Long before the coronavirus pandemic I had grown uncomfortable with the traditional handshake greeting. My discomfort only being aggravated by the fact that it was so difficult to avoid. And to forsake. The urge to shake hands on meeting friends and acquaintances or being introduced to new people is almost primal. It is close to … Continue reading Handshake no more
I recently intimated my intention to migrate this blog to a WordPress.org site to give more flexibility - and to avoid the WordPress.com subscription fee. Like so many of my projects, this has come to nothing. I set up the new site without difficulty. But it proved impossible to migrate any of the content. With … Continue reading Still here
That's it! However it was for you, the holiday is over. Unless you celebrate Chinese New Year, of course. In which case you have February 1 to look forward to. I don't. Although it's always a delight to watch the Lantern Festival procession as it passes under the windows of our flat here in Perth. … Continue reading Back to the grind
This article is published at the precise moment of the Winter Solstice - 2021 December 21 15:59. The moment at which winter officially begins. The moment at which the old year - battered and bruised from the impact of events; bowed and buckled under the weight of its history; worn and weary from its 365-day … Continue reading A wish for all seasons
There's a lot of meaning packed into the closing pair of sentences of Kirsty Strickland's piece in The National. Much of it, I strongly suspect, very far from what Kirsty Strickland intended. The penultimate one contains an illogic which would be amusing were it not for the fact that it betrays such a worldview so … Continue reading Look but don’t judge?
Most people, I suspect, find it difficult to think dispassionately about such issues. The acts involved are so unspeakably offensive as to automatically provoke revulsion in anyone with a modicum of human decency. This makes it all but impossible to discuss the kind of predatory behaviour so graphically and disturbingly described by Andrew Tickell without … Continue reading Those who prey
Few would disagree with Ruth Wishart's observation in her Sunday National column that "it's always a mistake to confuse social media with real life" but I have lately begun to suspect that the difference between the two may be rather less than it pleases us to suppose. Ruth goes on to allow that social media … Continue reading Social media and real life
I didn't attend the AUOB rally in Dundee yesterday. While I don't imagine the St John Scotland volunteers were overwhelmed by people suffering the effects of extreme disappointment, I had assured a few people that I would be there so I really should apologise. I don't like letting people down even in what most would … Continue reading A little difficulty
I want Scotland's independence restored as a matter of justice. I need no party's vision of Scotland as an independent nation again to know that restoring our nation's independence is the right thing to do. It is doing the right thing.
Sturgeon hopes that her statement will be seen as a commitment to urgent action. She provides the notion that those blinkered by their idealised perceptions of Sturgeon can take and inflate into a binding promise. But to the vanishingly little extent that it is a promise at all, it is one that she can easily wriggle out of. We have to wonder why, if the situation is as perilous as she describes, she is so reluctant to give a real promise while at such pains to be perceived as doing so.
Peter A Bell 