Scottish Independence

[PauloBarnesi]

I've not read it but I will if that is a recommendation

Its an excellent book that deals in a very even handed way what happened on that day; its scathing of the English and what they did afterwards; the highland clearances. But make no mistake “Bonnie” Prince Charles comes in for harsh words. Of course not every Scot was a Jacobite, so its unfair to say every Scot supported the uprising, in fact the majority probably feared it and its catholicism. The end of the highland way of life and the clearances were appalling.

But I think that much of the bitterness as you and others have said is a stoked up bitter jealousy, at England’s success. Sadly all the main industries of Scotland whether it be knitwear, Shipbuilding, coal mining, etc have all headed due south...

Meh even their best ever group didn't contain one Scotsman ...

No it contained two; Billy MacKenzie and Alan Rankine

Manchester produced over double the decent music since 1990 than the entire scottish contingent ever produced in it's lifetime. If you are talking post 80s then Manchester obliterates the majority of the UK. Only London can hold it's weight against that.

Lets add in some other stuff and quite frankly for a country of five million its more than held its weight. Anyway Manchester isn’t that great, for every Joy Division ‘unknown pleasures’, yet get some crap like the Stone Roses ‘second coming’ or even the ‘we need the money we are touring again’

[PauloBarnesi]

Oh and people of Scottish descent make up the largest number of US presidents, the majority I think coming via Ulster...

[LondonLax]

2) keep the quid, oooh very independent, can't print your own quids though

They already do print their own quids, three different sets of their own quids, Bos, RBS and Clydesdale

Interersting that the SNP want 16 and 17 year olds included in the vote. I suspect that's because they've identified them as being more idealistic and less pragmatic or world wise.

Personally I think all 16-17 years should get the vote UK wide but thats a different topic altogether

yes, they do print their own quids, but they are worth a pound and directly interchangable. What they have is UK money with their own picture on it. That becomes tricky if they are independent. We can't have a shared currency where two separate countries can decide whether to print more and more money. Once we are separate they would have to decide to keep adherence to the UK pound and thrive or die by its performance (and therefore their own fate is still utterly out of their hands). Or they keep the right to print money and influence exchange rates, by having their own currency. Once they have their own money (beyond just having their own pictures on UK money), they are at the mercy of the markets. Now that might turn them into Switzerland, or it might turn them into Hungary.

I'd say Scotland are pretty comparable to Denmark who obviously have their own currency but I'd suspect they would leave the pound and join the Euro in the long run.

[bickster]

Manchester produced over double the decent music since 1990 than the entire scottish contingent ever produced in it's lifetime. If you are talking post 80s then Manchester obliterates the majority of the UK. Only London can hold it's weight against that.

If you look at that objectively then it is utter nonsense, I'm going to get into a big discussion about it but as a "fan" of most of what Manchester has had to offer since punk I have to say you really are doing a disservice to Scotland.

[mjmooney]

Anyway Manchester isn’t that great, for every Joy Division ‘unknown pleasures’, yet get some crap like the Stone Roses ‘second coming’

Oh **** it, it's off-topic, but I'll say it again: "Second Coming" is a brilliant album - one of the very few 80s/90s Manc albums that isn't boring wank. And it pisses all over anything by New Order or The Smiths.

So there.

[Bazdavies79]

I think second coming is great, also love the smiths, never quite got new order or joy division mind.

Another feather for the scots is Jack Bruce, 1/3 of supergroup Cream. I can't say I can rattle off many good Scottish bands or musicians.

[mjmooney]

Good call on Jack Bruce, Baz.

Alex Harvey, anyone?

[dundeevilla]

Slightly OT, but for a small country we have more than punched above our weight in terms of what we've given the world.

Here is an amazing list of Scottish inventions to illustrate our pure dead brilliance

Road transport innovations

• Macadamised roads (the basis for, but not specifically, Tarmac): John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836)

• The pedal bicycle: Attributed to both Kirkpatrick Macmillan (1813–1878) and Thomas McCall (1834–1904)

• The pneumatic tyre: Robert William Thomson and John Boyd Dunlop (1822–1873)

• The overhead valve engine: David Dunbar Buick (1854–1929)

Civil engineering innovations

• Tubular steel: Sir William Fairbairn (1789–1874)

• Falkirk Wheel: Initial designs by Nicoll Russell Studios, Architects and engineers Binnie Black and Veatch (Opened 2002)

• The patent slip for docking vessels: Thomas Morton (1781–1832)

• The Drummond Light: Thomas Drummond (1797–1840)

• Canal design: Thomas Telford (1757–1834)

• Dock design improvements: John Rennie (1761–1821)

• Crane design improvements: James Bremner (1784–1856)

Aviation innovations

• Aircraft design: Frank Barnwell (1910) Establishing the fundamentals of aircraft design at the University of Glasgow.

