That would have been the 1998 World Cup then, would it?

Pendant? What's that?

Just imagine how it feels to be a Scot with compatriots who do this kind of thing....

Sometimes I despair.

Yes, 1998. That's how interested I am in football.

I'll amend the post, because I am sneaky.

You've got a few facts wrong mate:

Northern Ireland is a mess because of the Scots not the English. The NI protestants refer to themselves (rightly) as Scots and fly the Scottish flag.

Studies have proved than Scottish football fans are no better behaved than the English. They just get away with more because no one has stirred people up against them like they have against the English. And who did most of the stirring? Yeah right!

Reliably informed that the Northerners are more racist than the Southerners? Informed by whom? Some pillock who has never been North of Camden no doubt. Utter bollix mate. The southerners love to peddle this myth but unlike them I have lived in both places and the Southerners are the absolute worst for racism, arrogance and unfriendliness. There have always been far more BNP supporters dahn Sarf, but the Northerners, like the England footie fans, get accused unfairly. Anyone who calls people dirty northern monkeys and northern scum can hardly hold themselves up as broad-minded people can they? Personally I hate the cockney trash for the same reason you dislike the Scots - they are arrogant bigoted, uneducated little shits who are so up themselves it's not true. Fortunately I don't have to live amongst them anymore. I still go out of my way to stab them in the back at every given opportunity however!

There have always been far more BNP supporters dahn Sarf, but the Northerners, like the England footie fans, get accused unfairly.

I think thats largely because most foreigners live "dahn sarf", and you might be forgetting Bradford which has had its own motley collection of BNP councillors, and all those who voted for them.

Well, Mr Wotsgoingon, just reading isn't always good enough. Sometimes, you need to comprehend, too.


> Northern Ireland is a mess

Who said that? Not me. Northern Ireland is a wonderful place, which is why I've chosen to live there. Its politics is a total mess, and the people here generally pay little more attention to the politicians than to laugh at them. It's annoying when the politicians start shooting each other, of course, but they seem largely to have stopped that these days, which leaves us with less of a violence problem than most of the rest of the UK. According to the UN, Northern Ireland is now one of the safest places to live in the world. It's not a mess.

> The NI protestants refer to themselves (rightly) as Scots

No, they don't. I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about.

Until Major, sussessive British governments regarded Northern Ireland as a problem to be contained and ignored. That's the genuine reason why a lot of people over here might choose to be resentful of the English. Nothing to do with shite that happened four hundred years ago.


> Studies have proved than Scottish football fans are no better behaved than the English.

Please provide a link to one of these studies.

1998 World Cup: not a spot of bother from the Scots, no complaint about the Scots, despite their descending on France in their thousands, most of them with no tickets to matches, many of them with no accommodation, and doing little but drinking the whole time they were there. More English fans were arrested for violence than those of any other country but France. Any study that concludes from that data that both groups were behaving in the same way is flawed.

> Reliably informed that the Northerners are more racist than the Southerners? Informed by whom?

A friend of mine who lives near Manchester. Except that he didn't inform me that Northerners are more racist than Southerners, which is why I didn't say that. What I said was that public racism is more socially acceptable in the North than in the South, that Northern racists are more likely than Southern racists to feel safe making racist comments in front of you because you're the same colour as them.

> Personally I hate the cockney trash for the same reason you dislike the Scots

Who said I dislike the Scots? I said that they're far nicer than the English, that they're great people, and that they're the reason I love Scotland. Perhaps you missed those bits, you imbecile.

Fascinating article. Your experiences at Queens shocked me, I had no idea of the level of anti-Englishness there, nor that it manifested itself in such regular acts of violence.
(I wrote several more paragraphs, but on reflection, decided to follow your example and delete them. Suffice to say, my experiences growing up in Corby have not totally endeared me to "the Scots", to put it mildly).

Well I for one will be voting with my purse - no more holidays in wales or scotland until I need to show my passport at the border. Sod 'em.

