Ding dong merrily on high.

Interesting repercussions from my article in the weekends Sunday Times.

Having just received a phone call from Paul Hutcheon of the Sunday Herald who is doing a story for tomorrow's Herald, in which I will yet again be smeared as a vile individual, who not only accuses Michael Russell and his South of Scotland adviser Aileen Orr of being not only aware of the blawg, but also of them suggesting stories and much of the sly innuendo and tittle tattle for which I have been panned. In addition I will be accused of attempting to coerce Mr Russell into giving me either my job back or finding me a cushy number in a quiet quango.

It appears that someone has released private emails sent between myself and Michael Russell's home email address to Paul Hutcheon. I can with one hundred percent certainty, hand on heart, scouts honour, tell you that I am not the person who has released these emails, as I was legally advised that it was best to not tell the Sunday Times that Mr Russell not only knew about but suggested possible stories for the blawg as it would hinder any subsequent tribunal.

Now obviously, what appears in The Herald will be skewed against me. So I've decided to give you, my lovely readers, all 14 of you the main emails* from which I suspect I will be kebabed.

So sit back and be prepared to be bored.

* Some details of the following emails have been removed, basically names of certain individuals,

Oh one final reminder, Aileen Orr mentioned above is the SNP candidate for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweedsdale. She is without doubt the laziest candidate the party have probably ever put up for a seat, she has done close to zero campaigning in the constituency, has done a mere handful of Activate calls despite claiming to have spent every working moment doing them. She is a great pal of Paul Hutcheon, who didn't deny receiving these emails from her. The reason, I know all this? Well, until this all blew up, I was her election agent. I may still be as I haven't received ANY paperwork regarding my employment situation.



==================================================================================


-----Original Message-----
From: *******@******.com
To: feorlean@mac.com
Sent: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 17:33
Subject: Re: This week.

Michael

I am sending this to your Feorlean account as neither of us want the following appearing on the Parliamentary system where it could be accessed by an FOI request.

It is my understanding that you told me on the Friday morning that you would 'have to let me go'. I am unhappy about a situation where I humbly resign, as I do not accept that the blog was a sacking offence, it was something I composed outside of office hours, as a check on my parliamentary internet account will confirm, neither do I accept that the comments you refer to 'were of a serious nature'.

Yourself, Kevin Pringle and the FM responded in a knee jerk fashion and chose to sacrifice a loyal party member, employee and friend. You blindly accept the perceived 'truth' of the News of the World, rather than check the claims thoroughly yourselves and the context within which they were written.

At no point did you even begin to explain or even ask how the NOTW got my name and details. The FM's comments in Perth at the weekend basically give credibility to the belief that I was smearing opposition politicians with vile lies and that there is some great cybernat conspiracy.

The condemnation of Norman Will for having the temerity to comment on my facebook status was utterly pathetic and worthy of Stalinist practises long thought dead. Are the party aware that their is a vicious campaign to silence pro-independence bloggers and the FM's statement has gone down like a lead balloon.

You said the post on Cllrs Smyth and Nicholson were accusations of wife beating. That is completely incorrect, the images used to illustrate the post were tongue-in-cheek satire of the 1950's and 1960's showing woman being treated as less than equal.

Rather ironically, the first I knew about Cllr Smyth's dismissal was when you yourself told me about it on Friday the 20th, the day of the flooding and as we drove to Whithorn. I also have Cllr ****** weekly round-up which mentions it in detail.

If you remember correctly, it was you who told me about driving a drunken &%$^(*) ^*%$&& in Edinburgh and having to stop the car whilst he picked up some young men, where else could I have found that information?

Any comments on ***"£$ *^&%$***, came from comments that both you and Aileen made to me. Although, there is a seven Tories in a bed comment on the blog, it links to a photograph of ********* sitting on a bed in Africa…you know, humour.

The abject humiliation I have suffered in the media, both national and local (thank you for your Jekyll and Hyde comments in the Dumfries Courier) could have been prevented had you and the FM team taken time to consider the situation positively, rather than this pathetic knee jerk reaction better suited to your political rivals.

As it is your subsequent feeding me to the lions has left me virtually unemployable. As stated previously, I am looking to you as my employer to assist me in finding an alternative job, rather than let all of this sorry mess make its way into the public domain.

I intend to contest my sacking, given that although you now deny it, you were aware of the blog and even suggested possible subjects, such as the Daily Record pictures of Megrahi which I had asked SPICE for when I arrived at Parliament at 11.30am on the Thursday, for which they subsequently sent me an email claiming they could not locate the hard copies. As you will remember you said you would get them to me for putting on the blog.


I’m not trying to be a bastard about this situation, and I appreciate the kind words that you said in Friday’s email. I’m merely looking for some help from a friend in a powerful position who has not been truthful to the world about his knowledge of what I was doing.

You could have at any point told me to shut it down and I would have. I see the Courier even manage to publish my home address as justification for a letter I sent complaining about Smyth not identifying himself as a councillor when he attacked you over flooding/sea gulls/ regeneration.

As you gave me a deadline of Wednesday to respond, I will give you the same opportunity to respond to the above before I send it to your parliamentary address and cc the Presiding Officer and other interested parties.

I have recorded nothing on the telephone, I bear you and Cathleen no ill will, I only want some assistance. As you know I am loyal to the party and the government, however, I place Jane’s health and my family above that of politics. I would dearly love to walk away from this whole mess by the end of the week, if this is not possible then I will take up the offer from the media to talk about the blog.

