tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36925205451763240122024-03-13T15:32:14.020+00:00Wade's worldRandom notes from Edinburgh.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.comBlogger265125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-67297415252515457612021-01-09T14:06:00.003+00:002021-01-10T21:03:11.725+00:00Jenni Fagan's Edinburgh gothic <p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the end of the Luckenbooth, Jenni Fagan’s wildly gothic new novel, readers will need little convincing of the truth of its inscription: Edinburgh is mad god’s dream. </span></p><span face=""Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif" id="x_m_-5160274137846443475gmail-m_1363959072898301744gmail-m_-1882512260617094119gmail-docs-internal-guid-975f276d-7fff-7eed-084d-e3bbc90b8b6c" style="border: 0px; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The book opens with the devil's daughter rowing a coffin into Leith docks, as she makes her way towards Luckenbooth Close, a tenement high on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Here, the author’s sinuous, supernatural story unwinds down nine decades, through all nine floors of the ancient building, embroiling the lives of nine residents. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXlV9gb31T_uUbv-vfvYKyFBkmMUem2uKwVM-dWFOGsKPe8jvToBaZ-vY_jBbJwdmSYiefwTKQlN5ulFAyZsBRXgxTdjK0fGd8p6US2UblZrkF4_hDR96ualJ189gyUk90w0QUjVDBnXm/s680/fagan.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="680" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXlV9gb31T_uUbv-vfvYKyFBkmMUem2uKwVM-dWFOGsKPe8jvToBaZ-vY_jBbJwdmSYiefwTKQlN5ulFAyZsBRXgxTdjK0fGd8p6US2UblZrkF4_hDR96ualJ189gyUk90w0QUjVDBnXm/s320/fagan.jpg" /></a></div>Along the way we experience murder, love and Edwardian sex in the city and meet, among others, a Second World War spy and a 1970s gang leader, both women, a celebrity author and a miner who is terrified of the light. The last and most recent resident, the homeless Dot, breaks into the derelict tenement for shelter.</span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Weird” it may seem to some reviewers, but for Fagan, her third novel is “a love letter to Edinburgh”. If love is truth, she says, “it’s the business of writers” to reveal the hidden truths of people’s lives, the terrifying challenges and choices they face because they are trapped by forces they cannot control. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Take Dot. Fagan admits an empathy with her waif-like character who in 1999 squeezes through builders’ hoardings to find a place to live after her benefits have been stopped. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Dot’s on the fringes of everything in lots of ways, a quiet person who is not obviously a hero,” Fagan says. The question her character poses, she adds, is “Why are some women still unable to have any sense of security?”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That question comes straight from the heart. Fagan, 43, has always been reluctant to talk in public about her past, but the bones of her life story are shocking. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She was placed in care as soon as she was born, and afterwards had more than 30 placements with strangers around Edinburgh before she was 16. She was so often fostered out, by the time she was five her name had been changed four times. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s a lifelong legacy, you know, and its impact will always be there,” she says. “My original name is nothing like my name now. I eventually got hold of my social work files and there's about 17 different variations, because they would spell them wrong.” </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a child she remembers “being told the story about myself all the time”, as she was moved from place to place. “You're listening to people saying ‘This is Jenni and she is …blah, blah, blah. You had a little story book that would travel with you (to explain who you were).”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even now it feels strange, she says over a Zoom call. “I knew almost nothing about where I came from until I was a lot older. When I was growing up I never saw a photo of a person who looked like me. You'll know somebody who laughs like you - for me, there are not even any little markers like that.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Poetry and reading saved her. Fagan started writing aged seven. “I was completely voiceless in the system,” she says. “What was so powerful for me about writing a poem was I could see my voice. I could go away, come back three days later, open the book again and it was still there. I started writing and never stopped.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When she read the Hobbit, she discovered “a huge story, a game changer,” she says. “I used to go to a library van. I read all the books it stocked. I could see there were other worlds and that the world I was living in was not the only one.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-weight: inherit;">Though obviously bright, she quit Beeslack High School, Penicuik at 15, without qua</span><span style="background-color: white;">lifications. </span></span><span style="background-color: white;">She lived in homeless accommodation as a young adult and f</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: inherit;">or a while she sang in punk and grunge bands, gradually inching towards higher education. </span></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It took me a long time to even consider sitting in a classroom,” she says. “One of my biggest achievements was just to sit there, not even to study.” She became an undergraduate at 30, studying at Greenwich University and completed a PhD on Kafka recently at Edinburgh University. