The kind of Christian conservative culture that did know Linden Lea and rejected jazz as a foreign contamination would of course have rejected large scale Muslim immigration, as it rejected Jewish immigration. However that kind of culture is very small, and as you say, it's more of a liberal thing, putting value into the past. Cf the Church of England's church protecting and general liberalism. When the National Trust was being formed it was backed by that kind of old-fashioned Tory while the progressive wing embraced knocking down old buildings and putting up something in concrete. It's like how the Daily Telegraph has stopped being the paper for socially conservative yet parish councillor nature loved retired colonel types and has become the paper of money-grubbing consumerist spivs.

Early 60s to me is "period" while late 60s isn't, I suppose because they're in my life span. ""hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" of their field, just as the Northern English side of Classical British Television is the "all the lonely people, where do they all belong"." Good summing up! And many crime stories are "Smack your bitch up!" Perhaps we could do with "As long as a I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in Paradise."

I'm enjoying Mrs Wilson at the moment. Reasons:- Excellent acting by Ruth Wilson, Fiona Shaw, and Iain Glen. Keeley Hawes has been lurking as well, so can hope she will soon appear in full glory. Suspense story but the suspense isn't over yet another mutilated female body or bodies. The look of it. It has that soft light look of solid BBC drama, with muted tones. Also the early 60s, before the culture changed. The men still wear hats, the women gloves and hats. Formality heightens drama. As does manners and repressed emotion. A dramatic widow should appear in a black hat and veil. Still, that kind of society may be more picturesque than enjoyable to live in, and I for one would have welcomed our new jeans and rock music overlords.

Not a great PD James fan, so never much liked the adaptations. I can't believe in her poetry writing detective. I should have mentioned another awful adaptation of Ordeal by Innocence when they parachuted Miss Marple in to solve the crime. A total mess. I enjoy the Poirot adaptations because of the polished period features - lovely cars and clothes and interiors.

To your last point - yes -to Scots Nats English is Eton, Westminster, the Home Counties. It isn't Manchester, or Newcastle or the poorer parts of London.

There’s been a complete turn around with smoking in my lifetime, which people now do furtively in car parks (the grown up equivalent of behind the bike sheds). Loki/Darren McGarvey had an article in The Scotsman about how rap is seen by nationalists and in the UK context. I know nothing of rap and it sounds plausible to me. “After a brief pioneering period, when regional UK acts were more closely aligned – in part because so many imitated the Americans and there was no money involved – the UK Hip Hop community largely shunned its Scottish iteration. Which is why “Scottish Hip Hop” – specifically rap – became a separate genre. Not because it wanted to annexe itself from the UK (the opposite in fact) but because it was widely rejected by it. The idea of people rapping in a Scottish dialect was more laughable the further south you went. The idea Scotland could “do” Hip Hop was preposterous, despite being home to some of the best Hip Hop artists the UK has ever produced. In the context of music, I regard myself as Scottish because I’ve been conditioned to. And not by nationalists either – many of whom, ironically, berate me for being a “rapper” – but by an all-encompassing London-centric culture that subsumes not only the Celtic nations, but also many English regions, from which countless stunning contributions to Hip Hop have emerged – consistently dismissed or ignored for over 20 years. Hip Hop is about representing not only yourself, but also your “hood”. Which is why so many regional artists retain impenetrable dialects and obscure slang, despite commercial and cultural pressure to conceal or renounce them. I’m a “Scottish” rapper, not because I want to deny Britishness, but because I live in Scotland and perform in a thick, Glaswegian accent. It would be unthinkable to suddenly rebrand, throwing the very community that gave me a voice under the bus, simply because I’m enjoying some mainstream recognition.” https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/darren-mcgarvey-am-i-a-scottish-or-british-rapper-1-4772840

Thanks very much Robin. I had a heavy cycling activism project to do last year, which took up all my time.

Thanks. An obvious one I missed out was the Verses on the Death of Doctor Swift:- My female Friends, whose tender Hearts Have better learn'd to act their Parts. Receive the News in doleful Dumps, "The Dean is dead, (and what is Trumps?) Then Lord have Mercy on his Soul. (Ladies I'll venture for the Vole). Six Deans they say must bear the Pall. (I wish I knew what King to call.) Madam, your Husband will attend The Funeral of so good a Friend. No Madam, 'tis a shocking Sight, And he's engag'd 41 To-morrow Night! My Lady Club wou'd take it ill, If he shou'd fail her at Quadrill. He lov'd the Dean. (I lead a Heart.) But dearest Friends, they say, must part. His Time was come, he ran his Race; We hope he's in a better Place. https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/verses.html

Hi John I'm glad you like it. I see the Unthanks whenever I get a chance.

Thanks for your interesting comment. There's a reference to Lord of the Rings in the film, which of course gave a giant boost to the film industry there. you can tour Peter Jackson's Weta Studios & it sells New Zealand as a location for quite un New Zealand films like The Hobbit. The sets are still kept as a tourist attraction. Re the "global clone" - local cultural renaissance is often the precursor of political nationalism eg the rise of emphasising the folk among the Latvians as part of national self-assertion. The Maori cultural renaissance increased before the political demands for return of land and sovereignty started in the 70s. In Scotland Gaelic signs and writing newspaper articles in supposed Scots have appeared but of course the population goes on watching Strictly Come Dancing and Downton Abbey. The cultures have never been more similar - far more so than they would have been 100 years ago when Scottish nationalism was an eccentricity.

