The Scottish Parliament at night. Photo Rob Bruce Dec 18. Revised with input from the team at Sceptical Scot. The next Holyrood election is in May and on current form, the SNP will take almost all (if not all) the directly elected seats, leaving the Scottish Parliament with only a token (list-based) opposition. But why is this? There are many issues that “normally” might affect their poll rating.
History Festival
The faultlines of Scottish politics go back a long way: historians are still arguing about the Union of Parliaments back in 1707 when the Scottish Parliament voted itself out of existence. For some it was a pragmatic decision; for others it was a grave error. These controversies were argued over afresh at “1707: What Really Happened?” at Scotland’s History Festival last month.
Playwrights Tim Barrow and Jen McGregor read from Tim Barrow’s play “Union’ set in 1707. The scene dramatised the clash over the Treaty of Union between Lord Queensberry who was a main proponent of the measure and steered it through Parliament and Lord Hamilton, who led the opposition to it. Here is an excerpt from the scene, set in the “magnificent chamber of the Scottish Parliament”.
Was George Osborne’s spending review drawn up with an eye on the forthcoming Holyrood election?
With his U-turn on tax credits, he has certainly redrawn the political landscape; shooting Scottish Labour’s fox and perhaps creating the conditions in which the Scottish Conservative Party could become the second party in Scotland. That would be an earthquake in Scottish political terms.
Perhaps ‘Earthquake’ will be the title of Iain McWhirter’s next book as ‘Tsunami: Scotland’s Democratic Revolution’ about the SNP landslide at the General Election is piled high in Scotland’s bookshops in time for the Xmas market, illustrated with a Japanese-style drawing of a huge wave.
This is an excerpt from a scene which was read at an event at the “Previously…” Scotland’s History Festival, on November 19 2015
Set in the magnficent chamber of the Scottish Parliament, the scene features Lord Queensberry, the main proponent of the Treaty of Union and Lord Hamilton, who led the opposition.
In the run up to the historic vote intense debate raged among “Great & Small, Rich & Poor, Old &Young, Men & Woman”. It was ‘the common discourse and universal…
Platinum Point from Asda Newhaven. Pic Rob Bruce.
Update: Fri November 20. The Evening News on the tram situation.
Below posted Sunday November 15
IF EDINBURGH is entering a period of decline which may last the rest of the 21st century, the SNP will have to shoulder a great deal of blame.
At a time when the city has never been more in need of strong leadership, vision and imagination for its future it is being sabotaged by a party which is prepared to sacrifice the economic prosperity of the capital to a populist agenda it believes will further its nationalist project.
Over the last few weeks, I have noticed that some of my twitter-loving friends have been posting blogs and articles about something called “poppy fascism”. What on earth they mean by this frankly ridiculous term I’m not sure. It appears to refer to the ostentatious wearing of the poppy by politicians and public figures who are keen to link themselves to the memory of Britain’s war veterans. In some circles apparently, though not any that I am in, it is regarded as obligatory to wear a poppy and people who choose not to do so feel criticised in some way. Although as we mark the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second World War, we may just pause to remind ourselves that social death is not as bad as actual death.
THE ONLY WORD to describe how I feel about the new UK passport design is scunnered. Not one Scot is among the seven faces that are to be plastered across it. It is to have an embossed face of Shakespeare on every page as a security feature. But what about the other globally recognised poet these Isles have produced, our beloved Rabbie Burns?
I struggle to understand the motives behind the redesign. At the time of the referendum on Scottish independence last year, I wrote that a big part of my decision to vote ‘No’ was that I was not ready to give up my right to a British passport for what I thought was the potential mess of pottage offered by the Nats. Commentator Allan Massie quoted me in his Scotsman column on the eve of the poll.
Photo: Rob Bruce. Click ‘read more’ to see the whole article.
LIKE JK ROWLING, it seems, I am an “80 minute patriot”. This is what she was called on Twitter for being a No’ voter who supported the Scottish rugby team in the World Cup.
Personally, I feel that when it comes to full-throated, flag-waving ostentatious declarations of love for one’s country, 80 minutes is probably enough. Again, for me, I don’t know about JKR, I am quite happy to stick the Jimmy hat and saltire in a bag when I leave the ground.
If there is one thing that Americans do a lot better than Europeans, it is failure. An example is ‘Rising Strong’, an incredibly successful book on the subject of failure and its aftermath. Now a UK best-seller, I picked it up from Edinburgh airport bookstore, drawn by the sub heading “If we are brave enough, often enough, we will fall. This is a book about getting back up.”