Home rule for England - nothing else will do.

Queens? I never mentioned New York.

Interesting, I didn't know any of this except that drunken Scottish football fans like to sing "we hate the englisch more than you".

Yeah, where did "Queens" come from? I must have been thinking "University - Non-English part of the UK - Sq2 lives in NI - Queens Uni, Belfast" or something like that. Lateral thinking. Some people need to study it, comes natural to me.

(pssst... Tom... He went to St.Andrews. In Scotland. Hence his knowledge of things Scottish.)

Anyhoo, that was a mighty fine read Mr. 2. Shame I missed the original post.

Having lived in Scotland myself for 6 years, 2 of them when I was a nipper, I'll have to agree with your assessment that public racism is more prevalent. At 8 years old, I moved from Norn Iron to Scotland. In Scotland, I found out what Catholics and Protestants were, mainly due to a snowball fight at my school (Protestant, next to a Catholic school) where the nice Protestant kids I was at school with put rocks in their snowballs to throw at the Catholics walking by. There was blood.

Off topic - my personal hatred of the English football team comes from the self-aggrandizing media reports that follow any minor success. And the public mourning when they lose. Perspective, please.

This article and many of the comments are so full of crap it is hardly worth commenting on them.

Southerners v northerners. Northerners find racism more socially acceptable? Utter crap.

A bloke in Cumbria was sentenced to five years in prison for shouting at a mosque. Yes he actually had the audacity to shout abuse at a building.

I don't know if he threatened to behead it. Perhaps if he'd have raped a child he would have got less.

All those nasty southerners. Would they be the ones who have migrated from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Newcastle, Timbuktu, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, South Africa, Australia, Mars?

Nobody mentions the midlanders. Perfectly reasonable I suppose, so they're not worth mentioning. Here are many of us striving to prevent England being carved up into spurious regions and there are still idiots who go on about the north and south. Pathetic.

"My experiences of racism in England are based on living in the South-East. I am reliably informed that public racism is far more socially acceptable in the North. Could even be worse than Scotland."

This is true. In Manchester it is perfectly normal for complete strangers to walk up to you and start ranting on about "all the fooking blacks" etc.

> This article and many of the comments are so full of crap it is hardly worth commenting on them.

Yet you did. How queer.


> A bloke in Cumbria was sentenced to five years in prison for shouting at a mosque.

You seem to have confused "socially acceptable" with "legal".


> Here are many of us striving to prevent England being carved up into spurious regions and there are still idiots who go on about the north and south.

What? You're saying that, if two areas shouldn't have separate parliaments, then they are exactly the same? What on Earth are you on about? Are you seriously suggesting that Southerners and Northerners aren't different?

Just in case anyone was wondering, the chap in Cumbria got six months not six years, and shouted racial (not religious) abuse at particular worshippers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/engla...ria/ 4877412.stm

Your post contains so many inaccuracies and prejudices masquerading as facts, that I hardly know where to start. However, this howler jumped out furthest at me.

"Act of Union was actually England bailing out a bankrupt Scotland"

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Popular opinion in Scotland in 1707, as now, was overwhelmingly against union. The bill was pushed through, by four votes, by well-bribed pro-English agents (a permanent feature in the Scots Parliament from William of Orange's time onwards).

In Scotland it was felt that the English had caused Scotland's near-bankruptcy through their concerted attempts to stop Scotland establishing a colony at Darien. The English (and later British) policy of using its army and, even more so, its navy power to frustrate other countries imperial ambitions (lest their own be harmed) is, of course, well documented. However, pro-empire historians like to play down the English role in Darien's failure (a good example would be Schama wittering on about combs), ignoring the fact that William of Orange gave explicit orders that Scottish supply ships be stopped from reaching the colony, after the English East India Company complained that Darien’s success would be catastrophic for English business interests.

Once England presented terms for union to an unconvinced Scotland, who rejected them, they passed the Alien Act – which combined trade sanctions with a license to intern any Scots who visited England. This was followed by the threat of outright war. The English bullied their way to what they wanted - their usual MO.