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her understanding of life is woven through Luckenbooth. She would not, for example, scoff at the notion of the supernatural. Her narrative weaves between the real and the spirit world, and in one terrifyingly vivid scene, the ghosts of women slain in a heinous murder are conjured up at a seance. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These days, people only laugh at the idea of a sixth sense because of their own fears, Fagan believes, and because they have become conditioned by their regimented lives. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“We've been trained to kill our instincts,” she says. “We're at a point in the world, a point of crisis, where we need to do the opposite now. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“When, say, someone instinctively knows a parent needs them, and decides to pick up a phone, I think that’s a brilliant thing. My entire life I’ve been in touch with that ability to survive. I have a very deep respect for it.”</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Above all, steeped in feeling for the city, Fagan, who lives near Leith with her young son and partner, brings Edinburgh vividly alive. Her heroines drink in the rowdy howffs on Leith Walk, or rendezvous in the old Palais dance hall in Fountainbridge. The gargoyles of St Giles Cathedral stare down on her characters and the beautiful Meadows park conceals the graves of plague victims. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In better times, Fagan could even lead readers to the real site of her imagined Luckenbooth Close, in a cleared space on the North side of the High Street, near, appropriately enough, the Devil’s Advocate bar. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In these more difficult days she has fought off a bout of Covid-19, fearing in her darkness moments that she might die. Her response was to spend the last few months writing her memoirs to ensure, whenever she finally publishes, her own truth is out there. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“There's no one other person in my story, it is a weird thing,” she says. “People say, ‘Who was the one person who saved you?’ I say, ‘It was me, and it took a long time.”</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>A shorter version of this article appeared in The Times, Scotland edition on Jan 9 2020</i></span></li></ul><p></p><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="border: 0px; color: inherit; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span color="inherit" id="x_m_-5160274137846443475gmail-m_1363959072898301744gmail-m_-1882512260617094119gmail-docs-internal-guid-cfc773d1-7fff-70e5-1884-6b465b64860c" style="border: 0px; font: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-24898518012591406472020-05-14T14:39:00.000+01:002020-05-14T15:17:38.180+01:00Don't insult me with 'unionist' <div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Interesting times, uncomfortable times. That’s how the writer Denise MIna recalls the Scottish independence referendum.</b></span><br />
<b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">She voted No, went on Radio 4 to explain her position and was rewarded by endless vitriol on social media from Yes-supporting keyboard warriors. She hated the abuse, she hated the flag-waving in the streets and she still hates how the terms of the debate, even the terminology, are laid down by the Yes side, five years later. </span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What the f*ck is a ‘unionist’ anyway?” Mina demands. “I grew up in Paris, I grew up in Norway, I’m an internationalist.</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“‘Unionist’ is just an insult, a straw man argument, gathering everyone who disagrees with you into one bundle, and discrediting them by association with the Orange lodge, that’s what that’s about.” </b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wxz1yAv5LFMTeqBquQTrmBtW_wMrlG4V4A7PR2Q5gS-Z-M3CdB9CzGerpyRYh3U3_OhKRUJXGjpeAwJGgWiRWkXvYVcjDgCm89AzficjBAFruyxK3bq6vGkadv_pcDgG0YBgiMzAOpc4/s1600/mina+detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><b><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1500" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6wxz1yAv5LFMTeqBquQTrmBtW_wMrlG4V4A7PR2Q5gS-Z-M3CdB9CzGerpyRYh3U3_OhKRUJXGjpeAwJGgWiRWkXvYVcjDgCm89AzficjBAFruyxK3bq6vGkadv_pcDgG0YBgiMzAOpc4/s320/mina+detail.jpg" width="320" /></b></a><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Mina, it’s obvious, is spiky all the way south of her wild haircut. Best known as a crime writer, she’s in Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum theatre, where she has been watching her adaptation of Mrs Puntilla and Her Man Matti, by Berthold Brecht, a playwright whose politics chime with hers. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The production switches the action from rural Finland of the 1940s to a present-day Highland estate, but - and this is the nub of the issue - it is not a bit about twee nationalism.