Scotland

Since it’s Pope Day, let’s consider this tediously-hardy perennial too. Commenting on this post, Fifer asks: Since you’ve given this some thought, then, perhaps you can answer me this – why, exactly, are my taxes being used to fund an education system divided in Scotland on sectarian lines when, out of a population of 5 million, only 65,000 can be bothered turning up to see the head of their faith preach? Even Celtic can manage that turnout a few times a year. If we really are in the dire financial straits we’re told we are, perhaps it really is time to “think of the children” and educate them all as

The annual memorial service at Flodden. Photo courtesy of Grant Kinghorn. Today marked the 497th anniversary of the battle of Flodden, perhaps the gravest military disaster in Scottish history and a fiasco that’s still keenly recalled in these parts where Flodden is a bigger deal than Bannockburn. The story goes that some 50 men from Selkirk rallied to King James’s colours but that only one, a man named Thomas Fletcher*, returned alive. Commemorating that loss remains at the heart of the town’s Common Riding ceremonies each June. Outside the Borders, however, I suspect Flodden is most familiar as the inspiration for the most beautiful of all laments, The Flowers of

  I don’t know. I really don’t. It can’t go on. But it will. It bloody will. There are times when watching Scotland play international football produces the sensation that one’s actually trapped inside a Beckett play. It might seem a tragicomedy to you but it’s no fun in here. A game of two halves, as a friend puts it, in which bugger all that’s good happens. Twice. We can all recite the horrors. The 7-0 hammering against Uruguay in 1950 1954*. The 9-3 unpleasantness against England. Peru. Iran. Costa Rica. The two draws against the mighty Faroe Islands. But all bar the last were at the Big Show and

The answer may not be what you think. It seems that South Lanarkshire council have embarked upon the most idiotic defamation action of the year. Over to Jonathan Mitchell QC to explain: South Lanarkshire Council has long had a certain reputation for Brezhnevism. Recently it seems to have excelled itself by bringing proceedings for defamation in Lanark Sheriff Court against the membership of a local community council for an article on its website which linked to another article on a different organisation’s website entitled “South Lanarkshire Council and Scottish Coal Hand-in-Hand at Community LIE-aison Meeting”. I have never before heard of a Scottish local authority attempting to bring a defamation

George – now Lord – Foulkes is taking his leave of Holyrood and returning to the comfort of the red benches in the House of Lords. It’s fair to say that Foulkes’s ability to wind up nationalists has not endeared him to SNP supporters. Still,  Lallands Peat Worrier is quite right that the national bard would, were he still drawing breath, have felt the need to mark this heavyweight departure with some stirring lines in the old Scots demotic. Happily LPW was on hand to take dictation. It begins: To a Foulkes   So ye’re gaun at last, ye Lairdly ferlie? Your impudence protect you sairly! ‘Tis time again for

Back when the Iraq war was new and innocent and still pretty popular I recall a Scotsman headline announcing that, with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards entering the city, there was now the sound of Bagpipes in Basra. There was something thrilling, something tribal too, about this. Regardless of the arguments about the war, the skirl of the pipes summoned and honoured the ghosts (real and imagined) of warriors past.  One of those warriors was Piper Bill Millin and he is dead now. He may be the most famous piper of the Second World War and his obituary merits quoting at length: Bill Millin, who died on August 17 aged

Good to see that Craig Levein, the new Scotland manager, has a sophisticated grasp of football tactics. As this note left in the dressing room last week demonstrates: Final score? Sweden 3 Scotland 0.

Meanwhile, in other Glasgow news the city’s evening paper makes its readers an offer they can’t refuse. I believe this exhausts my annual quota of posts making gentle fun of Glaswegians. [Hat-tip: Kevin Schofield]

First things first: it is extremely inconvenient, even embarrassing, that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi is still alive nearly a year after he was released from Greenock Prison on the grounds that he was believed to have not much more, and perhaps fewer, than three months to live. Nevertheless, the fact that he has lived longer than expected does not advance or give any greater credence to the notion that there was some conspiracy designed to free him come what may and regardless of any other considerations. Nor is there any evidence, despite recent press reports, that BP (everyone’s favourite whipping boy now) played any role in Kenny MacAskill’s decision to send