CHAPTER ONE

Scottish Identity

LET’S LAY THIS ONE to rest straight away – Scotland has a more distinctive personality than many independent neighbours. We have massive oil resources – Ireland has next to none. We have a better wind resource than Denmark and more wave energy potential than Portugal. We have a strategic location the Vikings once killed for, we land more fish than Sweden and Finland combined1 and have a natural scenic splendour that makes other Europeans weep. We have more viable and internationally ranked cities than the rest of the UK2 and Europe’s highest ranked research university.3 We have more coastline than Germany, a richer folk tradition than the Spanish (OK, we could argue over that one) a list of inventors proportionately longer than any other nation on earth and world-renowned whisky, energy and engineering firms.

We have natural and cultural assets other countries would give their eye teeth to possess – but somehow the overall result is not a healthy nation with affordable energy, comfortable homes, cutting edge technology as standard and creative lives spent guddling around in nature.

We could spend a lot of time arguing about who’s to blame for what we already know – Scotland has some of the worst health, employment and social outcomes in Europe and one of the biggest income gaps. Take a look at Figure 1 below which vividly demonstrates the link between income and outcomes in Scotland today.4 If you live in one of the ten per cent poorest neighbourhoods you are five times more likely to experience crime, twice as likely to have chronic or serious health problems that result in emergency hospital admission and your kids will score only half the combined academic results of their most affluent S6 peers in the ten per cent richest neighbourhoods. These are dramatically unequal outcomes.

Figure 1: Deprivation and health, crime and education outcomes

The picture of income inequality is equally stark. In 2010–11 the poorest 30 per cent of Scots received 14 per cent of national income and there’s been very little change in this income inequality since 1998–99.5

Scotland’s assets are like familiar, family heirlooms for the few and untouchable, almost imaginary treasures for the many. Inequality has nipped Scotland in the bud.

So let’s not spend too much time arguing. Income and health, education and employment outcomes in Scotland are very unequal – even by the unequal standards of Britain. The only real question is why.

Scots currently inhabit a large, beautiful garden whose owner is busy but can’t trust anyone else to manage it. As a result, monocultures run riot, dominant plants stifle diversity, native species grow in the shade, climbers are unsupported, soil is exhausted, seeds are blown elsewhere, weeds run unchecked and litter fills corners. Passers-by admire the backdrop and spot the potential but puzzle over the general lack of care. There are a small number of stunning exhibits but all in the garden is not rosy. Somewhere under the weeds the little white rose of Scotland is still alive – growing, budding but never quite flowering for more than a few precious days.

How can it? A competent gardener is needed to restructure the garden from the grassroots upwards. But the best candidates are always overlooked – the Scottish people themselves. We could inhabit a well-tended, diverse garden, home to foreign exotica, hardy hybrids and flowering, reproductive and distinctively Scottish plants. But it would take a collective and united commitment of time and effort.

And we are divided.

Some believe Scotland is already a viable proposition, whilst others think the country has large, sick, hopeless urban populations and dispersed rural communities inhabiting barren (looking) land fit only for grouse moors. Can both ‘sides’ be right? Is there a single verdict on Scotland upon which a majority can agree?

Yes there is. Scotland is already a distinctive nation. But its identity may not derive from the commonly accepted symbols of nationhood. And that’s a paradox worth exploring.

It’s more than 300 years since the Treaty of Union. Britain plc has partly de-merged its acquisitions. Scotland has regained a parliament, is set to vote on independence, and feelings of Scottishness abound. No wonder. It would be hard to think of a nation with more visible, durable and internationally accepted calling cards of identity – tartan, bagpipes, Auld Lang Syne, haggis, Burns whisky, golf.

And yet.

Do all Scots identify with these tartanised symbols of nationhood?

Disconnected from the environment that created them, kilt-wearing, single-malt quaffing, Pringle-wearing, golf-mad Scots seem strangely inauthentic. Like an identikit picture on a Wanted poster – each piece may be accurate but the whole face doesn’t look like anyone real.

Nonetheless, at some point all Scots have tried to pour themselves into the part. Like 90-minute-Christians who appear in church for marriages and funerals, 90-minute-Scots ‘turn out’ for Burns Nights, Rugby matches, Tartan Army events, weddings and funerals. When identity is demanded or ritual is required, the kilt appears, a few poems or songs are dusted down and serious drinking helps lads focus on the only point of Scottish identity that seems to matter.

