With the exception of island states, borders are largely arbitrary constructs. Sometimes they can move quickly, as the experience at the end of the Cold War in central and eastern Europe demonstrated. More normally, they are the result of centuries of population movements, conquest and conflict, and political agreement and negotiation.
Fortunately, there has been little or no physical conquest and conflict on the border between Scotland and England for many decades. What about Gateshead and Sunderland to the south? How would people in County Durham feel if they look north to a Newcastle joining Scotland? Beyond the occasional headline-grabbing petition, there is no real political desire or demand on either side of the Scottish border for it to be moved.
Scotland has no interest in territorial growth and expansion. This would mean adding a sizeable population and additional public policy demands. Neither does Westminster have any desire for it. To lose Scotland would be viewed as disastrous by the London-elite.
To lose part of England as well would be unthinkable. To the extent that the border has been an issue in the referendum, it has been about how it extends into the North Sea. Drawing it in a different place may have considerable economic consequences to Scotland and the rest of the UK.
The worry that the border-moving petition taps into is that the north would be squeezed by a Scotland which will have increasing tax powers and the will to use them. Devolution in was already asymmetric because only one side of the border was involved. Others originating from the north-east are Tynesiders from the towns along the Tyne, from Blaydon and Newburn downstream , Northumbrians, Durhamites Dunhelmians if you are posh or Makems from Sunderland.
Stephenson, born in Wylam, Northumberland, was not a Geordie except as a corruption of his Christian name. Robin King, Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne. I watched Billy Conolly's tour of the UK the other night and he said it was something to do with the name of the lamps the minors used to use. All the other minors in Britain started using a new kind of lamp but those in Newcastle kept the old type of lamp which I think was known as a Geordie or something close and the other minors would refer to those in Newcastle as 'Geordies'.
Billy connolly said this is definately the true story and I beleive Billy! After an explosion in , George Stephenson invented the Geordie lamp in So all north east miners were nicknamed Geordies.
Also railwaymen, keelmen and sailors. The Northumberland miners used this lamp in preference to that invented by Sir Humphrey Davy at the same time, and the lamp, and eventually the miners themselves became known as Geordies. Sean Thompson, the toon! A question any Geordie should be able to answer, "Who won the battle of Trafalgar?
Geordies have been named so long before by our support for King George the second and have many a deep history of this in our TOWN! And ever since we are notorious for liking a good scrap. It was during the Middle Ages that the town flourished as a frontrunner in the wool trade , wool being a key commodity during medieval times.
In recognition of its strategic position the town was favoured by the royals, receiving its own mayor in and becoming a county town in complete with its own sheriff.
Even the decline of the wool trade in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had little effect on Newcastle since a royal act in had decreed that all coal exports in the North East were shipped from Newcastle quayside, even coal which was not mined in the town.
This allowed Newcastle to prosper as a regional centre for trade and halted the growth of local neighbours such as Sunderland, thus creating a rivalry which remains today. However, its prominent trade links were soon restored and it was business as usual after the Reformation when Newcastle began to trade and export products such as iron, slate and glass. The commercial industry was not the only sector to flourish in Newcastle.
By the eighteenth century the printing industry was the fourth biggest in UK after London , Oxford and Cambridge and the Newcastle Gazette and the Newcastle Courant were the first newspapers in circulation in northern England when they were introduced in and The establishment of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne in or the Lit and Phil as it is affectionately referred to attracted intellectuals and academics alike with its wide-ranging debates and plentiful literature in French, Spanish, German and Latin.
The building even became the first to use electric lightbulbs when the inventor Joseph Swan chose the Lit and Phil as the showcase for his latest invention. During the industrial revolution of , heavy industry thrived in Newcastle and its location made it an ideal base for building the ships and steam trains which powered the era. A number of advancements such as the invention of the steam turbine and the Davy lamp can also be credited to the town.
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