Well I'll just chuck in my two and fourpence here in defence of a certain sentiment behind, er, nationalism (or is it...)

We live in a crowded world of billions in which it's increasingly difficult to assert your identity, whether that means you personally, your family, your town, your county or your country. McDonalds and CocaCola and HSBC infiltrate every country and make everywhere look the same. I was in in Puglia in southern Italy in June, the poorest part of Italy with the possible exception of Sicily (which I also love to bits) and the received wisdom there is that anyone visiting that beautiful and (still, for now) distinctive part of the world now is lucky, because within ten years it'll turn into the same as everywhere else. You can assert your identity by having an afro, a tattoo, wearing rings in your nose or by killing twenty people in a school. You can join or form a club or a pressure group or join a political party. Anything to make you distinct. Both good and bad things can come out of people's struggle for identity and distinctiveness, but struggle it is. I've mentioned John Seymour, that guru of self-sufficiency, before. He was also a bit political, often in a right-wing way that I sometimes found indigestible, but one thing he railed against was gigantism. Massive, multinational corporations and huge states that have lost all sight of the interests of individuals and their human need for individuality. Behemoths such as Russia, China, India and the EU (and a good number even smaller ones than those). Human beings in general don't want to be anonymous ciphers in the furtherance of some state that claims that its interests trump those of the individual. You're very likely to get little regions that have long cherished their distinct character rearing up their heads and forming either official or unofficial protest groups, or showing their qualities by promoting their their distinct culture. Every big country has these groups. Spain placates its very distinctive regions by allowing them considerable autonomy. Good thing too, though even that doesn't satisfy the Basques and the Catalans. History always adds a twist to the tale, and so it should. The Welsh and Scots and Irish are great at promoting their distinctiveness without dissing anyone else's. John Seymour said he wanted to see the world broken up into far more small countries, no behemoths. Even East Anglia if it wanted to. Even Wales could shut pubs on Sundays if it wanted to (not something he was happy with, though he was more than happy for them to make that stupid move if they wanted to). If we don't allow people in their communities a considerable degree of self-expression and self-determination, then we'll inevitably generate the kind of negative nationalism that some people here complain about. Whose fault would that be?