Brexit n The undefined being negotiated by the unprepared in order to get the unspecified. When I first started to print this on shirts, mugs etc way back in 2017 little did I realise just how apt the words were. Sure, we knew that the Government had no strategy, vision, plan or destination in mind but most of us assumed that there were enough adults in the Civil Service to ensure that something semi sensible would emerge and be accepted by the Government. Oh how wrong we were! It’s perhaps worth recalling that in 2016 one of the aims of the Leave campaign was toRead More →

Watching the lunchtime news, Ian commented ‘Is there a massive sand pit down at Westminster where they have all stuck their heads?’ I have become detached and terrified in equal measure. Boris and his team are definitely in the lead over ‘the Donald’ in the lying stakes. How the hell did the elected members down there allow such a deluded, bumbling, arrogant person to be running our affairs? Yes I do blame the other MPs. They were all elected by their constituents to do the best they could to defend and support them. Too many of them have only been concerned about their own payRead More →

I did not know if I would be able to do The Flag this week as I was in hospital, kept longer than I anticipated, but everything went well. Do not believe all the criticisms you read from the Unionists, I get great service from my surgery and this week it was the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh as well. So nothing but admiration for the NHS. When in hospital I was able to keep up with the news through the Herald and the National, my wife brought the papers in each day; so where are we? Latest comment about the Nationalising of Ferguson Engineering;Read More →

In one of my earlier blog pieces I wrote about the offshore wind farm being built south of Wick. At the time of writing the first turbine had been installed and immediately connected to the grid thereby paying for itself from the very first turn of the blades, transmitting energy throughout the country. The same weekend, the first “Dounreay” flight departed with its load of uranium and nuclear waste bound for the USA and flew over the windmill; an emotive vista of the departure of outdated technology whilst the new clean renewable energy sprung up around it. To me it also contrasted the backward lookingRead More →

This year people have been subjected to many smaller community services being withdrawn from their Council budget. This ranges from libraries and town halls to weeding and grass cutting. After the initial outrage things have settled down. Some people just ignore that these things are no longer done. Others have been more pro-active. Earlier this year our Community Council held a meeting and invited all local groups along to network and discuss ways forward for the local community. A couple of our craft group committee managed to attend and their feedback was positive. Top of the list was their surprise at how many groups areRead More →

Well that was conference. Not one but two independence campaigns are off and running this week. The SNP’s Yes.Scot and the Scottish Independence Convention’s Voices for Scotland. The big bang of the Scottish Growth Commission report proved to be less disruptive and more constructive; when all sides claim everything is hunky-dory in going forward now, then you know the art of compromise is alive and kicking. Whilst it was a fascinating pre-debate exchange of views over the past year or so, there’s nothing like an impending election to remind you just how far this is from voters’ minds.  Somehow, the minutiae of when an independentRead More →

The train journey between Wick and Inverness is approximately 4 1/2 hours long. Taking the same length of time to travel between Edinburgh and London, the journey between the towns in the Far North and their nearest city is double what it would take you by road. Rather than following the A9 road down the coast, the train makes several detours inland and acts as a lifeline travel service for residents in the communities that were left isolated with the building of the Dornoch Bridge at the start of the 1990s, at that time the longest bridge in Europe, and for those in north westRead More →

“And still they gazed and still the wonder grewThat these big heids just hadnae got a clue”. One line from Oliver Goldsmith’s  poem above has always seemed to me to apply to people with pretensions.  While Goldsmith wrote “That one small head could carry all they knew” is not appropriate, I have substituted my own take on things.  The populace are definitely wondering at the public mess our Westminster government is making.  There seems to be no ending, or any progress, in sight for Brexit. As I write, the SNP have tabled a motion to revoke Article 50, which has received over 6 million signatures,Read More →

During the summer holidays last year, some local teachers began the hard task of clearing up an area of woodland near to one of the local schools. Located on the outskirts of the town and enclosed by buildings, it was an area that you never really noticed. Pleas for help were answered by both adults and children and by the time the schools started back in August, a huge amount of rubbish and debris had been cleared from the site and an entrance made into the trees. “Forest Friday” became a regular occurrence in the school whereby a group of children had the opportunity toRead More →

So. Another big Brexit vote. Another embarassing defeat. Just how much can one woman take. If this was happening in civvy street I am sure the men in white coats would be called in and act on such delusional behaviour. Heard a man on today’s (Wednesday) radio phone in who travels widely in Europe and says that the ordinary European is just laughing at us. Well, we knew that didn’t we? Thought he summed up the Brexit attitude very well though. ‘The English think they are the new Aryan race’. This is the really worrying aspect of Brexit for me. Common courtesy and decency haveRead More →