[Calum Mac Neill]

Goldenmessenger, the fact that we are all human beings and all have a human nature does not mean that we all share the same culture. Were that to be true, there would be little need for much anthropology which studies human groups. Likewise, patriotism is no more blind faith than is pride in one's family.

You are right to mention the compromised 'Scottish' identity of aristocracy with a Norman heritage. Normans were part of an ethnic group that had been busy conquering a lot of Europe and would happily take land anywhere - their own homeland was on the shores of the English channel.

I admire your sentiments of equality but not of cultural sameness although I can see why you would see an Anglophone Scot as being extremely similar to someone from Northumberland - an accent, a bit of dialect, but otherwise reading the same papers and books and watching the same programmes, singing the same songs as you and, more often than not, voting for the same set of political parties.

I would agree that if Scotland were finally to lose the Gaelic language and deepen its incorporation into English culture, there would be no substantial reason for justifying a sense of ethnic separateness. After all, even the people of what is now England once spoke Welsh, as it were. The Scots who gave their name to the nation would have ceased to exist and finally everyone would be content to speak modern English as their mother tongue and to participate in English culture as a native of the nation of Great Britain or Greater England. The bagpipes and tartan, the symbols of Gaelic culture taken over right royally by the Anglophone, would of course remain, still fit for purpose as a nod to a culture that no longer existed.

I prefer to celebrate the differences between Scottish (ie, Gaelic) culture and that of the English, as I would celebrate the differences between the Arabs and the Chinese.