Kenneth Roy
Now that Jim
can’t fix it,
who will?
George Chalmers
My murderer friend
Eileen Reid
It may now be
scientifically possible to
read our minds
Young Scots
Last week’s award winners
Judith Jaafar
The Labour movement
has ceased to exist. The
SNP is filling the void
The Cafe
A far from
Holy Land
Iain Macmillan
My happy days
with the great
Scottish playwright
Thom Cross
Hidden heroes
Barbara Millar
The minister of
Aberfoyle, carried away
into fairyland
Jill Stephenson
Those doctorates
03.11.11
No. 474
The Cafe
Joanne McNally’s wonderfully frank and, indeed, courageous trilogy of articles in last week’s editions of SR on the continuing balancing act between Palestine and Israel, in wrestling terms the ultimate of catchweight contests, stirred many memories and chimed in with a load of thoughts, away back then.
In early June 1967, on a generous fellowship from Edinburgh’s New College, a friend and I were due to land in Cairo on a student flight. The test match that turned out to be the six-day war kyboshed our plans, but, I believe, to my eternal benefit.
We were allowed our planned itinerary, somewhat trimmed because of the post-war circumstances and the change of borders, in 1968. Now the route was Rome, Sicily, Lipari, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, before coming anywhere near the far from Holy Land. Like the original Hebrews, but unlike them by plane, we arrived in Egypt where we spent a memorable three weeks, being entertained by so many Palestinian students from Cairo’s American University, who offered us meals, but, even more importantly, something about the spiritual bread of life. Quite simply, my naive view of little Israel, surrounded by all these big, bad Arab states, was, in a few weeks in Egypt, followed by just one week in the Lebanon, completely demolished, so much so that I could have been the first red-headed member of the PLO.
I so well remember arriving on a flight from Cyprus to Tel Aviv, because, to my utter shock, one day in the state of Israel was, sadly for me, one day too many. As a Church of Scotland minister, I’m talking about the Holy Land here. All I can say is that I agree entirely with Joanne McNally’s forceful and welcome take on the situation.
‘Bethlehem’, I remember saying, quoting a newspaper headline, ‘is closed down for Christmas’. Says it all really, but thanks to Joanne for introducing me to two most apposite words: makluba and hasbara.
Ian Petrie
Today’s banner
Children at dusk, Monifieth, Angus
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The Labour movement
has ceased to exist. The
SNP is filling the void
Judith Jaafar
With reference to John Milne’s piece (26 October
This is the very sort of thinking that has stultified Scottish growth for a very long time: craven pandering, fear and the seeking of approbation of those who are deemed to be wiser than we are. At last, now, we have raised ourselves, one of the cleverest nations on earth, from our enforced apathy and lack of confidence and are taking matters into our own hands. Does Mr Milne really believe that the Scottish government, civil service, ancillary agencies, interested commercial parties and the citizenry at large (and even the EU) are not competent enough to know whether Scotland can survive on its own or not, and that we need outsiders to tell us?
I am in agreement with him, however, on one very important issue. He states: ‘I am intrigued by the question as to how the lay citizens of Scotland are to know upon which of the conflicting assessments of the economics of independence can they safely base their referendum vote’. That’s a valid question and one for which I have an equally valid answer.
Since the birth of the independence movement in Scotland not one single British or Scottish newspaper, and latterly TV station, has covered this issue with anything but disdain and unionist bias. Every other party in the UK has always had some kind of media support and we all know how the wind blows in that respect.
It is a great testament to the SNP that they have achieved so much with no media support whatsoever. In fact they have been vilified and wilfully misrepresented across the board, from every quarter, and yet the popular vote is still rising. It seems the Scots know, or believe, something that Mr Milne doesn’t. Just think how much more the electorate would know and understand if the Scottish press gave the SNP a fair forum in which to outline its ideas and policies, its economic projections and its road map for a future, economically successful country. Then, and only then, can a public debate, as Mr Milne desires, start to take place. We all know the unionist lobby’s creative accounting; let’s hear or see the real accounts on a public platform, available to every Joe Bloggs who reads a tabloid paper and every Joseph Bloggs who reads anything else.
