Jason Moyer on 18/10/2012 at 16:04

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Do you understand the universal dislike of the English?

Chimpy Chompy on 18/10/2012 at 16:38

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Tories currently have 304/650 seats, assuming no other changes they'd go to 303/591 so a narrow majority.

(I was slightly surprised to learn there is still such thing as a scottish tory MP.)

Ulukai on 18/10/2012 at 16:49

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There's just one, I think? Edit: Ja.

june gloom on 18/10/2012 at 21:05

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I'm probably talking out of my ass but I suspect a lot of the England hate is due to Oliver Cromwell. Am I correct in thinking this?

demagogue on 19/10/2012 at 06:10

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International relations 101: England-hate is for the same reason as US-hate, post-colonial indigence. Countries aren't supposed to look down on another country & think of them as unclean brown-skinned barbarians they need to intervene to control, and tell them how to run their own governments as a "civilized" peoples, and England 1850-1950s / US 1950s-present are the poster children of that, fairly or unfairly. (France historically also to some extent.)

Since the collapse of communism, this has toned down some -- liberalism doesn't have to scrap for the developing world in the same way to counter the USSR threat (e.g., supporting west-friendly despots, although oil security is still an issue); and you have a whole generation of more educated youth that want liberal democratic change and aren't buying the "Western ideas are always bad" narrative. But that doesn't mean they're happy to see the US & UK blunder into Iraq for no good reason to overthrow their government and hand over a government that's not Iraqi and has just led to chaos and a decade of civil war ... thanks for nothing.

Edit: As for the Scottish referendum, from the US perspective (considering we're largely a nation of immigrants from every region) there's a sense that ethnic & national diversity is a beneficial thing for a country for its own sake, and of course half the story of the modern US is the rise of hyphenated nationality, African-Americans, Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, etc... I think that idea can be pushed too far, but when I travel to countries where that idea is incoherent, like Japan must be for Japanese and the idea of a European-Japanese or even Korean-Japanese is incoherent, etc, we'll maybe tolerate you living here your whole life as a permanent resident but not have a stake in the country with your own other national heritage... I feel like they're missing something. Hard to explain the feeling maybe. It's like they just take for granted that "Of course we Japanese value X because we're all good (nationally) Japanese". I think it's healthy if they have this other community (e.g., the rising population of Korean-Japanese) saying, "Wait a second, I love my home nation Japan as much as you, I'm a proud patriotic Japanese citizen, but you can't say that about all of us since I'm Korean..." You sometimes want that check, so you don't let the country just derail from reality into its own world. But I recognize there's a lot of politics and emotions that go into it too, so I wouldn't presume to tell a political community how it wants to recognize its own status. That's for them to decide for themselves.