The Rampant Scotland Newsletter - your weekly insight into what has been happening in Scotland, snipped from the Scottish media, for Scots in Scotland and abroad, bringing you news, events plus a Scottish magazine section. Printed with 100% recycled electrons.
Previous editions of this Newsletter are available in the Archive and the Index to the other pages of the Rampant Scotland site is available here.
The Scottish Snippets Newsletter in its original format began in April 1997 and continued in an unbroken series for 591 issues. Although no longer produced in that format there is now a regular update on the new and updated pages on the Rampant Scotland site and also "Scottie's Diary" on an intermittent basis, To receive this, kust send an e-mail to Scottie with "Subscribe Newsletter" in the subject line.
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Historical Affairs - Topical Items from Scotland's Past
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The "Magazine" section includes songs/poems of Scotland, Scottish humour and brief descriptions of Scottish Culture items added recently to the Rampant Scotland Website - with a link to the page where you can find the full feature, if you find the subject of interest to you.
The Mormond Braes (or Hills) are three miles north-east of Strichen in Aberdeenshire. Many a jilted lover has been encouraged to try again with the words "There's many more fish in the sea". Certainly this Aberdeenshire lass seems to think she'll bounce back quickly! Mormond Braes As I went doon to Strichen toon,
Chorus
There's many a horse has snappert an' fa'en
Chorus There's as good fish into the sea,
Chorus So I'll go doon to Strichen toon,
Chorus Meaning of unusual words:
There's Water In It Already |
Where else would you like to go in Scotland?
During a visit to Dublin to see for himself the impact of a ban on smoking in restaurants and bars and other buildings open to the public, First Minister Jack McConnell said that he was more convinced now that an all-out ban was enforceable, practical and desirable. He had thought earlier that a less ambitious plan should be pursued, which would have allowed bars to continue to allow smoking if they wanted to. There is an ongoing "public consultation exercise" in Scotland which is due to end later this year. Legislation could be enacted next year, but the Irish government advised implementing the change in the spring - when forcing people to go outside to smoke had less of an impact. An announcement is now likely to be made by Christmas.
As expected, Alex Salmond, who resigned as leader of the Scottish National Party four years ago, won the latest leadership contest by a substantial margin this week, as he sought to had back to the Scottish parliament. He won 76% of the vote and his choice as deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, was also well ahead of her rivals. Ms Sturgeon will lead the party in the Scottish parliament until the next election as Mr Salmond is currently a Member of the UK parliament in London.
Across the country, the Royal Mail failed to meet any of its 15 service performance targets in the three months to the end of June. In some parts of the country, the picture is particularly bad, however. The target for first class deliveries being made the day after posting is 96% but in May only 90.9% of letters arrived in Glasgow on time and in July the figure plummeted to just 80% (the worst in the UK) . But in Kirkcaldy, the posties hit the 96% target in July and even Kirkwall in the Orkney islands in the far north achieved 83.5%. Since the modernisation programme in the Royal Mail organisation began, 30,000 staff have lost their jobs and the company is often having to rely on agency and casual staff. Instead of two morning deliveries there is now only one and that can be at any time up until lunchtime.
It sounded so wonderful when it was announced this week that the Edinburgh International Film Festival was planning a £20 million circular, five-cinema complex with a roof-top restaurant in the capital's Festival Square. Sir Sean Connery had agreed that his name would be used for the new Filmhouse as he believed that the showpiece building would be of great value to the city where he was born. But it looks as though nobody thought to consult anybody. least of all the Sheraton Grand Hotel, which overlooks Festival Square. When the hotel management saw artists' impressions of the space-age building on their doorstep, they vowed to fight the destruction of what they described the classic view from their five-star hotel. They are horrified at the idea of slapping a large building in the centre of a public square, blocking the line of sight between the hotel and the Usher Hall and Edinburgh Castle. The leader of Edinburgh City Council was also aghast and says that a dialogue needs to be started to decide on the right location.
Car parking at major hospitals is always a problem, particularly for visitors and out-patients. In an attempt to alleviate the problem at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, a new multi-storey car park is being built. However, the site is on part of the existing car park and so half of the spaces have been lost. This has resulted in long queues, with many patients, some of whom are disabled and cannot park away from the building, turning up late for appointments as they get trapped in long lines of cars waiting to gain entry. Even staff are being affected - they are banned from using the car park and are having to find spaces in public car parks some distance from the Royal. One consultant (who asked not to be named) now has a 15-minute walk each way and claims that this means he spends 30 minutes a day less in the hospital - despite the hospital management laying on a shuttle service of buses from large public car parks and main railway stations. 