But still, without such even-handed perspicacity, voters are flocking in their droves to the independence party. Why? I think this has as much to do with a psychic change as anything else, slick as the SNP might be. Independence is an idea whose time has come. We are starting to believe in ourselves again, at last. The unionist lies are being exposed, one by one, and there is a metaphorical sloughing-off of our mental chains. The unionist parties in Scotland are being exposed as bankrupt, mendacious Westminster lackeys and time-servers who care not a jot about Scotland, only about retaining their jobs and the status quo.
If anyone can give me an example of a Scottish unionist politician who
has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly.
The Labour movement, which Scotland has so rightly and assiduously supported for such a long time, has ceased to exist. The punters know it, and feel betrayed. The SNP is filling up the left-of-centre void, taking Scots back to where they’ve always been, social democracy. For those of you out there who don’t want Scottish independence, and wonder where it’s all gone wrong, look no further than the Labour Party, especially the Scottish Labour Party. Together, they have betrayed all of you. The Tories never figured enough in Scotland to be game-changers, and the Liberals, LibDems or whatever they want to call themselves, have always just been chancers and band-wagon hoppers, with no clear ethos or policy.
As to John Milne’s other comment: ‘…a hope within the SNP that we will drift visionless and with nothing more than a vague sense of grievance into independence’, I’m afraid that cannot go unchallenged. Grievances, of which we have many, rightly or wrongly, do not a change in sovereign status make. It takes legitimacy on the world stage and international support, which Scotland has. Witness the Tibetans, the Basques, the Palestinians, the Tamils, the Quebecois and many others – this is a very complex issue.
In Scotland, we’ve had grievances for 300 years (never mind all the stuff that went on for hundreds of years before that), since the good burghers and landowners decided to ‘tak the King’s shilling’ and dissolve the Edinburgh parliament. The ordinary people didn’t want it, didn’t vote for it and have lamented it ever since. There is nothing vague about it, this grievance. It’s been festering at a deep, psychic level for a very long time, and it’s not really a grievance against the English (whom I personally happen to like), but a displaced grievance against the Scots nobility, or power-brokers, who betrayed us, as they have done thoughout history, time and time again.
The current unionist parties in Scotland, made up of Scots people, have been continuing this tradition of betrayal, unfortunately, and that’s why we have an independence movement. If anyone can give me an example of a Scottish unionist politician who has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly. The only politician that comes to mind is Alex Salmond, and he’s certainly not a unionist. Even your John Smiths and Donald Dewars were card-carrying members of the union, and thus frustrated in any attempts they might have made to ameliorate the Scottish condition or champion its causes. ‘Man cannot serve two masters’, and I have that from an unimpeachable source.
To say that a vague sense of grievance is underpinning the independence movement is a grave underestimation of the will and understanding of the Scottish people. They know that they have the wherewithall to make it, that their lives and fortunes will be better, that they’ll have to knuckle down and ‘get real’ and that their pride is depending on it. They want to be taken seriously again. Cannot any Scotsman, or woman, with any pride, buy into this scenario? As for ‘vision’ within the SNP (Mr Milne used ‘visionless’ in his comment above), I have to say that this is one area in which the SNP excels, and the very thing that the reluctant English press and media have conceded. The SNP, currently, is the only political party within the UK that has any vision whatsoever.
Judith Jaafar is an anomaly researcher and writer for last 20 years, as well as being a clinical/medical hypnotist
has ceased to exist. The
SNP is filling the void
The Cafe
A far from
Holy Land
Iain Macmillan
My happy days
with the great
Scottish playwright
Thom Cross
Hidden heroes
Barbara Millar
The minister of
Aberfoyle, carried away
into fairyland
Jill Stephenson
Those doctorates
03.11.11
No. 474
The Cafe
Joanne McNally’s wonderfully frank and, indeed, courageous trilogy of articles in last week’s editions of SR on the continuing balancing act between Palestine and Israel, in wrestling terms the ultimate of catchweight contests, stirred many memories and chimed in with a load of thoughts, away back then.
In early June 1967, on a generous fellowship from Edinburgh’s New College, a friend and I were due to land in Cairo on a student flight. The test match that turned out to be the six-day war kyboshed our plans, but, I believe, to my eternal benefit.