Not being English.

Not indulging in pedantry, moderation, village greens, David Cameron, New Labour, house price discussions, real ale, cricket or morris dancing.

It’s easy to sneer. But if this describes the English – what does it make the Scots?

Immoderate, excessive, concrete-jungle tolerating, Old Labour, lager-drinking, football-worshipping, hard men? The current working definition of Scottishness is male to the core and ties a nation psychologically and symbiotically to a neighbour über Scots would rather not emulate.

If anyone hadn’t noticed, the English are currently on a quest of their own – driven to self-discovery by the apparently resurgent Celts. Jeremy Paxman, Kate Fox, David Starkey, Simon Schama – the bookshelves are groaning with attempts to create a dna of the English that does not rely on Empire, Good Queen Bess, 1966, Dunkirk and EastEnders.

If being English is currently a puzzle, being not English is an absolute nonsense, a sentiment expressed succinctly in Renton’s speech in Trainspotting:

I hate being Scottish. We’re the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonised by wankers. We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonised by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It’s a shite state of affairs and all the fresh air is ever going to change that.

It’s no wonder young Scots want out – into a bigger or smaller world where identity can be defined by sex, drugs, music, hairstyle, Facebook friends – anything other than the dull, outdated straitjacket that accompanies the geographical accident of being Scottish.

And yet.

Try believing Scots are not a distinctive group but just self-deluded northern Brits surfing the net and watching MTV in a globalised world devoid of local cultural reference. Andy does. This earnest Scottish TV researcher came over to chat after a BBC discussion programme in which I was the only person to think Scottish independence was a perfectly reasonable political choice. The comment seemed to bother him. Like I had otherwise been on or near his wavelength but with one apparent endorsement of Scotland as a meaningful entity, had jumped straight onto another planet.

Looking at this well-meaning, naïve product of modern Britain, it seemed like time for mischief.

Was Andy watching MTV in a terraced house – the traditional unit of ‘British’ housing?

Nope – he lived in a tenement.

Did he take A-levels like most British students?

Nope – he took Highers. A more rounded education, according to his mum.

Did his parents own their house, like the average Briton?

Nope, and unlike most English students he stayed in their council flat during university. Cheaper.

After MTV, would he stay in to watch the Ashes followed perhaps by The Vicar of Dibley?

Nope. Unlike anyone south of the border, he’d listen to a witheringly sarcastic phone-in about the day’s football (Off the Ball) watch a sitcom about two auld geezers on a bleak housing estate (Still Game) and stay in with a lager because he had no cash to buy a round.

Ever thought of going out and just buying a pint for yourself, Andy?

Dinnae be daft.

Aye – Andy disnae quite speak proper English when he disnae huv tae either.

With Scotland’s best fishing on the doorstep, does Andy own a fishing rod, or a boat, perhaps?

Naw – and he disnae dae ‘country’ dancing or shoot deer either.

Do any of his family own land?

C’mon, we live in a council house.

OK Andy.

Did you vote for Britain’s favourite painting in 2005 – Turner’s Fighting Temeraire (The Battle of Trafalgar)? Or Britain’s favourite poem in 2009 – Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’?

Nope – Andy’s top marks would go to Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross (a picture he knows in great detail because unlike many English galleries, access to Scottish public art has always been free). And on best poem he’d be torn between Burns’ ‘Tam O’Shanter’, MacDiarmid’s ‘Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’ and MacCaig’s lines about his best poem being two fags long.

And yes, before I ask, Andy’s dad did work in the shipyards, refused to buy his council flat on principle, voted Labour until the shipyards closed, switched to the SNP, decided they were Tartan Tories and then supported Tommy Sheridan until the Parliament building costs overran – at which point he stopped voting altogether and died (prematurely) from lung disease five years ago.

Andy – how did your mum vote?

D’you know, her son never actually asked.

Andy, catch a grip.

The Scots are not just what happens when you vary England’s default settings – more rain, less winter daylight, more poverty, more hills, more cloud, less sun, fewer people, less ethnic diversity. Though these basic physical and social truths have certainly helped shape identity and behaviour.

Scots are not just intemperate versions of our more measured southern cousins. We don’t live in the same houses, laugh at the same jokes, read the same books, or share the same life expectancy. We don’t have the same capacity to commercialise ideas. We don’t have the same informal rules about collective behaviour. We don’t speak quite the same language and we don’t (publicly) aspire to the same social goals. We don’t have the same history, weather, geology, bank notes, education system, legal system or tradition of ownership. We don’t vote the same way and we don’t die at the same rate or from the same diseases.

