Guest sorefingers,

I would venture to suggest you go and do a bit of reading. I would suggest for a start "Warrior Race", "Safeguard of the Seas", "Steel Bonnet" and "Scotlands Story".

Malcolm Douglas post above is right on the mark. The late Roy Williamson also put it perfectly in one of the lines of his song "Scotland will Flourish".

"And let us be rid of those bigots and fools
Who will not let Scotland live and let live."

The bigots and fools he was talking about are the Scots who pass the blame and fault for all their ills onto others - they themselves of course are perfect.

Now to get back to your post:

"Teribus - the English have ye bamboozeled, first to do the dirty work - Australia - Canada and the Colonies while yet captive, but to add salt to the sore - taking the Shortcake!; convince us that none of it ever happened and freedom is what this was all along!"

What dirty work did the Scots do for the English in Australia, Canada and the Colonies? Taking them in their correct chronological order.

The colonies:
Nova Scotia, Scottish settlement to the north of the English colonies on the eastern seaboard of America, from which they were barred from trading prior to the Act of Union of 1707.

Jamaica and Barbados, English colonies founded during Cromwell's Commonwealth. Became the repository for Scottish prisoners of war taken during Cromwells campaign in Scotland during the civil war. Those prisoners were sent out as slave labour to work the sugar plantations. Have you never wondered why so many people from those islands have scottish surnames? The prisoners were landed and allocated to plantation owners, their names were entered on the plantation books. Unfortunately the Scots were not best adapted for hard manual labour in those conditions and tended to die. They were replaced by African slaves, who on arrival were given the names of the dead - it made the paper-work easier. (Note: That bit of information I got from a resident of Barbados - one Ramsay Macdonald, who did not have one drop of Scots blood in him)

Canada:
When the French got interested in Canada they had no intention of developing it. They explored and laid claim to large parts of Canada and America from the Canadian border right down to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Their reason for doing this was to effectively hem in the English colonists on the coast. Hint take a look at some of the place names down that strip of the states and the dates from which they have been known as such. The British were granted Canada under the terms of the treaty that ended the Seven Years War - France was just not interested in it. Now the Seven Years War followed fairly swiftly after the conclusion of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in Scotland - The British forces who fought the French in Canada were predominantly English regiments not Scottish - apart from regiments like the Black Watch and Kings Own Scottish Borderers the British Army had very few Scottish Regiments up until the Start of the French Revolutionary War/Napoleonic Wars, for very obvious reasons.

Australia:
Settled predominatly by convict transports - Why - because convicts could no longer be transported to the American colonies. Not one convict transport sailed to Australia from Scotland - the vast majority of those sailed from ports on the south coast of England, the remainder sailed from Dublin and Cork. What I am saying is very well documented - go and research it, but I doubt you will as it does not fit in with the myths you hold so dear. With the advent of the Highland Clearances Scots did emmigrate to Australia but the main destination tended to be Canada.

Next you said:

"Who did the Enlish need to stomp upon? First they used the Scots to stomp on the Welsh, next the Irish, some more of the same several times over including the plantation of Ulster by greedy wee Scotsmen in Kilts, next stomp all over India and several other places."

Again putting the above in correct chronological order:

Wales:
As Edward I neutralised Wales (Note he did not conquer Wales - oddly enough, no-one ever has, not even the Romans) before he took an interest in Scotland. Exactly when were the Scots ever used to "stomp on Wales"? You made the assertion - please provide details.

Ireland:
When James VIth became King of England (1603 - 15 years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada). He viewed what he called his "middle-shires" (the Anglo-Scottish border) as a nest of potential trouble-makers. The Spanish still continued to meddle in English affairs by continued dialogue with dissaffected nobles and clan chiefs in Ireland. James decided to kill two birds with one stone by "planting" border Scots and English families in the North of Ireland (O'Neill country). They didn't want to go and they certainly did not wear kilts. The one thing that James could depend on was that once granted land, these people would would fight like hell to hold it - after all that is what they'd been doing on the Anglo-Scottish border for damn near 350 years. Further more they were staunchly Protestant or Episcopalean, therefore less likely to be woed by any approach or offer from the King of Spain.

India:
Like Canada, the French were removed during the Seven Years War. The issue and driving force behind European involvement in India was trade not conquest. British, French and Portugese TRADING COMPANIES established posts in various parts of India with the connivance and agreement of the Indian rulers of those areas. The French commercial interests tried to squeeze out the British commercial interests and vice versa. India in the meantime had rulers who were expansionist in their own right - their incentive was conquest. Security for their potential targets lay in even closer ties with the British, French and Portugese. When the Seven Years War broke out in Europe, advantage was taken by both the French and the British to create a monopoly in India by trying to oust the other. By alliance and military action using privately raised armies the British came out on top (Clive of India worked for the honourable East India Company - He was not a professional soldier and he did not act on behalf of the British Crown)"

Finally you come out with:

"That would be fine if Scotland benefited from the booty but you know far better than I, no a farthing of it ever came hame to the wee hooose in da glen!"

Sorefingers, have a good look at the state of Scotland in the period 1700 to 1707, the year of the Act of Union. Seven years of successive crop failures and the collapse of the Darien Scheme - the population of Scotland were starving and the country was bankrupt. Take a look into the size and prosperity of the following cities in Scotland during this same period - Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen. Then compare that to what followed subsequent to the signing of the Act of Union. You assert that "...na a farthing of it ever came hame to the wee hoose in da glen!". With the English colonies and markets opened to the Scots by the signing of the Act of Union a damn sight more than a farthing came home. The trading opportunities opened up built Glasgow, built Dundee, built Paisley, made it possible for the complete redevelopment of Edinburgh. Of the patents that exist in the world 57% of them are held by British companies a serious percentage of those patents are the work and inventions of Scots engineers and scientists. Sorefingers name one that predates the year 1707.

"Howdo freedom." - Yeah damn right!!!