Monthly Archives: June 2012

The Giftie Gie Us

Listening to the last act of ORF’s live broadcast of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor on top of today’s EFF premiere of Brave and Cummings in Macbeth earlier in the week, I am struck by the contrasting views that various “furriners” … Continue reading

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Not Our Finest Hour

Before there were such clinically business-like names as “nuclear strike capability” and “mutually assured destruction”, there was the Strategic Bomber Offensive which, unlike our present military madness, was actually prosecuted to as full an extent as we could. Based on … Continue reading

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Nation for Sale

THE assertion by Scottish Labour that Scots willingly chose to join the UK is wrong on every level. Again, like yesterday, not technically a reblog, this informative article from Paul Scott was printed in today’s Hootsmon. It gives a scholarly backdrop to … Continue reading

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SOS Puffin—2012 Report

Technically this can’t be a reblog since the original wasn’t a blog at all. But as a great example of a dedicated wildlife fan who has put major amounts of effort over five years into a project to secure the … Continue reading

Posted in Community, Environment | 1 Comment

Day of the Naysayers

So, today is the launch of “Better Together” aka “The ‘NO’ Campaign”. Can’t say that I wish them well. That’s not because they oppose my personal belief that the Scots would do better running their own country in their own … Continue reading

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Public Disservice

Lothian Buses has a history stretching back to the formation of Edinburgh Corporation Tramways in 1919 and a slew of recent commendations, including Best UK Bus Company (2002), Bus Operator of the Year (2007) and Top City Operator of the Year (2011). … Continue reading

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Ehhhh: What’s Up, Doc?

Yesterday saw the first UK-wide doctors’ strike in decades. It was over proposed changes to their pensions and, although the government tried to play it down and a fair number of doctors showed up for work anyway, there were still … Continue reading

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Lost in Translation

Recently, SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson, a fluent German speaker, was interviewed in Wiener Zeitung (The Vienna Newspaper). In it, he urges caution in allowing himself to be described as a ‘nationalist’ because of continuing strong right-wing overtones in that … Continue reading

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Looking a Sea Horse in the Mouth

Yesterday, Marine Scotland published a controversial report on fish stocks in the Firth of Clyde as the Clyde Ecosystem Review. Whereas two years ago, a similar report had predicted that the estuary was “about to become a marine desert” this … Continue reading

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Who You Calling ‘Foreign’?

I often wonder at the genuineness of unionist ‘confusion’ at what Scotland being a normal country would involve. Every other day another academic is dragged out from some ivory tower to furrow his distinguished brow over whether the sun could … Continue reading

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