</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Instead the helpless local staff and immigrant hirelings are at the mercy of the pitiless inconsistency of Mrs Puntilla, a fabulously wealthy drunk played by Elaine C Smith. The chauffeur, Matti, is the Everyman figure who explains what it’s all about: the age old tyranny of capital over labour. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>That’s why ‘unionist’ is such an insult, says Mina. “Brecht was an international socialist. He saw the central division as haves and have-nots.”</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>This outlook is ingrained in her. Mina, born in East Kilbride, owes her peripatetic childhood to her father, an engineer, whose work took his family around Europe. Her teenage years were in Bromley, south London (“Do you know it? It’s a suburban shit-hole”) and she arrived in Glasgow, studying criminology in her early 20s.</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>She broke away from a PhD to write Garnethill (1998), set in her newly-adopted home city. It laid a pattern for the rest of her crime-writing career, by winning a prize and foregrounding a put-upon, flawed heroine, an abuse survivor with a history of psychiatric illness. </b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQln7crOXfTpIBBtmbUs9Jc63MeakwRnT7HjEH8FXTJFEl4BQZZpqKbGDlwcIYWoFstgikh48JIs28uSoUoNJA7ZNv2b3D2TpHiwtpxxutXpmRp7Z_e2FUfcH0wzPXvLV1Hv1zS6njZ7J/s1600/less+dead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="440" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirQln7crOXfTpIBBtmbUs9Jc63MeakwRnT7HjEH8FXTJFEl4BQZZpqKbGDlwcIYWoFstgikh48JIs28uSoUoNJA7ZNv2b3D2TpHiwtpxxutXpmRp7Z_e2FUfcH0wzPXvLV1Hv1zS6njZ7J/s320/less+dead.jpg" width="215" /></b></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;">About a dozen books later, The Less Dead comes out in August. It began as a true crime investigation of a series of murders in Glasgow and is rooted in her interest in “deserving” and “undeserving” victims, a distinction made, she maintains, by the public at large,</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"> rather than by the police or the media.</span></b><br />
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The setting is the 1990s, recalled by the author as a “crazy time” in Glasgow when a spike in heroin addiction coincided with a surge in the number of women on the city streets. Emma Caldwell, 27, became the best known victim in a spate of killings of sex workers. </b></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Mina explains: “Emma Caldwell was covered in a particular way because her family were lovely, and gave interviews. She herself was very sympathetic, she was a ‘good’ victim. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“The women before that - and I remember following those murders at the time - were not sympathetic, they were not seen as lovely and many grew up in foster care or children’s homes. They didn’t have anyone to stand up for them.”</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The more she researched, the more troubling her true-crime project became. “I realised I couldn’t really talk about these women, a lot were really kids, without repeating the offence and making it a gory book about the awful things that happened to people.” So, she says, she wrapped it up in fiction. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>She remains fascinated by the central moral conundrum: why do the public, and even many feminists, have so little compassion for sex workers and other “invisible” people?</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“One of the tropes of crime fiction when I was starting out was if you had a sex worker murder, you had to have five and they had to be killed in interesting ways,” she says. “If the victim was, say, a minister’s daughter, one was enough. The assumption was the audience didn’t care (about sex workers).</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the same time, particularly with those Glasgow murders, what was so interesting was the fact the feminist movement did not feel ownership over those women. They were like an aberration. </span></b></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“Even using the term ‘sex worker’ is controversial, because you are suggesting it is legitimate work. It’s so controversial, most people just stay out of it. It’s like trans rights - you hear people say, ‘I don’t know what I’m allowed to say about that.’ </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“That kind of fighting about words is a way of stopping people caring. In the meantime there are other human beings dying in the street, or behind closed doors. Those women who died will just be forgotten because people say, ‘It’s prurient to talk about them.’ Well, I’m glad crime writing is prurient.”</b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Ian Rankin, the author of the best-selling Inspector Rebus series, often argues for crime-writing to be accepted as serious literary fiction. Mina disagrees. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“I like low art forms. I like the notion of someone picking up my book because it’s fun. The fact it isn’t taken seriously means you don’t have the social status but you do have a real engagement with your readers. </b></span></div>
