Those anti-british protestors

[french frank]

All this focus on England [sic] is making me sick [sic]

Ooh, sorry about that . Lat mentioned English culture so I was responding to that and wanted to emphasise that over other aspects which are British.

[MrGongGong]

So the curries that were introduced at the time of the British Raj diminished English culture as the wine drinking brought from the Continent diminished it? What about the English vineyards that flourished centuries ago?

I don't think it's right at all to think of either sort of introduction as 'diminishing' the culture; or you could turn it on its head and say what the English [sic] brought back to England [sic] enriched English [sic] culture, while what was brought into this country by immigrants enriches British [sic] culture.

In both cases I think the emphasis is on enriching rather than diminishing.

Isn't the SNP more like Sinn Fein?

There are many things that some like to think of as imports to the UK that are very much central to our culture and are "native" (as much as anything can be that isn't an oyster !) to here

Drum & Bass
Chicken Tikka Masala

for example

[french frank]

"English" culture has been 'diminished ... by European culture'.... .

Indeed (or not - I mean I agree with you). We import, willingly, what people want to 'buy' (literally and in the sense of 'accept into our culture').

[MrGongGong]

If only Elgar had never heard Mozart, Bach, Beethoven or Brahms he would have not had his music "diminished" by alien Europeans

[Tapiola]

Isn't the SNP more like Sinn Fein?

In what ways do you mean, frank?

[french frank]

Purely in being, first and foremost, republican/nationalist and wanting independence/separation from the UK government. The SNP is slightly obscure as to its left-right position and Lat seemed to be suggesting a Catholic-Protestant divide in Scotland, with Catholics being, like the SDLP in NI, more on the left.

In the case of Sinn Fein, its nationalist cause seems also to mask its other political aims (or is that just my ignorance?). I was wondering where both parties would go politically were they to achieve their primary aim.

[Tapiola]

Your use of the term "mask" seems very apposite, frank, in connection with Sinn Fein.

There are many in Northern Ireland who believe that Sinn Fein has never abandoned its fundamental Marxist/revolutionary tendencies. Similarly, there is a perception amongst many that the renunciation of violence was a mere political expedient on their part, devoid of moral considerations and that SF are the true masters of political expediency. In this respect, the courage that MrGongGong speaks of might extend merely to the risks that SF took with its core vote/supporters in buying into a power-sharing Executive within the structures of a retained United Kingdom.

Many, many unionists, after the Good Friday Agreement could be heard to mutter "We've won". Sinn Fein's challenge at this time was to persuade its own core support of the very same idea, and it succeeded.

In a sense the Good Friday Agreement was the finest recipe for fudge this side of Mrs Beaton.

[Lateralthinking1]

Maybe it is just me then not liking the era we are in for that is very possible.

I am pleased that my arguments haven't been treated with knee-jerk reactions. The fact is that I would prefer to be in Nice than in Blackpool any day of the week but I value the fact that Blackpool is Blackpool.

Reggie Maudling's comments on the plane home notwithstanding - "For God's sake bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country." - one of history's many curiosities is that for all of Labour's talk, it is the Conservatives who made the crucial early moves towards resolving the NI situation.

[french frank]

There are many in Northern Ireland who believe that Sinn Fein has never abandoned its fundamental Marxist/revolutionary tendencies.

Leaving aside the reality that we aren't looking at any early reunion of the north with the south (unlike in Scotland where independence is at least on the agenda), SF would probably find that, should it ever achieve its primary aim, that would mark its own decline. Is it likely that a united Ireland would find a Marxist regime an attractive prospect? Those who support it at the polls primarily for nationalist reasons wouldn't necessarily follow it down that route. Similarly, it's probable that those who support the SNP for nationalist reasons wouldn't/won't share common political views when/if independence is achieved.

[This is all pure, detached theory as I have no deep knowledge of the Irish question]

[scottycelt]

The SNP is slightly obscure as to its left-right position ..

Indeed it is, and at present it seems to sit slightly left-of-centre on some social issues and more to the right on others. I can well remember Labour once labelling the SNP as 'Tartan Tories' and, at precisely the same time, 'left-wing socialist' by the Conservatives.

Scotland is just like most other European democracies ... any party that seriously wishes to gain power has to firmly occupy the political centre-ground where the practical and realist 'floating voter' of no fixed abode swans around.

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe it is just me then not liking the era we are in

Nope

[Lateralthinking1]

Could it be that independence might be to the SNP what coalition was to the Liberal Democrats?

[Serial_Apologist]

Those who support it at the polls primarily for nationalist reasons wouldn't necessarily follow it down that route.

Well in the case for SF support in the South, I would think that remains an open question, given levels of disillusionment among a populace now faced with an economic meltdown not of their own making, excepting insofar as inveigled into a credit bonanza of recent vintage, compared with in the UK where consumerism has now long consumed the public soul, from a cultural pov.

[Tapiola]

Leaving aside the reality that we aren't looking at any early reunion of the north with the south ... SF would probably find that, should it ever achieve its primary aim, that would mark its own decline. Is it likely that a united Ireland would find a Marxist regime an attractive prospect? Those who support it at the polls primarily for nationalist reasons wouldn't necessarily follow it down that route.

I think I would go along with that, frank.

[Tapiola]

Well in the case for SF support in the South, I would think that remains an open question, given levels of disillusionment among a populace now faced with an economic meltdown not of their own making, excepting insofar as inveigled into a credit bonanza of recent vintage, compared with in the UK where consumerism has now long consumed the public soul, from a cultural pov.

There is a perception that Sinn Fein are on very shaky ground when it comes to anything approaching an economic policy, as was (in)famously recorded ahead of the recent elections to the Dail in the Republic of Ireland. Gerry Adams stood for TD in Louth (and won).