Also, Billy Bragg is pointing out that Bowie & Rickman were of the working class boy goes to art school generation. Far too expensive now, and less social mobility.

"Do you have me in mind, when you talk of Europhiles claiming Bowie as a European?" No - it's a Facebook group called New Europeans who were talking about a Great European. Certainly the description made sense. I agree - he does fit that description far more than Paul McCartney or Ray Davies could.

The SNP are fine on antisemitism but there is a strong cross-over between the anti-Zionist far left and the Yessers. The SPSC is particularly noxious in Edinburgh, & have demonstrated outside of Israeli concerts.

Sorry to hear that. I can't recall any dark Christmases in Waugh's oeuvre. He no doubt would have gone to Mass and let his wife organise the whole thing.

Also, I had a look at the 1973 television adaptation of Murder Must Advertise. Ian Carmichael a bit too old for the part but otherwise very good, and the look and feel of the office felt right. Not open plan those days.

I was staying in a cottage in Skye where there was a set of bound Punches from 1910-1920. Much joking about commuting. However it was assumed that your life was your own when you left the office and the white collar workers had time for gardening and cricket. They didn't have such exotic holidays - a week in Margate seems to be the standard - but their day to day life looks a lot pleasanter and a little more rural. You can say the same about Pooter. He works conscientiously at a dull job but maintains quite a decent standard of living for him and Carrie. Of course what sets him apart from the last 30 years or so is the assumption that you will work in the same organisation all your life.

It's depressing to think that the work that has most influenced modern Scottish nationalism is the ridiculous Braveheart. At least the Jacobites had some excellent songs. Where's the sceptical spirit of Billy Connolly when you need him? He's someone that took the particular and made it universal.

I posted it over here as well and there's a discussion:- https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/scotlands-civic-nationalists-clan-nicolas-nativist-scots-id/ There's an interesting (and disturbing) comment- "The atmosphere in the Scottish universities is even worse, especially in literature departmentts where a climate of cultural exceptionalism is upheld by a bunch of semi-intellectual patriots who side-step any opposition by calling it ‘English elitism’ or ‘Tory condescension’. These cultural managers are busy massaging Burns, Hogg, Stevenson and MacDairmid, who were all either deeply contradicted or self-doubting in terms of politics, into seemless exmaples of early SNP pro-independence voters. It is utterly laughable! I once asked one of these smug lecture hall SNP lieutenants why they did not have MacDairmid’s ‘Hymn to Lenin’ or ‘On a Raised Beach’ neither in braid Scots, on the syllabus but only ever ‘A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’ , that every one by now, is heartily sick of. The answer was very revealing, as a Scot, MacDairmid was ‘theirs’ to do ‘as they wished’ with and no further English literary ‘imperialism’ was to be tolerated. The whole project is rancid and embarrassing."

I suppose Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair was "tolerably virtuous" but of course condemned by the author. The "fallen women" in Dickens are so fallen that they die or repent and wail. Lucy Glitters the demi-mondaine marrying the rascal Sponge & setting up a cigar & lending shop is a great refreshment. Tho' Sponge is a crook Surtees makes him likable by (a) not having any wise, virtuous characters as his foil; (b) giving him a real love for hard riding and hunting.

He's great on clothes and what a variety of colours the gentlemen wore - plaids and coloured waistcoats & fancy buttons. And how unlike the more genteel Victorians he is eg Trollope (who of course loved hunting as well). Everyone getting drunk all the time. The introduction to Mr Sponge says it's like Gogol's Dead Souls, with the journey of the rascal Sponge, the various houses, some quite ramshackle and louche, the swindling servants and little sense of an ordered state at all. I'm looking forward to reading a few more. I read Surtees' World, which is interesting on the hunting journalism of the day. Surtees' marriage takes up one paragraph!

Yeah - Nehru or someone used to say "You needed a lot of money to keep Mahatma in poverty" when Gandhi used to play about with spinning his own loin cloth. You need an awful lot of infrastructure paid by taxation to keep the drivers driving in liberty.

I do wish there would be a kind of quasi regional bloc developing within the English branch of Westminster ie MPs from the north east of all stripes banding together to get investment for the north east. However as you say the system is sclerotic. However with more coalition government the party system may become less rigid. I do think that this referendum might have given a good kick up the arse of Westminster. Historically the British establishment has gone on its complacent way until being given a good kick up the arse. It then reforms itself a little. It was typical of it that it dismissed the Scottish question as being settled without much trouble and then fell into panic mode at the last minute.

I think a lot of Yessers would find it absolutely in order that Salmond would control the message since they are now busy boycotting the BBC for not being on their side.

This guy is quite good on the numbers:- http://chokkablog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/the-sovereign-will-of-scottish-people.html?m=1

Yes, it was the Ashford poll. The indygov poll showed a slight majority of the young 'uns were for No.