Conversation overheard between two beggars in Edinburgh, “ye can get Buckfast in cans noo ye ken!” For our foreign and our more innocent readers, this roughly translates as ‘did you know that it is possible to purchase Buckfast (a highly acoholic ‘tonic’ wine) in cans now?’ I still don’t quite Read more…
Like villages the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, the tiny agricultural hamlet of Craigton of Airlie has its war memorial commemorating the men of the parish who fell in the 1914-1918 war. Appallingly, for a cluster of houses that barely registers on Google Maps, this vanishingly small community Read more…
Today is the 100th anniversary of the commencement of the conflict known, in its immediate aftermath, as ‘the Great War’ and, following the second great convulsion in Europe, as ‘the First World War’. The causes of this tragic spasm in world history has kept historians in gainful employment ever since: Read more…
And so, the parliament of the United Kingdom has voted in favour of marriage between same-sex couples. That’s that then … Or is it. It is beyond dispute that there are aspects of our lives that are beyond the control of our legislators. If, for example, they voted that never Read more…
There are few attributes more likely to consign you to the social sin bin, in Western society at any rate, than an inability to laugh at a joke made at your expense. Christians, in particular, appear very reluctant to look po-faced regardless of how hurtful or blasphemous a wisecrack has Read more…
Well, Happy New Year everyone! Despite the holiday period I have been absolutely blogless. Not, I hasten to add, through extreme laziness – well, perhaps slightly due to that. Mostly, it is because I haven’t had a minute to collect my thoughts. Now that I am commuting again, I am Read more…
Recent interventions by senior politicians in the decisions of the established religious organisations in the UK are beginning to give Christians, and others, cause for serious alarm. Even those of us who do not adhere to traditions that involve ecclesiastical law and hierarchies cannot but be concerned at the freedom Read more…
Edinburgh’s Christmas fair ground and German market are being constructed in Princes Street East gardens. I couldn’t help but notice the incongruity of the statue of David Livingston standing with an outstretched Bible while the chair-o-plane is carefully set out to ensure that the flying chairs don’t take his head Read more…
Anyone who consumes news output from the BBC in any format at all cannot fail to have noticed that all is not well at Auntie Beeb’s place. The news website is screaming, “BBC needs ‘radical overhaul’”, while Eddie Mair is asking whether Newsnight is “toast” and the Director General resigns Read more…
Following somewhat in the vein of my last post, there was an interesting discussion yesterday on BBC Radio4 between an author of romantic fiction and a computer programmer. The latter has developed software that can produce readable works of prose and poetry using a complex mathematical algorithm. One of the Read more…