Lazy Days

The rain has been hosing it down, and shows no sign of ending.  There’s a weekend of festivities, of a sort, ahead, what with the local agricultural show set to defy the sodden fields and have the Rural wimmen bakin’ and makin’ and what not.  But the highlight will be a visit to the much-missed Queen of Hearts, showcasing her new castle with her knave on best behaviour and all the little tartlets too.  I have my excorcism kit at the ready.  Only two more sleeps.

Meantime cohesive thinking  has taken a back seat and any pretence at creativity put on hold.  But the world has not stopped and there’s a few interesting topics and splendid articles to be read.  If you missed them here’s a wee sample of what I’ve been enjoying of late:

Firstly the question of whether NATO membership is or is not important, firstly to SNP members, and secondly, as an issue in the referendum:

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/5669-why-independent-scotland-must-stay-in-nato

Then we have a really fine article taking that issue, and others that may be more or less important, and putting them into persepctive, with a fine debate following:

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/things-we-dont-care-about/

But let’s not be sidetracked away from footie – how can we as one half of a certain pair prepare to clinch their place with the big boys, wondering if they’ll be travelling to Madrid, Manchester or Milan; whilst the other tries to find out about the Mechanics and negotiates for tickets in the full house of 1,400 or so – be warned, The Genealogist is a Forres quine.  The current state of the game is discussed here:

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2012/08/27/scottish-premier-league-rumours-of-death-greatly-exaggerated/

Staying parochial I see that Glasgow City Council are still mired in the brown stuff, which comes as no surprise:

http://www.scottishtimes.com/former_labour_minister_sleaze_row

And back in the real world, the one full of liars, sycophants and cynics, baksheesh and bollocks,I was heard to remark earlier today that there may even be a master-being up above, but really I think it’s simply that just desserts will always be on the menu.

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/5705-former-news-of-the-world-scotland-editor-charged-over-sheridan-case

Now a plea if I may.  For whatever ails us there’s always someone with greater needs, putting our own woes into perspective.  If there’s any medics out there with a knowledge of treatment and care of Behcet’s, please let me know, for a dear friend needs some expert help.

Armstrong

It’s a name often heard of late, and I have to confess to a vested interest.

For my next kilt will be an Armstrong tartan; it is the one I am supposed to wear but hitherto do not.  My maternal ancestry comes from the Fairbairns, and they are part of Clan Armstrong.  Both hail from the south and east of the country.  The Borders are real Armstrong territory, home to reivers and sheep-stealers.  On the coast is where you’ll find the Fairbairns, following the herring from Fife down to Eyemouth where a number of Fairbairns perished in the storm of 1881.  Some may say that the fishwife is alive and well, evident in the female Fairbairn descendants to this day; but I couldn’t possibly comment, my own branch hailing as it does from a long line of agricultural labourers in the fields of Fife, before the railways arrived and the Forth Bridge, that monument in girders, took them over the firth into Edinburgh’s smoke.

But I digress, for it is other Armstrongs that have been making the news.  Lance was first; giving up his fight to clear his name; accepting the persecution of the American drug police intent on stripping him of his seven wins in Le Tour.  I do find it strange that the Americans may have such power.  The event was not run by them and the title never awarded by them.  It seems that it may not be theirs to take away.  But the evidence seemed stacked, or so we are led to believe, for it will never be presented, the defence never heard.  There appears to be so many cyclists and team-mates of Armstrong with evidence to be given that, quite possibly, the titles may have been won on a level playing field.

Then came Neil, sad indeed.  I remember well those gripping scenes as a blip of light emerged from The Dark Side of the Moon, and as The Eagle Landed.  Could it possibly all have happened in the Arizona desert?  Were we all hoodwinked?  Neil Armstrong too found himself lauded in the Borders, an Armstrong to be proud of.  And so as that first moon landing comes back to mind; the conspiracy theories aired again; it is a shame that the man that uttered those immortal words is no longer with us just as we are on the brink of finding out the mysteries of Mars.  Or is that just another desert?

I heard, on the wireless yesterday, a quest to find the favourite Armstrong.  Could it be either of the above?  Perhaps, in these parts, Gary of that ilk.  Now there was a Border Reiver, a terrier even.  One of the finest scrum halves to grace the game, forever spinning the ball down the line or urging and prodding the forwards ahead, sniping at the goal line.  They breed them tough in those parts, and the sheep are worried, but not so much as in the frozen wastes of the north, Wales even, where the ovine threat may be sinister and rustling is the sound of wellies and overalls, allegedly.

