In Scottish terms, this year’s Olympics were the most political I can recall, as exemplified by Team GB gold medal winner Chris Hoy saying:

Scotland is part of Britain, they are not mutually exclusive; I'm a proud Scot and I'm a very proud Brit as well.

But “Salmond’s approach to the Olympics”, in which “goodwill or congratulations have been directed only at the Scots athletes taking part, has been “churlish and petty” and has shown a “lack of generosity of spirit”, according to Kenny Farquharson in this week’s Scotland on Sunday.

Farquharson continued:

The SNP believes Britishness is dying as Scots increasingly see themselves as Scottish, not British. This has been repeated so often it has become a truism. The problem is, it simply isn’t true. The Scots are a complex and sometimes contradictory people – inconveniently so for the SNP.

He then cited Scottish Social Attitudes survey data from successive years showing that dual Scottish-British national identity is very much alive and well.

This was evidently too much for one CyberNat, who replied:

Your "stats" on Britishness (particularly those related to the multi-nationality disorder you and other Brit nationalists suffer) should also reflect and state that perhaps the reasons there are "high" number of "British, not Scottish" in Scotland is due to the high levels of "Southern British" people living in our country, not to mention the aspiring Southern Britishers like yourself Kenny.

Peeling away his “disorder” insult, his “aspiring Southern Britishers” nonsense and the deeply distasteful subtext of his use of the expression “our country” when set against the status of English people living here, we can see what lies at the root of his view: he sees multi-layered senses of national identity as abnormal. To be Scottish, he thinks, should be to exclude all else.

Such a view is entirely inconsistent with my experience and preference. I was born and did much of my growing up in Northern Ireland, moved to Scotland as a teenager, put down roots here and later came to identify with Scotland more than any other part of the United Kingdom.

In terms of nationality, I would therefore consider myself Irish (by birth, and by which I mean the island nation of Ireland), Scottish (by adoption, and primary identification) and of course British (as a matter both of objective reality and political persuasion).

Moreover, I’m not each of these three in some fractional sense totalling 100%. I’m not less Irish just because I moved elsewhere or less Scottish because I happen to be a new Scot. Rather, I’m fully Irish, fully Scottish and fully British — and those nationalists who try to tell me otherwise only betray their own prejudices. I know several English people living in Scotland who self-identify as both English and Scottish — to my mind, an entirely reasonable designation.

So far from being a disorder, such nuanced senses of national identification evince a richness and openness which, while perhaps unusual in global terms, are far from being uncommon in the British Isles and in various other parts of Europe. My own nationalities even span state boundaries, which fact should in itself serve as an indication of my diametrical opposition to nationalism of any kind.