Now that’s just weird. What you going to do when the cat gets run over? Have a ceremonial unpeeling? Do they sell cross stickers to put on top? It’s fraught with potential grief!
Yes, it’s the ‘Auld Alliance’ thing, combined with the fact that the French are the traditional sworn enemies of the English. So it’s ‘two fingers up to the English and their language’.
A sane Scotsman who doesn’t feel such animosity would, indeed, just use a flag.
I’m afraid those stick figures are catching on in the UK. Somebody pointed them out on another (UK) forum that I frequent, and now I see the things everywhere.
Some (:D) people seem to have become so busy hating England they forget there’s more to a national identity than that. Personally, I find it a little amusing that England can be the centre of a non-English person’s universe to a level that even the most patriotic English person can only aspire to.
The characterisation that we have those stickers because we “hate the English” is really quite unfair, although there are a good number of Scots who have a bad attitude towards our southern friends.
They were normally attached to cars that were taken to continental Europe alongside the GB plate. The most common place to go on camping holidays with the car was France, hence “Ecosse”.
And the thing is, it’s not so much “we hate the English” as “we’re not English”. It’s irritating to Scots to be referred to as English. English people who are puzzled by this should imagine how they’d feel if everyone in Europe assumed they were American because they spoke English. Canadians and New Zealanders already know the feeling.
My Dad was always mistaken for being Australian when he was in the US. He’s from Ipswich.
Happens to folks the world over.
Stickers are not that uncommon in the UK, but as others have said, they tend to be stuck in the back window rather than onto the bumper. For allegiance to football teams, you sometimes see miniature jerseys suction-cupped to the window.
PS “Baby on Board” stickers are pretty lame, but not as lame as these which actively make me want to set about the offending vehicle with a lump hammer.
(Note the use of “quote marks” - is the little princess a bit of a heifer?)
I went through secondary school thinking my Geography teacher was from Australia…nope…east Anglia as well.
Ironic that I made such a gaff with a geography teacher of all people.
Would I be right in thinking that maybe East Anglians were over-represented within the original convict settlers? Who cares if I’m right or not that is a good story and I am sticking with it.
Fair enough (personally I’ve worked with many, many Scots and only one ever expressed anti-English sentiments) That explanation makes sense enough.
And it isn’t surprising that we seek to distinguish ourselves from the masses. We all have something of a regional identity.
I know how annoying it is to be called a “geordie” just because I have a north-eastern accent. How much more so the offence is when you actually come from Sunderland. ( I don’t but my brother-in-law gets it all the time and he is as mackem as the day is long)
Car tattoo sales website with pictures.
Regarding the stick figures, I got one of these, just because Order of the Stick is cool. If you read ALL the ad copy, you’ll see that it’s available in white and clear. I missed that and got the clear. I put it in the lower corner of my van’s window and . . . you can’t see the design at all from the outside. From the outside, it just looks like an all black bumper sticker. If you’re inside the van, though, the light coming through makes the figures visible. So I have a stealth stick figure bumper sticker.
You had to remind me. I don’t see as many of these as I used to. I’m betting they’re not big in the UK.
Oh I don’t know, my stick figure family is an Avatar and a Drake with a Hello Kitty face on the Jetta, and a Rorqual and a Mackinaw with a Hello Kitty head on the momvan. A friend from EVE says I will probably find my momvan being followed by someone with the stick figure of a Raven on it 
<a common ship used to shoot industrial ships to loot them or just grief them>
However, I have seen several of the Darwin fish, FSM ‘fish’ and one terribly English one with ‘n chips’ in the middle.
Around here there’s a few annoying ones with obnoxious statements like ‘Protected by angels’, ‘Powered by fairy dust’, and the absolutely vomit inducing ‘Don’t drive faster than your angel can fly’ which really makes me want to ram them.
In the late 80s there were Fat Willys Surf somethingorother stickers on half the cars in the West Country. I assume those went the way of Global Hypercolo(u)r.
I think I saw the answer to this question on a minivan in Whitby last week: a row of stickers, family members sorted by size, and the girl in the middle had angel wings and a halo. Oh yes, there were also various church stickers, and a chrome Jesus fish, on the back of the minivan.
I was simultaneously sympathetic and creeped out.
I’ll lend you my sledgehammer. 
:: shudder ::
Yes, it does, but when you’re a person from a country that is effectively dominated by another country ten time the size of yours, you feel differently about it. When I lived in the US, a lot of people I met thought I was Irish. That doesn’t bother me at all. But I am bothered when someone calls me English.
I’m not trying to defend the offensive attitudes some Scots have towards the English, absolutely not. But we are protective of our national identity, and I don’t think we’re being unreasonable in doing so.
This is exactly how English-speaking Canadian feel about being mistaken for USAmericans.
Understood, and I think some Kiwis might feel the same way - as mentioned in my first post on this. Canadians are sometimes mistaken for Irish folks, and I imagine that bothers them a lot less than being mistaken for Americans.
“Alba” ones too. Almost certainly not Gaelic speakers, but probably SNP voters.
Those don’t really annoy me either. I mean, in the end, does any expression of Scottishness amount to “Fuck the English”?