<b><br style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px;" /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #201f1e; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>“In Glasgow, people have come up and said, ‘Read your last book, hen. It was shite.’ I love it. I bet Salman Rushie doesn’t get that.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: inherit; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Mrs Puntilla and her Man Matti, Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, until March 21; Glasgow Citizens Theatre from March 25, 2020</i></span></div>
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A version of this article first appeared in The Times Scotland edition, March 7, 2020<br />
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-65144739915182873262017-10-03T22:19:00.001+01:002017-10-04T07:26:23.861+01:00Barcelona notebook: the Catalan referendum<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I spent four days in Barcelona during the Catalan referedum. Not every thing I wrote was published in the paper, or even submitted for publication. I've emptied some of my notebook here. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thursday 28, September </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A
copy of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica carried at the head of a demonstration today in
Barcelona brought home the vast gulf between the supporters of Catalan independence
and the Spanish government.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
pro-independence students who assembled the banner, say it perfectly reflects
the heavy-handed actions of Mariano Rajoy’s government, before Sunday’s
referendum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">About
ten million ballot papers have been seized, 14 Catalan officials arrested, and
thousands of Spanish police are quartered in Barcelona, ready, apparently, to
be deployed on polling day to halt the vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Miguel
Sarquella, 20, who helped make the Guernica banner, was carrying the portion
featuring a man screaming in his death throes, beneath a rampaging bull. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“We
feel the current government is repeating the actions of repression, which we
had before democracy was established here,” said Mr Sarquella, an architecture
student. “We think this kind of democracy is fake.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Picasso’s
image depicts the bombing of a town in the Basque country and the slaughter of
about 300 people by Franco’s Fascists, supported by Nazi aircraft. Was
that really a fair comparison with contemporary Catalonia?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It
was, insisted Mr Sarquella. “We don’t feel free to speak for ourselves,”
he said. “We don’t feel free at all. Why have they moved thousands
of policemen here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Julia
Ramon, 20, stressed the independence movement was pacifist. Ms Ramon said.
“This is a student march, but all ages support us. Many of them had to live under Franco 40 years ago.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Emma
Clark was one of 25 drama students, who staged a show about freedom in front
of the Guernica banner, once the march reached Placa de la Univeristat <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“It’s
the best backdrop for our play, because they won’t even let us vote,” said Ms
Clark, brought up in Catalonia by her Croydon-born father and Czech mother. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
20-year-old was uncertain what would happen over the next few days, and it was
difficult to figure out how the constitutional crisis would be resolved, she
said. The Spanish government insists the referendum is
unconstitutional; not a single country in the EU has offered support to the
Catalan independence movement. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“We
have to do the best we can here, and let’s see what happens,” Ms Clark said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The
demonstration of perhaps 10,000 university and school students was cheerful and
loud, the police presence muted, save for the local Mossos officers, who
helped to marshal the crowd. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Where
it differed strongly from the mood ahead of the Scottish independence
referendum was its unmistakeable sound of protest. The uncompromising attitude
of the Spanish government has stoked resentment; the response of Westminster to
the Yes movement in Scotland seems both sophisticated and benign by comparison.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“That’s
because British democracy is much more mature,” Mr Saq</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">uella said. “It has solid
government. Our democracy is much more recent. It just changed from one
repressive government, when Franco was in power, to one which is patched
up, just to look good to the world.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Was
his passion for independence making him exaggerate the failings of Mr Rajoy’s
government?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“I’m
not actually passionate for independence,” Mr Sarquella said. “I still have my
doubts, but I am passionate for freedom of expression. I still don’t know
if I will vote yes or no, but I do want to vote. We need to be able to vote.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Friday 29, September </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Tonight, rallying under a flag made by Rory Steel’s mother, 17 Scots joined tens
of thousands of demonstrators in Barcelona, supporting the rights of Catalans
