Author Archives: davidsberry

About davidsberry

Local councillor, tour guide and database designer. Keen on wildlife, history, boats and music. Stood for the Scottish Parliament 2011; lost by 151 votes.

Britain’s Dinosaur Defence

Posted on August 22, 2016

On a recent visit to the Royal Yacht Britannia, I was struck by two ‘birds-eye’ illustrations hanging in the corridor of the state rooms. One shows the Coronation Naval Review at Spithead in 1953 and the other the similar Silver … Continue reading →

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Blowing the Inheritance

Posted on August 18, 2016

Edinburgh deserves its status as a World Heritage Site. Its New Town is—along with Bath—the shining example of magnificent Georgian architecture. Its regular streets of coherent facades are interspersed with circles, squares and gardens and gifted with wide views of … Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Environment, Transport | Tagged | Leave a comment

Dunkirk Spirit Doesn’t Age Well

Posted on August 7, 2016

During the last decade or so, arguments that Scotland’s future rest within the union have revolved around two key points: 1) economic advantages of being an integral part of a ‘large’ country; 2) the glorious history that nations of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Community, Politics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Chiels That Winna Ding?

Posted on July 29, 2016

In the midst of a Twitter storm this week, I realised that the bulk of the 3,000+ responses to a chart I published were from unionists, almost all of whom appeared to insist that the only debate that could be … Continue reading →

Posted in Commerce, Politics | Tagged | 2 Comments

Not Brexit; Engleave

Posted on July 18, 2016

Three weeks on and the reverberations of June 23rd continue to cloud any clarity of the political future for Britain. The now headless Brexiter movement has slid from media view and left a new government under Theresa May to sort … Continue reading →

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Why Bait the Bear?

Posted on July 10, 2016

A recent NATO summit in Warsaw agreed to deploy four multi-national battalions (from USA, UK, Germany and Canada) to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The British are to be in overall charge and the contingent is to consist of a … Continue reading →

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Foreignacy

Posted on July 4, 2016

Opinionated though it may be, it’s not often that this blog has the temerity to launch a new word into the already crowded seas of English vocabulary. But the second decade of the 21st century, the world appears to be … Continue reading →

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This Scuppered Isle

Posted on June 26, 2016

Three days on and the enormity of what happened on June 23rd still has not registered in all its implications either with me or the population at large. The jubilation shown by Brexiteers at counting stations appears to have evaporated … Continue reading →

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Toys Out the Pram; Bums Oot the Windae

Posted on June 24, 2016

I join over 15m voters in their varied disappointment on waking this morning to discover that Britain has voted to leave the EU. That’s about as sober a statement as I can manage right now. Because I am bealing, furious, … Continue reading →

Posted in Commerce, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Comments

Quis Docebit ipsos Doctores?

Posted on June 12, 2016

Actually, at school, I hated Latin. The relevance of dead languages was even less clear to me than that of calculus. But I was blessed with teachers who knew how to ignite thrawn teenage imagination and instill a heady mix … Continue reading →

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