Mark

==================================================================================

-----Original Message-----
From: ********@****.com
To: feorlean@mac.com
Sent: Fri, 4 Dec 2009 14:47

Changing the office door locks, having Aileen demand to know if I was recording our conversation and and making ***** ********* try to find out what journalists I had spoken to is not really the best way of maintaining my loyalty. For the record, the only journalist I have been in touch with is ****** ********, after she contacted me to say she'd spoken to you at the Diaspora event.

The NOTW as part of their concerted campaign against Independence supporting bloggers, have managed to to knock out another five bloggers this week. ****** ******* is being dragged into it, after his former constituency secretary and friend, is exposed as someone who failed to condemn a racist comment on the Scotsman forum. Iain McWhirter's blog from Monday questioning just how much you knew about my blog, the accusations that the FM responded in a knee jerk reaction rather than actually look at the truth through a NOTW prism, are all gaining momentum.

****** has asked if I want to give my side of the story to ****** ******. I don't want to.

What I do want is help finding a job. It needn't be immediate, some time in the next few months, stuck in some quango, under my first name, not even in Dumfries and Galloway.

Falling on the sword is one thing, destroying my families future for the SNP is an entirely different thing.

Mark

Are you going, going to the Boston tea party?

Interesting to note that today, December 16^th is the 236^th anniversary of the infamous Boston Tea Party.

Instrumental in sparking off the American Wars of Independence, this act of revolt against the British Empire and the British East India Company was undertaken by American colonialists who donned cunning disguises as native Mohawk American Indians and dumped boxes of tea in the harbour.

Future American President, Samuel Adams worked to publicise and defend the ‘Sons of Liberty’, stating that the Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option, for people who suffered taxation without representation and had no other means with which to defend their constitutional rights.

A few months earlier in September, 1773, a couple of hundred miles North of Boston, a cargo ship, 'the Hector', arrived in Pictou harbour, Nova Scotia, with 189 passengers aboard. It had been at sea for two-and-a-half months after leaving Greenock with thirty-three families and twenty-five single men on board.

The man behind this scheme was the formidable, Dr. John Witherspoon formerly of Paisley. President and head professor of what was to become Princeton University. Witherspoon, had purchased 200,000 acres of land from the Philadelphia Land Grant Company, whose shareholders included Benjamin Franklin. Settlers were offered a farm lot and a year of provisions.

A glance at the names of those on board, displays many familiar to today’s Scotland.

Witherspoon, long critical of the British Empire had embraced life in the colonies and was a strong supporter of the Revolution.  When challenged that America was not yet ready for independence he replied that it "was not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of rotting for the want of it."

At the same time that a fledgling Independence movement in the Americas is gathering momentum, in Scotland professional Englishman Doctor Samuel Johnson and his loyal acolyte James Bowell were engaged on ‘A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland’. This grand tour in search of the romantic savage, came a mere seven years after the death of James Edward Stuart and the end of the Pope’s recognition of  "Bonnie" Prince Charles as the lawful sovereign of Great Britain.

The Western Isles that Johnson and Boswell encountered was a desperate place with the disintegration of the Clan system and the Clan chief’s Highland Clearances policy starting to take effect, with whisky and the wearing of Tartan still banned after the 1745 rebellion. Johnson infamously opined, "The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England!"

As many of Scotland’s leading lights were drawn to London and the glittering prizes there, unsurprisingly few if any, took Doctor Johnson to task for such pithy throwaway comments like. "Scotland is a vile country, though God made it, but we must remember that he made it for Scotsmen, and comparisons are odious, but God also made Hell”. One wonders what Witherspoon might have made of Johnson.

Who would have thought that Scotland and Scots would have had to wait for over 200 years to get just a little bit more representation for our taxation, whereas the Yanks simply chucked boxes of tea overboard? 

Welcome, come on in, pull up a pew, kick back a bit....relax, I won't bite.

Greetings friends old and new. Michty what a fortnight it's been. Derided, abused, ridiculed, shamed, mortified and condemned...but enough of Tiger Woods problems. How the blinky blonk have I been?

Well the world kept spinning, real friends came to the fore and called, emailed, visited and some even sent actual letters in long hand! My family and I are immensely grateful for all the well wishes that have come our way. 


As you'll no doubt have heard or read, the Sunday Times have given me the opportunity to tell my side of the story about the vile lies and one man propaganda machine I had supposedly told and become. 

By opening up the blog I'm giving those desperate souls who were keen to see if they got a mention, the same sensitive bairns who googled their name against Cheese and poured over the cache looking for the slightest whiff of insult, the chance to see what all the fuss was about. You know who you are, you cheeky monkeys, fear not, I'll not embarrass you by letting everyone know your names, that'll be our little secret. For now.


Interestingly since I closed the blog down the page visits have just kept climbing, I dare say that now it's back on-line it'll drop back into the relative obscurity from whence it came.


My biggest surprise was the speed with which my world imploded. One minute I'm pootering about here having the occasional mocking dig at politicos and their tame pets in the Scottish media, the next I'm exposed as Beelzebub in tweed. Within minutes of the story appearing the spittle flecked keyboard warriors began reaching for their collective Thesauruses and in an orgiastic spoffing of biblical dimensions the bitter mal mots were soon in full flow.
Six hundred plus google news and blog checks describing one as 'odious', 'poisonous', 'despicable', 'venomous' 'evil', 'loathsome', 'cowardly', 'poisonous', 'filthy', 'foul mouthed', 'bullying' and '46' were simply too much for one mere mortal to take, and then the journalists and bloggers started. Did I mention 'poisonous'?



I've removed the post regarding Wardog, the language I used in it was too robust for a man of my delicate sensitivities, and to be honest I cringed every time I used it, knowing that some ladies were on occasion liable to amble past and peruse my musings.


