So the British Government

Either that or it will end up like Albania 🙂

One of the feepaying schools at a guess?

Nope it was just a normal Secondary Modern School in Ipswich, purportedly "one of the better ones".

The point I'm making is you should judge like with like. My world then was in general a much more violent place than it is today. Folks seem to think that Chavs and crime are some sort of new occurance. Let me tell you they are not! So when people go watteling on about kids being beaten for speaking a language (or to put it another way not confroming to the rules), this would have been the background to the way that they were treated. Actually not excessively harsh in that world.

As far as I'm concerned its great to promote Scottishness, but the reality is in fact some good distance from some vision of Rob Roy or Braveheart, in fact it would be extremly difficult to seperate the Scots and English by any reasonably quantifiable measure.

How about we do that here and now. Someone try to establish what a Scot actually is, go on I dare you! 😯

How about we do that here and now. Someone try to establish what a Scot actually is, go on I dare you!

Easy

G – two different groups are involved. The scots – who are people descended from scots and the people of Scotland – who live in Scotland and for whom it is there home. Surprisingly there are known genetic differences – one example is blood groups – the ratios of the various blood groups are different north and south of the border.

However I accept that there are no clear differences in the peoples in this way – but there are social differences – the main one being a further left political philosophy taken as a whole.

Tories get a far lower share of the vote in Scotland than in England and have done so for 50 yrs.

Anyone who thinks Scotland "gives comfort to terrorists" should come up to Glasgow and try to detonate a car bomb at the airport.

See if you change your opinion when your rolling on the ground on fire and some weegie is kicking the sh*t out of you 🙂

I put it to you TJ, that when you've sobered up and read that again, you will agree that you were struggling there.

Its a fabrication man, there are no more distinct Scots in Scotland than there are Essex Girls in Essex. We are a polyglot of a vast amount of influences over millenia. The simple bottom line is that there is as strong an argument to reintroduce Latin or Norman French as there is Gaelic, and Scotland is no more one nation or one people than the rest of the UK.

Epicyclo stated as much himself with his infamous bullet in his own foot earlier.

g -in fact it would be extremly difficult to seperate the Scots and English by any reasonably quantifiable measure.

I can't find anything that you will find conclusive G but there are distinct differences in the relative proportions of blood groups A and O and RH+ between England and Scotland – this is as a result of influence of the angles, saxons and normans on the English Gene pool which is not nearly so strong on the scots gene pool and the influence of Irish immigration to Scotland has also had an influence on this. It is a small and hardly important distinction but it is one way of separating the scots and English by genetic markers – there are others

so I am afraid you are wrong – there are clear genetic marker and traits that allow the two to be separated.

Very minor and of no actual importance but its there.

i'm sure these genetic markers you speak of could very well exist when concidering the populations as a whole, but the question asked was a way to individually determine scots from english. there is no way this method could be used on an individual basis to say "yup he's scotish" and "nah, he's english" – the genetic marker will not exist in 100% of cases, just in a majority of them. scottish/english is a political and geographical term – not biological. you cannot expect mother nature to conform exactly to the boundries of land we have created. "i am afraid you are wrong" indeed.

G – Member
So lets consider this for a moment….. so we are talking about a Scottish headmaster in a Scottish school teaching the Scottish Curriculum, as decided upon by the Scottish Education Authority, under the auspices of the Scottish Educational System, which was then and has been for a very long time different to those in the rest of the UK, and somehow you have managed to turn that into racist oppression by the English??????

Did they not teach English at your school? You seem to have comprehension difficulties. You have turned it into oppression by the English, not I. I don't recall ever feeling oppressed by the English 🙂

I said it was a Lowland Scot making those remarks, and I was not blaming the English in this instance. I was talking about the enforcement of English language as a deliberate policy to destroy the Gaelic culture, and I was quoting something that was actually written.

Much of the damage to Highland culture has been at the hands of the southern Scots, with policies going back hundreds of years to some of the Stewart kings who saw extermination of the Highland people as the appropriate policy.

Much of the later stuff was done with the best of social engineering intentions – sadly there is a similar thing going on right now in the Cocos Keeling Islands where children are being punished for not speaking English.

However, a jeremiad on this subject is not really necessary in this forum. I'll go and nurse my apparently shot foot.

G – does this mean you've kissed and made up with the tatty howkers?

Sorry, G – I was a bit rude there. Must be the sore foot 🙂

so I am afraid you are wrong – there are clear genetic marker and traits that allow the two to be separated.

Norfolk's going to wanting independence next then.

What's a Scot?
Somebody who loves football, but never bothers watching the World Cup and loses interest in European football by Christmas, maybe?

Must admit it is funny telling my Scots mate that Celts didn't exist, bagpipes are from Iberia and the Plaid has no recorded existence in the C14th and Wallace was a Norman/Saxon Noble 😆

md – I think the Celts are the Tuatha de Danaan who conquered Ireland from the Fir Bolg. One source I read had them coming from Iberia, so thay may have brought their inflatable dead cats bagpipes In around the 4th or 5th centuries they settled in the west of Scotland, around the fort at Dunadd, gradually moving up the great glen and cuffing the locals in 834 at Inverness. One of the distinguishing factors of these people was the intricate knotwork in some of their are art, generally called celtic knotwork. From 834 until the death of McBeth in, errrm, 1051 Scotland was pretty much Celtic. McBeth was overthrown by McDuff, but he was helped out by Sigurd the Stout, the King of Northumberland, placing McDuff (and Scotland)in debt to the Northumbrian (Viking) throne. This was taken in 1067 by William the Conqueror who pretty much annexed Scotland in payment of that debt. From then on the the throne of Scotland was pretty much Norman, and this is reflected in the art and architecture of the times. Somerled mac Gilliechrist, who assumed the title Lord of the Isles, didn't really go along with this, and due to the remote nature of the western isles, the islands held out several more centuries.
Anyway, Celts did exist, they just didn't come from Scotland.