The Union was not, of course, lovely, altruistic England begging Scotland to share in its prosperity, but a hardheaded, cynical piece of politics. By 1707, it had become evident that the gluttonous, gout-ridden Queen Anne was not going to produce an heir. The English, who had suffered hard to get their Protestant constitutional monarchy, had planned ahead and passed the Act Of Settlement in 1701 (breaking a existing 1696 agreement with Scotland on the issue). This legislation barred Catholics and those married to Catholics from becoming monarch, and would ensure that, on Anne's death, the throne would pass to the Protestant house of Hanover.

However, Scotland had passed no such legislation, making it clear that they would choose a monarch for themselves (Presbyterians always demand the right to choose things for themselves). For example, although he became King of England in 1688, William of Orange hadn't become King of Scotland until the Scottish Parliament ratified a separate treaty in 1689. Although fiercely Protestant, Scotland at the beginning of the 18th Century was largely an aristocratic oligarchy, and hadn't gone through a civil war for the rights of parliament like the English had. The prospect of the Hanoverians wasn't particularly popular in England, let alone in Scotland, and there was a strong belief that the Scots would go their own way when Anne finally snuffed it. The prospect of the powerful Jacobite leaders (whose support was growing in the Scottish parliament) restoring the Catholic Stuart line was very real, and the English were quite happy to "bail out" Scotland, rather than see a pro-French Catholic monarchy installed north of the border, trapping them in a neat pincer movement.

Anyway, the money wasn’t so much a bailout as an investment, given that Scotland would become their territory after the Act of Union was passed.

So, there you go. You learn something every day.

Right, yes. And where, exactly, did I say why Scotland was bankrupt?

> Your post contains so many inaccuracies and prejudices masquerading as facts

I'm genuinely interested. I've just re-read it, and I can see some statements that are my own personal experience, some that are presented as my own opinion, and some that are about as controversial as "Rain is wet." And I know that there are no prejudices: prejudice would be deciding my opinion of Scots in advance and ignoring evidence to the contrary; what I did was start out loving Scots and have my opinion gradually changed by first-hand experience. So, please, point out these alleged fallacies.

"We all had to be very careful about walking around in public, and it was a bad idea to go out after dark."

This was in St Andrews?

Blimey, the place must have gone downhill rather a lot in the last few years.

As for the guy who wore an England shirt in Aberdeen, well what can I say? In ABERDEEN? What did anyone expect?

> This was in St Andrews?

It was in St Andrews while Braveheart was on at the cinema, not always. Braveheart ran and ran, mind: the biggest blockbusters usually get about two weeks at St A; it got a couple of months.

On this subject - have you seen the comments on Andy Murray's blog following him saying he didn't support England? Bloody hell. So far they've had comments about the Dunblane shootings and London bombings taken down and there is currently one comment saying the UDA is going to blow him up.

Other than these pretty extreme examples - the sheer amount of bile from both sides is shocking.

Did he say he that doesn't support England or that he does support whoever England's playing?

It is arguably a tad rich for someone who is cheered on by thousands of English fans every time he's on court. I can understand why an English tennis fan who has been enthusiastically supporting Murray might be angry at the lack of reciprocation.

What on Earth that might have to do with Dunblane, though.... Honestly, some people.

Oh, I see: "anyone but England". That's not quite the same as saying that he doesn't support England.

Some journo asked him the question of who he was supporting in the world cup and he (stupidly) said he'd be wearing a paraguay shirt for the England game. Mind you, he's meant to be British, as is Henman, but I can't imagine Henman being asked the same question.

That's the thing though, why the hell should an English tennis fan be pissed off? In football and rugby England and Scotland are rivals. We aren't in tennis, athletics, etc. In tennis Andy Murray is representing Britain. In the world cup England are representing England. He is not cheered on by English fans. He is cheered on by British fans, many of whom happen to be English.

