Be Excellent To Each Other

I find this rather funny. There's clearly a lot of money in being a bitter demagogue. It represents the fact that a lot of these chip-on-shoulder Nats feel so powerless and impotent (because they are), they're happy to spunk what little they have to fund this twat, who'd rather live in England, to rant on their behalf.

He's pocketed so much money from this personally and has never given a breakdown of expenses. 'I'm only paying myself a living wage'. What utter, transparent lies. That and the fact these morons keep spunking donations at him for doing such a good job representing their small minds.

Fools and their money, and so forth. 'Wee blue book souvenir edition'. A shitty propaganda pamphlet for £52. Amazing.

Allegedly.

Yes sorry, allegedly a twat.

Interesting Guardian piece about what the British Social Attitudes survey has to say about Scottish attitudes. It suggests that the Scottish aren't as exceptional as the Scots think they are, in line with similar studies I've seen. Might find some time later to go through the actual study.

If the rest of the country think the same as us maybe you could do us all a favour and stop voting for the fucking Tories?

I'm in Scotland on the day after the election. If the stories get in I am gonna pretend to be Welsh or something.

And Scotland's much more different to England than, say, Cornwall. Weird, eh?

I really like this guy, loads of great videos on the YouTube channel.

He's like a Brit, but he lives in America, which I guess can happen.

This was done before the vote, but still very watchable IMO.

Fuck you chris

I just assumed that guy was David Baddiel's little brother.

This weeks had bit on the UK election - the show is "last week tonight with John Oliver' if you want to grab the whole thing (very worthwhile watching all of them)

This *should* be that small section (i'm not in a place to check right now)

His show is on Sky I think (I record it every week, but have no idea which channel it's actually on)

Yeah I've just about watched the whole lot now, very good stuff.

Some of them are a bit scary too, the ones about prisons and nuclear weapons spring to mind. The one on the wealth gap was great too.

In fact, it's almost all really good.

Yeah, he sat in for John Stewart on The Daily Show for a few months while Stewart was making a movie.

Then he got his own show on HBO and it is awesome: I adore John Oliver. He's also good in Community.

EDIT - And also on 'The Bugle', obv.

I really like him, but I think he's truly awful in community.

He has nothing but nice things to say about you.

I was booking a hostel for a forthcoming trip to Scotland last night. After I realised that 'yha.org.uk' is only for England & Wales, and that the Scots had their own organisation, I started the booking. I spent ages scrolling up and down the obligatory 'nationality' question on the reservation form. I found that there wasn't an entry for 'British'. Lacking a 'Cornish' option I had to plump for 'English'.

I made sure I gave my country as 'UK' when entering my address.

Scotland is like that for everything. National Trust? Nope, Scottish National Trust. Shared blood service? Nope, Scotland has its own blood service and its own stocks. Ambulances say 'The SCOTTISH Ambulance Service' on them. Could you imagine English ones saying 'The ENGLISH ambulance service'? Of course not, that would be silly. SCOTTISH TEA is sold bearing the slogan BEST BREWED WITH SCOTTISH WATER. Brands looking to ingratiate themselves with the locals feature banners saying 'PROUD TO SERVE SCOTLAND'.

Generally you find that practically everything is prefixed with 'Scottish' or otherwise tries to highlight that it's local local local, in Scotland.

I don't know how this came about but all I see are almost pathetically desperate attempts by the Scottish in general to highlight that they're distinct and different from everyone else. Take a close look around when you're here Kern, you'll find it very strange.

As a Cornishman, he's probably used to it.

I was watching something on Sky Go the other day, and when it was playing an advert it I heard the familiar tones of the British Gas advert, I looked up, and I saw that Super Mario Galaxy style world they have for their adverts. Then they mentioned who the advert was for. "Scottish Gas". So I guess that in someway backs up what EBG was saying. (I was watching in Devon mind, so not sure why I got a Scottish advert).

Now I think I misunderstood EBG.

That's because he was speaking in SCOTTISH English.

How so?