We were allowed our planned itinerary, somewhat trimmed because of the post-war circumstances and the change of borders, in 1968. Now the route was Rome, Sicily, Lipari, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, before coming anywhere near the far from Holy Land. Like the original Hebrews, but unlike them by plane, we arrived in Egypt where we spent a memorable three weeks, being entertained by so many Palestinian students from Cairo’s American University, who offered us meals, but, even more importantly, something about the spiritual bread of life. Quite simply, my naive view of little Israel, surrounded by all these big, bad Arab states, was, in a few weeks in Egypt, followed by just one week in the Lebanon, completely demolished, so much so that I could have been the first red-headed member of the PLO.
I so well remember arriving on a flight from Cyprus to Tel Aviv, because, to my utter shock, one day in the state of Israel was, sadly for me, one day too many. As a Church of Scotland minister, I’m talking about the Holy Land here. All I can say is that I agree entirely with Joanne McNally’s forceful and welcome take on the situation.
‘Bethlehem’, I remember saying, quoting a newspaper headline, ‘is closed down for Christmas’. Says it all really, but thanks to Joanne for introducing me to two most apposite words: makluba and hasbara.
Ian Petrie
Today’s banner
Children at dusk, Monifieth, Angus
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The Labour movement
has ceased to exist. The
SNP is filling the void
Judith Jaafar
With reference to John Milne’s piece (26 October
This is the very sort of thinking that has stultified Scottish growth for a very long time: craven pandering, fear and the seeking of approbation of those who are deemed to be wiser than we are. At last, now, we have raised ourselves, one of the cleverest nations on earth, from our enforced apathy and lack of confidence and are taking matters into our own hands. Does Mr Milne really believe that the Scottish government, civil service, ancillary agencies, interested commercial parties and the citizenry at large (and even the EU) are not competent enough to know whether Scotland can survive on its own or not, and that we need outsiders to tell us?
I am in agreement with him, however, on one very important issue. He states: ‘I am intrigued by the question as to how the lay citizens of Scotland are to know upon which of the conflicting assessments of the economics of independence can they safely base their referendum vote’. That’s a valid question and one for which I have an equally valid answer.
Since the birth of the independence movement in Scotland not one single British or Scottish newspaper, and latterly TV station, has covered this issue with anything but disdain and unionist bias. Every other party in the UK has always had some kind of media support and we all know how the wind blows in that respect.
It is a great testament to the SNP that they have achieved so much with no media support whatsoever. In fact they have been vilified and wilfully misrepresented across the board, from every quarter, and yet the popular vote is still rising. It seems the Scots know, or believe, something that Mr Milne doesn’t. Just think how much more the electorate would know and understand if the Scottish press gave the SNP a fair forum in which to outline its ideas and policies, its economic projections and its road map for a future, economically successful country. Then, and only then, can a public debate, as Mr Milne desires, start to take place. We all know the unionist lobby’s creative accounting; let’s hear or see the real accounts on a public platform, available to every Joe Bloggs who reads a tabloid paper and every Joseph Bloggs who reads anything else.
But still, without such even-handed perspicacity, voters are flocking in their droves to the independence party. Why? I think this has as much to do with a psychic change as anything else, slick as the SNP might be. Independence is an idea whose time has come. We are starting to believe in ourselves again, at last. The unionist lies are being exposed, one by one, and there is a metaphorical sloughing-off of our mental chains. The unionist parties in Scotland are being exposed as bankrupt, mendacious Westminster lackeys and time-servers who care not a jot about Scotland, only about retaining their jobs and the status quo.
If anyone can give me an example of a Scottish unionist politician who
has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly.
The Labour movement, which Scotland has so rightly and assiduously supported for such a long time, has ceased to exist. The punters know it, and feel betrayed. The SNP is filling up the left-of-centre void, taking Scots back to where they’ve always been, social democracy. For those of you out there who don’t want Scottish independence, and wonder where it’s all gone wrong, look no further than the Labour Party, especially the Scottish Labour Party. Together, they have betrayed all of you. The Tories never figured enough in Scotland to be game-changers, and the Liberals, LibDems or whatever they want to call themselves, have always just been chancers and band-wagon hoppers, with no clear ethos or policy.
