Eclectic is scarcely adequate to describe the motley crew of celebrities, who were undoubtedly recruited by some bright, young Downing St sage and asked to tell the people of Scotland of their undying affection for the place and its people. A principal organiser was historian and TV
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As the name proclaims, this is a photo website but I rarely say much about the hobby in these blogs. Next month, we have been invited to the marriage of a family friend and I began to reflect on wedding photography. Good quality cameras are now comparatively
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It would truly be a very brittle heart that was not moved to sympathy for the relatives of all those who died on the Malaysian flight which plummeted to earth on the sunflower fields around Donetsk . That emotion will be felt deeply too by the Russian people and by
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The Tory spin machine has been in overdrive, trying to convince us that women have arrived and in future will be treated as equals to male colleagues and receive promotion on merit. We know in reality that the cabinet re-shuffle was about presentation for the next election.
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There was a news-clip last week of a young Prince George taking a few stumbling steps in a polo field with his mother watching carefully over him. His father and uncle were , presumably, actively engaged in a chukka. A good part of my childhood was spent
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Ian Paisley perfected the tactic of the counter demonstration as a political spoiler during the sixties in Northern Ireland. Whenever a Civil Rights event was announced, he organised some ad hoc group to stage a protest at the same location. The RUC would inform Stormont that there
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David Cameron has warned that the UK may be at risk from ‘radicalised’ jihadist Britons, currently operating in support of opposition forces in Iraq and Syria. The numbers are small, three to five hundred at best, and he offered no proof to the Commons but Cressida Dick,
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It was a rare joy to spend an evening at the Usher Hall in the company of these two cultured and dignified , Muslim gentleman after a week in which we had witnessed malevolent scare-mongering by UKIP and the refusal of Northern Ireland’s First Minister, Peter Robinson,
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Clackmannanshire has just about 30 000 people on the Electoral Roll and, in a 30% turn-out last Thursday, 1200 of them voted for the UKIP candidate, David Coburn. That’s something over 1 2% – modest but significant and worrying. I have lived and worked in this area for nearly
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Lord Trimble has warned that a YES vote for Independence in Scotland could destabilise the peace process in Northern Ireland as it may increase pressure for a similar referendum to be held there also. He did concede that the democratic movement for constitutional change in Scotland was a
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