Scots are no more northern variants of the English than the Irish are western ones.

The Scottish identity is not just a bundle of remnants – a set of random behaviours by mindless contrarians welded together into a dangerously unstable and unpredictable personality. Scots are quite obviously and consistently different from their neighbours – English, Irish or Norwegian. But different enough?

Scots are (characteristically) in two minds. Most folk believe national difference must be enormous before policy or governance arrangements need pay the blindest bit of attention. Thus Scotland must be as unlike England as Brazil is unlike Denmark before difference is worth recognising or nurturing. National difference must be as stark as two primary colours and as non-negotiable as the old Iron Curtain before it can hope to justify ‘nationhood’. In practice, this ‘high bar’ of distinction is not louped by many independent European states. And yet, perversely, the Scots demand it of themselves.

The Nordic nations differ by only a few shades of grey. The Low Countries have pastel coloured borders. And yet try suggesting Spain and Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, Norway and Sweden should merge. Try it and stand well back. In mainland Europe, slight but important points of cultural distinction form the cornerstone of each nation state. I remember interviewing the Sinn Fein leader and former ira man Martin McGuinness for Channel Four’s People’s Parliament during that bizarre period in the ’80s when his voice was ‘banned’ on TV and radio. If Sinn Fein got their wish and Northern Ireland became part of the Irish Republic, I asked, what would be visibly different to the casual onlooker?

He thought for a while and said: ‘The street signs would be in Irish Gaelic.’

The same thought occurred to every member of the production team – is that all? Could such a tiny change possibly justify those long decades of struggle, death, grief and violence?

And yet, travel from Germany to the Netherlands and street signs are often the only visible evidence of border crossing. In fact, Scotland does look different – there are mostly terraced houses in English cities and mostly tenements in Scottish ones (though I’ll grant you Newcastle stretches the point). And yet we speak mostly the same language, share institutions and recent centuries of history with our southern cousins. So the Martin McGuinness question arises again. Does a very different history once upon a time justify change today? Do real social and cultural differences justify full political independence?

Look around. Some distinctive nations choose to go it alone, others opt to remain within larger states. Former parts of Denmark are now within the Federal Republic of Germany, the population of the United States of America contains more Spanish speakers than Spain, Russia straddles five time zones and the single state of Brazil is physically larger than the 50 states of Europe. Enormous diversity can remain within some single states (though usually with more devolution than Britain has tolerated) whilst other nations depart from remarkably similar states as soon as war, occupation or revolution permits.

Of course Scotland is a sufficiently distinctive nation to consider political independence. But Scotland has more than cultural distinctiveness. The secret ingredient is what Benedict Anderson called the Imagined Community ‘because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.’6

You could call it a form of love. That warm, mutual feeling of confidence and trust between independent people that encourages them to join forces, share resources and change living arrangements to face the future together.

But hey – love? In a debate about Scottish identity?

That’s a toughie for a nation that doesn’t do emotion (without a large skelp of drink).

So the constitutional debate focuses on detail, process, money and currency – like a divorce where hurt, betrayal and despair cannot be discussed and practicalities assume paramount and disproportionate importance. Who will have the stereo – and can its future be sensibly discussed in isolation from the CDs?

Here’s the thing. National self-determination isn’t about technicalities; it’s about identity, confidence and trust. That’s not to say the technical questions are trivial. Almost everything written about Scottish independence eventually touches on the Black Gold. Will oil sustain a new Scottish state or does recent banking collapse suggest Scotland cannot rely on its own resources to stand alone? Can Alex Salmond guarantee Scots will be better off in an independent Scotland?

Of course he can’t.

If Scots need guarantees and cast-iron certainty, the country will remain a grudging and grumbling part of the UK forever. None of our small, independent neighbours broke away from larger states to be better off. Far from it. When Norway announced independence from Sweden in 1905 it immediately became the second poorest nation in Europe. The tiny independent nation of Iceland which boasted the world’s first parliament reluctantly returned to Norwegian control in the 13th century after tree-felling turned the island into a northern desert. Still its tiny population (smaller than Dundee) seized the chance for independence without a moment’s hesitation when the Germans occupied Stepmother Denmark in 1944.

