That Yorkshire/Scotland thing
The Bard of Barnsley, Ian McMillan, states in his book Neither Nowt Nor Summat that more people live in Yorkshire than in Scotland. Is he right? Let's check, shall we?
According to the 2011 census Yorkshire had 5,288,200 inhabitants. That's North, South, West & East Yorkshire rather than the ceremonial county which would still include Middlesbrough and other bits of what is now called Cleveland. Scotland's population was 5,313.600. Ooh, that's close. And a bit of a surprise to me, to be honest. Only 4 of Scotland's cities are in the Top 50 most inhabited towns & cities in the UK, with Dundee only just making the cut in 47th place. Glasgow comes third and Edinburgh 9th, and Aberdeen pops up at number 29, but Yorkshire has Sheffield (6th), Leeds (8th), Bradford (11th), Hull (15th), Huddersfield (40th) and York (45th). Places 51 to 100 include no Scottish places at all but Doncaster, Rotherham, Wakefield, Barnsley and Halifax are all in there.
Something fishy is going on here, and I'm not just referring to the smells in Scarborough and Fraserburgh. Official statistics tell us that there are slightly more people in Scotland but it's hard to believe. In the 2012 Olympics, had Yorkshire been a country it would have finished 12th in the medal table. I don't know where Scotland would have finished but it's a good job Andy Murray is from Dunblane or that medal cupboard would have looked pretty bare.
Scotland covers over 30 million square kilometres, Yorkshire just under 3 million, which makes Yorkshire more than 10 times as densely populated. That's one of the reasons we moved here. In Scotland (apart from the central belt) there is room to take a deep breath and spread your arms wide, but bide a wee; just under 20% of the land in Scotland is grouse moor, owned by landowners like David Cameron's father-in-law and inaccessible to most Scots and to everyone else unless you want to risk being blown to bits by a chuff with a gun. David Cameron himself, despite taking a break while he was Prime Minister because he is well aware that most voters don't like that sort of thing, enjoys a day's shooting, as do members of the Royal Family. Conservative Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw (born in Nairn but schooled in the very English city of Winchester) famously shot both a grouse beater and one of his fellow hooligans on the same day on a Scottish estate, providing Scots, English, Welsh and Irish people alike with a damn good laugh.
It is, to say the least, a bit rum that nearly 20% of Scotland is owned by so few people and used in such an unproductive and cruel manner. It's not just birds that suffer, as you can discover for yourself by clicking here. There's no need for me to drone on about it because all the information on why reform is a good thing for animals and for people is provided on the site.
If you live in England you don't have to go North, or at least not as far North as Scotland, to come across the unspeakable enjoying their bloody thrills. Shooting UK advises its readers that:
Stunning countryside and a wealth of country sports to enjoy. Yorkshire is certainly a wonderful destination for the keen shooter.
And when they refer to a keen shooter they don't mean Sheffield United's Billy Sharp or John Marquis of Doncaster Rovers; they are inviting you to mortgage your house, sell all your belongings, push Granny downstairs etc. so you can then rub shoulders with the assassins in their plus fours and wellies on the Yorkshire Moors.
We all know that it rains a lot in Yorkshire and that it rains even more than that in Scotland but it does depend on whereabouts in the country you happen to live. Glasgow, Ayrshire, Argyll and the Hebrides are soggy at the best of times. We went on holiday to the Isle of Skye once and not only did we never see a sea eagle it was so cloudy & dull we could barely make out the shape of the Cuillins either. When we went to Mull the weather made Skye look like the Sahara Desert; it came down in stair rods. I don't recall ever seeing horizontal rain before that holiday, although I was once caught in a hailstorm in Halifax that left my face stinging. This year we stopped at Whitehills on the Moray Firth and the weather was fantastic; it was like the South of France but less oppressive, because of the sea breeze. If we never go there again, to us Banff, Buckie, Elgin & Lossiemouth will always be lovely, warm & sunny. In fact, I bet it's just gorgeous up there right now.
The East Coast of Yorkshire, meanwhile, is cold. The word "warm" has never, in my experience, applied to Scarborough, Brid or Hull. At the end of the cricket season Yorkshire CC holds a Scarborough Festival, during which they never win; the matches are either lost or abandoned as draws because of the foul weather. Nowadays Yorkshire only play at Scarborough and Headingley but within living memory they had home grounds at Huddersfield, Bradford, Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Harrogate. Scotland is not renowned for cricket, although their team did beat England in a one day match during the summer just gone and I did see a proper ground, with nets and a scoreboard, in Kelso.