But yeah, Scottish Gas being the respective sub of British Gas. SSE is branded as 'Scottish Hydro' here. All the companies know they can engender a bit of mindless brand loyalty by sticking the word 'Scottish' in there. You'd think it would be too obvious to work, but it's not.

When I was first pregnant I was very newbie mum-to-be and wanted an app to help guide me through what were a few difficult first months of pregnancy.

I searched for an NHS app, just to track what symptoms I might expect, what size fruit the baby was this week (turns out you should always know your baby fruit size), etc.

The app I downloaded was, I later realised, an NHS Scotland app.

It makes you enter your postcode. I entered mine, pressed submit.

It tgen kicked me out saying that the app was only for the use of Scottish residents and that I was not permitted to use it.

Do egg companies call themselves Scottish Eggs or Scotch Eggs?

And what if they do actually sell Scotch Eggs?

Scottish Scotch Eggs?

Yeah, NHS Direct is England, and Scotland have 'NHS 24'.

Despite obvious benefits of shared resources and the convenience of a single point of health contact for the whole of the UK, everyone wants their own little thing that's theirs. It's unnecessary and more than a bit pathetic.

Scotch eggs are fairly popular, but nothing is more popular than Greggs. There seems to be a Greggs every half mile.

The Scotland Bill has its second reading today. I think the interplay between the government and the SNP is likely to prove to be an interesting dance. No doubt the SNP will publicly object to everything in the bill and to whatever concessions are tabled as they don't want to be seen to be 'agreeing' with the Tories whilst quietly welcoming any increase in Holyrood's powers. I'm wondering if it'll have to be Labour who have to propose anything major (with the both government and the SNP's tacit support) to get this through.

I accept that a sometimes wearying degree of parochialism is occasionally undoubtedly present in advertising materials and such (although even the "Scottish Tea for Scottish Water" thing could be argued as vaguely legit due to the fact that the water up here is soft and the teas are tailored to that characteristic, whereas that's only true in parts of England - but it makes no difference really in practice as far as I can tell. I buy Yorkshire generally anyway, tea discussion fans! But anyway) - but the fact is, that sort of passive nationalism as a marketing tool *does* work on lots of people (and again, you could make the environmental argument that we should all be eating sustainably, so consuming "Scotch Beef (Always seems strange that meat is the only place we use the word "Scotch" up here, really) is better than eating "British" as you know it's gone less distance - but that's a whole different discussion and not really applicable to slapping a saltire on the aisle in Tesco or whatever to convince people you invest locally). The fact it doesn't happen so much (or at all really) in other parts of the UK is more because of the general recent association with such sentiment as something generally not nice - but let's not get into whether or not that's a good thing or not now, eh?

The reason most of the bodies you mention use the term "Scottish" is because - irrespective of whether or not they are wholly owned subsidiaries of a "British" company, or have an equivalent body down South doing apparently the same job - generally they are Scottish companies. Or, in the case of most of the public services (ambulances, NHS, police, prisons, certain areas of transport etc. etc.) because they fall under the devolved control of the Scottish Government and so are essentially ran as separate departments with separate budgets. This isn't just - as your post implies - in the interests of petty minded flag waving (or "pathetic" as you put it); more to do with the fact they have operate with different legislative concerns to the rest of the UK due to being required to work under Scots Law rather than English (and Welsh, if you like). You see this also to a lesser extent in Northern Ireland. So in practical terms, even though they may seem to be doing the same work, the work behind the scenes may be *completely* different.

(I'm not able to comment on whether there's a tax benefit to running a "Scottish" company as a separate unit and declaring profits as such, funnelling them back into your Global Mega Corporation later or not - but it also wouldn't surprise me).

I once saw a Marks & Spencer gift box of Scottish biscuits. The tin was shaped like a London bus, and the passengers pictured at the windows included the likes of Shakespeare, the Beatles, Elizabeth the First, etc etc .

A very large post by Stephen there, expending a lot of effort saying 'Scottish things are separate don't you know', which wasn't in doubt. The fact they feel the need to prefix 'Scottish' in front of them is the subject of debate. There's nothing to stop it being called 'The ambulance service' in Scotland either, after all, it doesn't say 'The English Ambulance Service' in England, does it? The fact it's different behind the scenes is completely irrelevant to the public who don't care about how it's run. But in Scotland, everything must have 'Scottish' in front of it, because it's so jolly important in the mind of the wee Scots that they have their own thing that musn't be confused for anything that also exists in England. It IS pathetic.