The rest of the blog is intact. As of today I haven't received a summons, been carted off to jail, spat at in the street nor been waylaid by footpads or neer-do-wells in the dark closes of Dumfries.

So if you're a politician or a journalist with the incredibly thin skin that bruises as easy as an autumn peach, then please contact me and ask me to remove any post I may have put up here that you deem to be beyond the pale. 

I would caution anyone posting, that anything deemed by me, to be deliberately inflammatory, insidious or downright evil, no matter how sphincter collapsing funny, will not be tolerated. Maybe.  


The views on the life politic, philosophical, societal, historical or even artistically in here are all mine. Mine I tell you. Enjoy.

Hooooooooooots

Click on the link below.

Hoooooooooooots

Bullying Secretary General of Labour Party Kicked out of Council Meeting

Ooh drearie me, news has waded its way through the flood waters of Dumfries that Colin Smyth, Scottish General Secretary of the Labour Party and Labour councillor for Nith Ward was kicked out, ejected, expelled, nay cast out by popular vote from a Dumfries and Galloway council meeting on Thursday this week.

Smyth's official misdemeanour was for 'offensive conduct and refusing to respect the chair'. 

Councillor Smyth and Councillor Ronnie Nicholson, the not so popular with their own members, odd couple, have allegedly a history of behaving in a rather intimidating manner towards councillors and council employees of the lady persuasion. So much so that one is tempted to think that Messrs Smyth and Nicholson might have been happier in an earlier age when women were expected to stay in, shut up and put out on demand.

One can only imagine what kind of thrill some chaps might get from trying to impress the ladies with their machismo ways.

Although the vote was put to the full council and Smyth actually had cross party support, not one lady member voted for him to remain in chamber.

Naturally when Smyth was given his marching orders...

 

Nicholson, a local low rent landlord and erstwhile leader of the Labour group flapped his arms, squawked about a bit and left in a hissy fit.

 

The remaining members of the Labour Party and the rent-a-mob glee club they invite to council meetings. Were nonplussed and did what comes naturally to such sorts.

FMQ's November 19th 2009

The failure of meritocracy, as explained by the Parkinson-Peter Principle: 

1. Work expands to fill the time allotted to it. 

2. In a hierarchy, every competent employee is promoted until he reaches a level of incompetence. 

3. Over time, all positions thus fill up with incompetent people. 

4. Incompetence expands to fill all positions in meritocratic systems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When did the Scottish Unionists give up on Scotland?

I managed to attend a bit of 'Tedfest' at Glasgow University this weekend. 

TedFest was a day of celebration for retiring Professor of Scottish history Ted Cowan, whose career has seen him inspire students and historians around the world. At close of day, Ted summed up the days papers presented by a broad range of academics and covering topics as diverse as, Ken Simpson's 'Flyte Club: The Scottish Tradition of Verbal Assault' through to Jenny Wormald's, 'If only the English hadn't been there, a solution to Ireland, 1603-1607.


When he was discussing Richard Finlay's,  'English Party Politics and the Union of 1707', Ted paused and said, "I've always wondered when the Scottish unionists stopped believing in Scotland?" 


This struck a chord with me. At what point did the Scottish Unionists give up on Scotland? Each of the Unionist parties at one time or another through all of their histories have backed 'Home Rule' - Independence lite...so why today are they so vehemently opposed to the normalcy of a small country wishing to end a bankrupt union and revert to being in charge of it's own affairs. What happened in the past 100 years that let our fellow Scots decide that Scotland wasn't worth the effort?


Matt O'Neill's poem below, maybe goes part of the way to answering the question. 

"The Unionists" by Matt O'Neill

Are you the man ah'm lookin' for - the proud, unconquered Scot?
The man who hauds his heid up high regaredless o' his lot?
D' ye believe in "Wha daur mess wi' me?" The Declaration o' Arbroath?
If ye'r country wis in danger, wid ye rise tae swear that Oath?

Does ye'r heart fair swell wi' pride when the piper fill the bag,
or when ye see the Saltire or the Lion Rampant flag?
Dae ye raide a glass in honour tae oor heroes o' the past
who fought tae win oor liberty an' defend it tae the last?

If ye answer "Aye" tae aw these things, ye might jist be the man -
but dae ye know abbot oor history since the Union began?
There's maybe things ye dinnae know that should be brought tae mind;
some pointed facts - the battleaxe - tae cut the ties that bind.

For the past three-hundred years we've aw been subject tae the south;
cosseted an' humoured, tricked along by slight o' mouth.
Noo we're Anglicised, institutionalised, absorbed intae their state -
did ye never wonder why that is? Did we really earn this fate?

The truth is aye, it's aw oor fault, we did it tae oorsel's.
We didnae pay attention while the fly-men wove their spells.
We've lost oor independence, oor honour an' oor pride,
by handin' power tae Unionists who court the ither side.

For centuries the English tried tae drive us tae defeat;
they won some an' they lost some - but they never had us beat.
Then the Union took oor rights away, wi' the help o' traitor -Scots,
an' the Unionists have held us since while London calls the shots.

For years oor Scottish history wis "discouraged" in oor schools -
a policy o' dumbin'-doon tae turn us intae fools.
The teachers taught o' Hastings, King John n' Runnymeade,
while oor weak-kneed Scottish Unionists thought no' tae intercede.

When Thatcher harried Scotland, her war went unopposed;
oor Unionists, they aw stood back while industry wis closed.
They muttered fae the shadows, but widnae brave the light,
their jobs were too important tae be riskin' in a fight.