Back then, Iceland had no geo-thermal power, had not fought and won the Cod Wars, nor gambled and lost everything thanks to a bunch of cocky young bankers. What it did have, was a sudden influx of American soldiers at the Keflavik airbase, radiating confidence, driving jeeps and promising to stick around. And then Iceland took a leap in the dark.

So it goes. The urge to break away from an existing union – political, marital or financial – is rarely totally rational, or economically prudent. There may be preparation, debate and plans – but eventually caution becomes an anchor and the voyage must begin.

Mind you, Scotland approaches the independence question with yet another current running – localism. It may not be necessary for Scotland to prove its people are dramatically different or guaranteed to have short-term economic success or even part of an imagined community to argue that 5 not 55 million people is a better size for democracy and effective governance – especially with a public sector dismantling government at Westminster.

Culture, oil, politics, history and size. Scotland has as many reasons for seeking independence as any other restless nation – although currently the argument convinces more voters south of the border than north of it. A majority of English people has consistently supported Scottish independence since the 2007 SNP victory raised the question. Some – like English socialist Mark Perryman – think the departure of the collectivist Scots would provide a long overdue jolt to the complacent English left. Others – like ex-Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie – think Scots are whingeing subsidy junkies and cannot wait to halt the ‘gravy train’ heading north. Mind you, I’m sure he thinks the same about Yorkshire.

Such strong southern support for Scottish independence could have been harnessed to prompt a UK-wide debate about federalism, devolution and democratic change right across the paternalistic, top-down United Kingdom. It could – but it hasn’t.

It’s been far easier to portray Scotland’s endless agonising over constitutional status as a right royal pain. We do want more powers, don’t we? A bit… no a bit more… no that’s too much… no maybe it’s fine… What about a referendum with one question… Or two… no, wait…

It’s been far easier to mock northern indecision, view Scottish independence as Alex Salmond’s personal obsession and his party’s landslide majority in 2011 as a form of mass hypnosis. It’s not so easy to regard the plodding Scots as a revolutionary vanguard destined to challenge Britain’s centralised, class-riven, unequal society until something better emerges. But who else will? The conservative English? Or the Welsh? Gubbed by their neighbours in 1283, our Celtic cousins were forced to dance to an English tune in education, health, local government, housing and even political outlook, despite devolution. Even after, in the last Westminster elections just 1.7 per cent of Scottish MPs were Conservative compared to 20 per cent of Welsh MPs and 56 per cent of English MPs with the Northern Irish water muddied by different political loyalties – as is their prerogative.

1.7 per cent, 20 per cent and 56 per cent. Those figures tell us something.

The distinctiveness of Wales is largely cultural, not political or institutional. Welshness is kept alive by male voice choirs, Welsh language schools, S4C, the Methodist Chapel and (once upon a time) by campaigns against holiday homes. No-one can be in any doubt the Welsh are culturally distinct from the English. But has that been enough to create feelings of nationhood or a drive towards a new Welsh state? Like defiant prisoners whistling ‘Home of our Fathers’ as the firing squad take aim, Welsh culture has been the last defence against economic and social domination. The Scots have always had more – we’ve had unique, long-lasting institutions.

No offence to speakers of Welsh, Gaelic or Scots, but language alone does not sustain nor fully define a nation – at least not this one. Law abiding, rational, dour old souls that we are, Scots are defined by outlooks created by institutions that predate (and have survived) the Union. By an education system that seeks breadth, not specialism. By a legal system based on statute, not precedent. By a Kirk not led by the Head of State. By a housing policy not historically based on sale and inheritance, but (for better and worse) on tenancy and rent. By an economy based (recently) on state activity not private enterprise. And by an endless and hopeless quest for kinship and connection in lieu of the social democratic state, Scots have lacked the opportunity (and determination) to build.

All that most Britons notice about Scots is that we wear kilts – but who doesn’t these days – and have two public holidays at Hogmanay.

In fact, we do many things differently north of the border but since we don’t quite understand why any more, there’s no reason anyone else should. As a result Scots are often propping up what doesn’t matter and ignoring what does.

Occasionally we catch the scent of a blossom that has been taken from the room – like Hugh MacDiarmid’s little white rose of Scotland that ‘smells so sweet and breaks the heart’.

What is it then? What is Scottishness?

It isn’t the Scottish football team – however convenient a repository that is for outpourings of male emotion.