Mike Denness was both a Scotsman and captain of England's cricket team but he wasn't very successful. It was during his captaincy that the Greatest Living Yorkshireman refused to play for England, leaving the likes of Denness and David Lloyd to be battered by Lillee, Thomson and the great West Indian bowlers of the day. Then, of course, there was Douglas Jardine of Bodyline infamy. He was born in Mumbai to Scottish parents, but like Willie Whitelaw he went to Winchester School and perfected a stiff upper lip there as demanded of an England captain, particularly one who went to Australia and outraged the entre country by instructing his fast bowlers to brain the Aussie batsmen on purpose.
There is a sort of Yorkshire Independence movement but it amounts to very little, especially compared to the Scottish National Party and its fellow independence seekers the Scottish Greens and Scottish Socialists. Then again, for all its tradition, in South Yorkshire (once the Socialist Republic of..) especially, of returning Labour members to the Commons, industrial militancy and contempt for the Tory Party, there is a strong tendency towards conservatism with a small c. There was a majority for Brexit in Yorkshire in 2016, which is a very different outcome to the 62/38 Remain win in Scotland. The Scots are not so much leaving the EU as being dragged out of it against their will, which, naturally enough, has persuaded many to back the pro-Indy parties, including a lot of folk who voted No in the 2014 independence referendum, in which the majority was a more marginal 55/45. There is reason to believe that were the people of Scotland to vote again now it would be closer still.
Yorkshire has never been a country in its own right even though it behaves like one; there's no Tyke version of Robert the Bruce and no By Eck Bannockburn. The Wars of the Roses were between the Houses of York and Lancaster but most of the fighting took place elsewhere and I don't suppose many folk in Yorkshire or Lancashire either cared who won or even knew the conflict was taking place. The decisive battle, at which Richard of York was killed in 1487, took place at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. The new King was a Welshman, Henry Tudor, who was born at Pembroke Castle and who, for all I know, never visited Blackpool in his entire life.
The Bard of Barnsley's book is all about whether or not he can claim to be a real Yorkshireman. Mr McMillan's father was actually a Scotsman from Lanarkshire, which is one of the reasons he sometimes doesn't feel Yorkshire enough. There are lots of Scottish people all over England, of course, including those who travelled down to work in the coal mines and whose children and grandchildren now feel pretty English, as you would if you were born in Barnsley, or Sheffield or Leeds. Having said that, though, my experience so far is that there are a lot more English folk in Scotland than vice versa, although I've not met any from Yorkshire yet. There might be a reason for that; my friend Nick tells me that he was giving careers advice to school leavers in Barnsley and none of them wanted to leave their home town. I'm from Chesterfield, which is in Derbyshire, so it's different for me. I was only an adopted Yorkshireman so was free to move to wherever I like, and I like it here, even if that river is beginning to look a bit too close to the top of its banks for comfort just at the moment.
It's the rain, you know.
We all know that it rains a lot in Yorkshire and that it rains even more than that in Scotland but it does depend on whereabouts in the country you happen to live. Glasgow, Ayrshire, Argyll and the Hebrides are soggy at the best of times. We went on holiday to the Isle of Skye once and not only did we never see a sea eagle it was so cloudy & dull we could barely make out the shape of the Cuillins either. When we went to Mull the weather made Skye look like the Sahara Desert; it came down in stair rods. I don't recall ever seeing horizontal rain before that holiday, although I was once caught in a hailstorm in Halifax that left my face stinging. This year we stopped at Whitehills on the Moray Firth and the weather was fantastic; it was like the South of France but less oppressive, because of the sea breeze. If we never go there again, to us Banff, Buckie, Elgin & Lossiemouth will always be lovely, warm & sunny. In fact, I bet it's just gorgeous up there right now.
The East Coast of Yorkshire, meanwhile, is cold. The word "warm" has never, in my experience, applied to Scarborough, Brid or Hull. At the end of the cricket season Yorkshire CC holds a Scarborough Festival, during which they never win; the matches are either lost or abandoned as draws because of the foul weather. Nowadays Yorkshire only play at Scarborough and Headingley but within living memory they had home grounds at Huddersfield, Bradford, Sheffield, Middlesbrough and Harrogate. Scotland is not renowned for cricket, although their team did beat England in a one day match during the summer just gone and I did see a proper ground, with nets and a scoreboard, in Kelso.
Mike Denness was both a Scotsman and captain of England's cricket team but he wasn't very successful. It was during his captaincy that the Greatest Living Yorkshireman refused to play for England, leaving the likes of Denness and David Lloyd to be battered by Lillee, Thomson and the great West Indian bowlers of the day. Then, of course, there was Douglas Jardine of Bodyline infamy. He was born in Mumbai to Scottish parents, but like Willie Whitelaw he went to Winchester School and perfected a stiff upper lip there as demanded of an England captain, particularly one who went to Australia and outraged the entre country by instructing his fast bowlers to brain the Aussie batsmen on purpose.