But my favourite Armstrong can only be one other.  There was only one Louis, born so we are led to believe on Independence Day, 1900,  – he may have been a year and a month out – and taken far too young, with that voice and that horn.  There’s a biography of Pops on the bookshelf and I think it might be time to delve in, to go back to Preservation Hall and to the days when being black in the Deep South had little going for it.  I think when I go out today I may find High Society on the iPod.

It’s not a bad clan to claim ancestry association; and that kilt replacement may not be far away for it seems to have shrunk over the years.  I wonder if there’s a Hunting Louis, or Ancient Red Satchmo, version of the Armstrong tartan……

Let the Games Begin

Well they’re going to anyway, and our screens will be filled with tear-jerking moments as another ‘best ever’ event is put on by the only country that can.  Yes indeed, it’s almost Paralympic time, and the hype is building by the day.

Now I have to confess that I don’t find the prospect to be enticing as a spectator sport; this is much in the same way as I was not surprised to find that only 6,500 ticket sales could be racked up for the womens’ Olympic football at Hampden.  I’m not against what these athletes are striving to achieve and have every admiration for their battle against adversity.  But I don’t intend watching a great deal of it.

On one hand I’m glad that my occasional lottery pound goes towards making their training possible, allowing talented people to become full time athletes.  But I’m equally glad that my taxes allow financial assistance to disabled friends through Access to Work funding, allowing a business to be run and a living to be earned.  The alternative would be a life on even more expensive benefits.

But my real problem with the forthcoming event comes in the role of sponsors Atos.  Who? you may say, for it is not a name up there with those massive commercial conglomerates that have their names plastered all over, dictated the terms even of ticket purchasing, snacking etc, of the main event a few weeks back.

Atos Healthcare is a body about which a lot more should be learned.  They are pumping money into the Games, and it’s our money, tapayers’ money.  For Atos have a massive multi-million pound contract from  – our government.  And what what is that they do in our name?  Well, it seems that Atos are ensuring that thousands of our sick and disabled citizens are to have their benefits slashed, and you and I are paying them to make massive corporate profits in so doing.

There was a time when benefit assessment was carried out by the relevant government department, by civil servants, people without a vested financial interest.  But those deprtments no longer have the manpower, following redundancies by the tens of thousand, and out it went, to private tender.

Decisions are made, monies curtailed, but there’s an appeals process.  And that’s a nice little earner, no doubt most of the cost going in legal aid funding to another bunch that need our largesse even less.  The statistics are horrifying.  40% of appellants win their case, the Atos decision held to be flawed.  And where the appellant engages professional assitance, from people who know how the sytem works, people with medical training and knowledge, the success rate is over 90%.  Staggering isn’t it?

Is that the system we want in this country?  Can you imagine the stress the benefit claimant has from Atos decision to appeal procedure; the time that takes; the impact on household finances?  And all the time you and I are paying this mob a fortune.  I can’t imagine that the contract was conditional on throwing some loose change at the Paralympics, but it leaves a nasty taste in the mouth that the funding to make it all possible comes at the cost of those who need it most, the sick and the disabled, the very group whose exploits are being staged for the world to see and marvel at.

So while the athletes are lottery funded and don’t need to work those that can’t work get pushed further toward the scrapheap.  I can but hope that A2W is not to suffer a similar fate and come within the Atos remit.  Meanwhile I’ll make a date for my lates mini-paralympics and get The Networker down to the gym and help him put his pain-wracked body round the machines as he tries his damndest to stave off the muscle wastage and atrophy that 20 years of MS have ravaged on his soul.  And I’ll get a good workout providing manual assistance where possible.  Alternatively we could put the kettle on and settle down to watch the Atos Games.  I think not.

No doubt there will be heroes to emerge.  No doubt the Daily Mail will find the equivalent of another immigrant black islamist called Mohammed to fawn over – what’s Daily Mail speak for schadenfreude?

Airport Stalingrad

Brilliant.

Airport Stalingrad.

Ring any bells?

It’s the little things

…….that make it all worthwhile.

And it was one of those tiny things, as inconsequential as it was unexpected, that brought a beacon of brightness to the gloom yesterday.