As to John Milne’s other comment: ‘…a hope within the SNP that we will drift visionless and with nothing more than a vague sense of grievance into independence’, I’m afraid that cannot go unchallenged. Grievances, of which we have many, rightly or wrongly, do not a change in sovereign status make. It takes legitimacy on the world stage and international support, which Scotland has. Witness the Tibetans, the Basques, the Palestinians, the Tamils, the Quebecois and many others – this is a very complex issue.
In Scotland, we’ve had grievances for 300 years (never mind all the stuff that went on for hundreds of years before that), since the good burghers and landowners decided to ‘tak the King’s shilling’ and dissolve the Edinburgh parliament. The ordinary people didn’t want it, didn’t vote for it and have lamented it ever since. There is nothing vague about it, this grievance. It’s been festering at a deep, psychic level for a very long time, and it’s not really a grievance against the English (whom I personally happen to like), but a displaced grievance against the Scots nobility, or power-brokers, who betrayed us, as they have done thoughout history, time and time again.
The current unionist parties in Scotland, made up of Scots people, have been continuing this tradition of betrayal, unfortunately, and that’s why we have an independence movement. If anyone can give me an example of a Scottish unionist politician who has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly. The only politician that comes to mind is Alex Salmond, and he’s certainly not a unionist. Even your John Smiths and Donald Dewars were card-carrying members of the union, and thus frustrated in any attempts they might have made to ameliorate the Scottish condition or champion its causes. ‘Man cannot serve two masters’, and I have that from an unimpeachable source.
To say that a vague sense of grievance is underpinning the independence movement is a grave underestimation of the will and understanding of the Scottish people. They know that they have the wherewithall to make it, that their lives and fortunes will be better, that they’ll have to knuckle down and ‘get real’ and that their pride is depending on it. They want to be taken seriously again. Cannot any Scotsman, or woman, with any pride, buy into this scenario? As for ‘vision’ within the SNP (Mr Milne used ‘visionless’ in his comment above), I have to say that this is one area in which the SNP excels, and the very thing that the reluctant English press and media have conceded. The SNP, currently, is the only political party within the UK that has any vision whatsoever.
Judith Jaafar is an anomaly researcher and writer for last 20 years, as well as being a clinical/medical hypnotist
03.11.11
No. 474
The CafeIn early June 1967, on a generous fellowship from Edinburgh’s New College, a friend and I were due to land in Cairo on a student flight. The test match that turned out to be the six-day war kyboshed our plans, but, I believe, to my eternal benefit.
We were allowed our planned itinerary, somewhat trimmed because of the post-war circumstances and the change of borders, in 1968. Now the route was Rome, Sicily, Lipari, one of the volcanic Aeolian Islands, before coming anywhere near the far from Holy Land. Like the original Hebrews, but unlike them by plane, we arrived in Egypt where we spent a memorable three weeks, being entertained by so many Palestinian students from Cairo’s American University, who offered us meals, but, even more importantly, something about the spiritual bread of life. Quite simply, my naive view of little Israel, surrounded by all these big, bad Arab states, was, in a few weeks in Egypt, followed by just one week in the Lebanon, completely demolished, so much so that I could have been the first red-headed member of the PLO.
I so well remember arriving on a flight from Cyprus to Tel Aviv, because, to my utter shock, one day in the state of Israel was, sadly for me, one day too many. As a Church of Scotland minister, I’m talking about the Holy Land here. All I can say is that I agree entirely with Joanne McNally’s forceful and welcome take on the situation.
‘Bethlehem’, I remember saying, quoting a newspaper headline, ‘is closed down for Christmas’. Says it all really, but thanks to Joanne for introducing me to two most apposite words: makluba and hasbara.
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
This is the very sort of thinking that has stultified Scottish growth for a very long time: craven pandering, fear and the seeking of approbation of those who are deemed to be wiser than we are. At last, now, we have raised ourselves, one of the cleverest nations on earth, from our enforced apathy and lack of confidence and are taking matters into our own hands. Does Mr Milne really believe that the Scottish government, civil service, ancillary agencies, interested commercial parties and the citizenry at large (and even the EU) are not competent enough to know whether Scotland can survive on its own or not, and that we need outsiders to tell us?