The latest Civil Aviation Statistics have confirmed that budget airline Ryanair, based in Dublin, carried the most international passengers to and from Scotland during 2003 - by a wide margin. Using Prestwick airport in Ayrshire as their main Scottish base, Ryanair carried 1.12 million international passengers, 50% more than the second biggest airline, KLM. British Airways was a poor fourth, which is hardly surprising as BA only flies to Paris from Scotland, while Ryanair currently operates 15 daily international flights from Scotland. And Ryanair is growing fast - this week it announced another four routes to the continent - Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Pisa and Murcia (Spain).
Protest groups are trying to block plans to build 3,000 additional houses over the next ten years in the Scottish Borders. The plan is to create a new "commuter village" on 300 hectares of open countryside at Huntlyburn, near Melrose, or in the St Boswells area. Scottish Borders Council is predicting an influx of Edinburgh commuters, who are being pushed out due to high property prices in the Capital. Others may be attracted by the prospect of passenger train services being restored to the area by 2008. However, objectors say that the influx of hundreds of commuters will produce little economic gain for the Borders and would "be the end of the Tweed valley as we know it." 
Alasdair Sutherland, an Australian wine grower, who emigrated from Scotland with his parents when he was 10-years-old, has struck a deal with Wine Importers Edinburgh and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland. He is donating 20% of the price of every case of his Capercaillie Wine sold in Scotland to help to save the country's largest variety of grouse. The vineyard was named after the capercaillie nine years ago after Mr Sutherland read about the endangered species in the Scottish Field magazine. Two years ago, on a visit to Scotland, he came up with the idea of contributing to its conservation, following in the footsteps of another wine grower donating a percentage of its takings from one of its products to save the koala. The capercaillie's serious decline seems to have been arrested, with the latest survey showing that there were now 2,000 birds in Scotland, but it is still not out of the woods yet. The assistance from the wine deal has allowed the RSPB to recruit an assistant conservation officer to work with landowners and forestry companies to protect the environment in Speyside, Moray and Perthshire where the bird survives.
When the Scottish Ambulance Service announced that the preferred bidder for the air ambulance service to the northern and western isles was Gama Aviation, there were immediate concerns amongst islanders that it could impact on the commercial services of the existing provider, Loganair. Gama will operate two helicopters from Glasgow and Inverness, specially equipped helicopter in Shetland and fixed wing aircraft from Glasgow and Aberdeen. But Loganair has fixed-wing aircraft in Orkney and Shetland which double up on inter-island commercial flights, when not used as an air ambulance. If they lose the air ambulance contract (after 37 years) these flights could be at risk as they may no longer be viable.
A delegation from the Texas city of Houston was in Aberdeen this week to mark the 25th anniversary of the twinning of the two cities. The northern town is hardly a "twin" of the huge Texas metropolis, but the basis of the link was the black gold of oil. In 1979 Aberdeen was looking forward to a bright future of oil exploration and development in the North Sea and certainly the oil industry has fuelled the close relationship, with expertise and personnel flowing in both directions. A commemorative plaque was unveiled in Aberdeen's winter gardens to mark the silver jubilee and some of the delegation from Texas were present at the original signing of the twinning agreement all those years ago.
After the battering from heavy rain, there had been fears that the grain harvest this year would be badly affected. While it appears that many crops have been ruined in England, with wheat turning black in the fields, the picture in Scotland has turned out to be not quite as bad as expected. The important barley crop, in particular, is in reasonable shape according to the distilling giant Diageo. Grain size is said to be good although inevitably moisture content is high - 24% in some areas - and it will take time and expensive fuel to dry it out to acceptable levels. One problem in the last week is that there has been a shortage of harvesting equipment as farmers all try to make the best use of the better weather at the same time.
A better week from the point of view of sunshine and low rainfall. Aberdeen had over 13 hours of sunshine on Wednesday and both Edinburgh and Glasgow had over ten hours of sunshine on Monday. The end of the week was not so bright, however, with more cloud and some showers on Thursday and Friday over a large part of the country. Temperatures are holding up well for the time of year with Glasgow and Edinburgh reaching 19C (66F) on Wednesday. The outlook for next week is for high pressure drawing in some warm air from Europe and for a fair amount of sunshine and temperatures around 20/21C (68/70F).
The Victoria Cross awarded to an Edinburgh-born army major is to be auctioned later this month and is expected to sell for up to £100,000. The country's highest military honour for bravery was won by John Cook in Afghanistan in 1878 when his impetuous charge broke up an enemy force and he saved a fellow officer's life by wrestling his attacker to the ground. After further acts of bravery in Afghanistan, Cook was mortally wounded in a battle at Sherpur a year later.
