Blethering Skite

Where does the Winter Fuel Allowance fiasco leave Scottish Labour? It’s been exposed as not just without principle but also without strategy as it has to pretend that it has autonomy and agency when it clearly has neither.

The Winter Fuel Allowance was due to be devolved in September of this year and replaced with a Scotgov equivalent. But in July of this year the UK Labour government announced that the WFA would be abolished for all but those on pension credit or other means tested benefits.

UK gov did not consult Scotgov about this. Rather, it notified them very shortly before making the public announcement. There is no conceivable way, therefore, to argue that Scotgov chose to cut the WFA. It had no involvement in that decision.

Scotland is an energy-rich country - but its businesses are being forced to pay the highest prices in the world for using it. Almost every company in Scotland is feeling the pain, from high street hairdressing salons to farmers to whisky producers. 

But, while exorbitant energy bills are forcing Scottish business leaders to make increasingly difficult decisions such as laying off staff, more than £200 million of public money has been paid by the UK energy systems operator to turn off wind turbines, most of them in Scotland, this year alone. 

This problem is getting worse all the time. As more renewable power comes on stream, the times when Scotland is producing more power than it currently uses are becoming more frequent. The interconnectors between Scotland and England can only carry so much power - and so when there is an excess the Electricity Systems Operator pays Scottish energy generators to go dark.

If energy was cheaper in Scotland then businesses could expand. It would reduce the extortionate bills for current operations and also provide incentives for entrepreneurs to find new ways to use it - including smelting metal, building data centres, splitting water molecules to make hydrogen and more. That would benefit the economy and boost growth. 

If Scotland were an independent country, Scottish businesses would certainly not pay what they are currently charged. Scotland is a renewable energy powerhouse being penalised by the way energy is managed for and by vested interests in the south of England. Hanging onto one UK tariff is old-fashioned and unfair to Scotland. Energy companies make money from this arrangement - but the Scottish economy loses.

A West Lothian man has shared an image of an unidentified flying object above the skies of Bathgate.

The local, who wishes to remain anonymous, captured the snap from Easton Road looking over the back of the houses in Traprain Crescent on Sunday, November 24 at 4.41pm.

At first the Bathgate resident believed the object could have been a satellite or the International Space Station, however, the flying object remains unidentified.

Compassion and connection will prevail if humanity is to survive. It may feel we are at the worst moment in human history because the moment is now. There will be worse moments to come, that is certain. Poetry could become the only means, literally, of survival. Truth will be our life-raft. For example, in October of this year it was reported by the Centre for European Reform that leaving the EU will cost Ukania an additional £311 billion by 2035. That is the “black hole” Rachel Reeves was less than honest about.

The leaders of Ukania will not face reality because they do not know what it is. It is the people of Scotland who are paying the price for that. As Robert Musil wrote in “A Man Without Qualities”, “If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility.” The art of what is possible will be the basis for the politics of the future. Upside down or inside out, we will get there. We have to.

The Ring of Brodgar, sometimes called the Ring of Brogar, is a stone circle superbly located on land rising above the saltwater Loch of Stenness and the freshwater Loch of Harray. When first erected there were 60 stones here, in a perfect circle 104m in diameter. Today just 36 of the original stones are still standing, and one of those only just, having been split vertically by a bolt of lightning on 5 June 1980.

The ring of stones is surrounded by a ditch cut into the rock that was 6m wide and 3m deep. There are entrance causeways across the ditch on the north-west side and on the south-east-side

OP: @[email protected] “Taken as a whole, reading Alexander Hutchison’s poetry is like coming across fragments of a Psalter or song-book or of North-eastern folk ditties – elegant, humorous and deft by turns – all clasped within the ragged covers of a rumbustious, medieval recipe book for everything.”

—David Kinloch on the poetry of Alexander Hutchison

When it was first constructed, the Forth Bridge was regarded as the eighth wonder of the world. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it is easy to forget that this is a structure every bit as spectacular and remarkable as the Eiffel Tower, of which it can seem oddly reminiscent. The bridge can be viewed to really good effect from both North Queensferry and Queensferry: and the views from one of the many trains crossing it are equally worthwhile, especially of North Queensferry and Queensferry and of the Forth Road Bridge only a short distance to the west.

Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket', by Margaret Hamilton, is one of the poems from 'The Kist' -  an anthology of Scots (and Gaelic) poetry and prose that was digitised by Education Scotland and gifted to the Scots Language Centre so that teachers and learners can continue to benefit from this valuable resource.

See ma mammy

See ma dinner ticket

A pititnma

Pokit an she pititny

Washnmachine.

See thon burnty

Up wherra firewiz

Ma mammy says

Am no tellynagain

No’y playnit.

A jist wen’y eatma

Pokacrisps furma dinner

Nabigwoffldoon.

The wummin sed Aver near

Clapsd

Jistur heednur

Wee wellies sticknoot.

They sed Wot heppind?

Nme’nma belly

Na bedna hospital.

A sed A pititnma

Pokit an she pititny

Washnmachine.

They sed Ees thees chaild eb slootly

Non verbal?

A sed MA BUMSAIR

Nwen’y sleep.

As I watched BBC Breakfast at around 7am this morning, it was minus 10 in Tulloch Bridge just south of Fort William and plus 12 at St Mary’s in the Scilly Isles yet it’s the same means tested winter fuel allowance for pensioners in both places.

Still months away from the real Scottish winter, we see the first signs of how different Scotland is from the southern parts of the UK and how important the Winter Fuel Allowance is for many here.

In a year or so, we’ll see the winter mortality data for all parts of the UK and it will be interesting to see if the media connect those directly with the removal of the allowance.

Private health providers are bidding for a bigger share of the NHS in England - and health secretary Wes Streeting has said “Labour will be holding the door open” to more private involvement. There was a significant increase in NHS funding in the next budget - but it is an open question how much of that money will end up as profit for private businesses? 

The Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), which represents private hospitals and groups such as Bupa, has offered more than £1 billion of private sector capacity to NHS England. If accepted, that will signal a huge expansion of the role of the private sector. 

This is being sold as a smart way to get waiting lists down - but it is a long-term threat to the future of the NHS. This is just one example of creeping privatisation in England’s NHS - others include private firms taking over community services and a deal over weight loss jabs for the unemployed. Plans for ‘patient passports’ are also causing concern.

The UK government expanding the role of the private sector will have knock-on effects for Scotland. Here are five key points.

Is Lombard Street really the most curved road in the world?

There are many prehistoric monuments scattered across Kilmartin Glen, but perhaps the best known and most intriguing comprises the remains of two stone circles at Temple Wood. This may be because a stone circle is by its nature more interesting than a cairn, and there are the remains of two of them here. It may also be because an early landowner, Sir John Malcolm was so fascinated by the place he planted a wood around the circles at the end of the 1800s, which he named Temple Wood to reflect what he thought to be the purpose of the site.

The species most commonly seen in our homes, especially at this time of year, is the giant house spider. They are one of the largest species in the UK and one of the fastest, reaching speeds of up to half a metre per second. It is facts like that that can make them sound terrifying, but if you see one running across the room, they are not out to attack you.

The common misconception is that house spiders come into our homes to seek shelter and warmth from the lowering autumn temperatures outside.But in fact the spiders we see are only more noticeable at this time of year because it is mating season for them. The spiders we believe are intruding have actually always been there. They are just out in search of a mate. When the male finally finds a female, he will mate with her numerous times over the space of a few weeks until eventually dying and being eaten by the female. The females can live for several years.

Another misconception is that spiders are the pests. Yes, they are uninvited and in many cases unwanted, but they are only there because there is a good food supply. It could mean there is another pest in your home that you cannot see. The spiders are then coming into eat the other insects and in turn taking care of the real pests. House spiders act as a free of charge pest control and the size of the spiders depends on how much they have eaten. So seeing big ones just means they are doing their jobs right.

