What makes a Scot?

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

BJ--

As I said, nationality and race are two different things. No matter what your race, when you move to the United States you become an American. It doesn't matter what the motivation was for the move, your ethnicity doesn't change, just your nationality.

Example #1: Mr. Harrar (an Ethiopian) moves to NYC, gets a license to drive a taxi, and takes out U.S. citizenship. Nationality: USA

Example #2: Mr. Harrar (still an Ethiopian and first cousin to the fella in NYC) moves to Glasgow, can't get a taxi license so becomes an accountant, and applies for citizenship, which is duly granted. Nationality? BRITISH. Not Scottish. Not Scots, but British. He becomes a British Subject (just as his disgruntled, SNP-voting neighbour is).

Time for a dose of historical reality here. The Union of Crowns (1603-- which saw James VI pack his golf clubs and gallop off to Merry Olde England never to return) and the Union of Parliaments (1707) put an end to the "nation of Scotland". Okay, it was technically "The Kingdom of Scotland" or some such, but the point is that once the executive and legislative branches left, Scotland was reduced in status to something like an "uber" county. There was a lot of "local" govenment -- and that's been seriously eroded over the years-- but despite (or perhaps, because of) the fuzzy-headed rantings of Mr. Harrar's SNP neighbour in Glasgow, all the "big" decisions were taken by the executive and legislatve bods down in London.

Granted that Scotland has recently been hiked up the govenmental ranks from the status of "Uber County" to something the equivalent of the state of Idaho, now that it has its own multi-district assembly, it still isn't really an independent nation. Even though SNP stalwart Ramsey Luigi Casatti (Mr. Harrar's Glasgow neighbour, who really is -or isn't- Scottish according to your definition) may fantasize about turning Scotland into some sort of throw-back 19th century worker's paradise, complete with a permanent seat on the United Nation's Security Council, the hard fact remains that Scotland hasn't been a "nation" for 201 years, and that it was, at best, only a quasi-nation for 104 years before that.

If a Scottish nation exists at all, it exists in the hearts and minds of the descendants of those people who witnessed the departure of their king and parliament all those centuries ago. That means that someone in Toronto, Canada or Brisbane, Australia or Wellington, New Zealand or Harare, Zimbabwe has as much claim to be a Scot, as someone sitting in a pub in Glasgow, in Great Britain.