There is a sort of Yorkshire Independence movement but it amounts to very little, especially compared to the Scottish National Party and its fellow independence seekers the Scottish Greens and Scottish Socialists. Then again, for all its tradition, in South Yorkshire (once the Socialist Republic of..) especially, of returning Labour members to the Commons, industrial militancy and contempt for the Tory Party, there is a strong tendency towards conservatism with a small c. There was a majority for Brexit in Yorkshire in 2016, which is a very different outcome to the 62/38 Remain win in Scotland. The Scots are not so much leaving the EU as being dragged out of it against their will, which, naturally enough, has persuaded many to back the pro-Indy parties, including a lot of folk who voted No in the 2014 independence referendum, in which the majority was a more marginal 55/45. There is reason to believe that were the people of Scotland to vote again now it would be closer still.
Yorkshire has never been a country in its own right even though it behaves like one; there's no Tyke version of Robert the Bruce and no By Eck Bannockburn. The Wars of the Roses were between the Houses of York and Lancaster but most of the fighting took place elsewhere and I don't suppose many folk in Yorkshire or Lancashire either cared who won or even knew the conflict was taking place. The decisive battle, at which Richard of York was killed in 1487, took place at Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. The new King was a Welshman, Henry Tudor, who was born at Pembroke Castle and who, for all I know, never visited Blackpool in his entire life.
The Bard of Barnsley's book is all about whether or not he can claim to be a real Yorkshireman. Mr McMillan's father was actually a Scotsman from Lanarkshire, which is one of the reasons he sometimes doesn't feel Yorkshire enough. There are lots of Scottish people all over England, of course, including those who travelled down to work in the coal mines and whose children and grandchildren now feel pretty English, as you would if you were born in Barnsley, or Sheffield or Leeds. Having said that, though, my experience so far is that there are a lot more English folk in Scotland than vice versa, although I've not met any from Yorkshire yet. There might be a reason for that; my friend Nick tells me that he was giving careers advice to school leavers in Barnsley and none of them wanted to leave their home town. I'm from Chesterfield, which is in Derbyshire, so it's different for me. I was only an adopted Yorkshireman so was free to move to wherever I like, and I like it here, even if that river is beginning to look a bit too close to the top of its banks for comfort just at the moment.
It's the rain, you know.
Ah well the rain is coming down in stair-rods today, albeit intermittently, in England's far south west. They'll be pumping out basements down by the quayside at this very moment.
ReplyDeleteI chose between Scotland and Yorkshire six years ago. Stirling or Sheffield? Where shall it be? In the end a humble Ordnance Survey map decided the issue. The plethora of footpaths, marked in green, snaking up and down dale near Stocksbridge won the day over the complete absence of similar across Stirlingshire. That's partly due to the legalistics; they don't mark official rights of way on Scottish maps. But do they have footpaths? Yes, but you need to have an "inside" like a locally-produced footpath guide and hand-drawn map. Or pre-existing local knowledge. Plenty of scope on the bare hills - so they say - although you'll need good weather and public transport; the first of these being rather more likely than the second. You've done well to find that stile and finger post; I guess that's relatively tame territory walked regularly. For my part I had visions of frequently exercising my rights of access only to find barbed wire at the next field boundary sternly policed by sturdy Highland cattle.
Another reservation at the time was the relative absence of midweek football played under floodlights. Competitions in Scotland tend to feature fewer teams so not so many fixtures are required. I'd wager you'd find more games being played on a Tuesday night in November in Yorkshire than Scotland to a factor approximating to Geoffrey Boycott's test batting average. In truth I'd now regard that as being healthy from a personal perspective although I'd doubt our mutual friend would cope whatever his fine intentions. He'd have to live no further north than Gretna with his Sat Nav set for the start of the M6.
Stirling, William? I never knew that. It's not too late, of course. Don't forget to call in on your way up.
ReplyDeleteIt was curious. I liked the idea of Stirling because it's a decent-sized town, has plenty of trains and is close to everything I want. The easy geography of central Scotland would have been a revelation to me; it's no larger than Devon. Perth was another possibility; the town appealed rather more but it was slightly off-centre in terms of getting about by public transport. Now, in contradiction of this last statement, I'd quite fancy Ayr although I'm not exactly sure why. The sea I suspect.
DeleteThe issue, bizarrely, was the countryside. Or should I say access to it. Rural buses are terrible and, as I've said, it's not always apparent where you can walk. Many of the better-documented trails are over marvellously open and hilly land but, getting older, that's not a challenge I'd always relish; soft accessible countryside has its merits. But it would have been strange to be looking at all of those hills and not getting out on them; I'm sure my expeditions would have been mainly urban. In Sheffield I was in the countryside twice a week, often very easily by bus from Hunter's Bar. Throughout the two years I was planning to head to the North York Moors and the Dales but never got the chance. I had my work cut out with the Peaks as well as other less-publicised places north, east and south of Sheffield. A good choice!