I feel the need to face check these exceptionalist claims. 1/the number of non-native English speakers is disputed. Depends what you mean by “speak”. English/Brit nationalists frequently over-estimate numbers of proficient English learners. https://twitter.com/juliahb1/status/1325923084239577090

2/ British ownership of the concept of democracy is too surreal a claim to address or fact check. The U.K. until half a century ago operated a vast authoritarian empire without meaningful democracy.

3/ Cool, yes, a Scottish guy discovered anti-biotics by accident.

4/ A Scottish guy in America did indeed falsely claim to have invented the telephone. He was lying. It was something of a scandal. Records have been adjusted to show an Italian guy, also in America, was real inventor.

5/ A Scottish guy did come up with one of the early versions of TV, but not the technology which prevailed in the 20th century. That was from an American.

6/ The internet was developed in the US, not Britain. The tweeter will be confusing this with the World Wide Web, which was the brainchild of an English chap In Switzerland.

Point: what we are seeing here is an attempt to nationalise what are fundamentally things which are the product of the international exchange of ideas, from democracy to telephony. No one nations owns them. Even the English language doesn’t belong to England, it never has.

(And we know that English isn’t “British” because it has been changed beyond recognition by being used by non-Brits. Our language - and this includes our Scottish English - is global. We don’t “own” it. We can’t, languages don’t work like that).