The record wet weather in August may have helped to drive people into the Edinburgh Fringe performances rather than keep them away, but whatever the reason, there were 1,251,997 tickets sold for the three-week festival, an increase of 5.6% on 2003. This year, around 44% of ticket sales were via the Internet. The weather did affect the atmosphere, with less of a "buzz" around the city, perhaps due to a reduction in the number of street performances. Some venues reported significant increases - the Stand Comedy Club experienced a rise of over 38% compared to 2003.
Will Adamsdale has won the prestigious Perrier Comedy Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, beating another 200 contenders for the title. Many of the other shows star stand-up comics but Adamsdale was performing in what has been described as "a glimpse of a man on the edge and a satire on the world of self-help and corporate jargon." Featuring the teachings of his alter ego (American motivational speaker Chris John Jackson), it started out as a trial-run at the Fringe but went on to popular and critical acclaim.
With its long history, it is perhaps not surprising that the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow has survived on a diet of family variety shows. But this summer's offering entitled "A Kick Up the Eighties" with stars (well, they are well known in Scotland) such as The Krankies, Bucks Fizz, Stu Francis and a magic act named The Art of Illusion, has had low numbers turning up to see the show. The theatre has a seating capacity of 1450 and has been playing to around 400 people in weeknights and 700 at weekends. The management are now wondering whether expensive variety shows have at last reached the end of the road, even in Glasgow. The theatre claims that those who have seen the show appear to have enjoyed it, but the audience has tended to be the older generation. Fortunately the theatre has had a good year so far, putting on comedy shows, so there is no financial crisis.
Celtic won the first of this season's clashes with rivals Rangers by the slimmest of margins last Sunday, the only goal being scored by Celtic's Alan Thomson in the 85th minute. But that was the 7th consecutive win by Celtic over Rangers and gave the Parkhead side a 5 point margin at the top of the Scottish Premier League. That left Rangers in third place, below Aberdeen - the team that ended last season second from the foot of the table. This year, it is Dunfermline currently at the foot of the table, with just one point from four games.
In the week that the Scotland international football (soccer) team slumped to a new low of 67th in the latest Fifa rankings, they faced Spain in a friendly match in Valencia. When Berti Vogts took over as manager in March 2002, Scotland were 51st in the international rankings. They then fell 12 places within six months after crushing losses to France, Nigeria, South Korea and South Africa and the embarrassing 2-2 draw in the Faroe Islands. A 1-0 defeat of Holland helped a bit but that was immediately reversed by a 6-0 loss to the Dutch team. So playing a team like Spain seemed like a match too far - it's twenty years since Scotland last recorded a win against Spain (two goals from Mo Johnstone and another from kenny Dalglish gave Scotland a 3-1 win in front of 74,000 at Hampden Park - those were the days!). In the match on Friday evening, even if the Scotland side did not have the players of the same stature of 20 years ago, they put in a stout performance and scored first - an own goal by a Spanish defender from a corner kick. Spain were a lack-lustre side in the first half (though, to be fair, a number of their star players were on the bench at that stage). With the Scots ahead, Spain threw in some of their better players and levelled the score with a penalty 12 minutes into the second half, after Jose Antonio Reyes had been brought down by Jackie McNamara. But this being a Scotland game, there had to be a certain element of farce and three minutes later the game was halted when the floodlights failed. This was followed by a thunderstorm and the game was eventually abandoned.
David Murray surprised everyone just over two years ago when he stepped down as chairman of Rangers Football Club. After all, he was still the largest shareholder, having bought the club in 1988 (for £8 million), although his holding had ben diluted over the years as he attempted to bring in new finance to the club. He has now bough back some of the shares, taking his ownership back to 86.3%. The club now has debts of around £70 million, to a large extent due to a buying spree for new players in the late 1990s, which failed to produce a financial return. Now that he is back at the helm, he says he will embark on a £57 million rights issue to clear much of the debt and his company, Murray International Holdings Ltd, will underwrite £50 million of the share issue. But the cash injection is to put the club on a firmer financial footing and will not be used to buy new players. Indeed, Murray regrets embarking on the spending spree for players which led to the present situation.
The company which owned the Glenshee and Cairngorm ski centres went into administration earlier this year as a lack of snow in recent winters resulted in a drop in business. Glencoe was sold in June and this week there was relief in Glenshee when it was announced that a group led by the resort's operations manager had reached agreement with the receivers for a management buyout. This will allow the continuation of the skiing operation and an expansion into activities such as quad bikes and go-karting which are not so dependent on the weather.