A Scotsman, an Englishman, a Welshman and an Irishman walk into a bar...

I've always been miffed at the stereotype of the cheap, miserly, frugal, parsimonious Scot, the type who created the Grand Canyon when he dropped a penny down a gully. I always believed it was a myth broadcast good naturedly by our English friends, much like they've created jokes about everyone else in the world, you know Krauts, Frogs, Eyeties, Dagos,  Spics, Yanks etcetera. Then there's the really embracing racial ones that I'll refrain from using. But back to stereotypes, much as Paddy is thick and Taffy a thief. Jock is always tight with his money. It's an image that's been perpetuated around the world through popular culture and commerce. 

Companies use it in advertising discounted goods and deals. I've seen tartan clad images extolling the savings to be had from Floridian garden centres to French bags for life. Other nations portray us as tight wads who'd rather die than spend a penny on an indulgence. Take a wander in Southern Germany and grimace while the locals explain to you why the Scots are similar to their covetous, grasping, money obsessed Swabian neighbours...

I don't know the origins of where this reputation for parsimony came from. I suppose a people traditionally never more than a wage packet away from poverty have had every right to be frugal and careful with their money. But to be openly chided as being money obsessed, well it's a bitter pill to swallow. Dr Johnston's quip about oats when he grandly rumbled "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people" perhaps set the tone. I would have had a lot more respect for Boswell if he'd turned round and lamped the good Doctor rather than obsequiously titter at his wit and erudition. The twat.

Since Charles Dickens misread an Edinburgh gravestone marked 'Ebeneezer Lennox Scroggie - Meal Man' and somehow contrived it to read as 'Ebeneezer Scrooge - Mean Man' and thus created the archetypal Scottish miser in 'A Christmas Carol' we've all been screwed. Even Robert Louis Stevenson gave us the truly wretched miser Ebeneezer Balfour in 'Kidnapped'.  Disney got in on the action as early as 1943 when they created the prototype for Scrooge McDuck in this propaganda film that was supposed to stop honest working Ducks from spending their dosh on zoot suits and hootchy cootchy red hot mamas and spend it on tax for guns instead...




The above film was supposedly banned, not for the couthy but biased depiction of the Scot, but instead for suggesting that taxes should be used for guns -- mmkay guns are bad...

The writers of the Beverly Hillbillies created Milburn Drysdale, the greedy Scottish American banker who tried to steal the Clampett's money and stop them spending on luxuries. Generations of kids around the world have grown up with the Glaswegian Scrooge McDuck as their dominant example of what a Scot is like and how we react to money and its non spending. In The Simpsons we have the two best known 'Scots' in the world in C. Montgomery Burns, as a Scottish-American miserly Billionaire and arguably the most famous Scot of them all, Groundskeeper Willie. A man not known for his profligate ways...

So it's fair to say that culture has given us a reasonable kicking as stingy tightwads. Proof of our nations generosity during the annual charity whine-a-thons is always mentioned on our local news but only ever raised for comic effect down south, where it is suggested that we donate more per head, because -- we have to. 

In the world of reality even Andrew Carnegie, possibly the greatest philanthropist the world has ever known, a man who gave away £80 million for libraries around the world was regarded by the London and American press as a miser, because he didn't tip in restaurants... 

In political life, despite all evidence to the contrary, the hard of thinking Unionists trot out the timeless nugget that all Scots are state subsidised spongers too mean and miserly to let go of London's benefits largesse... 

All my life I've fought against this mince, believing that the people and friends I see around me, are generous to a fault, give freely to charity, man the stalls and barricades, lend a hand, support each other. That Scots are far removed from this hurtful and malicious sterotype.  

That was until I had a look at the results of the latest poll done by the Scottish Social Attitudes survey, conducted by Professor Heinz Wolff  sorry Professor John Curtice of the Scottish Centre for Social Research. Media commentators barely able to contain the squirming in their pants gushed forth, telling us that support for Independence was at a low of 23% -- a full one percentage point lower than when the SNP took Government in 2007. 

Ha, they laugh in the face of Independence. I had a look at the poll and yeah verily it stated that when 1,495 folk in Scotland were asked for their Constitutional preference, a mere 23% of the face painted, die hard, deep fried mars bar warriors expressed a desire for an Independent Scotland.


So that's it then, the game is indeed a bogey, there's no point in continuing with the struggle, nuts to all that as-long-as-one-hundred-of-us-are-still-standing malarkey...We're well and truly rammed up the chuffhole without a puggle.


But wait one wee minute, further down the poll, in fact the very last part, has this thoroughly wordy, but worthy set of questiona:


Say that it was clear that if Scotland became an independent country, separate from the rest of the UK, taxes would be the same as now.
 
In those circumstances, would you be in favour or against Scotland becoming an independent country?

Now, let us say it was clear that if Scotland became an independent country, (separate from the rest of the UK), people would on average pay an extra £500 a year in tax.

In those circumstances would you be in favour or against Scotland becoming an independent country?
 
And, say it was clear that if Scotland became an independent country (separate from the rest of the UK) people would on 
average pay £500 less a year in tax.

In those circumstances would you be in favour or against Scotland becoming an independent country?

	Taxes same	TaxesUp	Taxes down
	%	%	%
Strongly in favour/in favour	36	16	45
Neither in favour/nor against	23	15	17
Against/Strongly against	38	66	35
Don’t know	2	2	3
Sample size	1495	1495	1495

So look at that, if your average tight fisted miserly Jock can be persuaded that he or she will save £500 a year on their tax bill they'll be quite happy to vote for an Independent Scotland, all for the saving of roughly £1.37 a day. A jump from 23% to 45% in favour of Independence all for the saving of £500. To those 22% arrivistes, you cheap, miserable, miserly 90 minute patriots, you're selling your countries future for the equivalent of a Daily Record and a Mars bar a day.

Imagine how many more of these free loading bastards would sign up if we could show them that an Independent Scotland, successful in business and society could save them a grand a year?