We had celebrated one of our own little things a few days ago, a little gathering of grannies and the like and heaps of home baking most of which now seems to have disappeared.  The birthday bike went down well, but the opportunities to take it along the road and practise gear changing, stretching toes to the tarmac, have been rare.  The weather has been gathering; the clouds unleashing torrents, and the routine of school slowly bringing life back to ‘normal’, just as the frenetic cycle of out-of-school activities ramps up and The Rural reawkens in time for offerings to the Wimmens Industrial shed at the local show.

The horse trials coincided with the 50 mile charity cycle run; this weeked it’s the turn of the balloon festival, then The Exposition.  In between times there’s dinners and house-warmings, and book fairs looming large.  The opportunities to run The Grasshopper round the lanes seem to be rarer, despite Urchins confined to class for several hours each day.  But out it did get at the weekend, before the charity cyclists descended.  I had a good run about half the distance of the hardier souls, and met up, several times, with a tougher breed.  For the local running club were out in force, striding each and every one of the 50 miles of the route, with notable absentees, and one masochist intent on doing the lot in a kilt.

Any ay, there was I, with a little time to spare between meetings, a visit to the dentist’s couch, and that of the hygienist, next in the diary.  There’s a small branch of the only remaining chain of booksellers close by.  Not for me a coffee shop.  Oh no the lure of the stacks had me reaching for my wallet.  And a strange and unexpected burst of generosity, guilt perhaps, found me at the till with Horrid Henry’s Holiday and one of those cut-out-and-dress dolly things from the marketing team behind Brave; oh and a couple of paperbacks for onself, one of which looks to be vital research for a certain little trip looming large and of which more later.

But there was another little unexpected thing lying in wait.  I had intended bringing you news of more gloom; perhaps the self relegation of what once boasted of being The Voice of Scotland or some such; the once fine, two centuries of history and more; the paper once known as The Glasgow Herald, has surpassed itself again, rebranding as a regional rag having once boasted of being a national newspaper.  The only reason for this is to hide the plunging circulation evidence with the other parochial pamphlets which report six-monthly, rather than have the evidence laid bare on a monthly basis.  And that’s before the impact, the Gardham Effect as it may later be recorded, with shoddy journalism and a unionist agenda.  As usual Rev Stu brings it all expertly to the fore, so I’ll move on.

On to the parcel that awaited my return.  I was expecting nothing and had no books on order, well none that were due for immediate delivery, other than hopes for the birthday bunny that will be visiting imminently.  And inside this cardboard wrap were no fewer than five paperbacks, newly published.  Then the penny dropped.

A crossword competition, a few months ago.  I had received occasional prizes over the years, a DVD here, boxed set there, and always unannounced with no note of where or why.  The last one had a marvellous prize, five re-published works of prime travel writing.  The publication came from the House of Bradt, source of guidebooks to the world’s far flung places.  The competition was in the quarterly magazine of Wexas, Traveller, by far the best travel magazine available.  It is provided to Wexas members, but available to the unwashed on subscription.

Hilary Bradt has published some classics of days gone by, a few works gone out of print, a welcome addition to that field.  I’ll start with her own Connemara Mollie, knowing that any work of travel round the backroads of Ireland, especially on a pony can be nothing but good.

It is no coincidence that Bradt and Wexas are leading lights in promoting travel writing, with annual competitions and prizes.  One of my aims is to have an article in Traveller, one day.  But the world of the magazine editor is a strange one and the art and angst of pitching can destroy the toughest of souls.  So one way of keeping your name in front of the great and the good, to see your name in print in their august pages, is to scoop the crossword competition.  The prize this time ensures that the bedside table remains well stocked, at least until the birthday bunny arrives; and has the advantage of putting a rare and unexpected smile where it is not often seen.

A Tale Well Told

The name of Tahir Shah has been mentioned on these pages on a number of occasions.  I have been reading his works for some years, with increasing admiration.  He features on my list of favourite authors, and the latest work, Timbuctoo, on my reads of the current year.  Rather than have me sound like some sort of authorial groupie, you might want to have a look at Tahir’s website to get a real flavour of his work over the years.  As well as baing a writer of pretty unique style and skill, he also manages to get into the odd scrape or two.

But it is his latest work that has me captivated right now.  The book itself is a mighty tome, published by himself in the style of the period in which it is set.  It was designed by his wife Rachana.  Her work is known to many of his readers for she it was who masterminded the work on that house in Casablanca; the one that gave the inspiration for his scribblings about the djinns and his unique storytelling behind The Caliph’s House and In Arabian Nights.

