Yet another new blog

Picture the scene: Ivanka Trump is briefing Donald at Mar-a-Lago on how things are going in the UK under the leadership of Johnson and Cummings. She may squirm and avoid the question all she likes but the answer is: it's not going well. Trump quite liked the idea of having a special friend across the pond and instructed his advisers (and boy, he has quite a few) to encourage the Tories in the run-up to the last general election. Steve Bannon was the main player: he talked to the Tories about strategy, gave them all sorts of ideas on how to deal with Labour (mainly by blackening the name of the leader with the help of the foreign press that claims to represent the UK), and led them to believe a US/UK trade deal was on the cards if they just did what they were told. The Tories followed these instructions to the letter and some of it has gone quite well: they have a majority of 80 in the UK parliament. Plenty of Tory voters have gone for the xenophobic line promoted by the Tories ...

First of all,  I am very sorry to hear that Caroline Flack has taken her own life. Suicide is a terrible event. It affects the families and friends of the deceased for generations. In many cases, the grief, anger and guilt may fade into the background but they don't go away. The family and friends of Caroline Flack face a lifetime of asking: How could it have happened? Could they have done more to help her? How could she feel so alone and so isolated that death was the only way she thought was open to her? You'll all have your own ideas about those questions. But that's not what I want to talk about here. My subject is hypocrisy. Until she died, I'd no idea who Caroline Flack was. And I have to say the TV obituaries don't make her career any clearer to me. I'm quite used to 'celebrity' now. I see TV programmes advertised on channels I don't watch and find myself asking: Who are these people? For example, there's a channel on Sky which bel...

The new Tory leader in Scotland, Jackson Carlaw, said, just one day after being elected by his merry band of voters: THE newly elected leader of the Scottish Conservatives yesterday branded the  SNP  an "evangelical faith-based cult" in an anti- independence  rant to the  BBC . This was not a smart move by Jackson. His comment might offend those who live a faith-based life and others who consider themselves evangelicals. However, it didn't upset too many SNP supporters, their main target, because I expect some of them have heard every insult there is from the Tories. But it did get the SNP  twitterati sharpening up their sense of humour and sending out dozens of tweets, of which my current favourite is: <<Thine adversaries shall call you a cult, and thou shalt respond with   raucous humour and piss-taking. For which thine adversaries shall hate you more, but thou shalt be pissing yersels with laughter.>> WS Saraband twitter ...

1 Scots is an Indo-European language related to other Germanic languages. Ulster Scots is an associated language. 2 On the map above, you can see Scots on the right hand side on the same branch as English but separate from it. 3 Scots shares some vocabulary with Dutch, Flemish and German. That dates back to the time when Scotland was an independent country and traded widely with nations across the North Sea. Scots also shows traces of French/Norman vocabulary, dating from its time as an independent political nation when there were links between the Scottish and French crowns. 4 There are many dialects of Scots: https://www.scotslanguage.com/pages/view/id/10 5 Robert Burns wrote in Ayrshire Scots and in English. Many Burns enthusiasts favour his Scots poetry and songs over his English compositions. 6 Glaswegian Scots contains idioms and vocabulary from Irish English and translated from Irish itself. 7 Doric, often referred to as 'the Doric,' is a dialect of Scots...

This is a follow-on from remarks made about Gaelic on Facebook recently. My hope is to clarify a little bit the place of Gaelic in Scottish culture and education. 1 Scottish Gaelic is one of a group of European languages often referred to as Celtic languages: Irish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, Galician, Asturian, Manx, and Cornish (in revival). The Celts were not a single group but a number of groups of craftspeople valued for their skills in metalwork. They were especially valued because of their skill in making weapons. Their wares have been found all over Europe, as well as among grave goods in China and on the Silk Road. 2 The Celtic languages and cultures share some similarities even now. 3 The Scottish Education Act of 1872 made English the only language of Scottish education. Gaelic and Scots were not 'banned' but teachers were expected to teach through English in the classroom and parents soon realised that the way for their children to get on was to sp...

The beautiful unicorn is by Boo Paterson. People walk out on lousy situations all the time: chuck the job that is making them ill, abandon the disfunctional friend who is using them, give up on the family that's bad for them. If you get yourself into a bad relationship, you're also allowed to walk away. A bad marriage is more complicated but still in the end both parties can have a fresh start. This is because everybody knows before they get into it what their rights and responsibilities are - and what happens if they renege on them. Bluntly, you pay. Emotionally as well as financially. Countries are in the same position most of the time: Czechoslovakia was a fake country even as it was being set up. So it split up by agreement and with 'help' (not always very helpful help) from neighbours. Yugoslavia wasn't so easy a split: the country was created out of an ancient, unresolved civil war as well as a more recent world war - and it has taken several more ...