Comment by andrewcooke | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewcooke | Hacker News Reader

If you're English, be prepared for some weird attitudes (you're sometimes treated as "an enemy" just because you're English). It's nothing terrible (certainly not as bad as racism towards racial minorities (I'm searching for the correct way of saying this, not having lived in the UK for many years, but I guess that's better than "people of colour")), but it gets tedious after a while.

[English; lived in Scotland for 3 or 4 years]

[Edit: Interesting reading the comments. Maybe things have changed (though I would have thought the debate over devolution - which seems like a good idea to me - would have exacerbated feelings). This was ~15 years ago and many Scots explained it to me as resentment over Thatcher, poll tax etc (in fact, one reason we went to Scotland was in search of a more left-wing environment). It wasn't good natured ribbing and it was pretty widely acknowledged as being "a thing" (had many conversations with Scottish friends about it - one memorably said that it was considered normal in middle class conversation over dinner to trash the English in a way no one would dream of doing to any "racial" goup). And I could certainly understand the motivation (the "historical context"), even if it was occasionally unpleasant.

It also got considerably worse when I moved from academia to "real" work.

It wasn't trivial (any once incident, sure, but the steady drip over time...), it certainly wasn't isolated pockets, and it's something I would take into consideration in future. In short: I was glad to leave.]

In the words of Groundskeeper Willie:

"Brothers and sisters are natural enemies. Like Englishmen and Scots! Or Welshmen and Scots! Or Japanese and Scots! Or Scots and other Scots! Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!"

I'm a Scot, and lived in London for a few years. I had the exact same experience in reverse - if you're not from England and decide to live in the South East of England, prepare to get slagged. I now live in Glasgow, the city which has such a bad and undeserving reputation, and despite my posh-scottish accent, I've not had one issue with anyone I've worked with.

From a business opportunity perspective, I can say quite confidently that the Scottish startup scene is growing very nicely, and there are a lot of really cool companies coming out of Edinburgh in particular.

A classic example is Boswell's first encounter with Johnson in 1763:

"Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I come from.'--'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expence of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he [...] retorted, 'That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.'"

Had Boswell been more thin-skinned or less stubborn, we might have had no Life of Johnson, and so no Johnson either.

I had an interesting experience working in Scotland for a few months. Went to the local pub regularly since their wasn't much else to do (borders). People weren't very friendly at all, especially in the pub. I figured they didn't like outsiders.

Watched a six nations game on the tele in the pub one Saturday and I was heard cheering loudly and somewhat drunkenly for the Welsh rugby tram.

Barman said to me 'so ure not English then?'.

I replied 'no, Welsh'.

From that day on until the end of my stay I was treated like a completely different person.

I imagine this doesn't always happen, but in some places your place of birth does matter in the UK.

To be fair, we Welsh aren't exactly that friendly to the English either, but we have the following viewpoint:

  We don't hate the English. We just pity them for not being Welsh. :-)

That's the "Anyone But England" phenomena:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8733373.stm

I think it's a lot better than that. This Londoner moved to Glasgow about 8 years ago and lived there for 2 years, and rarely even had anyone comment on my Englishness. The only amusing thing was that I was forcibly introduced to every English person that anyone knew, perhaps they thought we'd have some kind of magical bond!

Brilliant, I can just imagine it:

"Yer fae England, ye'll ken Jim Smith aye?"

[Going by the downvotes, clearly not a comment for a humble teuchter to be making! Even worse, someone living in Edinburgh!]

Can't say I ever found it particularly bad, just mild poking fun - my Scottish friend at uni in England with me had it a lot worse. Kind of like being Canadian in America, I suppose.

I think it also depends where in England you're from. I've always gotten on well with Scottish people but I'm from the North anyway, so maybe there's a bit of a shared pain at what happened with Thatcher.

Hmm. I must say I'm amazed you could generalise in that fashion - I can't speak for your personal experience, but we certainly don't treat English people as 'the enemy', and to claim that that is a consideration for an English person choosing to work in Scotland is rather laughable.

I've been living in Glasgow for 18 months now and never had a problem. Everyone has been phenomenally friendly, which was a surprise, having grown up in Norfolk where standoffishness is the norm.

As an Englishman (from the south-east to boot) who married a Glaswegian I can relate to this. I was held personally responsible for most of the ills befalling Scotland and my protestations that I had been on poll tax demos etc fell on deaf ears.

But that attitude did change and I put it down to the creation of the Scottish parliament. From about 2000 it started to become the focus of the most of the real political arguments, or at least that's how it seemed to me, and the anti-English thing became much less specific. More of a "we don't like the English except for the ones we've met" kind of thing.

As an aside, it's also the reason why I believe that the Scottish parliament may have killed the chance of independence. It seems to have taken some of the sting out of the, very real, ruled from London mentality. At least for issues that actually affected people day to day.

I grew up in small town Scotland with an English accent and can report that in pockets of Scotland there is certainly blatant, out and out racism.

But in the cities and as an adult, I really don't see it as an issue anymore. I work for one of the companies sponsoring the event and I see probably about as many foreign employees (English and other European and world nationalities) as there are Scots.

I think most countries will always have some pockets of racism because some people will always be ignorant. So I'm not absolving my country entirely, nor saying the anti-English sentiment no longer exists, but I don't see it as the big problem it used to be.

It really depends on the circles in which you move. There are parts of Scotland where Scots are practically a minority (St Andrews) and where the accent is pretty much posh English (central Edinburgh).

I've lived in Scotland for 9 years now and have a southern English accent. I spent 4.5 years as a volunteer police officer and only once ever received any racial problems. Ironically from a very posh, and drunk, German.

The company I work for makes a huge thing of recruiting mid 30s professionals from London. If you're starting a family then moving to Edinburgh is a very easy sell, especially if you've benefited from the London property boom.

I can imagine it's tedious because it's just so trite. How about we do away with trivial affairs like the location of one's birthplace, and instead work on using technology to make the world a better place?

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