Quote Originally Posted by tibilicus View Post
I don't think I've changed my "location" on these forums since I was a wee scamp. Funnily enough I didn't think about future political ramifications or concepts of national identity when I was 14..

+ England is a location, its technically a region within the UK. If I put down "Hull" (thank God I don't actually live in Hull) as my location it doesn't mean I advocate independence for the North East.
"Technically" England is a Kingdom, Scotland is a Kingdom, Northern Ireland is a Kingdom, and Wales is a Principality who's Soveriegn Prince is a vassal of the Queen of England. Than Mann is an independant Lordship.....etc. Describing England as a "region" is however completely wrong, Mercia is a region within England, as is Wessex, because they are only loosly and geographically defined. England, however, like the other Kingdoms etc., is very specifically defined and there is a "Queen of England" seperate from a Queen of Scotland, the fact that the two kingdoms are in a political union is peculiar which is why it is the topic of discussion.

Rhy may be a Unionist but I suspect even he would bristle if you described Scotland as a "region" of the UK, though in that case "province" might be more accurate and that would not go down over-well either.

It depends what you think my flag means. It's in my sig to refer to my ancestry. My grandfathers side of the family were Anglo-Indians. He was born in Karachi to the son of an Anglo-Indian working for imperial tobacco. He served in the Indian army and would tell me wonderful stories of his time their. Although I never have visited when I have the money I plan to. I had about three generations of my family in India and if I traced my tree I could still find relatives from my great-grandmothers side of the family. I still think if independence didn't happen the family would still be in India. Surprisingly my grandfather was actually very supportive of Indian independence. He understood the Indian culture very well and was troubled by the British partitioning India, he always said it wasn't the right thing to do. I beleive I still have his photos somewhere with a picture under the Indian flag in which he annotated as "free India".
As opposed to my Great Grandfather, who was a Royal Engineer and helped build the Indian Railway but then came home to his wife and children to the Pub in Alton. That's the difference between us, then, wherever else they have gone my family has always been "from" here, and "here" has been mostly England. The sole exceptions being my Anglo-Swedish father's family emigrated (my great grandfather Henric lived here during the war anyway) and the Welsh cattle drover who left Wales and decided England was a better bet.

On the other hand, I suppose your identity makes more sense if it is more expansive, that's fine but it's typical of "Brits" who came "home" after the Empire fell, because out there Brtish was as complex as it got. Back here the issues have not become more simple.

Anyway, despite my ramblings, I guess I've kind of supported my own argument. India was part of the empire as Australia was part of the commonwealth.
But the Scots, they've sat in parliament, ruled the throne and conquered the world in the name of Britannia. Salmond's view genuinely appalls me. Were the Scots some how coerced into Union or did they join for mutual benefit? Which seems more likely? I understand your view but I don't understand the logic you've linked to it. The commonwealth was a lose organisation of countries with British heritage. The UK is a sovereign nation made up of composing nations who have a shared history of roughly 1000 years. It's easy for Salmond to say Scotland's identity is distinct yet he doesn't acknowledge a superior over-arching British identity.
Ah, but "Australians" and probably Anglo-Indians, et al., served in parliament in the 19th Century, moved unhindered throughout the Empire and administered parts of it; Governor Generals came from the UK and the first Prime Minister of Canada was a Scot.

If you can seperate out the Commonwealth into individual nations, as we have done, don't suppose you can't seperate Scotland and England.