Of course this is all IIRC and may be complete nonsense.

>Must admit it is funny telling my Scots mate that Celts didn't exist, bagpipes are from Iberia and the Plaid has no recorded existence in the C14th and Wallace was a Norman/Saxon Noble

And Haggis is an English dish 🙂

And Haggis is an English dish

..not something I'd be bragging about. Unless you're proud of having inflicted it on us.

so I am afraid you are wrong – there are clear genetic marker and traits that allow the two to be separated.

Sorry about resurrecting this, but I've been away for a week, so I couldn't respond to this by TJ.

Please let me have the details of the extensive research in this area and I will by all means have a read. My suspicion is that what we are talking about here are comparisions between relatively closed island or wilderness based communities, as opposed to the greater Scottish Nation, as is spread out over the entire planet. I'm also pretty sure that if you go at the genetics of it you will find that there are as with all of us traces of pretty much every racial type there is pretty wildly spattered about in the Scottish gene pool.

However, what this once again does prove is that all this nationalistic nonsense is just so much tosh. We now have TJ talking about being able to determine someones race by their blood group, of which there are only 19 as far as I can find out, and how many races on the planet do we reckon there might be???? I suspect we'll be measuring noses and facial charactersitics next!

Face it TJ, there is no way in this day and age that it is possbile to seriously define or identify Scotish from English or Irish, other than todays post code.

G – not what I said at all. You said there was no genetic difference and clearly there is. You don't want to believe it then fine. The ratios of the various blood groups are different and other gene markers are different. Obviously this is across populations not a way of measuring individuals altho to some extent that can be done as well.

However in the best tradition of STW you have taken what I said and totally distorted it in order to rubbish it.

An easily read wiki bit that shows what I am trying to explain Plenty of good acedemic references to follow.

You don't want to listen then no point in me replying further

Bigbutslimmerbloke –

The PEOPLE existed, but we really do not know how they referred to themselves. The word 'Celt' is derived from a Greek word 'Keltoi' used by the denizens of the City States to sneeringly refer to those who lived inland from the Ionian Sea (think 'barbarian'). The Word Celt in it's modern sense was first used (allegedly) by a man called Edward Llyudd, an ardent Welsh Nationalist and Scholar of the mid C18th. As was the fashion he looked to the classics for inspiration and came across the word and misapplied it to mean the peoples of Northwestern Europe.
Neither Caesar, his generals or the Historian Tacitus ever used the word when writing about the Britons – usually using the insult 'Britonculli' instead.
Simply put, the use of the word is a myth, promoted by a man who wished to create a pan-'Celtic' alliance to resist English oppression but the concept of a Pan-European People all speaking the same language and sharing the same culture is wrong according to what i have read.
We do not know how the early Britons referred to themselves, the Tuatha De Danaan & the Fir Bolg are legendary races said to populate Ireland before the coming of Finn & the Fenians – themselves a mythical construct – with no real basis in history.

The Romans, various waves of Angles/Saxons/Jutes/Danes and Norwegians put paid to any written texts (if any existed) and the names of the various tribal groupings that have come down to us are at best Roman bastardisations of names – or even made up ones.
Names such as Catavelaunii, Trinovantii, Scottii, Caledonii etc are all thought to be such.

We continue to use the term 'Celt' because we have no other readily identifiable term, but in reality the name is a myth promoted by a daft Welsh Nationalist who was a poor scholar.
Dr Robin McKie's book 'Face of Britain' explains all this far better than i can, it is about the Human Genome Project applied to the genetic history of Britain – a good read.

There are only three races –

Negroid
Caucasian
Asiatic

There are however many ethnicities on the planet 😉

Muddydwarf – I am aware that there is argument over this but I thought there were more. Which would you put Australian aborigines in? south sea islanders? American Indians?

I thought it was mongoloid not Asiatic anyway – or am I out of date?

Native Americans (i thought) came under the Mongoloid/Asiatic banner as they originated from Asia and crossed the land bridge to the America's approx 10'000yrs ago?

Not sure about Pacific Islanders to be honest, all the Fijians i've met have had apparent African bloodlines (probably due to imported slaves during British colonisation/rule).

G – not what I said at all. You said there was no genetic difference and clearly there is

TJ : To quote you right back at yourself, "in the best tradition of STW you have taken what I said and totally distorted it in order to rubbish it." Below is in fact what I actually said. It is you sir who are distorting my words, not the other way around. I will however add, that I also do not agree that there is a simple genetic measure that can be used to define Scottishness either, but thats is not in fact what I said.

in fact it would be extremly difficult to seperate the Scots and English by any reasonably quantifiable measure.

How about we do that here and now. Someone try to establish what a Scot actually is, go on I dare you!