Power innovations

• Condensing steam engine improvements: James Watt (1736–1819)

• Coal-gas lighting: William Murdoch (1754–1839)

• The Stirling heat engine: Rev. Robert Stirling (1790–1878)

• Carbon brushes for dynamos: George Forbes (1849–1936)

• The Clerk cycle gas engine: Sir Dugald Clerk (1854–1932)

• Cloud chamber recording of atoms: Charles T. R. Wilson (1869–1959)

• Wave-powered electricity generator:By South African Engineer Stephen Salter in 1977

Shipbuilding innovations

• Europe's first passenger steamboat: Henry Bell (1767–1830)

• The first iron-hulled steamship: Sir William Fairbairn (1789–1874)

• The first practical screw propeller: Robert Wilson (1803–1882)[

• Marine engine innovations: James Howden (1832–1913)

• John Elder & Charles Randolph (Marine Compound expansion engine)

Heavy industry innovations

•Coal mining extraction in the sea on an artificial island by Sir George Bruce of Carnock (1575). Regarded as one of the industrial wonders of the late medieval period.

• Making cast steel from wrought iron: David Mushet (1772–1847)

• Wrought iron sash bars for glass houses: John C. Loudon (1783–1865)

• The hot blast oven: James Beaumont Neilson (1792–1865)

• The steam hammer: James Nasmyth (1808–1890)

• Wire rope: Robert Stirling Newall (1812–1889)

• Steam engine improvements: William Mcnaught (1831–1881)

• The Fairlie, a narrow gauge, double-bogie railway engine: Robert Francis Fairlie (1831–1885)

• Cordite - Sir James Dewar, Sir Frederick Abel (1889)

Agricultural innovations

• Threshing machine improvements: James Meikle (c.1690-c.1780) & Andrew Meikle (1719–1811)

• Hollow pipe drainage: Sir Hew Dalrymple, Lord Drummore (1700–1753)

• The Scotch Plough: James Anderson of Hermiston (1739–1808)

• Deanstonisation soil-drainage system: James Smith (1789–1850)

• The mechanical reaping machine: Rev. Patrick Bell (1799–1869)

• The Fresno Scraper: James Porteous (1848–1922)

• The Tuley tree shelter: Graham Tuley in 1979

Communication innovations

• Print stereotyping: William Ged (1690–1749)

• Roller printing: Thomas Bell (patented 1783)

• The adhesive postage stamp and the postmark: James Chalmers (1782–1853)

• Universal Standard Time: Sir Sandford Fleming (1827–1915)

• Light signalling between ships: Admiral Philip H. Colomb (1831–1899)

• The telephone: Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922)

• The teleprinter: Frederick G. Creed (1871–1957)

• The first working television, and colour television; John Logie Baird (1888–1946)

• Radar: Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973)

• The underlying principles of Radio - James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)

• The Automated Teller Machine and Personal Identification Number system - James Goodfellow (born 1937)

Publishing firsts

• The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1768–81)

• The first English textbook on surgery(1597)

• The first modern pharmacopaedia, William Cullen (1776). The book became 'Europe’s principal text on th classification and treatment of disease'. His ideas survive in the terms nervous energy and neuroses (a word that Cullen coined).

• The first postcards and picture postcards in the UK

Scientific innovations

• Logarithms: John Napier (1550–1617)

• The theory of electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879)

• The first theory of the Higgs boson or "God Particle" by Peter Higgs particle-physics theorist at the University of Edinburgh (1964)

• Popularising the decimal point: John Napier (1550–1617)

• The world's first oil refinery and a process of extracting paraffin from coal laying the foundations for the modern oil industry: James Young (1811–1883)

• The Gregorian telescope: James Gregory (1638–1675)

• The concept of latent heat: Joseph Black (1728–1799)

• The pyroscope, atmometer and aethrioscope scientific instruments: Sir John Leslie (1766–1832)

• Identifying the nucleus in living cells: Robert Brown (1773–1858)

• Hypnotism: James Braid (1795–1860)

• Transplant rejection: Professor Thomas Gibson (1940s) the first medical doctor to understand the relationship between donor graft tissue and host tissue rejection and tissue transplantation by his work on aviation burns victims during World War II.