As a physical book it is nothing short of majestic.  But the tale it tells is another thing all together, and best summarised by the man himself.  We are in Regency London, society, Byron et al.  Napoleon is on his way to St Helena, but war continues to be waged, now with America.  There is an unseemly race to locate the mysterious city in the desert, to relieve it of its riches; and for the infidels to be taught a lesson.  And an illiterate American escapes from slavery, where he found himself after a shipwreck, at the hands of the Moors, then the Touareg,  having been in that city, and survived.

The book has rested on the shelf for some weeks, waiting for the right moment.  That has now arrived and it has found itself on the bedside table, the silk marker already deep into the tale.  The maps are exquisite.

And there’s an accompanying website.  For this is more than just a book that Shah has created.  We have available digital images of the original published narrative of Robert Adams, and so much more.  And there’s treasures; and clues; a mystery to solve.  Hidden across the globe, at four locations covering Europe, Africa and Australia, are four life size bronze sculptured heads.  There are clues in the book, and on the website.  Crack one of the four codes hidden in the novel and enter it via the website, and get a series of more codes.  Eventually you could find yourself with shovel in hand digging.

I think I’ve a project on hand here.  But first of all I’m going to thoroughly enjoy every word on every page.  And on all those lists of things to achieve before shuffling off, I’d suggest that opening the covers of a Tahir Shah book is a must.  He’ll open so many new worlds, and you’ll realise that a bookshelf is incomplete some of the magic of Tahir Shah.

And he’s going to be in Wigtown in a few weeks time……….

Closing Ceremony

Last words on the festivities:

First the number crunching:

http://order-order.com/2012/08/13/olympics-in-numbers/

Then the polling effect:

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/5588-scots-poll-bursts-unionists-olympic-bubble

How about the Union Dividend:

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/another-union-dividend/

And finally the outpourings and the rantings:

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/those-vile-cybernats/.

Sorry about that last lot, but it has to be seen to be believed.  It seems to take us back to matters relating to the team formerly known as Sevco, the ones who almost got a Davidson-Doing up at Peterhead.  So on a happier note on the footie front, let’s see a fantastic start to the season.  Down 2 -0 at half-time; three within a another minute; and then bouncing back to win 5-3, and all at the home of the local rivals.  What fun we had.

 

Books & Bikes

There’s a dual theme here, and I’ll give you a prime example of that shortly.

I’ve been in Russia of late; firstly with Solzhenitsyn’s Apricot Jam, proving that even in his later years, after decades of exile, that he could still look objectively at all that he always saw as wrong in his country, and had retained all the writing skills of his younger days.  I had no intention of staying in Russia though, until that was I popped into one of Oxfam’s Bookshops and picked up, for the price of a couple of loaves and half a fishie, Robert Haupt’s Last Boat to Astrakhan.  So right now I’m half way down the Volga, enthralled.

Haupt was an Australian journalist who was based in Moscow from 1991 – 1996; those years, post Gorby and with Yeltsin drinking his way towards a free market economy, the days before Litvinenko was poisoned in London and oligarchs made a mint from state assets to launder round the world’s football clubs.  It reads like one of those conversations between Clive James and Vitali Vitaliev, with heaps of sardonic wit and an insider’s look from the outside.  On the back cover is the following:

“It had been my childhood dream to travel to the Caspian, the below-sea-level sea.  When the chance finally came to make the voyage, after the fall of the Soviet Union, I seized it, buying the round-trip ticket with a stack of inflation ravaged roubles that filled a plastic bag and took half an hour to count.  Had I delayed, the trip would not have been taken.”

Even then the salmon and the sturgeon had been exiled from the Volga’s currents, victims of dams and pollution.  The boat Haupt took was the last one to reach the sea as dredging ceased and the channels silted.  We head to Nizhny Novgorod, and the world’s biggest Fair, with trade from five seas and centuries of commerce.  And to Kazan, once reached by the Golden Hordes, where the Koran was in vogue for centuries before the Bible came downstream.  Haupt is a commentator who admits that he longs for a society for those who don’t crowd the Sistine Chapel, ascend the Eiffel Tower, or be gobsmacked at Giza.  He cancelled plans to move on from Samarkand to Bokhara on the strength of ‘you’ve got to go to Bokhara….’  I think we’ll get along just fine.

Coming up may be The Dalai Lama, and that surprised me.  For my eye was caught by a review of Beyond Religion – Ethics for a Whole World.  It is in the magazine of the Humanist Society of Scotland, but not online yet, so no link though I may be able to update later.  His Holiness reveals that he is a secret humanist.  He tells us that the world needs “an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally accessible to those with faith and those without; a secular ethics.”  One for the birthday list methinks, and there’s a list that increases as the days count down.