How can they be proud Scots when England tells them how tae act?
Ye cannae serve two masters - it's a plain an' simple fact.
Oor parliament in Holyrood wis wrung fae them through fear -
the fear that we wid break away - wi' Independence near.

When the Unionists rule in Holyrood, they're no' concerned wi' you;
they make it nae mair than a branch o' the Westminster HQ.
Aye, it's business there as usual - busy arguin' the toss -
but when somethin' major comes along, they check it wi' the boss.

The lies they've spread, the fear they've bred, tae keep the Union hail;
like border guards an' passports - lies that still prevail.
They lie, come Independence, we'll be livin' hand-tae-mouth,
an' oor kin will be like foreigners if they're livin' in the south.

They'll smile at ye sincerely, they'll gie ye'r haun a shake,
they'll warn that Independence could be Scotland's big mistake.
But jist remember how they think, the surest antidote -
it's England before Scotland, an' themsel's that they promote.

There's nae end tae their treachery, nae end tae their lies,
nae end tae the depths they'll stoop tae keep their Union ties.
They'll sell themsel's for coppers, an' their nation cheaper still,
they'll infect ye wi' their cowardice an' shackle ye'r free-will.

So when next time ye go tae vote, remember who tae blame,
the Unionists are waitin' for ye, confident ye're tame.
Remember that ye're jist a pawn in their bogus bon accord;
so become the proudest Scotsman - an' put them tae the sword!

Danger, danger, warning, alert!!! Possibly the most boring blawg post ever ahead. You have been warned.

Planning appeals. 

A phrase so dull, that tears of genuine ennui are gathering in the very ducts of mine own eyes as I type this. 

However, before I hyper yawn and unexpectedly swallow my own head, let me say the following. The Scottish government stuck out a run-of-the-mill, rather staid, in fact utterly dull, press release about the planning and appeals process this morning.

BBC Scotland, and STV ran it, nobody else can be bothered, cause it's like planning innit...

On closer inspection, I noticed it contained the following news.

"In the last six months, more than 80 per cent of written planning appeals were dealt with within 12 weeks. This compares to 27 per cent in the year 2008-09, and only six per cent in 2007/08."

So the process of appealing against planning decisions being dealt within three months has grown from from 6% to 80% in a two year period.

The exact figures are as follows:

Seven per cent of written planning appeals were dealt with within 12 weeks in 2004/5, 2005/6, 2006/7 and six per cent in 2007/08. 

So in the SNP's first year of Government they woefully failed to maintain the consistent 7% standard set by the previous Lib-Dem-Lab Scottish Executive... But somehow, in answer to the prayers and offerings of first children from developers around the country, they managed to improve the performance by 74%!


David Lonsdale, assistant director of CBI Scotland, described this phenomenal piece of good news for his members in the construction industry as, "an encouraging step." 

Obviously CBI Scotland don't want to get anyone's hopes up, by suggesting that a 76% improvement in a key economic factor is anything more than an 'encouraging step'. The possibility that this government might, maybe, perhaps be having a positive effect on the vast, dead hand of bureaucracy that blights our civil service, is something the CBI do not actively encourage. 


Planning, the rock and roll of local bureacracy. 


Told you it was boring. 


So, now that it's already half past November and people have started receiving Christmas cards....here's a bit of a treat for the ladies who've been complaining about the number of nubile girlies pictorially illustrated on this here blawg. 

An anonymous source has sent me a photograph of my dear chumrade Conan the Librarian, who shed over half his body weight after a trip to a local waxing salon, and now presents as a much more respectable Santa.

Apologies Prof Devine. ....separated at birth?

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, start all over again.

Peoples of Glasgow North East, press silver in my palm, I predict your future.

Well, since a plethora of professional pontificators are about to tell us who's going to win Glasgow North East, I thought I'd join in and gaze longingly into the orbs above and predict the winner and losers.

But first, some statistics about the constituency.
 

School leavers with no qualifications - 300 per cent higher than the Scottish average.

Teenage pregnancies – 60 per cent higher

Deaths from lung cancer – 94 per cent higher

Heart disease – 40 per cent higher

Folk on income support – 130 per cent higher than the national average

Unemployment rate – 140 per cent higher. 


So, the man or woman who is going to tackle this problem has a mighty task on their hands. He/she will be a skilled negotiator, only in politics to help people, adept at fighting crises after crises, capable of turning teen pregnancy statistics into chaste kisses behind smart bus shelters, able to educate an underclass and produce a workforce, fit and raring to face the challenge ahead.


Through the mists of time, my swirly globe rumbles and grumbles, images appear fleetingly.

A tall man, an old hippy chic, a dashing young lesbian and latterly a little feller with a home made haircut all swirl around in my globe. 


Until 

There it is, a figure emerges through the fog and darkness, shuffling towards the light of a cash machine. He's wearing some sort of bling and what looks like a dead animal thrown across his shoulders.

Yes, dear hearts the winner of Glasgow North East by-election is none other than our old friend, the former speaker of the House of Commons and one time right wing shop floor socialist...the Honourable Baron Michael Martin of Springburn, of Port Dundas in the City of Glasgow.

A surprise victory?

Not really, after all he entered the House of Commons exactly thirty years ago, and has become the foremost practitioner of filling his boots. 

Why these past nine years since he replaced the estimable Labour MP Betty Boothroyd have found him as happy as a pig in ozone friendly shit. He's grabbed, grasped and empire built, his constituents have died, become addicted, been incarcerated, lived through dire poverty and ignorance. All hail the pig swiller extraordinaire who got off with it.



Oh and the wee boy who lives with his mum and dad, but doesn't, will be the next Glasgow North East MP. 

