All of this 'national characteristic' stuff I always find really interesting. I spend my entire working life travelling the world and meeting different cultures. I am particularly interested in 'identifiable national collective psychologies' if such things exist.. you know the stuff...
Americans... eternally optimisitic
English... universally uptight and repressed
Finns.. collectively depressed etc etc..
Is there smoke... hmmm yes of course but I always get twitchy with it too. I Have Bruce Quarrie's Napoleon's Campaign's in Miniature and I am sure there is a patronising section of that ilk included there... thinking it is one thing.. committing it to print is another!
Anyway.. the Scots (as everyone knows) are
fun loving, generous to a fault, even tempered, abstemious, polite, deferential, unassuming, passive, compliant, supportive, uncritical and of course loving....
But the IRISH.....