

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    1. Stonehenge is still a feat of ancient engineering, even if it's not as good as The Ring of Brodgar. Point was it's English, being in England and I like it :)
      We could argue the toss for hours of the Roman influence in Scotland, I've read plenty of good theories that they never held any land north of Hadrian's wall for any significant amount of time and that a large number of roman artifacts found in Scotland were either as a result of raids southwards or as a result of trade via the coast, not overland. Not going into that any further for now though!
      Stephen Fry can have been born in America, but he's an English Treasure - that's the beauty of an accepting society. I could have put Hitchens on that list, but he became an American in the end up!
      Anyway, that's just how I see it :)

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    2. I live in Clydebank,and would say that the Antonine wall took more than a few incursions to build,but it has to do with a lot of the nonsense now coming from the English Academia,about how the Romans left England civilised,but they ignore the fact that what became England actually slipped into the "Dark Ages" and the only seats of learning and places of study were in the Gaelic/Celtic lands.I was teasing about Fry,but even the feat of engineering it was built before England was created it was stone-age peoples who no longer seem to be around but they were not English,as the Angles had not arrived there yet? just my way of teasing the superiority of some folk.

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    3. Aye, again, get your point. The Antonine wall was built out of non-permanent materials, and although parts survive of it, it wouldn't have taken anything like the amount time Hadrian's wall took to build. Telt ye we could go at this for hours!

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    4. I did mention that I cant get out often,if not then I'll tell you now,I don't get out often depends on the weather and if I feel up to it ,I have spinal nerve damage,and am getting operations to fix me well I hope it fixes me,had two and next one in about 10 days I have to wait about six months or up to a year between operations,anyway this place is my entertainment I do have hundreds of TV channels but this is like have a conversation,and I am usually flippant and irreverent,and never ever serious,even when pointing out little things.But now I will leave you in peace so you can think,about more serious things BFN.

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  2. Another great Blog Angela, keep them comming!!

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  3. It is very interesting blog to me.And thanks for your post. Publish more post about your blog.

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