As effective as the last Labour monkey to wear the red rosette, he might have to make do with talking to mum and dad every night on the tellybone, when he 'moves' to ThatLondon, although I suspect he might be back home for good next summer. 

He has to win the crystal ball has spoken. His party are defending a majority of over 10,000 votes, they've added thousands of postal votes, their friends dominate just about every newspaper and media outlet in Scotland and they've got Sir Awex Ferguson on their side, how could they not win?




The losers? The people of Glasgow North East and Scotland.

School leavers with no qualifications - 300 per cent higher than the Scottish average.

Teenage pregnancies – 60 per cent higher

Deaths from lung cancer – 94 per cent higher

Heart disease – 40 per cent higher

Folk on income support – 130 per cent higher than the national average

Unemployment rate – 140 per cent higher. 

Because he's worth it.

Yesterday's Sunday Times had the mother of all stooshies, when TV presenter Neil Oliver responded to Professor Tom Devine's criticism of the BBC Scotland series A History of Scotland.

Professor Tom derided the programme as 'fatally flawed',  'profoundly disappointing' and resembling a 'mediocre B-movie'.

Former archaeology student and local newspaper reporter Oliver responded that he was not offended by the personal criticism aimed at him,he then rather bizarrely goes on at great length to say:

“I could not be less interested in what a plump old man thinks about my physical appearance... His thoughts won’t distract me for more than a nanosecond. To go on at greater length would be like hunting a domesticated cow with a high-powered rifle and a telescopic sight. I’m just not inclined to torment him further.” 

You'll note the hirsute, hunk Oliver made no reference to any of the substantive criticisms Devine levelled at the programme. Devine, who is head of the school of history, classics and archaeology at Edinburgh university, was instead dismissed as as a “fool” with a narrow knowledge of Scottish history.


Anyone who has watched the programme through gritted teeth as yet another goblet of wine falls in slow motion across the flagstones, like an outcut from an Adam Ant video, or has bitten their tongue as a hoisted dagger is seen glinting aloft prior to being driven between the shoulders of a Mediaeval Iron Maiden fan, may find themselves agreeing with Prof Devine that this is history lite for mouth breathers. 

The programme's target audience seems to consist of those who find great appeal in watching 'star' Oliver not only walk backwards, but talk to camera at the same time. Naturally, the money shot for the TV audience is a combination of Oliver gently handling some artefact of Scottish history whilst delicately brushing aside a strand of his luxurious hair from his manly brow. 

Grown women have been known to collapse on DFS sofas throughout the land cusping their lady bits in orgiastic paroxysms of delight as the Neil, smoulders down the lens into the very heart of their damp gussets.


Unfortunately, Mr Oliver was at University with a chum of mine who actually made it in the cut throat world of 'Indiana Jones and the Search for a Meaningful Career'... I say unfortunate as he happens to have sent me a photograph of Mr Oliver in his not so hairy days. I leave you gentle reader to decide whether Mr Oliver would be the hair of telly history if he still looked like this...

,

Historic Scotland set lasers to stun.

The New York Times today carries the following story about Scottish expertise helping to preserve one of America's famous iconic landmarks, and scene of my favourite Hitchcock fillums, 'North by Northwest', Mount Rushmore.

Naturally I thought I'd put it here, so that passing strangers might get a chance to read it, because if the Hootsman does cover the story, it'll be portrayed as some form of anti-SNP story... 


Enjoy.


 EDINBURGH — Come April a small team of experts from the Glasgow School of Art and the government heritage entity Historic Scotland will fly to South Dakota at the behest of an organization called CyArk and the United States National Park Service. They will make laser scans and computer models of Mount Rushmore.

Aside from the wee bit of Scottish blood in three of the four enshrined presidents (Lincoln’s the odd man out, in case you’re wondering), there is of course nothing whatsoever Scottish about this most all-American of sites. But cultural expertise transcends national borders. The Scottish team of four or five will spend a few days setting up and moving around their various scanners to capture all of Mount Rushmore’s nooks and crannies, collecting billions of bits of digital information, which will then be brought back here, to be crunched and sorted out by computer.

What results should be the most complete and precise three-dimensional models ever of the site, millions of times more detailed and accurate than the best photographs or films, precise down to the tiniest fraction of a millimeter. 

In an era of computer animation, with gamers navigating virtual universes at the click of a mouse, making laser scans of old monuments may not sound special, but the Scottish team has achieved some unprecedented levels of sophistication with their models. Through scanning, the experts can conjure up what objects looked like ages ago, in effect turning the clock back on ancient sites. They can simulate the effects of climate change, urban encroachment or other natural or man-made disasters on those same sites, peering into the future. 

Given a proposal for a new building in a city like Edinburgh, they can also create virtual realities, almost microscopically accurate, so viewers might see what the building looks like from all angles in the place where it’s intended to go, including the shadows it might cast at different times of day. 

The technology isn’t brand new or unique to Scotland, but the Glasgow team is on its cultural front line. Douglas Pritchard, a Canadian-born architect by training, is the wizard behind the Digital Design Studio at the art school. He heads the Scottish laser expedition with David Mitchell, director of Historic Scotland’s Technical Conservation Group. Describing how fast laser modeling has progressed and how far it might soon go, Mr. Pritchard said, “We’re no longer a million miles from the ‘Star Trek’ holodeck.”
He was perfectly serious. 