Just out of interest, it’s the Welsh Ambulance Service too.

Yeah, every Ambulance Service is named, somewhat helpfully, for the geographical location it serves. It's not called the English Ambulance Service because there is no such thing. E.g. Round here it's the North West Ambulance Service and it's part of NHS England. In Scotland it's the Scottish Ambulance Service and it's part of NHS Scotland.

There is no 'English Blah' for anything because presumably the English feel much less need to desperately reinforce their identity in absolutely everything. Regions might exhibit it on a smaller scale but Scotland is by far the worst offender to the point of tedium. Scotmid, Scotbet, Scotthis, Scotthat. Fucking hell I've even eaten sandwiches that said 'MADE WITH PRIDE IN SCOTLAND' on them.

Now we have the nationalists standing alone trying to oppose the EU referendum bill: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33067157

Thank fuck there aren't many of the idiotic morons.

Regions do it presumably because they are big enough to make it worthwhile having seperate services - you can see that in Police Scotland, they used to be seperate regions, but it was condensed into one to make it more efficient and to save money. You don't need 4 or 5 different forces in a country with only 5 million people, after all.
The sandwich thing, everywhere does that. Was in America in April - both Nevada and California. Saw plenty of things loudly proclaiming "Made in Nevada" and "Made in California". EVERY country does it - EVERY brand plays on peoples loyalty to their country. I don't know about others, by I am more likely to buy something that says "Made in Britain" rather than "Made in China".

I guess that's where we differ then, because I can see when some lame attempt is being made to pander to some bias and it makes me more unlikely to buy it.

I believe, by law, producers are required to state where the product has been made. If companies wish to use this as a marketing tool, it makes sense. There are some people more likely to buy something made within a few hundred miles, rather than a few thousand.

Just makes ecological sense to buy local stuff, not to mention economic sense.

I'm on a large business project involving marketing in Scotland at present.

All our contact and research at present shows a far stronger bias to buy into marketed Nationalism in Scotland than in England.

For example, shoppers in Scotkand show a strong negative bias to buying something labelled as 'English' (English Butter), for example, whereas Shoppers in Engkand do not show the same bias against products listed as 'Scottish' (beef, water, etc).

Basically, advice and research says don't stock products marketed as English, avoid any show of the Union flag on packaging, etc

Whilst I'm sure that's true in a lot of cases and probably more prevalent than in England it's clear from your ambulance example that you are also seeing fanatical nationalism in instances where having Scotland in the name is simply descriptive of an organisation's function because it was set up to serve that region.

I disagree. Given the size of the country, a regional or locally based force is more likely to be able to adapt itself to the needs of the communities they serve. I doubt the policing needs of inner Glasgow are similar to those of the remote islands.

But I'm happy for the Scots to organise their policing in whatever way they want.

At first glance, I thought Robert Carlyle was holding a gun to that poor dog's head, then.

This is basically what I'm saying. Because I'm not a native this stuff just seems really blatant to me, and it clearly works very well. Stick a fucking Saltire on it with the word 'Scotland' and 'Pride' in there somewhere and you're good to go. You'll have to forgive me if I think such strong nationalism is basically an indicator of small-minded idiocy. We certainly consider that to be the case with highly nationalistic english EDL dickheads.

Incidentally I think Rob Carlisle is a top actor that adds to whatever he's in. I'm watching the somewhat unlikely Once Upon a Time at the moment, and without his character in that it probably wouldn't be worth watching.

Bzzt!

That's not always the case. Outside of the British season for tomato-growing, for instance, imported Spanish tomatoes have a smaller carbon footprint than locally-grown ones.

So's your face.

Yesterday in Parliament:



Superb!

EDIT: and a bit further down:

Indeed.

Anyway, I don't think that people are simply buying into an ecological ideal by actively avoiding anything with a Union flag in case it comes from part of the UK south of the border...