This paper has several aims: to determine if Yersinia pestis was the causative agent in the last Scottish plague outbreak in the mid-17th century; map the geographic spread of the epidemic and isolate potential contributing factors to its spread and severity; and examine funerary behaviours in the context of a serious plague epidemic in early modern Scotland. Results confirm the presence of Y. pestis in individuals associated with a mid-17th century plague pit in Aberdeen. This is the first time this pathogen has been identified in an archaeological sample from Scotland. 

Fear seems to have been so great in some areas that those dying of the plague might not be buried at all. An anecdote from Tillicoultry concerning a man that had died suddenly, the assumption being from the plague, recounts that “the people were afraid to touch the corpse or even enter the house. It was pulled down, and the small eminence, which this occasioned, was called Botchy Cairn” . Similarly, McKerral relays a story concerning the outbreak in Kintyre where green knolls on Kilkivan farm attest to the presence of houses that were left to decay and collapse on top of their occupants: plague victims.

While fear of burying plague victims may have led to their abandonment, there also apparently a fear of improper burial to the extent that a further apocryphal anecdote for Highlanders to “order their coffins while still alive” to ensure proper burial.

Finally, another story has it that a plague victim managed to convince friends to dig his grave, within which he lay until he died.

It is unclear if a general fear of the dead and contracting the Pest from plague victims can be used to characterise mid-17th century Scottish public opinion. Arguably, plague pits and mass burials in general were more a practical response to the logistical difficulties associated with disposing of the dead on a large scale.

Having the plague was not a one-way ticket to a plague pit and, indeed, there are many examples of plague victims receiving normative and caring burial treatment despite any potential risks to the bereaved.

OP:@[email protected]

And here we are, 50 years on, with nothing much changed. Instead of Cheviot sheep, the glens filled with expensive Airbnbs; instead of stags, land and houses which locals can’t afford to buy or rent; and the black, black oil still there, with the private oil and gas giants making record profits”

—Angus Peter Campbell, writing earlier this year in the P&J

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Places and people from the Scottish Witchcraft Trials: Isobel Wilson in 1649 in Carriden. Also accused: Margaret Somervell, Catherine Wilson, Janet Robertsone, Jeane Walker, Janet Small, Margaret Blair, Catherine Allan, Euphane Drysdaill.

Survey of Scottish Witchcraft:

https://witches.shca.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.accusedrecord&accusedref=A/EGD/1341&search_string=lastname

A Targeted Message

Our billboards that carry our stock messages such as ‘Independence is Normal’ and ‘Believe in Scotland’ with instantly recognisable iconic Scottish backgrounds have been immensely popular. Those positive messages make up 80% of our billboards - it helps make the independence movement more approachable, and independence itself more of an aspirational goal than a politically motivated one, and that resonates with the undecided and reluctant union supporters that make up our target audience.

If you are looking for ways to hurl insults at your enemies, then the medieval world has some interesting examples for you. Taken from chronicles, literature and court cases, they show inventive ways to offer slights and invectives.

The words here are sometimes poetic and clever and sometimes just vulgar and mean, so reader discretion is advised.

Flyting

A practice found in the British Isles and Nordic lands during the Middle Ages was flyting – a game where two people would exchange insults against each other in front of an audience. It has been coined the medieval version of a rap battle. A famous example is The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, recorded in Scotland around the year 1500. Here are the opening lines of what Kennedie said about Dunbar:

Dirty Dunbar, on whom do you blow your boast?

Pretending to write such slanderous screeds,

Raw-mouthed rebel, you fall down at the joust.

My laureate letters I loose at your deeds;

Mandrake, manikin, master only of mead,

Thrice-shelled trickster with a threadbare gown,

Say Deo mercy, or I’ll cry you down;

Leave your rhyming, rebel, with your wit’s weeds.

Radioactive air pollution from the nuclear weapons plant at Coulport, on the Clyde, has more than doubled over the last six years, prompting cancer warnings from campaigners.

Emissions of the radioactive gas, tritium, from the Royal Naval Armaments Depot on Loch Long, have risen steadily between 2018 and 2023 from 1.7 billion to 4.2 billion units of radioactivity, according to the latest official figures.

