How Brexit is breaking the tourism industry in the Highlands
First published in the National on Sunday, June 27, 2021 Ewan Brown and his support runner descending Beinn Eighe in the Celtman race A DIFFERENT crowd of tourists and seasonal…
First published in the National on Sunday, June 27, 2021 Ewan Brown and his support runner descending Beinn Eighe in the Celtman race A DIFFERENT crowd of tourists and seasonal…
Photo – Rob Bruce The row of turreted tents for the international press pack that has appeared on the green sward outside Holyrood looks a little like the set…
A dozen white-painted cottages strung along the seafront harbour in the hamlet of Diabaig look out on a postcard-perfect West Highland vista – but there are few inhabitants to enjoy…
“I have walked down both Las Ramblas in the sunshine and Sauchiehall Street in the rain – and I prefer the latter” I read this quote in an article –…
The Rings fountain in Boston – pic Rob Bruce The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which was recently incorporated into Scots law gives children a right to…
Seumas MacInnes who has run the Cafe Gandolfi at the heart of Glasgow’s Merchant City for 40 years is getting ready to reopen the iconic restaurant on April 26…
I am WFF right now – Working From France. Coming over here for the last chunk of 2020 was a personal Brexit protest. Working and living here has always been…
The loch was – we wild swimmers don’t use the ‘C’ word – so let’s call it invigorating. I got out of the water to change on the pebbly shore…
Film Draws Parallels with Carrie Gracie’s Fight for Equal Pay July 8, 2020 A full-length documentary “In the Light: You have to look squint at history sometimes to see the…
A converted bus – from Ann’s sketchbook
This is the second excerpt from Robert Kemp’s 1950 series of radio broadcasts about the Scots language. At a school, our scholar of Scots – Jean – converses with a…
Excerpt from a radio series about the Scots language by Robert Kemp
Boston, March 24. Her voice breaking and shaking with anger, a survivor of the massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School addressed the crowd on Boston Common; “We are not special, we are not particularly articulate”. Leonor Munoz’ message was that she was an ordinary teenager at an ordinary school on an ordinary day and that what happened to her could happen in any high school on any main street in any town in America. The fun and anticipation of a teenage Valentine’s Day – she said a little about that – ended when she went outside in response to a fire alarm to be told “Code Red: Run”. Leonor’s older sister Beca, a student at Northeastern University spoke too – she received a text from her sister that day saying “Active Shooter on Campus – Do Not Call”. For the crowd of thousands on a grey end-of-winter afternoon clustered around the Common, straining to hear the speeches, that is the text, as one mother’s handmade sign said, that nobody ever wants to receive. Everyone can relate to what is becoming an all-too-ordinary story. Teacher and former Marine Graciela Mohamedi told the crowd: “The opposition will call you snowflakes. But do you know what in Massachusetts we call thousands upon thousands of snowflakes rising on a wind of change? We call that a blizzard!’
Feb 28, 2018 – Boston. A former spy chief discusses Brexit. At Harvard’s school of government today, a lunchtime talk “Brexit’s Impact on the Future of International Security: A Conversation…
Imagine the two main parties of the British political system as two massive, heavy velvet curtains, a little moth-eaten, frayed. People are swinging on them and they are on the…
Like other cities, Boston has many fewer independent bookshops than it once did. But there is one still standing among the boutiques of Newbury St, the smartest shopping street in town. Trident Booksellers has been there since 1984 and it seems to be still going strong.
At the end of 2017, my two home countries of the USA and Scotland are going in different directions in terms of tax reform. While the Scottish government is introducing more progressive taxes, the US is in the process of passing a controversial bill which cuts tax bigly for the rich.
Paul Wiessmeyer, who I wrote about this week on my “Boson Blog” contacted me about this family of refugees who are hoping to be reunited Monday. On DECEMBER 18, a Turkish Airlines flight 1525 that originated in the Sudan, will land in Dusseldorf, Germany at 13.05 PM. Among the passengers will be an Eritrean mother and her four young sons, recently granted permission to leave a Sudanese refugee camp to be reunited with their father Asmerom in Germany. This will be the first time they see each other in four years.
There is a point in Mairi Campbell’s one-woman coming of age show Pulse where in an attempt to convey inarticulable emotion she writhes on the ground speaking gibberish. As she plays wild notes on her viola, animated scribbles light up the backdrop. Struggling with unrequited love for a priest, travelling alone in Mexico, in a culture she doesn’t understand, she has lost her way.
A middle-aged man stands at a street corner waiting for his customers, wrapped up against the December chill. Master violinmaker Paul Wiessmeyer, along with several others, has been summarily evicted from a Harry-Potter-ish building in Boston’s music quarter.
The place, 295 Huntington Ave was easy to miss – you could walk past the unprepossessing entrance without guessing what was inside up the narrow staircase. Built as a hotel a century or so ago, it became a cultural ecosystem about 60 years ago. There was a symbiosis in its corridors where music students, performers and media types rubbed shoulders.