It isn’t – sadly – organised communitarian endeavour. Most Scots don’t do credit unions, local energy companies, community trusts or local asset ownership (at least not on the scale of our European neighbours although we are catching up). We don’t do local governance – perversely in a tiny country we do extremely large.

It isn’t a tradition of healthy living. We don’t do the body as a temple, exercise, eating vegetables or getting outdoors. We don’t live in nature. We don’t build in wood.

Our ‘ither’ national dish is probably chicken tikka masala washed down with Irn-Bru or super lager.

We reassert our collective proletarian identity with every curry we order, every sun-bed we occupy, every triple voddie we demolish in the name of a ‘good time’ and every year of life expectancy we thereby lose. All to prove we are Scottish – the underdogs against the British Bulldogs. David against Goliath. Wee, tough Billy Bremner against louche, decadent David Beckham.

We cling to a tough-talking, self-mocking, cynical world outlook instead of recognising such gallows humour for what it is – a coping mechanism created in days of appalling poverty and maintained by affluent descendants of impoverished Scots out of guilt and solidarity with those still mired in near-permanent inequality. A world we dare not fully acknowledge, tackle or fix.

So Scots generally ignore the paradox of an empty rural landscape in which there is somehow no affordable space for us to live. We blame the resulting high rural property prices on wealthy incomers seeking second homes instead of an absurd land scarcity tolerated by successive Scottish governments. We allow city to remain divided from country and therefore – uniquely at our latitude – have no weekend hut or cabin culture. We are at home in the pub, on the terracing, in the diy store or on the couch – not in nature. We live indoors like troglodytes amongst the finest natural scenery in northern Europe. Land remains over-priced and under-used – people-free thanks to planning preference, economic difficulty and landowner diktat. Empty, man-made desolation is now ‘Natural Scotland’.

We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. Modern Scots are predominantly urban Scots, after all, with gyms for exercise, parks for dog walking, some of Europe’s most popular cities for leisure and trips abroad for guaranteed sunshine. What happens in run-down rural areas is not our problem. What goes wrong in wrecked urban communities is not our fault.

Life is good – by and large. Scotland bumps along. Most of the nation’s health problems are concentrated in a few postcodes the rest don’t visit. Folk are generally happier than they are down south. And when the economy improves / Labour gets back into power/ Scotland votes for independence, everything will get better.

These at least are the ‘classic’ outlooks still favoured by many of our politicians. Scots are currently being asked to define Scottishness through the constitutional prism of independence alone. But perhaps that isn’t a wide, searching or engaging enough perspective. Polls consistently show Scots want more economic control and tax-raising based here – but maybe not total independence. Not yet. Desire for the ‘Full Monty’ is being blocked, perhaps by satisfaction with being British, perhaps by 300 years as a junior partner but possibly by something that’s been around longer. Chronic disempowerment. The kind that arises from centuries living on land we could not own, piers we could not use, rivers we could not fish and forests we could not enter. Centuries inhabiting homes we could not (till recently) own, improve or inherit and cities, towns and villages whose shape we (still) cannot really determine. Centuries speaking in dialects and languages we could not use in official situations and thinking about realities, histories and people we would never hear on the radio or TV channels of our own public broadcasting services.

The Scots’ much discussed ‘lack of confidence’ cannot be remedied by simply ‘pulling ourselves together’, developing ‘positive self-talk’ or ‘thinking big.’ Our disempowerment arises from several centuries of ‘get out’ and ‘keep off’ signs – many erected by fellow Scots. A sense of engagement can’t just be switched on – especially when involvement in Scottish democracy has historically been so limited.

Awash with credit, homes, cars, flat-screen televisions, patios, fridge-freezers and leather three piece suites – most modern Scots are leading lives of relative comfort compared to our forebears. But are we in control of this country? Are Scots actively shaping Scotland or are we still passively shaped by it – absent experts, distant officials, old choices, old loyalties, old divisions, old money and all?

This may seem a harsh, even alarmist critique of a country that’s evidently not on its collective knees. The blight of inequality affects only some. The fear of ‘falling behind’ encourages just as strong and self-improving a reflex amongst others. On a good day, no symptoms of general malaise are visible. But look closely. Just as disease spreads when herd immunity falls below 90 per cent, just as a barrel is soured by one badly bruised apple – so the whole of Scotland is impacted by the acute problems of the few.