Campaigners say that tritium is “very hazardous” when it is breathed in, and can increase the risk of cancers. But according to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), the emissions are well within safety limits.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has declined to say what has caused the increased pollution. Tritium is known to leak from ageing nuclear submarine reactors, and is also an essential component of nuclear bombs.

OP: @[email protected]

Scotland’s ferry service must be the worst in the world. We know this because the media keep saying so. But wait! How does it compare with others around the world? Turns out it’s not so bad after all. Funny that. It’s almost as if our media has some sort of agenda. Herald writer’s cringing ignorance of the best equipped ferry service in the world – ours

Sueno's Stone is the largest and most spectacular of the many carved stones that have survived from the early medieval period in Scotland. It stands in a purpose built glass shelter on the north-eastern edge of the town of Forres beside a disused spur of road near the roundabout between the B9011 and the A96.

The most striking thing about Sueno's Stone is its enormous scale. It stands over 6.5m or 21ft high and carries intricate carvings that completely cover the front and rear faces of the stone, and its sides. The western or front side of the stone carries a huge ring headed cross, the body and surrounds of which have been filled with interlaced knotwork designs. The base of the cross is a few feet above the base of the stone, and the gap beneath it carries carvings of two bearded figures facing one another, with a smaller figure between them and others behind them.

The rear or eastern side of the stone is very different. Here you are confronted with what amounts to a Bayeux Tapestry in stone: an account of a battle told in a series of horizontal strips set within panels which are displayed one above another down the length of the stone. Similar techniques have been used elsewhere, especially on the Pictish symbol stone at Aberlemno Kirk, but it is the sheer scale of the battle being depicted, and the scale of the stone that has resulted, that makes Sueno's Stone unique

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A new exhibition looking at how folklore is an intrinsic part of life in Scotland opens tomorrow (Friday 1 November 2024) at Blackness Castle.

A new exhibition looking at how folklore is an intrinsic part of life in Scotland opens tomorrow (Friday 1 November 2024) at Blackness Castle. Drawing on images from the Historic Environment Scotland (HES) archives, ‘In the Land, of the People’ explores how folklore is woven throughout Scotland, through its landscape, its history and its people. Visitors will be taken through the landscape, the monuments, and the communities of Scotland, exploring how folklore is an ever-evolving force that has shaped and continues to shape the world we live in. Note that due to the construction of the building the exhibition is only accessible via a staircase.

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It's Common Weal's 10th birthday this week.

I still shake my head in wonder at what we've acheived in that time. Not least the 112 policy papers we've published!

Not many other think tanks - even the ones ten times our size - can say that. And we've done it without big donors, corporate sponsors or shady backroom envelopes!

See our wee celebration article here and, if you can, consider donating a few quid to keep us going for another 112 policy papers.

OP : @[email protected]

Hallowe’en

The Fairies were not contented with abstracting handsome children – beautiful maidens and wives sometimes disappeared. 

“The Miller of Menstrie,” in Clackmannan, who possessed a charming spouse, had given offence to the fairy court, and was, in consequence, deprived of his fair helpmate. His distress was aggravated by hearing his wife singing in the air – 

Oh! Alva woods are bonnie, 

Tillicoultry hills are fair; 

But when I think o’ the bonnie braes o’ Menstrie, 

It mak’s my heart aye sair. 

After many attempts to procure her restoration, the miller chanced one day, in riddling some stuff at the mill-door, to use a posture of enchantment, when the spell was dissolved, and the matron fell into his arms. The wife of the Blacksmith of Tullibody was carried up the chimney, the fairies, as they bore her off, singing – 

Deidle linkum doddie; 

We’ve gotten drucken Davie’s wife, 

The smith o’ Tullibody. 

“Those snatched to Fairyland,” says Dr Buchan, “might be recovered within a year and a day, but the spell for the recovery was only potent when the fairies made, on Hallowe’en, their annual procession.”

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The University of Glasgow looking terrifying in this spooky, moonlit postcard view of around 1904 🎃

#Glasgow