The cultural implications of the technology are big, as are the political ones for Scotland, which, via the country’s culture minister, Michael Russell, has latched on to the laser team’s work.
It was about three years ago that Mr. Pritchard’s art school group began surveying a swath of the center of Glasgow, along the River Clyde, creating 3-D digital representations of some 1,400 buildings and dozens of streetscapes. They caught the attention of Mr. Mitchell, who enlisted Mr. Pritchard to scan a decaying iron bridge in Dundee, which was nearly impossible to survey with much accuracy except by laser. 

The bridge project led to scans of Stirling Castle and Rosslyn Chapel, the 15th-century Gothic fancy to which “The Da Vinci Code” has lately brought swarms of conspiracy-minded tourists. One of them was a man who tried one day to take a sledgehammer to the so-called Apprentice Pillar, convinced that the Holy Grail was hidden inside it. 

No harm done, but the event illustrated, as Mr. Mitchell noted, why scans are necessary. “Remember Windsor?” he asked, referring to the fire in 1992 that burned parts of the British royal castle. “If restorers had had laser scans back then, they could have rebuilt everything to within three millimeters of accuracy, but instead they had to rely on conjecture from photographs.” He noted the more recent case of the Buddhas in Afghanistan that the Taliban blew up in 2001. 

The basic principle behind the laser technology is simple: A box, with a laser inside, sits on a tripod; as the box slowly rotates 360 degrees, the laser, moving up and down, bounces its beam off whatever is solid in front of it. In so doing, it registers some 50,000 points in space every second. Traditional surveyors might produce a couple of hundred measurements a day, prone to subjectivity and human error. Lasers collect millions of measurements per hour. A scanner can even identify certain materials, determining whether something is, say, made of glass or stone. 

Aerial lasers and a hand-held version operate the same way. Combined, they can bring to life as 3-D images entire cities or a mountainside, like Mount Rushmore’s. 

This spring, at a digital-documentation conference in Glasgow, Mr. Russell met with Ben Kacyra, the American engineer and inventor of the scanner. Partly because of what had happened to the Buddhas in Afghanistan, Mr. Kacyra had established the nonprofit CyArk to compile scans of 500 Unesco World Heritage sites around the globe. 

The Scottish crew was signed up to scan for CyArk five Scottish World Heritage sites (the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh; Neolithic Orkney; the island of St. Kilda; New Lanark; and the Antonine Wall, an ancient Roman ruin) as well as five other sites. Having been already in touch with the Park Service about Mount Rushmore, CyArk enlisted the team to start there. 

What are the big cultural implications? For starters, Mr. Pritchard talked about “a new kind of empowerment.” He was referring to the prospect of using virtual-reality models to allow the public to judge all sorts of proposed urban plans. The drawings and computer simulations long cooked up by developers and architects will be replaced by more detailed, easier-to-comprehend, more objective views, in essence democratizing knowledge. 

The benefits of storing and distributing state-of-the-art views of the world’s most precious cultural sites at low cost (the annual budget for the Scottish team is under a half-million dollars) are obvious. 

By way of example Mr. Pritchard showed off on his laptop a ruined Victorian monument, Paisley Fountain. It was returned in virtual guise to its original lacquered green sheen, thanks to some paint scraping taken by Scottish restorers. When combined with the laser scans, the scrapings proved what the surface of the fountain first looked like. Nobody had imagined it to have been so shiny. “But,” as Mr. Pritchard said, “technology doesn’t lie.”

Then he clicked on a virtual model of a Maori canoe, bought in pieces not long ago by the National Museum of Scotland and never assembled. Laser scans proved it never could be: the pieces turned out not to belong together. 

The demonstration pointed toward some bright, gleaming, globalized frontier of cultural information-sharing and progress, albeit curiously backward-glancing. In London at the moment there happens to be an exhibition of paintings by the German-born British artist Frank Auerbach from the 1950s and early ’60s, marvelous pictures that show the city rebuilding as if from scratch after the war. 

Back then, death and destruction held out for midcentury Modernists the prospect of a new urbanism, a fresh start born of loss and industrial advances. 

That was half a century ago. 

The new cutting edge of laser technology offers instead a means to preserve and restore whole cities exactly as they once were. It promises a world kept as if in amber. 

A virtual past that never dies.



Set to Stun

"Something fishy over SNP election hopeful who was born in two places..." Labour reaches new low.

The Duke of Wellington, pictured above, sporting his now familiar traffic cone outside Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art, the GOMA, was the subject of much ridicule for being the most English of Englishmen.

Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish liberator, who campaigned for Catholic emancipation, the right for Catholics to sit in the Houses of Parliament and for the Independence of Ireland was the man whose quote about Wellington's birthplace has often been misattributed to the Duke himself.

O'Connell said, " The poor old Duke! What shall I say of him? To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse."  

Which brings me to the latest super duper smart campaigning tool from the Labour party, fighting for their safest seat in Scotland. At no great expense, the labour party have produced and printed 30,000 leaflets which will be slithering through letterboxes throughout the constituency over the next couple of days. 

This leaflet does not point out what great things Willie Bain will be doing as their Labour MP in Parliament, it doesn't comment on the fact that he's completely at odds with the Labour party over his support of the striking posties, nor that he opposes privatisation of the Royal Mail, nor does it highlight his slamming of Glasgow's Labour Council policy of school closures as 'the wrong decision'.

Instead it accuses the SNP candidate, David Kerr, of being a big, fat, smelly liar over his place of birth.  No doubt, the assertion being that if Kerr lied about that, he'd eat your children and defecate in the Pope's Mitre whilst flagellating himself with the latest Dan Brown tome.


