h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I understand what you are saying Effers It's very obvious from here too that England is a different place than the rest of Britain.

I think we just disagree somewhat on the colonised bit, but maybe you are talking about the land itself (out of which people and culture arise), which most certainly is colonised in England as much as anywhere else In that sense I would say the same forces that colonised Scotland also had colonised England.

The reason you don't see it is that we are the most colonised. People frequently have discussions here on all sorts of programmes about Britishness/Englishness. All other areas of the UK have always had a strong separate identity from Britain. But we have been totally submerged by it in an insidious way.

I think the recent riots are to do with it in a modern context. We need our identity as well and stuff Britain and all it stands for. People are becoming more aware that Britain is the 4th biggest arms exporter in the world, we are BP, and drug companies and the Financial heart in the City of London that Thatcher set in motion.

Look I can't really explain it to you People are getting more and more sick of Britain...take my word for it or not..or the ravings of a lunatic

And yes in the past England was very aggressive and warlike..but I don't think that will happen now.

Effers, your post would make complete sense of me if you left out these two sentences:

>>The reason you don't see it...

>>Look I can't really explain it to you

The rest of the post I understand. It's lucid and fits with what I understand of the world.

What I don't understand is why you keep saying I don't get it. I wonder if you actually read my posts properly, or are just reacting to something you imagine is there.

Okay sorry. I'm used to people not knowing what the hell I'm rambling about.

I'll try to address the issue.

But really its just such an emotional thing for me that I didn't properly read what you wrote.

I will in future.

But you really should know unless its something playful its a tremendous effort for me at present. But I shall make sure that I won't respond to your posts unless I take time and trouble over them.

Oh and if you are interested in more of understanding of the history of English/Britishness read the novels of E. M. Forster if you haven't.

Of course he has nothing to say about the contemporary issue of ethnic immigration here..which is a whole other layer added on to one big mess already.

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Whoa there! It did no such thing!

When Elizabeth I of England died she left no heirs and was succeeded by James VI of Scotland (you know how complicated royal inbreeding is). This was the Union of the Crowns of 1603 and was the genesis of Britain (although Scotland & England were both still independent states).

In 1707 the two countries came together in the Act of Union, creating the single state of Great Britain. This was the 4th attempt at Union since 1603 and was met by rioting in the streets of Edinburgh.

In no sense whatsoever was Scotland "colonised". It retained a distinct legal and educational system superior to the English models which led to better educated Scots dominating the political, legal and philosophical British landscape. The Enlightenment was Scottish-led for example.

The Welsh ... aye, they were colonised.

Dunno. Could it not be seen as...belittling?...trivialising?...to talk of a hypothetical colonisation-that-only-artists-can-see and which cannot be defined, in contrast to actual colonisation that has a material impact on peoples' lives in easily definable and apparent ways, whether they are artists or not?

But how would I know? I'm not an artist. I don't see these things.







S'ya reckin only the CofR has a liberal protestant tradition? Not the Church of Scotland? Or the North-European Lutherans

S'ya reckin only the CofR -> D'ya reckin only the CofE

I love the way you re-write history swl.

We installed James because he was the closest relative.

England was vastly more powerful than Scotland after the Elizabethan age..our greatest era. He couldn't wait to get down here and on the English throne.

I know my history really well so look forward to further discussions with you.

Point out one thing in that post where I "re-write" history.

Fair enough..its more about what you left out about the massive power of England after the Elizabethan age.

>>The Welsh ... aye, they were colonised.

And let's not forget the Irish.


There was a *sort* of economic colonisation of Scotland, however. Blackface sheep and all that.

SWL, I'm certainly up for a Scottish history lesson

What about the decline of gaelic, or the clearances? Nothing to do with the English?

Suppression of language and land theft are both classic tools of colonisation, but we could be talking about the amorphous colonisation that Effers refers to.


>>But how would I know? I'm not an artist. I don't see these things.

That's one of the shortcomings of materialism

Clearances - Scottish Lairds figuring sheep were more profitable than tenants running subsistence crofts and packing them off to the coast, Lowland towns and the New World. Nowt to do with England.

Gaelic - by the time of Union, very much limited to the Highlands and the clearances shipped a lot of Gaelic speakers away.

The main language of Scotland was a form of English, Lallans Scots. Basically a dialect in the same way that regions of England had variations.

Gaelic died out for the simple reason that a more universally understood language was available. What's the point of learning & speaking gibberish if no-one but your immediate circle can understand? Language is about communication.

>>Suppression of language and land theft are both classic tools of colonisation,


There has not been a history of suppressing Gaelic in Scotland.

*However* the economic circumstances changed so that the language was no longer economically useful - i.e. as a medium for trade negotiations. It was still spoken within some communities (still is in, eg, Harris), but decreasingly so as the size of those communities diminished - partly through clearances but far, far more so by simple economic migration.

I contend that this kind of thing is nearly always the case. For example - Australian Aborigines...yes they've lost their language and culture. But it hasn't been actively 'Taken Away' - it's been a side effect of the theft of their means of livelihood and subsequent dislocation.

Notwithstanding, there have also been cases where a language and culture have been actively suppressed where it is associated with a power block in competition with the coloniser.

Scots, incidentally, is an interesting one. James I/VI and his father where rather proud of their distinct language and James bemoaned the fact that he gad to lose it in order to govern England. (An interesting king, James. Quite the intellectual!) By the time we get to Smith, Hume and the other Enlightenment figures, they were expressing embarassment at being able to write good English but being let down when they opened their mouths.

Meanwhile Gaelic is still taught in a Glasgow school where parents send their children if they want them to get jobs with BBC Alba. However it's a dialect which is unintelligible in the Western Isles.

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That's something that nips my The amount of licence payer's money thrown down the drain trying to promote this dead language is ridiculous.

swl:

Only two minor quibbles:

>>Clearances...Nowt to do with England.

Not *entirely true. It was also to do with the Lairds being in hock to an English economic system - they couldn't compete without 'efficiency savings'. And many who couldn't compete sold out to English Lairds who took Scottish titles. (Wasn't Sutherland one?)

Still...like I keep saying about Capitalism...it's only business.


>>The main language of Scotland was a form of English, Lallans Scots.

nnn...English and Scots were regarded as separate languages. In fact ambassadors to the English and Scots courts would learn English and Scots. Think of them as Swedish vs (Bokmal? Nynorsk?) Norwegian. But then. 'A language is a dialect with an army'.

Lallans is different again. Nobody has ever spoken it as a proper language. It is the artificial creation of Hugh McDiarmid, cobbled together from various dialects. This kind of thing has been done before - e.g. an official basque was knitted together from various mutually intelligible dialects. Or there's BBC Welsh and BBC Gaelic, even. or al-Jazeera Arabic. But McDiarmid wasn't even going for that: It was a *deliberately* artificial language to make the readers of his poetry slow down and think.

>>That's something that nips my The amount of licence payer's money thrown down the drain trying to promote this dead language is ridiculous.

Well, fair point.

You could have said the same about Welsh thirty-odd years ago, except that that's now a living language. Whether this was money well spent possibly depends on whether you speak it.

Twll tyn pob saes!