UK Keratoconus Self-Help and Support Association

It´s the new avatars. Howcome som use the pure English flag while others, like chef modreator Long John Silver prefer Union Jack? Others again are represented by a flag almost similar to my own!

check the Chit Chat section its all explained..and thisll prob be moved there now

It has been!

John honoured me by giving me the flag of Scotland because I am a Scot. Jay has not specified to which of the home nations he belongs so he gets the Union Jack.

I guess John gave himself a button badge of the union jack in order to remain aloof and impartial in any of the occasional spats of nationalism to which the Celtic nations are prone.

By the way, Per. Are you doing anything special for Norway;s national day on May 17?

17. may, do you mean what I will do that day this year or what is normal?

People go in parades and eat ice cream, hot dogs etc. It is above all a childrens day. Women dress in national costumes, which vary from region to region. Men fashion is suit, allthough the latest trend is also for men to cash out a 50.000 NOK handmade national costume.

College graduates terminate a long period of heavy partying, called "russetiden" on this day. After the main parades, which usually take place before noon, the "russ" have their own parade, mainly a competition to expose their large party busses which share loud Ibiza party music to the audience. A group of college graduates may spend up to 1 mill NOK on this project, which only last a few weeks prior to 17. may. A few days later they have their final and desicive exams...

Socialists in the capital arrange their own version because they find the traditional flag-waving thing too offending to newcomers in the country (which on this day sell gaz-baloons and kebabs for millions to the natives ) and themselwes . It would be like having St. Patrics day in an open park area with rock conserts, punk people and anti racist appeals.

Family people watch the main parade where schools march through the streets, or take part in it themselves. Afterwards most people either go home to their gardens and barbecue or go to the local pub and drink the shit out of themselwes, not very unlike the celtic approach to a national day.

Some hard core ski fundametalists celebrate the day enjoying the last snow in the moutains. As for many Norwegians skiing and the wild mountain landscape are the greatest symbols of national identity.

Asylumn-seekers on round-trip and groups of people from Poland celebrate the day by having a pickpocket party.

All this is broadcasted live from the old state tv-channel NRK.

Andrew MacLean wrote:I guess John gave himself a button badge of the union jack in order to remain aloof and impartial in any of the occasional spats of nationalism to which the Celtic nations are prone.

Of course I did, Andrew. That's the reason.

As I'm sure I commented somewhere else, I originally had a square George, but that looked really odd with the "moderator" banner under the eyes running into it and turning it into a second stripe.

Then I tried a square Jack. Better, but still too close to the red stripe to look sensible.

Finally I tried the round button Jack. That one's not too bad, so I'll probably leave it for now. At least, until I next change the rank icons.

Per

The odd thing about living here is that we have no National Day, nor anything really approaching it. Oh, we play at having a celebration of our nation on St Andrew's Day, but this is more ignored than celebrated, and then there is the annual celebration of the work of the Poet, robert Burns, but this is very far from being a national celebration.

In Norway you have the consititution, upon which; congratulations. You have May 17 (of which I became aware when some Norewegian Students in Glasgow ended up in hospital after having a race to see who could drink a bottle of Scotch most quickly: they all nearly died.

Norway is a close neighbour of Scotland, and we have a lot of vocabulary in common. Much of our history is interwoven. Many of our families have inter-married. but it always seems to me that you are much better at being a nation than we are.

Andrew

To mee it seems that Scots celebrate their national day whenever there is an international at Hampden or when they play England away

We do a fair bit of celebrating when the Scottish team beats england, but that does not happen very often.

But that is not the same as celebrating the sheer joy of being a nation.

Come to think of it, the whole of the UK is a bit deficient in National Day Celebrations. The English have St George's Day. But I'm not sure how well that is observed.

The Welsh have and do celebrate St David's Day.

The Irsih (well some of them) celebrate St Patrick. I don't think that there is a single day set aside for the British collectively or in their individual nations to think about what it is that makes us Scottish, Irish, English (the Welsh do) or even British. Oh well

A

Well, why not start with a celebration of the birthdays of one of the historical freedom fighters in Scottish history ? Braveheart, Rob Roy etc ? You certainly have a strong arsenal of national symbols.

Oh, we are not short of national heroes. In fact we have a surfeit of them. The problem is that it is hard to fine one that we can all own.

Malcolm Canmore married Queen Margaret of Dunfermline. She destroyed much of ancient Celtic culture, because she just did not understand it. Yet she also gave Scotland a dynasty that would last for a millennium, and that included Robert Bruce and his descendants the Stewarts (from whom the present Queen of Scots (Elizabeth II) is descended.

William Wallace seemed like a heroic figure in the movie, but they had to bend the historical narrative to cast him in such a good light.

The ancient High and Laigh (low) Kings of Scots had a tendency to fall out and squabble between themselves.

The Jacobites are not universally respected.

The Covenanters are equally divisive in their legacy.

We have a variety of language groups, with the resulting confusion of cultures: in Orkney and Shetland their local language is more Scandinavian than Scots; in Aberdeenshire and the East they speak an ancient language known as Doric. In The South West they speak a form of Scots sometimes called Lallans. In the North and in the Western Isles they speak a language called Gaelic that is akin to Irish.

Yet ask any Scot what nation he belongs to and he will answer 'Scotland". Ask him what this means and he may well be stumped.

In Norway you also have a rich variety of languages, but your people all know about the Constitution that unites your nation, about the freedom you won and about the loyalties that bind and unite the nation. I admire you

Andrew