But there’s another one beforehand, a birthday that is, for Urchin the Elder gets a shot at it this weekend, and it seems a bigger bike is essential, and with it gears and mudguards, lights, a basket even.  It’s not as easy as it sounds, but we’re nearly there.

It’s been a good few days on the cycling front, with warm sunshine and so I made hay, and broke sweat and had thinking time a-plenty.  But whilst I was hurtling down sunny lanes, okay hurtling is a bit enthisiatic, but as I was so the farmers were busy too and the field thrummed to the sounds of …….  making hay while the sun shone.  And that of course meant that every time I hurtled round a blind bend so it seemed I was faced with an oncoming tractor, taking up all the road and the grass verges.  There was much breathing in, squeezing past, closed eyes and loss of momentum, for the work in the fields meant that each tractor was hauling either a huge lump of machinery with whirring blades and other bits sticking out, or was pulling a massive trailer laden with big round bales.  Ach well, the sun was there for us all, and looks to have gone back into hiding.  I set a new world record with the speed camera at the school gates, 23mph slowing down from the foot of the hill.  The wind was behind me, and the bend at the bottom was just a tad on the nervous side.

This weekend also sees one of the more interesting of our book festivals as the season gets into full swing.  Edinburgh is underway, but that’s a logistical nightmare of time and traffic, tramworks and fringe loonies.  It goes on for weeks and so varied is the programme that there’s no chance of making a day out of it, with speakers of interest typically involving a return visit every two or three days all for a half hour talk at a tenner a time.  Not this year.

But down at Traquair it gets more interesting, with literary bike rides in the company of storytellers, and all in the tranquil scenery of the Borders.  Still, logistics are such that to get there for a 9am start, when there’s birthday presents to open, is just not going to happen.  Great initiative though.

Through the door the other day though, came the programme for this year’s festival at Wigtown, always a favourite and not just because the town is rammed with second hand bookshops.  I’m sorely tempted this year.  Miriam Darlington is on, talking about the soon-to-be-published Otter Country and her travels from Tarka territory to Camusfearna and beyond.  And that one’s at Gavin Maxwell’s family home at Monreith.  Jan Morris will be there too, and it’s not often she makes any trip from her home in Cricceith these days; but her words always have an audience spellbound.  For The Genealogist there’s Sarah Fraser and her account of The Last Highlander, tales of her husband’s, and indeed her former husband’s, swashbuckling ancestors.  The volume rests unopened on the shelf as yet.  But the star, for me, has to be Tahir Shah, in from his home in Casablanca to tell us of Timbuctoo.  Unmissable, but for the small matter of the arrival of the school bus two hours away at the same time.

Wigtown runs from 28 September to 7 October, inconveniently missing the local holiday Monday which precedes it this year.  It is such an out-of -the-way place it makes for a very long and tiring day, though the rewards are worth it.  Or better still a long weekend.  Now there’s a thought.  Now, that school bus…..

Only two more sleeps and it will be here again.

Playgrounds and Bullies

It seems a shame to even think about the subject in this week that The Urchins head back to school.  But in so doing I’m thinking not of children on the road to learning right from wrong, but of their adult role models; public figures even, paid at our expense.  At school level we rely on the school bullying policy and expect the firm hand of the headmistress to deal with the problem quickly and effectively.

But this week’s bullying seems to have got out of control, and the fallout continues to grow.  I refer of course to that astonishing outburst by Labour’s Ian Davidson MP on Newsnicht; his allegation that the BBC in general and Isobel Fraser in particular were institutionally biased in favour of the Nationalists.  Followers of political coverage in these parts will know that such claims were met initially with incredulity, astonishment even.  For it was so completely against the trends of recent years and contrary to the usual claims of BBC Accused.

Then the conspiracy theories started.  Pre-meditated it was, so they said, to give the BBC a defence against the usual round of pro-Labour claims.  And it is no coincidence that there is an imminent review of the BBC Charter obligation of impartiality shortly to begin.  Hah, they said, now both sides claim bias, so the Beeb must be OK.  Davidson repeated his Newsnat jab so often in his rant that he must have had such an intention before going on air.  And the BBC were complicit in the strategy, except no one told the bold Izzy, for the look on her face confirmed her natural reaction of amazement, astonishment and insult.