‘Mairi Campbell reacted angrily when she was downgraded for playing her own composition in her final exams and left Guildhall College of Music and Drama for her bolthole on the Isle of Lismore. Supportive tutor Peter Renshaw found the phone number of the family’s cottage there and called her, a moment which features in the show. “I said ‘you can get tae fuck’ and got on the train home to Edinburgh. I never went back. The next thing was Peter’s call to Lismore where I was recuperating. He said that they’d keep up the fight.” ‘
PULSE to showcase at Celtic Connections, Jan 2016
Not many musicians could hope to fill a theatre with a one-woman experimental musical about their own lives. But Mairi Campbell’s new show ‘Pulse’ in which she acts, sings, plays the fiddle and dances the story of her own musical coming of age has been selected to represent the best of Scottish musical culture at the prestigious Showcase event at Celtic Connections in January 2016.
Utah Road Trip: 3. The last section of our road trip involved driving from Bryce Canyon to San Francisco. We decided to take the road less travelled, across Nevada.
Road Trip 2. (Find more in this series under ‘Travel’ on the right hand menu). First light is the best time to take pictures, and on our road trip stop off at Zion National Park, a chilly dawn found us at Overlook Point, Rob and his tripod hovering on the edge of a 1,000 foot drop. The landscape stirs echoes of cowboy B movies, Star Trek scenes and prehistoric epics. You could almost believe the rocks were polystyrene and peering down into the deep valley, I half-expected to hear a dinosaur roar. This area has been the backdrop for many movies, the most famous being Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Photos: Rob Bruce. I have a precious 15 year old Baedeker guidebook to the US, the pages falling out with overuse. In the flyleaf of the book is a tiny map of the entire country with around a dozen sites picked out. Bryce Canyon is one of them. It always intrigued me as it was one of the only ones of which I had never heard. So it was great to get an opportunity to visit on a road trip from Salt Lake City to San Francisco this September.
SAN FRANCISCO gave itself over to ‘Dreamforce’ for a few days in September. Now in its 12th year the event was bigger than ever. Usually busy roads were closed to traffic and rolled over with fake grass, inflatable arm chairs, stages, huge screens and food and drink stops. A 1,000 berth cruiseliner moored near Fisherman’s Wharf to provide extra accommodation. Airbnb apartments were available for $1,000 a night. Stevie, Wonder, the Foo Fighters and Japanese artist Yoshiki played. But this was not a music festival – it was a software conference.
Children and food. What a lot is in those three little words. A recent argument on Mumsnet and Women’s Hour (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0640j5f Tuesday August 11) reminded me of the anxiety I used to sometimes feel as a parent about what, how, when and why my children were eating.
The row was about an assertion that mums today are ‘addicted” to feeding their children constant snacks, On the show food writers Annabel Karmel and Joanna Blythman slugged it out, with Blythman arguing for three square meals eaten round a table and water in between; while Karmel voiced sympathy for struggling parents trying to get their children nutritiously fed and watered each day without too much stress.
THE BIGGEST threat to freedom of expression in Britain today is not the shadow of the law, but whispers behind the scenes. Not the courtroom so much as a slippery excuse from someone in authority that says, I’m so sorry but we can’t put this on, because of this or that or the other dog-ate-my-homework reason. The fear of protests; the wrong kind of attention, a storm on social media. Trouble with the venue, the risk assessor, the insurance adviser, the head of college. These nebulous fears are recast politely as “it doesn’t quite fit in with our programme this year,’ or ‘ we don’t think it will sell enough tickets”, or “I’m sorry, we are already full.” This was what I argued when, at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, I took part in a panel discussion after a show about the tension between art and politics, inspired by a trio of called-off productions in 2014, called “Walking the Tightrope” staged by Underbelly Productions.
09 Jun 1996: The Observer By ARNOLD KEMP THE psychologist Carl Jung wrote that he needed many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. New York is…
The SNP, according to Scotland on Sunday, is ‘furious’ about plans for the ‘unelected’ House of Lords to scrutinise the Scotland Bill. (http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/snp-furious-over-lords-power-over-scotland-bill-1-3821894)
The Lords are appointed not elected, granted. But there is more to democracy than being elected. After all, Hitler was elected.
A strong democracy relies at bottom on the protection of the rights of the individual citizen. That requires more than an elected bunch of career politicians being left in sole charge of all of the levers of power.
You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for the people of Greece. It seems ridiculous to hold Greek pensioners who can’t pay their electricity bills responsible for the jigsaw of calamities which mean that their government is now struggling under an unpayable mountain of debt.
The situation for Greeks has been very much worse, according to a recent report int the Ecomomist (http://www.economist.com/) than it has been in any of the other hard-hit countries such as Ireland.
Within any unit of economic union, some parts are wealthier than others – in Germany the West transfers assets worth roughly £80 billion to the former East Germany each year.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany). In Britain, London funds public spending in Wales, for instance.