Candide

The 2011 Scottish Census was released today. The Western Isles population increased by ~1500, a 5.6% rise. The Highland population increased by ~23,000, an 11% rise. Compare this to the 4.6% rise recorded for Scotland as a whole, and you get a crude indication that the image of a dying periphery isn’t as accurate as the naysayers would hope.

transhumanisticpanspermia:

anticapitalist:

letterstomycountry replied to your post: arielnietzsche replied to your post: Homework is…

I expect a full Tumblr dissertation on Marx’s critique of Adam Smith

Oh lord.

I had started reading Wealth of Nations like a month ago, but the book was too heavy and the library return date was in 3 weeks and it was on hold by 10239847129384 other people.

Adam Smith didn’t seem like the uber capitalist libertarian guy that libertarians make him out to be.

Smith is actually quite interesting. He had a much healthier view of the market than modern American libertarians. (Who I doubt are even capable of reading the Wealth of Nations.)

Plus, as its title suggests, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” is more an examination than a proposition. Smith had good analysis about the benefits and downfalls of metal-based currency, and a pretty good explanation for the wealth disparity of his time. (Risk is what drives the economy.) Of course, that explanation holds zero water for the modern economy, where the modern capitalist never takes any real risk.

I read this a couple of years. It’s actually a rollicking good read, especially if you’re interested in British economic history. He provides all these lovely examples and anecdotes of what idiot merchants in London were up to. (i.e. making monopolies)

tulililli:

This is a ridiculously mundane post, but I have to do something to stay sane while I work on this literature review. I’m doing a research paper on patterns in Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Language Maintenance in native linguistic minorities in the UK. In normal, I-have-a-life words, I’m basically trying to figure out why Welsh is getting more popular and Gaelic is declining. The major factors of an enduring language seem to come from these four, for almost every researcher:

• Prestige of Language
  Use at respected institutions, perceived legitimacy, use by “cool” people, taught in schools or not.
  Landweer, UNESCO, Karan
• Relationship between language minority and majority
  Government policy, tension or lack of tension between the two groups, etc.
  UNESCO, Karan, Ehala, Landweer
• Ability to use language for economic reasons
  presence or absence of the language in the public and business sectors, continuity or discontinuity of the majority language economy with the minority language economy.
  UNESCO, Landweer, Karan, Ehala. 
• Significance of Language to minority
  How important it is to them that the language continue on, any sentimental or nationalistic meaning for the language, whether the language makes a statement about specifically not belonging to the majority.
  UNESCO, Landweer, Karan, Ehala.

Is this Scottish or Irish Gaelic? I’m fluent in Scottish Gaelic. My own feeling is that one of the ultimate reasons behind the different fortunes is that the Welsh language is seen by most Welsh people to be intimately connected to their country and culture but Scottish Gaelic is seen by the vast majority of Scots as being something ‘teuchtars’ (scottish ‘hicks’, means thicko) speak on those windswept, alcoholic, bible-bashing islands at the edge of nowhere. 

In Wales, every schoolchild is at least exposed to Welsh - most Scottish people will go their lives without hearing a word of Gaelic. This can be seen as a symptom of the differing fortunes, but it can also be viewed as a cause. There was a resurgence in both Welsh and Scottish nationalism in the 19th and early 20th century. The Welsh embraced Welsh as a defining marker of Welshness and the thing they would be fighting for - they weren’t too bothered about political independence. The Scottish national parties were founded by Lowlanders who had never met a Gaelic speaker in their lives and who were focussed on getting home rule. If there was a lingusitic element at all, it was of the Hugh MacDiarmid variety - trying to craft the various Anglo-Saxon idioms, already in decline, into a Synthetic National Scots. They were basically arrayed against Gaelic - which to these Protestant lowlands represented Irishness and the Pope. 

So the national movement in Wales was united by Welsh and faught for it. The national movement in Scotland ignored Gaelic, because, well it was never really a language of all of Scotland anyway, and focussed on fighting for home rule. It was left to the Gaels themselves to preserve Gaelic, and being the poorest, most downtrodden, inhabitants of Scotland, is it any wonder they were willing to abandon their language in order to move to the lowlands where the streets were paved with gold, and they could look forward to a better English-speaking future.

selchieproductions:

Sure, Gaelic is only spoken by a little less than 2% of the Scottish population, but as we actually do amount to 2% of the population, one would think we’d at least get 2% of said budget, rather than the 0.07% of it that we’re currently getting.

People always complain about Gaelic Medium Education and how our children are getting more money than other children; this, however, is far from the truth. Each year the government invests £1385 in every child in GME - i.e. a child who gets their education through the medium of Scottish Gaelic - whereas non-GME schools get £3556 per child and year to spend on their education.

The SNP has said that it plans on changing this, but I remain highly unconvinced as to whether or not this is something they will really try to change, as they won’t even bother putting a Gaelic translation on our upcoming independence referendum answer sheets as ‘it’d cost to much’.

Sometimes I feel like Gaelic is little more than a way for the government to attract tourists to our country (ceilidhs!stunning islands!kilts!bagpipes!capercaillie!julie fowlis!) while they’re actively making sure that people who want to use their language as something more than a tourist gimmick are completely ignored … 

The money Dr Alasdair Allan is spending in his new post as Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Languages on forcing an obligatory Scottish text on every Higher English pupil (just after we all having been forced to study a Scottish topic in history), and on inventing some daft new course called ‘Scottish Studies’, would be better spent on making it more rewarding for young Gaels to go into teaching as opposed to the media, or on supporting Gaidhlig classes throughout the country, or maybe on giving important companies in his own constituency the right to benefit from RET…

A long sentence I know, but a proper commitment from the Scottish government on improving the status of Gaidhlig has to be explicity tied into improving the Western Isles economy. Our last gaidhealtachd will die between being denied fishing rights in our own waters and having our only forward-looking industry (namely, Arnish renewable technologies) gathering dust despite the Scots gov’s supposed desire to become green! 

Turning Gaidhlig into a toy language to be studied (i.e. learning ‘ciamar a tha thu’) as part of some vapid Scottish studies Int 2 course is the road to extinction. Isn’t the SNP’s attempts to Scottishize the curriculum reminscent of Michael Gove’s attempts in England to turn History GSCSE into ‘Our-National-Story Indoctrinating’ class…

…I love Scotland, I’ll vote YES in the referendum, but the way the SNP gov is treating Gaidhlig and the Western Isles makes me worry we’ll be worse off post indepedence…