Now whilst I am deeply cynical of every utterance from the politicos, especially those from London, where nothing is said or done that has not been scripted by a spin doctor or media expert, even I wonder if they would stoop so low as to give the BBC a defence before the inquiry begins, and in so doing look so utterly foolish themselves?

But then it went off in another direction, for enter the fray the written press, and the Political Editor of The Herald.  Magnus Gardham was at his desk for the first week in his new role, having been recruited from the world of the red-tops, and in particular the Daily Record.  The readership waited to see if he was up to the task if he could write for an ABC1 audience, after a career writing for the CDE of his previous readership; in short did he have an extra syllable?  And on top of that what would be the political views expressed to his more cerebral audience in the broadsheet world, for his past was steeped in Red; his Labour colours very firmly attached to the masthead?

Well in he waded, suggesting that the state-funded broadcaster had indeed exhibited bias against Davidson’s mob, for they had not identified the legal expert called on to give a view as being a supporter of those nasty nats.  The identity was no secret, for the Lallands Peat Worrier blog is nothing if not an open book.  He called for the BBC to flag up such links, and the rest of the world says, in the words, of one of his former labour luvvies, ‘bring it on’.  Yes please BBC, tell us every time you ask the likes of Lorraine Davidson, Kirsty Wark, Catriona Renton, Brian Ashcroft, and many others, Gardham himself even, just what their political connections may be.  Now that would be step forward.

And Gardham’s article in the pages of his new employ had online comments closed within the day.  The editor published no readers’ letters on the fracas.  And I hear the tearing up of subscriptions to The Herald, and a further decline in the already plummeting readership.  The appointment of Gardham must have been a calculated risk.  We shall see how the readership takes to it.

But where in all of this has been the headmistress?  Davidson, it will be remembered, has form, particularly in his dealings with the female of the species.  He sits as chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster, pontificating on the rights to hold a referendum towards what his committee childishly insists on calling Separation.  This is the referendum his party, with the others based in London, spent five years ensuring that a minority government could not hold.  He used to agree that Scots could, indeed should, be masters of their own destiny, but now he sees it as his duty to thwart it at every step.  He chairs a committee as a representative of a party with no say in either government.  He has bullied the solitary nationalist representative away from his table and has for company assorted Tories from English constituencies – for they have none from Scotland to take those seats. And his boss, the leader of Scottish Labour, the one with authority over all Scottish MPs, MSPs, councillors et al, Johann Lamont, what has she had to say?

Well Ms Lamont has taken the opportunity, yet another one, to give evidence to her leadership qualities.  She of course was put in place by the block vote of the unions, against the vote of party members and parliamentarians alike.  She harbours dreams of being First Minister, in a Scotland either independent or continuing to be dependent.  And hasn’t she just stamped her authority all over those credentials.  Did she come out and instantly back her man, confirm her view as coinciding with those he expressed?  Has she perhaps agreed with Gardham?  Maybe she saw it for what it was and decried the bullying tactics of her man in London.

None of that I’m afraid for Ms Lamont underlined her claims to lead this nation of ours by saying……..  absolutely nothing.  Not a single word.  Now that’s leadership is it not?  And Davidson – well give him every opportunity to put his face before the cameras, his views on to tape.  For he is a gift to the Yes campaign, never seeming to miss any opportunity to prove beyond doubt that he is nothing but a dinosaur of old labour and unfit for a modern society.  Let the man have his say, even if most of the media does turn a deaf ear.

It is hard to sit here defending the often accused BBC; I suspect the conspiracies are a stretch too far.  And I am minded that the combined forces of the London parties, the ones that spent years denying us the right to a say, now want that referendum to be held immediately, not in another two years.  They want it now, in the aftermath of the flag-waving Jubilee and the jingoistic Olympics.  Oh no they can’t wait can they, not until the athletes meet again in Glasgow for the Commonwealth bunfight, the one where they wear the saltire or the dragon, or whatever; they can’t wait until the Ryder Cup’s been to Gleneagles and Scotland showcased in all her glory.  We should have it now, according to them.  Commonwealth games – that’s the ones with all the former nations of the empire competing independently isn’t it?  Let’s have more from the bully before then, and more of nothing from the hiedie, please.

It’s Time (for Scotland to Grow Up)

Those of us who keep an eye on the blogosphere in relation to our nation will know the name of Doug Daniel.  He has much to add to many a debate.  Here’s one of his own articles, which is well worth a read no matter which side of the referendum debate you may currently fall.

It’s Time (for Scotland to Grow Up).