Jack McConnell got it (partially) right the other day when he said the this was football and had nothing to do with politics. Unfortunately he forgot that if it had nothing to do with politics then he should then have shut the fuck up and not inflamed the whole thing. Idiot.#

I'm Scottish and I am also British. They aren't mutually exclusive. I can't say I particularly want England to win the world cup or 6 nations or any other sport where we play against them. I'm Scottish - not English. When the Olympics are on I don't want English athletes to lose as they are representing Britain and I'm British. The problem is that there are too many people in Britain who don't seem to be able to get their heads around that.

> I can't say I particularly want England to win the world cup or 6 nations or any other sport where we play against them.

At the risk of digging up the cliche (cliches are sometimes cliches because they're true), I don't want England to win either. Not because of nationalism or owt like that, but because I'm a committed footie-hater and given the way the english media is banging on about 1966 ALL THE BLOODY TIME, it's blatantly obvious that should England win this time out, they won't shut up about *that* for forty years.

That's anti-media sentiment and anti-footie sentiment rather than anti-English sentiment, btw. I've found it pretty easy to avoid sport in Scots media, but it sneaks into bloody everything - men's magazines, music magazines, even bloody fashion magazines thanks to the WAGs or WIGS or whatever they're called.

As long as the debate is about England and Scotland and Britain, your comments are all fair enough, David. But you say Murray brought Paraguay into it. Where does Paraguay fit into ancient British rivalries? He didn't say he doesn't support England. He said he'll support "anyone but England" and said he'd support England's opponents. Why? Scotland aren't going to win, are they?

From Murray alone, or from any other individual, it's unremarkable. As a matter of fact, I want England to lose, though for different reasons. What is beginning to piss English people off is the constant desire for England and the English to lose at anything and everything coming from almost every Scot on the planet. Like I said, it gets wearing. And it's unique to Scotland.

Incidentally, every time Wimbledon came round while I lived in Scotland, I couldn't help but notice the Scots' attitude towards Henman: most seemed to want him to lose. I lost count of the conversations in which I was told that English support for Henman was stupid, that Henman was shite, that the English needed to just get over themselves and stop pretending that an Englishman could win Wimbledon. They didn't get all British about it when the British player was English.

> given the way the english media is banging on about 1966 ALL THE BLOODY TIME, it's blatantly obvious that should England win this time out, they won't shut up about *that* for forty years.

Yep, that's my reason, too.

Henman is shite. ;-D

Sorry.

I understand that though. It's something that over the last decade has got more and more noticeable is that the national media increasingly use the term British for competitors who are Scottish competing under the GB flag but using English for others. Henman was constantly referred to as English. "England's hope for Wimbledon Win", etc. As soon as Murray appeared he was "British". I can't remember this happening before Euro 96.

I've heard Henman referred to interchangeably as English and British. Which is fair enough, because, as you pointed out, he is both. Murray is regularly referred to as Scottish as well as British — I mean, come on: is there anyone who isn't aware that he's Scottish? What I've always noticed is that, every time Henman is referred to as English, Scots start ranting about the English media "always" calling him English and "never" calling him British, and every time Murray is referred to as British, Scots start ranting about the English media "always" calling him British and "never" calling him Scottish. Ditto for all other sports. Not true, in either case.

Besides, this is bizarre: Scots disown Henman 'cause he's English, want him to lose 'cause he's English, and complain when he's referred to as English instead of British. One might almost be tempted to suggest that, no matter what the situation, some Scots will always find a way to whinge about it.

You know what pisses me off about this? Murray is a boring arrogant whining git, and has been for quite some time. But now, if I mention that, people are going to think it's part of some stupid national football-related rivalry. Arse.

Double standards are normal in random nationalism.

>>Murray is a boring arrogant whining git, and has been for quite some time. But now, if I mention that, people are going to think it's part of some stupid national football-related rivalry. Arse.

Henman is dull as dishwater too.

Yup.