• Colloid chemistry: Thomas Graham (1805–1869)

• The kelvin SI unit of temperature: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824–1907)

• Devising the diagramatic system of representing chemical bonds: Alexander Crum Brown (1838–1922)

• Criminal fingerprinting: Henry Faulds (1843–1930)

• The noble gases: Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916)

• The Cloud chamber: Charles Thomson Rees Wilson (1869–1959)

• Pioneering work on nutrition and poverty: John Boyd Orr (1880–1971)

• The ultrasound scanner: Ian Donald (1910–1987)

• Ferrocene synthetic substances: Peter Ludwig Pauson in 1955

• The MRI body scanner: John Mallard and James Huchinson from (1974–1980)

• The first cloned mammal (Dolly the Sheep): Was conducted in The Roslin Institute research centre

• Seismometer innovations thereof: James David Forbes

• Metaflex fabric innovations thereof: University of St. Andrews (2010) application of the first manufacturing fabrics that manipulate light in bending it around a subject. Before this such light manipulating atoms were fixed on flat hard surfaces. The team at St Andrews are the first to develop the concept to fabric.

• Macaulayite: Dr. Jeff Wilson of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen.

Sports innovations

Scots have been instrumental in the invention and early development of several sports:

• several modern athletics events, i.e. shot put[84] and the hammer throw, derive from Highland Games and earlier 12th century Scotland

• Curling

• Gaelic handball The modern game of handball is first recorded in Scotland in 1427, when King James I an ardent handball player had his men block up a cellar window in his palace courtyard that was interfering with his game.

• Cycling, invention of the pedal-cycle

• Golf (see Golf in Scotland)

• Shinty The history of Shinty as a non-standardised sport pre-dates Scotland the Nation. The rules were standardised in the 19th century by Archibald Chisholm

• Rugby sevens: Ned Haig and David Sanderson (1883)

Military innovations

• Lieutenant-General Sir David Henderson two areas:

- Field intelligence. Argued for the establishment of the Intelligence Corps. Wrote Field Intelligence: Its Principles and Practice (1904) and Reconnaissance (1907) on the tactical intelligence of modern warfare during World War I.

- Royal Air Force. Considered instrumental in the foundation of the British Royal Air Force.

Medical innovations

• Pioneering the use of surgical anaesthesia with Chloroform: Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870)

• The hypodermic syringe: Alexander Wood (1817–1884)

• Discovery of hypnotism (November 1841): James Braid (1795–1860)

• Identifying the mosquito as the carrier of malaria: Sir Ronald Ross (1857–1932)

• Identifying the cause of brucellosis: Sir David Bruce (1855–1931)

• Discovering the vaccine for typhoid fever: Sir William B. Leishman (1865–1926)

• Discovering insulin: John J R Macleod (1876–1935) with others

• Penicillin: Sir Alexander Fleming (1881–1955)

• General anaesthetic - Pionered by Scotsman James Young Simpson and Englishman John Snow

• Ambulight PDT: light-emitting sticking plaster used in photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating non-melanoma skin cancer. Developed by Ambicare Dundee's Ninewells Hospital and St Andrews University. (2010)

• Discovering an effective tuberculosis treatment: Sir John Crofton in the 1950s

• Primary creator of the artificial kidney (Professor Kenneth Lowe - Later Queen's physician in Scotland)

• Developing the first beta-blocker drugs: Sir James W. Black in 1964

• Glasgow Coma Scale: Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett (1974)

• EKG [Electrocardiography]: Alexander Muirhead (1911)

Household innovations

• The Television John Logie Baird (1923)

• The Refrigerator: William Cullen (1748)

• The Flush toilet: Alexander Cummings (1775)

• The Dewar Flask: Sir James Dewar (1847–1932)

• The first distiller to triple distill Irish whiskeyJohn Jameson (Whisky distiller)

• The piano footpedal: John Broadwood (1732–1812)

• The first automated can-filing machine John West (1809–1888)

• The waterproof macintosh: Charles Macintosh (1766–1843)

• The kaleidoscope: Sir David Brewster (1781–1868)

• Keiller's marmalade Janet Keiller (1797) - The first recipe of rind suspended marmalade or Dundee marmalade produced in Dundee.