Kerr made the mistake of claiming to have been born in the constituency. His parents may have lived in Shettleston, his mother may have carried him for nine months in Shettleston, he may well have returned to the family home, in Shettleston, a few days after popping into this brave new world. However, the fact remains that he was born in a maternity hospital on the South side of Glasgow, not Shettleston. In the eyes of Labour this, obviously, like the Duke of Wellington, does not make him either a horse or Shettlestonian.




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Rather than regurgitate all the despairing facts on life in this constituency, have a gander below and wallow in the poverty, ill health, lack of education and unemployment statistics.

Michael Martin left this constituency in a state befitting some third world shit hole, Willie Bain was his agent and Labour party secretary. 

Say hello to my leetle friend.

It appears that the recurring theme of gangsters in Glasgow has reared its ugly head yet again.

SNP Councillor Billy McAllister had written to Labour Provost Bob Winter asking for a debate on a council motion on organised crime in the city.

The Lord Provost has refused the debate citing that 'he will decide all matters of order, competence and relevence.'

Naturally it is within his authority to grant of deny motions to council business, however I can't quite get my head around why Glasgow city council wouldn't want to at least debate this obvious problem. 

We know of the near cult status some of these people accrue and the plethora of hagiographies that climb the bestseller's list, perhaps they give the reader some vicarious thrill to read about thugs shooting each other up the arse with shotguns. All the same, surely it's the responsibility of every elected politician to stand up to the gangsters, dealers and thugs that control huge swathes of Scotland.

Willie Bain, the Labour PPC has deemed that the good folk of Glasgow North East are not interested in the root causes of organised crime and are only interested in locking up kids caught carrying knives. I suspect that Labour have read the runes wrong, failure to address one of the core problems in the constituency could have a disastrous effect on Labours ability to hold on to their massive majority. Failure to not even discuss or recognise the problem, naturally, gives carte blanche, to that particular breed of unemployed Labourers, tanning salon owners, security bosses and taxi drivers with second homes in Spain. 

One armed bandit front bench reshuffle.

Walking charisma void Iain Gray and erstwhile leader of the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament, has reshuffled his dynamic front bench team, with an even more err dynamicer team.


In a move akin to juggling deckchairs on the Titanic, Mr Gray's attempts to spice up his team are pretty difficult to satirise.

For example, noted human vacuum, Jackie the Hutt replaces Cathydoll Jamieson as party health spokesperson. No doubt this has less to do with her renowned physical appearance and more to do with the fact that she gurned loudest and longest about the nine clostridium difficile deaths deaths at the Vale of Leven hospital, which happened between December 2007 and June 2008 and were entirely Nicola Sturgeon's fault, because obviously viruses become stronger under an SNP government.

Cathydoll moves to housing and regeneration, which is pretty laughable given her constituency suffers from crap housing stock and is so weighted down by the dead hand of Labour that regeneration has little chance of success.

Other nova bright moves are  Rhona Brankin stepping down as education spokeswoman for family reasons. To replaced by Clydebank and Milngavie MSP Des McNulty. 

Former Health minister Andy Kerr has more burdens added to his already poorly handled finance and economy remit.

Hamilton North and Bellshill MSP Michael McMahon becomes local government spokesman.

John Park has been dumped from his economy and skills role and has been handed the poisoned chalice of elections and campaign portfolio, he still gets to keep his seat in the shadow cabinet. 

There is still no place in the front bench team for the venerable Baron George Foulkes von Cumnock. A vote winner if ever there was one. 

This is the last roll of the dice, the last tug on the puggy machine for Gray, if Labour lose Glasgow North East, you can bet your bottom dollar Gray will get it in the neck from Spud Murphy, Darling and Broon himself. The oddest fact to emerge from the whole murky reshuffle is that it takes 27 Labour MSP's to shadow an SNP Ministerial team of 16 - some 60 percent of the the entire labour Parliamentary group! Go figure.

No Mean City Ya Bassa

Colour me gob smacked that the Express, is the first Scottish paper to flag up the actual genuine bona fide problem that impacts on life in Glasgow North East more than almost anything else.


Violence, drug dealing, addiction, theft, prostitution and money laundering can all be lain at the feet of a few families in the constituency, Glasgow's very own Soprano's, the gangster families.

Bada bing

'One man on a mission to clean up this corner of the city is local councillor Billy McAllister, who needed armed police protection after he forced the Lyons crime family out of a council-run community centre"

Chirnsyde Community Initiative in Milton is now well known as the place where Cllr McAllister took on the Lyons family and managed to evict them from controlling the centre which had received a quarter of a million pounds of Glasgow City Council funding and was known to be the place to score the finest drugs known to Milton.


Gangsters be here.

Mr Lyon's the caretaker of the above centre on £18,000 a year had £63,000 in cash confiscated from his home, he claimed it belonged to an associate of his son... 

 Billy McAllister, the SNP’s deputy leader at Glasgow City Council yesterday claimed Labour has not done enough to tackle the problem.

He said: “Why am I the only councillor in this whole city raising the issue of organised crime?

“Surveys come back saying crime is the number one concern of residents, but nothing changes.

“I’ve been attacked, my car has been attacked, my house has been attacked,” he added. “Of course I’m in danger but that is no deterrent to standing up for what is right.”

Willie Bain, the Labour candidate underplays the influence of the gangster, insisting that most people in the area are more concerned with low-level street offending.

He said: “Knife crime has been by far the biggest issue and there is growing support by the day for my mandatory sentences for anyone carrying a knife.”

The fact that a culture of crime has been allowed to grow in the East End of Glasgow owes much to the loose hand of Labour which has represented the area at council, Holyrood, Westminster and Europe, since St Mungo was a boy.   

The boy Limmy plays a blinder.

