We nearly killed ourselves this week compiling twelve “quotes of the year” articles for December 30 and 31, which required ploughing through over a THOUSAND posts (1,170 to be precise) looking for interesting or amusing word-nuggets. Unfortunately, everyone was on holiday or out having a good time, so hardly anybody read them.
So we’ve put them all together in a single ridiculously huge mega-post to give everyone who only reads the most recent article a chance to catch up. We’re nice that way.
And then on Monday, when we’ve all finally got back to having some sort of vague idea what day of the week it is again, 2014 starts in earnest.
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Category
scottish politics
We’re enormously grateful to the alert reader who uncovered this little gem. “The Claim Of Scotland” is a book published in 1968 and written by one Herbert James Paton, a philosopher and a senior civil servant at the Admiralty and Foreign Office, who sadly died the following year.
If you click the image above, you’ll find a scanned PDF of the foreword, contents and first chapter, which at just 14 pages is a modest task of reading. Prepare yourself to marvel at how little times have changed since this pre-North Sea oil age, and to smile ruefully at a few of the sentences you’ll encounter.
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Tags: claimofscotland
Category
culture, history, scottish politics, uk politics
Awesome start on healing those divisions, Johann.
(From today’s Scottish Sun.)
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Category
comment, scottish politics
Okay, readers, it’s time to speak your brains. We’ve been evolving the synergy of the Wings customer-facing recognition interface in line with the leading edge of the zeitgeist over the years, from our early crude banners through to the current clean and eye-catching style, and it’s time to pick the logo that’ll take us through 2014.
Give us your thoughts, whydoncha?
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Category
admin, pictures
Is to mercilessly and with extreme prejudice delete the comments of anyone who doesn’t put the right amount of paragraph breaks in them.
Just sayin’.
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Category
admin
There are now just fewer than nine months to go until the referendum that will decide Scotland’s future. But in those 260 or so days, there will be one that more than any other is likely to shape the outcome, and curiously it’s one in which few people in Scotland will actually be very interested.
The last elections to the European Parliament, in 2009, saw a turnout in Scotland of under 29%, below even the dismal UK figure of 34%. We have no reason to believe this year’s will be massively different, at least not on the northern side of the border.
But the election, which takes place (on 22 May) almost exactly halfway between now and the referendum, will have a huge impact on UK politics, and the corresponding knock-on effect could decide which way Scotland swings in September.
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Category
analysis, comment, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
Okay. We’re done warming up.
Time to go for it properly.
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Category
admin, comment, navel-gazing, stats
So here we are, then. 80% of the referendum campaign is over. It’s 2014. The next nine months are when we’ll either win or lose it all. Time to get to work.
Happy New Year, readers. In every sense of all of those words.
Category
scottish politics
Holy hell, we made it! (Via January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October and November.)
“It is in the UK’s self-interest to portray relations with an independent Scotland on this side of the referendum as highly contentious and difficult but its interests will immediately change on the other side of a referendum if Scotland votes Yes.” – Professor James Mitchell of Edinburgh University casually exposes the massive con-trick that lies at the heart of the entire No campaign.
Let’s hammer a stake through this sucker and go home.
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Category
scottish politics
We’re so close now, readers. Stick with it. Think of the stories you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren. (Earlier tales: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October.)
“Well, we have worked together, absolutely closely and co-operating throughout this process. The, the, the power to impose special measures on the Falkirk Labour Party is taken at the NEC, and I’m part of the UK party, and certainly I’ve been part of that process.“ – Johann Lamont finds a roundabout way of saying she hasn’t been consulted on Labour’s ongoing car-crash.
An auspicious start to November, for sure.
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Category
scottish politics
