Vote Of Nasty Conservatives

This was first posted on Facebook on 23rd March 2021, with support from my Ko-Fi network. A few things that occur to me after listening to the no-confidence vote debate in the Scottish Parliament this afternoon. (Video at link: it took less than an hour.) Continue reading

This was first posted on Facebook on 6th March 2021, with support from my Ko-Fi network. “…well, imagine a person standing on a block of ice, planning and planning and planning. Planning ways to get about on the ice, ways to decorate it, ways to divide it up, ways to cope with all the possible knowns and givens of a block of ice. That would be a busy person, provident and industrious and…

Greens claim ‘most commercial holiday lets operating unlawfully’

According to a survey undertaken by Scottish Greens Lothian MSP Andy Wightman, most commercial short-term holiday lets in Edinburgh are operating unlawfully.

The results of the homesfirst.scotsurvey, published in a report today show that just one property out of the 477 surveyed had the appropriate planning consents, suggesting 99.8% of commercial short term lets in the capital could be…

George Kerevan reckons the First Minister needs “a wider range of radical thinkers” among her advisers. It’s a popular, not to say fashionable, term in Scottish political discourse – ‘radical’. We hear it a lot. Indeed, one of the more prominent groups in the Yes movement was/is the Radical Independence Convention/Campaign. It often happens that when words become ubiquitous we stop thinking about…

Death and power in the Highlands

    Endless ridges

The mountains and glens of the Scottish Highlands are famed for their beauty and tranquillity. These are places where great peaks towers over peaceful valleys and the hand of man has changed little over the generations. Or so you might think.

I used to wander these hill and enjoy what I thought was a natural landscape but now I see something very different. I see a landscape…

Wightman plans moves on proposed closure of music school

The council is accused of wanting to close the City of Edinburgh Music School which is one of four specialist music schools in Scotland, and this weekend the story has not yet been denied by the council. Andy Wightman MSP and his daughter Isla Ratcliff, a former pupil of the Music School Early last week we were invited to a media briefing about the council’s draft budget which was coming up for…

Old Glenbucket’s land need reforming

Glenbuchat is stunning. More rolling countryside than majestic mountains it sweeps and dips and is a tonic to the eye. But behind the magnificence lurks a darker tale. Raptor Persecution UK mentioned in a blog in 2014 that the Convenor of the Cairngorm National Park Authority (CPNA), Duncan Bryden, wrote to the Environment Minister about incidents of raptor persecution and “disappeared birds” –…