Look closer still. Our collective response contains symptoms of low-grade damage – hesitation, poor self-esteem and chronic fear of making mistakes.

No matter how few are truly crippled by ‘the Scottish Effect’, we all experience and pay for it. In cash terms, of course, but in the more important matter of outlook too. Trust in the capacity of others, belief there is such a thing as society and our very identity as equality-loving Scots – all these precious social goods are threatened by the existence of no-go zones, jobless, loan shark patrolled, drug dependent ghettoes, fear of others and the corrosive cynicism of the dispossessed. Aye right. We are the only nation who could turn a double positive into a negative and bestow that withering outlook on a leading Book Festival (it’s still a good title, mind).

Above all though, inequality eats away at leadership. Who knows what pace of change can reasonably be sustained when some can run marathons whilst others can hardly walk to the chippy? How can such an unevenly empowered group cross the road together when one person’s uncertainty causes everyone else to falter? Blight on healthy plants doesn’t arise by mistake or coincidence. It’s the fairly predictable outcome of difficult climate, poor soil conditions, a lack of protection, shelter and nourishment. As with gardens so with nations. 

Of course Scotland is not doing too badly. Of course there are successful Scots. Of course there always will be exceptions – but few as powerful as the rule. The expectation of exclusion is at the core of Scottish identity. Even though the children and great-grand children of the dispossessed now have some wealth and material goods they don’t have and don’t expect to have the collective power to shape their local lives or feel Scotland is unequivocally their country and their responsibility to use well. Such chronic disempowerment disappeared in large parts of Europe when feudalism was abolished thanks in part to the Napoleonic Code which ended privilege based on birth.7 It didn’t happen here. That single fact has allowed exclusion to become normalised and privilege to thrive – even as Scots try to entrench their broadly social-democratic values at Holyrood. The Scottish Establishment has used wealth, brass-neck, cultural confidence and long experience of controlling valuable assets to keep a grip on Scotland’s institutions and collective expectations. That grip weakened with devolution and weakened further with the surprise election of two SNP governments. The move towards a more equal, Nordic-style society has begun. But the move is hesitant – as progressive Scots are divided by the all-consuming battle over independence.

There’s no doubt Scotland has a distinct, national identity. Not all good. But not all bad either.

The task for Scots is to let that flower blossom – to dismantle shade-creating, top-down structures of governance and weed out the negativity and self-doubt caused by the persistent blight of inequality. This book aims to show that among ordinary Scots, far from the chattering classes and against incredible odds, that process has already begun. And nowhere is community action more urgently needed – and the Scottish way of life more sadly distinctive – than in the realm of health.

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1  Scottish catches in 2011 were 363,800 tonnes – Sweden 212,000 Finland 151,000 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu.

2  Edinburgh was voted ‘Best UK City’ 2012 for the 13th year in a row by Guardian and Observer readers, ‘Favourite UK City’ by Conde Naste readers in 2012 (2010 Award Winner for Best City), ‘most desirable UK city in which to live’ in YouGov poll 2009 and one of the world’s top ten cities by a travel magazine in 2008 – Lonely Planet guide rated Glasgow as one of the world’s top ten cities the same year.

3  The University of Dundee was voted Europe’s ‘Best Place to Work in Academia’ in an annual worldwide survey compiled by The Scientist magazine, 2012.

4  Each cohort represents the ten per cent of neighbourhoods which contain the most and least income-deprived people. These two groups (of the least and most income deprived) each represent over 700 neighbourhoods (there are 6,505 ‘neighbourhoods’ and 500 to 1000 people per neighbourhood. So each of the two ten per cent groups represents over 350,000 people living in Scotland) Figure 1 shows health, education and crime outcomes for the two ‘poorest’ and ‘richest’ ten per cent of neighbourhoods in Scotland. Emergency Hospital Admissions per 100,000 people Pupil Performance measured by ‘average tariff’ scores from pupils SQA exam results from 2010/11. UCAS use these scores to establish entry into higher education. Crime rates recorded by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), 2012 and only show police recorded crime. The ‘richest’ and ‘poorest’ neighbourhoods have been selected by the percentage of their population who are income deprived. Compiled from 2011 government statistics by researchers at the Improvement Service.

5  http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0041/00416632.pdf.

6  Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

7  The Code was adopted in many countries occupied by the French during the Napoleonic Wars, and thus formed the basis of private property law in Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal (and their former colonies), Poland and many German regions .