When all is said and done ,you’ve got to admire a man that stand’s up for his right;s
RORY
I like his attitude - definately surrey.
Fight the good fight!!
Well done.
Rory is there no length ye will go to in order to blacken my name? 
My horse told me to write the letter… 
Here is the reply I got
I did go back to Stirling and played and when one o the heavies came oot to remove me he said that his boss had told him to tell me to go..I said that her boss(for the then boss o Stirling was so) said I could stay and gave him the above.He looked at it and hurried awa.I carried on playing .Another person ,much more civilised it seems this time ,came oot,handed me back the letter and as it was hot enquired if I would like some refreshment brought oot and hoped I enjoyed my recital…I did ,very much.
Here is the view from the wall I was sitting on…
Mayo wot is a Surrey attitude 
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam by appointment Uilleann Piper to HM Queen Elizabeth II of England but Queen Elizabeth the 1st of Scotland
I note the presence in her Majesty’s flunky’s note of one of the distinguishing marks of British vs North American English: the gramatic treatment of collective nouns (nouns that are singular in form, but plural in nature: the orchestra, the regiment, the company, etc). In north american english, these take a singlular verb, whereas in the UK they tend to agree with a plural verb. I still haven’t worked out the precise mechanics of this; ie, which collective nouns get such a treatment and which don’t.
I should point out that Historic Scotland > are > very willing…
Uilliam, Surley as in not taking crap from someone who tries to push you around.
You were right - you stood your ground - AND you did the right thing and wrote to their boss (queen) , and were able to show them the letter that basically says - " get lost and let him play as long as he isn’t collecting money!"
I love it and yes that was surley!
Slainte!
A simple rule describing the difference would be that the subject-verb agreement in British English is generally based on semantics (meaning), while that of North American English is generally based on morphology (form). I’m not familiar with the sub-distinctions within British English to which you refer. Can you give some examples?
Sure. Here’s a couplet from To Have and Have Not by Mr. William Bragg, Esq.,
The factories are closing and the army’s full,
I don’t know what I’m going to do
Under the semantic subject-verb agreement rule (as defined above), the first line should say “the army are full”, but instead it conforms to North American usage.
Quite interesting. Might it be that the author is bending the rule to make the syllabic structure fit the meter of the couplet? In any event, I’m not at all surprised that there are exceptions, but, unfortunately this is outside of my expertise and I have no idea what the motivation may be.
Wouldn’t it be that the army is a collective noun. The individual members are not “armies”. In the case of “Historic Scotland are” the reference is not to the organisation or body of Historic Scotland, but rather to indivuals in the employ of that organisation. That, to me, is the difference, but I could be wrong.
djm
I’ve had it explained to me in the following manner:
In american english a corporation is an individual legal entity, therefore singular.
In English english a corporation is a group of people, therefore plural.
American = “Our company is going to sell the new products.”
English = “Our company are going to sell the new products.”
My hat’s off to you Liam for standing your ground and not letting them get away with using the Queen’s name to incorrectly enforce their own made up policy.
-g
I suppose that’s a step in the right direction…remember, the first “queen” elizabeth would have ordered you strung up for playing the pipes…some “golden age”
“the orchestra test” is my reference point for this particular problem. New world English says “the orchestra begins”; old world “the orchestra begin”*
Sticking with the music citation above, my source for the phrase “the orchestra begin” will be King Crimson’s The Court Of The Crimson King.
In any case, I think your point about individual members in an army is also true of an orchestra, and it gets the opposite treatment. So, I suspect there’s another factor we’re missing.
Rory see whit ye started
All o ye haud yer wheesht or go awa an beil yer heids ye windae licker bampots.Its all a load o tosh anyways…
Mayo ye wrote SURREY that why I was confused
Crack she is the 1st of Scotland…
Slán Go Foill
Uilliam
As a preface, let me just say for the record (before I go into all the boring crap below): Uilliam, you rock dude!!! 
The above explanations sound fine enough to explain prescriptive rules involved in this distinction (i.e., what English teachers, grammars, etc. prescribe as correct). I am curious, however, what the descriptive rules are, i.e., explanations accounting for the way the colloquial language is spoken. I wonder what is the natural tendency for speakers of British English in conjugating verbs to agree with their subjects?
With regard to colloquial American English, even though the prescriptive rule is morphology (form)-driven, semantics (meaning) play a key role in “mistakes” people make while speaking: “The group of astronauts (is/are) flying home today.” A typical speaker may think “astronauts” is the grammatical subject, but it isn’t (it’s a plural head noun in a prepositional phrase). “The group of astronauts IS flying home today” is grammatically correct because “group” is a singular entity. However, at a deeper semantic level the speaker realizes that the semantic subject (the whole subjective phrase) refers to a plural entity, so many speakers tend towards (the grammatically incorrect): *“The group of astronauts ARE flying home today.”
Likewise, words like “cadre,” “committee,” “team,” “squadron,” “gaggle,” and “herd” can be misleading to American English speakers because they suggest a plural condition but function as a singular noun. Grammatically correct usage is: “The herd of cows IS eating right now,” “A collection of crazy misfits POPULATES the island Rudolph visited,” etc., but consider this recent “error-ridden” headline: “One in 18 Americans LACK good literacy skills.” Because the subject is “one” and not “18 Americans,” the verb should be singular, and so “one in 18 LACKS good literacy skills” is grammatically correct.
In language there is a never-ending battle between form and meaning that accounts for its oscillating dynamic nature (how it changes over time [e.g., Anglo-Saxon > Middle English > Modern English) and space [from speaker to speaker, dialect to dialect, daughter language to daughter language] . If I had to bet on it, I’d say that this accounts for the discrepancies noted above.
And lastly, even though I’m an American, I’d never accuse a speaker of British English to be guilty of CONJUGATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!
A surrey with attitude:
(but no isinglas curtains…)
No fringe on top?
All the cool surreys have a fridge on top.
Well, I thought I started a thread about a interesting episode in the life of a piper,but it turns out to be a thread about grammar and a surrey with a fringe on top.
Isn’t it amazing,You just never know how these threads are going to turn out .
RORY