to vote in the region's independence referendum. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Mr
Steel, 23, the vice convenor of SNP Youth first became aware of the
Catalan independence movement three years ago when he saw its flag
alongside a candlelit display in Glasgow’s George Square, in support of
Scotland’s “Yes” movement.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Solidarity
it seems is reciprocal, and SNP Youth, he said, has built strong links with
left-leaning campaigners in Catalonia who are voting “Si”. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The
actions of the Spanish government over the last few weeks have appalled Mr
Steel . He condemned the “jack-boots “of the Spanish police in making
arrests and seizing ballot papers, and noted lingering connections between the
People’s Party of Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, and the former
Fascist regime of General Franco. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Jordan
Linton, 22, his friend, highlighted the stark contrast between the approach
taken by the Spanish government and their Conservative counterparts at
Westminster, who signed the Edinburgh Agreement with the SNP in 2012. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> “Two
governments, in Scotland and the UK, with diametrically opposed views in terms
of the outcome, were able to come together to agree a referendum which was
legally binding, which gave people the chance to have their say,” said Mr
Linton, a North Lanarkshire councillor. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>“A
lot of the literature here, surprisingly since they are on the cusp of the
referendum, has simply been about the right to vote, it’s not about taking
sides. The word ‘Votar’ is everywhere. It has underpinned my whole time
here.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Christina
Cannon, 19, another member of SNP Youth is already a Glasgow City councillor.
She agreed with Mr Linton. “The principle of democracy has become the theme of
our visit,” she said. </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Over
the last few days, there has been condemnation of the Spanish government
heavy-handed approach from across Scotland and that was a matter of
pride for these activists. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> "Christina McKelvie (the SNP MSP) wrote
to Donald Tusk, of the EU Council, a cross-party group of MSPs
wrote to Rajoy,” Mr Linton said. “That is leadership - it would
have been good to see that more around the world.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Mr
Steel agreed: “The Scottish government has already stood up more for the rights
of Catalonia than the other major players in Europe. Not a lot has been
said by other nation states.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Were
they frightened by the possibility of violence in the next 48 hours?
Worried would be a better word, said Mr Steel, “worried that the police should
be sent out to stop a democratic process.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Saturday 30, September </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Opponents of the Catalan referendum believe they are silent majority, but when
3,000 gathered in Placa D’Urquinaona yesterday evening, they quickly
found their voice. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These
demonstrators were older and angrier than those who had been on the
streets proclaiming “Si” just 24 hours earlier. They felt they had been
ill-served by Catalonia’s political leadership for years. “SOS
Intimidats pel Nacionalisme”, read the poster taped to a shop window – "intimidated by nationalism".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This
demonstrators had been too afraid to speak out in the past, believed
Roberto Pardo and Laura, his wife, both lawyers from Barcelona. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> “Today
is the day,” Mr Pardo said, a Spanish flag draped over his back. “We have been
silent for too long – it is time to do something."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No-one
here would vote, he added. His wife agreed. “Why would we?” Mrs
Pardo wondered. “This is an illegal situation.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNadhDoki5iSzDC_o39OmsLtjDfQMWWw5zSNFmVdhdUavxvF_M7oxzwlgLSL79Lv0qwj5LZyNyNvKqfwGz-0nKziVY0sXfrbWSXmHkoWLV-UK15G-cpGR7vsqlZ4RQL16S7O6EWwtcp2d-/s1600/couple+of+righto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1543" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNadhDoki5iSzDC_o39OmsLtjDfQMWWw5zSNFmVdhdUavxvF_M7oxzwlgLSL79Lv0qwj5LZyNyNvKqfwGz-0nKziVY0sXfrbWSXmHkoWLV-UK15G-cpGR7vsqlZ4RQL16S7O6EWwtcp2d-/s200/couple+of+righto.jpg" width="192" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An
office worker, who said his name was Jose, was not going to vote. “We
support the constitution, we support the law,” Jose said. “Catalonia has
been part of Spain for 2,000 years and we want to continue. This is not some kind of colonial situation – we have been united since the foundation of the
Spanish state.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Over
the last 30 years, the government in Madrid had given away too much to Catalan
politicians. “They needed support for this or that policy, so they made
too many concessions,” Jose said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“They
have allowed Catalan separatists to indoctrinate people. In TV, in the
media, in schools, all we hear is Madrid is wrong.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Around
