Originally Posted by
pdcorlis
Interesting Jock - do you think that is a hold-over from the austerity of WWII and the post war period, or is it something deeper in the character or culture?
Originally Posted by
Jock Scot
Oh it goes way back. . . . Don't forget there are families in the UK that go back some 500 years and they are still regarded as new by those that can go back 1000 years! . . . it is in our breeding, for good or ill.
It can be a challenge for us brash colonials to grasp the different cultural attirudes between us and the Brits. Our nation is only approaching the middle of its third century. Dating the origin of Scotland is a bit difficult because of differnt opinions of what constitutes a nation, but tradition says that Kenneth MacAlpin styled himself "King of the Scots" in the middle ninth century. That implies that Scotland is about five times as old as the USA.
Here is one example of the different attitudes:
A. One of my cousins informs me that in his home town in western Colorado a burning political question concerns whether the present owners of a "Historical Building" should be permitted to change its appearance by installing solar panels on its roof. The building in question was originally built in 1936.
B. In the UK there is an area called the "New Forest" which was mentioned in the Doomsday Book---four centuries before Columbus.
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"No man is genuinely happy, married, who has to drink worse whiskey than he used to drink when he was single." ---- H. L. Mencken
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