Blethering Skite

It's Friday!! This weeks #podcast is a fascinating chat with independent film maker Mairi Sutherland .  Find out about the making of her Robert Burns movie Red Rose, the state of the Scottish film industry and her plans for a Scottish Gaelic Cowboy movie!  Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts  and if you like it, please share 😀

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Most Scots would now prefer a republic. Polling from Survation found that just 34% of Scots surveyed supported the continuation of a hereditary monarchy while 45% said they would prefer an elected head of state.

With don’t knows excluded from the results it puts support for the monarchy at 43% compared to support for an elected head of state at 57%.

Source:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/24299181.new-poll-finds-support-monarchy-scotland-falling-rapidly/

The Labour party isn’t even pretending to respect the devolution settlement now. Labour’s idea of Scottish devolution is that they’ll support it as long as Scotland votes for a Labour controlled Scottish Government. It’s the do as we say because you can’t be trusted school of British nationalist paternalism. It’s not for a government in Westminster to second guess the democratic choices of the people of Scotland at a Holyrood election, but that is exactly what the deeply undemocratic Keir Starmer is doing. When the devolved Scottish Parliament was established in the late 1990s, Labour genuinely thought Scotland would be Labour’s plaything and powerbase forever. The voting system imposed on Holyrood was supposed to produce a Labour Lib Dem Scottish Government in perpetuity – or rather a ‘Scottish executive’ because we can’t have Scotland getting ideas above its station now can we?

The Scottish Budget was announced by Shona Robison yesterday, met with predictable spin as the opposition parties jostle for position. As a minority government, the SNP will have to do deals to get their budget passed, and to this extent they have offered up policies which it will be extremely hard for Labour to vote down. Here’s a brief look at some of the main points in poverty reduction measures, housing, and arts and culture (further coverage to follow).

Poverty Action

One of the standout announcements was that the Scottish government would move to scrap – or offset – the two-child benefits cap.

Predictably the Tory press and their editors and columnists went into hysteria. Presenting Swinney as a Bad Santa the Daily Mail frothed and fumed: “The SNP’s Budget has been slammed [by us – Ed]...

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The Draft Scottish Budget has announced funding for inter-island free ferry travel to children and young people under 22 which follows on from the successful free bus travel scheme Making the announcement in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday 4th of December, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government in the Scottish Government Shona Robison said that "the government had listened and…

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Come join us for a night of stories and literature with Donald Smith- a festive celebration of Edinburgh's 900th anniversary.

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 18:30 - 19:30 GMT

Leith Library

28-30 Ferry Road Edinburgh EH6 4AE

900 Celebrations.

Edinburgh is officially 900 years old, but only 20 years have passed since it was recognised as the world's first UNESCO City of Literature. To mark these events author, playwrite and Director of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, Donald Smith, introduces his new book Edinburgh: Our Storied Town (Luath Press).

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Could Artificial Intelligence save Scottish Gaelic?

The future is uncertain for Gaelic and most of the world’s minority languages. Could cutting-edge language technologies be the key to their survival? English speakers can now hold real-time spoken conversations with apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. What breakthroughs are needed to get us to that point for Gaelic? How might such a transformation affect language revitalisation efforts, for better and for worse?

This lecture introduces modern language technology to a general audience, showcasing ongoing research involving Gaelic at the University of Edinburgh. It then addresses tensions in collaborations between big tech and minority language communities, such as navigating data ownership and cultural preservation. Finally, it looks ahead, considering how AI might help revitalise not just Gaelic, but other minority languages.

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For 1st December, a wee insight into a difference between Irish and Scots Gaelic (and, perhaps, psyches):

December:

Irish Gaelic: “mí na Nollag” (Month of Christmas)

Scots Gaelic:  “An Dùbhlachd” (The Darkness…)

The Forgotten Street Behind a Hidden Library Door

Deep within the lower floors of the National Library of Scotland, there lies a forgotten street that offers a glimpse into Edinburgh’s past. Libberton’s Wynd, located in the heart of the old city, was demolished in the 1830s to make way for George IV Bridge, but a part of the street still remains.