Isle of Man Alive

For those of you unfortunate enough not to receive the joy of Border TV or BBC North West, you may have missed the mild stramash that Alastair Darling has created in the heart of the British Isles, by cutting the Isle of Man's budget by a WHOPPING 24 %.

Labour Chancellor Darling's latest cost cutting exercise threatens the Isle of Man's status as a tax haven and completely undermines its economic viability.

Cutting £140 million out of a budget of £572 means that the Manx Government are in danger of losing their Triple AAA credit rating. The cut according to the Government of Keys is non-negotiable.

The island was the first crown dependency to slash corporation tax to zero for all companies except financial institutions, which pay 10%. 

The zero percent tax rate saw an influx of new business to the island, whose 80,000 inhabitants enjoy one of the highest living standards anywhere. 

The teensy weensy little Isle of Man makes more films per year than the rest of the UK, because of the tax breaks available to production companies. Since this first started the Isle of Man has built up a fully functioning well trained  film workforce. This is now under threat.

What is increasingly interesting is the grumblings of the Manx people talking about Independence. 

The fact that tax exiles like Nigel Mansell, Rick Wakeman, Norman Wisdom (possibly Hovis) and sundry industrialists like John Whittaker the publicity shy property developer billionaire behind plans for the contentious new Hunterston coal power station could  be at the heart of an Independence movement is worthy of a great big guffaw.


Darling boobs again. 

Oops he did it again. 


 

T minus five hours ten minutes.

Some reasons why the BNP should not be on Question Time tonight. 

They have no MEP's,  MP's,  MSP's, Councillors or even community councillors in Scotland. 

They have never saved a single deposit in any electoral contest in Scotland.


So why are BBC Scotland playing Question Time tonight?


BBC Scotland must stand up to BBC London and opt out of this, I suggest they play Schindler's List, which perfectly illustrates what happens when you allow fascists a platform.

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24 Hours after, here we have the BNP take on it. Somehow told you so isn't enough.

3000 new members cry BNP tears.

What this seasons fashionable SNP cyclists should be riding in Glasgow North East.

Following Ms Dugdale's rather odd dig at a renegade SNP supporting cyclist for freewheeling his bicycle along the pavement of a Glasgow street, I feel that the above Saltire bike should be the preferred mode of transport for all lycra clad independence supporters. 

Naturally, if you see someone pedalling the above on the pavement do feel compelled to blog about it or even report them to Strathclyde's finest for breaking the transport laws. Alternatively, try to explain how Michael Martin's former agent can claim to live locally when he works in London.


Mayhaps he pedals from London to Springburn...

Evil Nat mows down innocent pedestrians on bike of death.

Margaret Curran, "I've lived and worked in the East End ma whole life, son."

Culture Smack! Ben Nevis, it's a bit of a hill.

Dearie me, the publishers of Culture Smart! Scotland, are getting it in the neck from some of the tabloids this morning. Their crime?

Ben Nevis is a "biggish hill"  

Loch Ness as a "dull waterway".  

Highlanders don't like pork and eat only porridge and Arbroath smokies for breakfast. 

Protestants are so bigoted they refuse to have anything green in their homes.   

Scots plant rowan trees just to ward off witches.  
 
We regard 'fairies as guide neighbours'   

Scotland was once ruled by the 'Steward' dynasty

We're noted for our rudeness and blunt ways, 'To the unprepared their bluntness may seem downright rude. But be warned that these same forthright people can be very touchy and extremely easily offended if you speak to them in the same vein.'

Shetlands Viking pageant is 'Up  Helly Ya' bass

Robert Burns had 'nothing much to say about religion.'  

The author a London based historian and aptly named John Scotney has apologised. His biography reveals an extremely well educated and probably interesting man. All of which beggars the question, what was he thinking of?

The guid guide is sold mostly in the USA and Canada. Personally I'm surprised there is no mention of our cheese eating terrorist appeasing monkeys or our cringe laden unionists supported by the Loyal Orange brotherhood....



http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=74339&view=full_sptlght

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-1221402/Scots-rude-Ben-Nevis-just-big-hill-Loch-Ness-dull-according-new-travel-guide.html

 http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2688373/Tourist-guide-brands-Scots-drunken-bigots.html

Incapability Brown

Just what size of a lawn does Gordon Brown have if he spends £12,000 a year on gardening?

In days gone by when a chap made a social faux pas, you know the sort of thing; wore his fob in the wrong waistcoat pocket, invested the family loot in a dodgy railroad or was caught buggering the under butler, the only recourse to infamy was either an insufferable life in exile amongst Johnny foreigner, or a short stroll into an empty room with a loaded service revolver.

Somehow I fear James Gordon Brown lacks the intestinal fortitude for either action....

Come ahead if you think you're hard enough. You're going to get your fucking head kicked in etcetera

These were the delightful images MSP's, Civil Servants, Members of the Public and the viewing audience of dozens of political anoraks watching on BBC Parliament witnessed yesterday, when Iain Gray 'challenged' First Minister Alex Salmond to a debate on Scotland's future on St Andrew's day.


Mr Gray a former secondary school teacher will quite naturally have seen the two handed 'come ahead' gesture many times in the playground and at some of the more rambunctious square goes, often seen in the wee small hours of Labour party conferences boozing dens and naturally amongst combatants in our national sport of street fighting.I was fortunate enough to be in the Chamber and in the canteen after Iain Gray's finest moment. Heads slumped among the thinking Labour MSP's, the writing is definitely on the wall. Iain Grey will no doubt be challenged between the Glasgow by-election and Christmas.

Who will replace him as Leader Labour in the Scottish Parliament?