I am in agreement with him, however, on one very important issue. He states: ‘I am intrigued by the question as to how the lay citizens of Scotland are to know upon which of the conflicting assessments of the economics of independence can they safely base their referendum vote’. That’s a valid question and one for which I have an equally valid answer.
Since the birth of the independence movement in Scotland not one single British or Scottish newspaper, and latterly TV station, has covered this issue with anything but disdain and unionist bias. Every other party in the UK has always had some kind of media support and we all know how the wind blows in that respect.
It is a great testament to the SNP that they have achieved so much with no media support whatsoever. In fact they have been vilified and wilfully misrepresented across the board, from every quarter, and yet the popular vote is still rising. It seems the Scots know, or believe, something that Mr Milne doesn’t. Just think how much more the electorate would know and understand if the Scottish press gave the SNP a fair forum in which to outline its ideas and policies, its economic projections and its road map for a future, economically successful country. Then, and only then, can a public debate, as Mr Milne desires, start to take place. We all know the unionist lobby’s creative accounting; let’s hear or see the real accounts on a public platform, available to every Joe Bloggs who reads a tabloid paper and every Joseph Bloggs who reads anything else.
But still, without such even-handed perspicacity, voters are flocking in their droves to the independence party. Why? I think this has as much to do with a psychic change as anything else, slick as the SNP might be. Independence is an idea whose time has come. We are starting to believe in ourselves again, at last. The unionist lies are being exposed, one by one, and there is a metaphorical sloughing-off of our mental chains. The unionist parties in Scotland are being exposed as bankrupt, mendacious Westminster lackeys and time-servers who care not a jot about Scotland, only about retaining their jobs and the status quo.
has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly.
As to John Milne’s other comment: ‘…a hope within the SNP that we will drift visionless and with nothing more than a vague sense of grievance into independence’, I’m afraid that cannot go unchallenged. Grievances, of which we have many, rightly or wrongly, do not a change in sovereign status make. It takes legitimacy on the world stage and international support, which Scotland has. Witness the Tibetans, the Basques, the Palestinians, the Tamils, the Quebecois and many others – this is a very complex issue.
In Scotland, we’ve had grievances for 300 years (never mind all the stuff that went on for hundreds of years before that), since the good burghers and landowners decided to ‘tak the King’s shilling’ and dissolve the Edinburgh parliament. The ordinary people didn’t want it, didn’t vote for it and have lamented it ever since. There is nothing vague about it, this grievance. It’s been festering at a deep, psychic level for a very long time, and it’s not really a grievance against the English (whom I personally happen to like), but a displaced grievance against the Scots nobility, or power-brokers, who betrayed us, as they have done thoughout history, time and time again.
The current unionist parties in Scotland, made up of Scots people, have been continuing this tradition of betrayal, unfortunately, and that’s why we have an independence movement. If anyone can give me an example of a Scottish unionist politician who has really fought for Scottish interests and refused to toe the Westminster party line, I’d like to hear it; honestly. The only politician that comes to mind is Alex Salmond, and he’s certainly not a unionist. Even your John Smiths and Donald Dewars were card-carrying members of the union, and thus frustrated in any attempts they might have made to ameliorate the Scottish condition or champion its causes. ‘Man cannot serve two masters’, and I have that from an unimpeachable source.
To say that a vague sense of grievance is underpinning the independence movement is a grave underestimation of the will and understanding of the Scottish people. They know that they have the wherewithall to make it, that their lives and fortunes will be better, that they’ll have to knuckle down and ‘get real’ and that their pride is depending on it. They want to be taken seriously again. Cannot any Scotsman, or woman, with any pride, buy into this scenario? As for ‘vision’ within the SNP (Mr Milne used ‘visionless’ in his comment above), I have to say that this is one area in which the SNP excels, and the very thing that the reluctant English press and media have conceded. The SNP, currently, is the only political party within the UK that has any vision whatsoever.