Exploring The Void

The street can be accessed through a hidden door between the bridge walls and the library building. Known as The Void by library staff, this corridor is not open to the public, but BBC Scotland News was granted a rare glimpse inside. The discovery of this hidden passage dates back to the 1990s when library officials stumbled upon it after breaking down a small hatch on a wall behind filing cabinets.

Inside The Void, arches lead into chambers and rooms that were once used for storage in the bridge. According to Bill Jackson, former director of the library, the chambers contained old rotten furniture, ledgers, shoes, and even a 100-year-old slate urinal, all waterlogged and damaged.

New analysis of ancient bones and fossils found in a Highland cave has revealed them to be "fishier than the average bear" and could even suggest polar bears once roamed Scotland.

Instead of consuming the meat of land-based animals, plants, or even a little salmon, like contemporary brown bears, these bears appear to have lived almost exclusively on seafood.

An antidote to the assimilated politics of Scotland

Borne of frustration, New Scotland Party is the brainchild of Peter A Bell: independence supporter, thinker and writer. The party aims to focus attention on defining the much-debated single route to independence to allow a concerted, unified effort towards the final goal as soon as is practicable. This may sound very familiar.

The attitude to achieving this goal will be very different to the political manoeuvrings of the last ten years. Defiance will replace compliance. Asserting Scottish national sovereignty will replace deference. 

It is evident that almost all existing parties accept the rules and cultural niceties of the UK parliamentary system. There is no recognition of the fact that this system is constructed to deter any liberation movement harmful to the British establishment’s interests. By abiding by the rules, set to shackle ambitions of independence, these nominally Scottish independence parties are ensuring continuation of the status quo.

What’s actually happening here, according to Rusbridger, is that these powerful media owners and editors – who control the majority right-wing press in Britain – are incensed that they can’t control the broadcast media and the BBC in the same way they do the print media. So they set out to do just that....

It is background but it’s coming to the foreground.

The broadcast media has dissipated as a controlling force but it still influences older viewers and acts as a mythological source of objectivity, which is the reason its such a prized goal. Surfacing some of these networks and bring them into the light is, I hope, useful?

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Like many other parts of the world, the UK is in the firm grip of an epidemic of disinformation and misinformation

Where does it originate?

Misinformation and disinformation abound in the UK from many sources, each with its own motivation.

Foreign interference: Some foreign powers have been accused of using disinformation with a view to destabilising democracies; an example is the widely alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Conspiracy theorists: Various groups or individuals who advance anti-vaccine rhetoric, climate denial, and “alternative” histories have seized upon social media as a method for magnifying their messages.

Everyday users: The most insidious form of misinformation probably emanates from ordinary people who are unwittingly passing along unverified or misleading content. What perhaps originates as a misconstrued post spirals into general belief.

Media and politicians: High-profile individuals and, in some instances, even news outlets have at various times propagated false or misleading information sometimes deliberately and at other times through negligence, further harming the public trust.

https://northeastbylines.co.uk/news/politics/how-the-uk-became-a-nation-of-misinformation-and-disinformation/

The UK Government's cut to the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) is the single largest attack on pensioner wellbeing in living memory.

Believe in Scotland campaigned against this cut with a billboard, video and social media campaign pointing out that Labour's own research claimed that as many as 4,000 pensioners could die if the WFP was cut. 

The fact that the WFP was devolved before it was cut and that Labour in Scotland voted for the cut but then claimed they would mitigate it if they were in government is clearly a naked political ploy. Playing political games with the lives and general wellbeing of Scotland’s pensioners is unworthy of any elected politician or political party.

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Skint, baw ragged, poackets ful eh ma

fingers, cannae afford tae burn toast an

it’s November. Christmas is close…

—William Letford, “This is it” Published in DIRT, Carcanet 2016

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.