• The modern lawnmower: Alexander Shanks (1801–1845)

• The Lucifer friction match: Sir Isaac Holden (1807–1897)

• The self filling pen: Robert Thomson (1822–1873)

• Cotton-reel thread: J & J Clark of Paisley

• Lime Cordial: Peter Burnett in 1867

• Bovril beef extract: John Lawson Johnston in 1874

• Electric clock: Alexander Bain (1840)

• Chemical Telegraph (Automatic Telegraphy) Alexander Bain (1846) In England Bain's telegraph was used on the wires of the Electric Telegraph Company to a limited extent, and in 1850 it was used in America.

Weapons innovations

• The carronade cannon: Robert Melville (1723–1809)

• The Ferguson rifle: Patrick Ferguson in 1770 or 1776

• The Lee bolt system as used in the Lee-Metford and Lee-Enfield series rifles: James Paris Lee

• The Ghillie suit

• The Percussion Cap: invented by Scottish Presbyterian clergyman Alexander Forsyth

Miscellaneous innovations

• Boys' Brigade

•Bank of England devised by William Paterson

• Bank of France devised by John Law

• Colour photography: the first known permanent colour photograph was taken by James Clerk Maxwell.

BEAT THAT DENMARK!

[PauloBarnesi]

No mention of Rabbie Burns? No mention of the Krankies? No mention of fried mars bars?

[mjmooney]

Quite so, Dundee. The point I was alluding to in my earlier post, thanks for putting the flesh on the bone.

About the only thing I could think of that compares is the achievements of the Jewish diaspora.

[dundeevilla]

No mention of Rabbie Burns? No mention of the Krankies? No mention of fried mars bars?

In lists dedicated to Scottish entertainers, cultural icons, and innovative deep fried foods respectively, they would all feature highly Paulo.

I suspect the list of deep fried foods would be the longest.

[PauloBarnesi]

No mention of Rabbie Burns? No mention of the Krankies? No mention of fried mars bars?

In lists dedicated to Scottish entertainers, cultural icons, and innovative deep fried foods respectively, they would all feature highly Paulo.

I suspect the list of deep fried foods would be the longest.

We need more lists of the greats from Dundee; William MacArthur MacKenzie, the great cloths from Harris, the great engineering achievements, Forth Railway Bridge, The great architecture, Edinburgh’s New Town, The great sportsman; Eric Liddell and Alan Wells and of course the wonders; B.A. Robertson, Rab C Nesbitt and those ƒrigg••• Midges!

[dAVe80]

William McGregor anyone?

Scotland has produced some of my favourite bands, Teenage Fan Club, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Orange Juice, The Vaselines, Belle & Sebastian, The Delgados, Arab Strap etc. With regards to Manchester, The Fall, Joy Division, and maybe The Buzzcocks aside, I find Manchester to have the highest number of over rated bands going, which suits the city well.

[mjmooney]

We need more lists of the greats from Dundee; William MacArthur MacKenzie, the great cloths from Harris, the great engineering achievements, Forth Railway Bridge, The great architecture, Edinburgh’s New Town, The great sportsman; Eric Liddell and Alan Wells and of course the wonders; B.A. Robertson, Rab C Nesbitt and those ƒrigg••• Midges!

Marmalade, cake and comics.

[dundeevilla]

Dundee is kown for the 'three Js' Mike.

Jute, jam and journalism.

Jute production used to be the city's main industry, jam is the marmalade, and journalism comes from publisher DC Thomson, home of the Beano, Dandy, Oor Wullie, The Broons, and magazines and newspapers like the Courier, Sunday Post and People's Friend.

[PauloBarnesi]

I think Jackie & Commando were Dc Thomson titles.

And of course AWB came from Dundee, and the Discovery.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

Ók, stupid question but worth asking maybe ?

If they went ahead and ended up with the Euro could that actually work ?

If you lived close to the border would it be the same as in NI where people pop over the border for cheaper petrol or would they still like to have my Queen on the money in their little pockets ?

[PauloBarnesi]

I ve no idea and I suspect neither do they yet. I think Salmond was talking about possibly joining the euro if they had independence, when it suited Scotland. Like everything AS wants his cake and definitely eat it....

[kidlewis]

His aim seems to be to alienate Scotland in this debate and become divisive. Evident from his comments today.

He is beginning to act very flippantly about any kind I reasoned debate.

It effects the whole of the uk this decision not just Scotland. His argument for this independent commission is non existent other than his own personal aim to go independent

[LondonLax]

Ók, stupid question but worth asking maybe ?

If they went ahead and ended up with the Euro could that actually work ?

If you lived close to the border would it be the same as in NI where people pop over the border for cheaper petrol or would they still like to have my Queen on the money in their little pockets ?

It would be the same as Ireland and Northern Ireland.