Dear Margaret,
I have quite the conundrum. I wonder if you could help me with it.
My Scots-born best friend moved to Beijing in 2005. She previously spent a year studying in Canada, but when she came back I found no traces of latent Canadianism.
Over the last few years she has learned to speak Mandarin quite competently. She also works for the EU. That could be another nail in her coffin, right?
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Tags: foreigner watchNatalie McGarry
Category
comment, culture
For those of you who – inexplicably and frankly rather hurtfully – STILL don’t follow us on Twitter and may therefore not have heard the news yet on your gramophones, this evening’s Scotland Tonight promises to be a real treat.
Not so much for the fact that they’ll be referencing our poll, but because they’ll be doing so as the jumping-off point for a discussion between Dennis Canavan (chairman of Yes Scotland) and Ian Davidson MP, on the subject “Are undecided voters in the independence referendum more socialist, more republican, & more green?”, which should be like watching Rab C Nesbitt give David Bowie fashion tips.
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Category
comment, culture, media, scottish politics
Every country on Earth is the best at something.
We can do better than this, right?
(Data)
Category
comment, culture, pictures, world
Experienced readers will know that it’s a rare and special day when the BBC deigns to open up a Scottish story on its website to reader comments.
The results are invariably to be cherished, as our friends elsewhere in the UK share their considered, informed and thoughtful views on why we’re all better together.
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Tags: britnats
Category
comment, culture, uk politics
The sun rarely shines on the council estates of Maryhill. But on the rare occasions when it does, they emerge, dragging their Argos Value deckchairs behind them.
The high-rise flats do their best to block the light, but they find a spot in the concrete playground where the sun peeks through. They plant their chairs, flap open their Daily Records, crack open their cans and bask in the thin angle of the sunlight.
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Tags: Julie McDowall
Category
comment, culture, scottish politics, uk politics
If you’ve been waiting (as we have), here are all six episodes of Jack Foster’s superb overview of the Scottish political scene, collected into one punchy 34-minute film.
Adam Curtis would, we hope, be proud.
Category
culture, scottish politics, video
Particularly alert readers will have noticed that this site isn’t called Wings Over Wales. Which is a shame in one sense, because “WOW” would be a great acronym to have.
But we’re going to make an exception to our normally all-Scottish, all the time agenda today, because of something that happened in the smaller of mainland UK’s sub-states about which we happen to have some personal experience, and which ties in to Labour peer Lord George Robertson’s extraordinary assertion in a debate last month that Scotland has “no language or culture or any of that”.
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Tags: lizardsone nation
Category
comment, culture, stupidity, uk politics
We’ve highlighted some truly gruesome displays of anti-Scottish bigotry on this website over the last couple of years, the large majority of them from right-wing English newspapers. But today sees perhaps the worst case we’ve ever seen, and we’re sad to report that the blame for this one lies squarely at Scotland’s own door.
We hope you have a strong stomach.
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Tags: britnatscringe
Category
comment, culture, scottish politics
Below is an extract from an article published in the US quarterly Dissent Magazine, entitled “Cockblocked by Redistribution: A Pick-up Artist in Denmark”.
We tweeted a link to it yesterday but dismayingly nobody seemed to notice it (not a single retweet last time we looked), and it really deserves reading. It’s an aspect of Nordic social democracy and gender equality that you don’t hear much about.
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Category
comment, culture, media, world
This is the entrance to the municipal offices of Stirling Council (“Scotland’s Heart”), visible from the monument to William Wallace that looks over the former Scottish capital. The figures guarding the doorway are Wallace and Robert the Bruce.
The building’s flagpole is flying a Saltire (specifically the city’s own modified coat-of-arms version, which features a Lion Rampant and explicitly represents the Battle of Bannockburn), as you might quite reasonably expect it to.
Enjoy this patriotic sight while you can. It might have barely 48 hours left.
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Tags: britnatscringe
Category
culture, disturbing, scottish politics