Jose, the cries went Up. “Catalunya es Espagna”, and then as more people
arrived, the procession moved off down Via Laietan, and the marchers burst into
song: Y Viva Espagna. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcu6a3rMU5wadEF0cX1pygFdbJxNY3wtHWjhYapzGafrMMDaiKeP-KSRK1qF_RbnWef7iaLJBk5awapFK_zBDHAAU1-1JDGnx0DgwkobXzE9-Ix_TCzB6c0dejmRmJRBHEuF1J8O39QLXX/s1600/IMG_7613.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcu6a3rMU5wadEF0cX1pygFdbJxNY3wtHWjhYapzGafrMMDaiKeP-KSRK1qF_RbnWef7iaLJBk5awapFK_zBDHAAU1-1JDGnx0DgwkobXzE9-Ix_TCzB6c0dejmRmJRBHEuF1J8O39QLXX/s200/IMG_7613.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rafael
Lopez, 58, an office manager, had come all the way from Madrid with some
friends to join the procession. The referendum he said was “illegal,
immoral and unjust.” It oppressed the people who had gathered here.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nothing
would happen next week said Mr Lopez, whatever the result, because the vote had
no validity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But there would be a reckoning, predicted Mr Pardo, the
lawyer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Afterwards,”
he said, “some of the government in Catalonia will go to prison. It
must be so, because this is sedition. They have declared war on the
Spanish government and the people. The law in Spain says you have a
trial, you pay the penalty, and you go to prison.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<u><br /></u></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></u></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><u>Notebook: Inside
Pau Casals School, Gracia Saturday night</u><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The
school was occupied on Friday and Saturday night. Scores of kids were
playing games, when we turned up in the early evening. The school gym had been requisitioned for people to sleep in; others slept in pop-up tents in the playground. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Only the adults stayed in the
school overnight, but when we were there, because the kids were still around, we were asked not to take photographs. <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Jordi
Mir, 53, an administrator. </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The police, the Mossos, came round earlier in the day and told us we had to be out by six in the morning. The only people we will open the door to at that time will be the people
who bring the (voting) urns and the ballot papers. We won't let the police in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If
the cops beat their way in there is no particular plan. The idea is that
people will sit in front of the door. They are going to have to play a game with us: it
will be like picking onions. We will be sitting there in rows. The
police will have to pluck us out one by one. We will invite them to
play. The idea is the cops will eventually give up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Ramon
Massana, 52, marine biologist </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It’s
been organised because of social media. The fathers from the school came
here about two days ago, and the proposal was made to occupy the school.
I have two kids here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Most
people will vote ‘Si’. The people who would vote ‘No’ will not vote. They
will say, ‘This is not fair.’ If they really want to stay in Spain, they should come
and vote, but instead they prefer to say, ‘This is not legal.’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>I
saw a banner on the anti-referendum march. It said: ‘We are oppressed by
nationalists’. What do you think of that?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It
is a joke, a joke. They are very emotional. We are not oppressing
them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>You
want independence?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes,
yes. I have always wanted that. Many years ago it didn’t seem
possible. Now it does, and I feel very happy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>To
the outsider, life in Barcelona seems to be going on as a normal – it seems
such a prosperous, comfortable city – but this argument is so heated and angry
…? </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Look back in history, go back 300 years ago – we had our country. And the
civil war – many things have happened – it was a very heated moment.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But
in the present (crisis) things started 10 years ago. The starting point was our parliament proposing a route for Catalonia, a new future. The proposal went
to Madrid: it was changed quite a bit, but then accepted in the
parliament. It came back to the Catalan Parliament and passed.
But the Madrid started rolling back on this again, they started changing our law. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">People
realised that we had been positive, but (Madrid) always made the law.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Things
have happened very quickly recently, but this is not something that came from nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Do
you feel Spanish at all?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No.
In this movement though there are so many people for whom identity is not
important. It is about dignity, about respect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Some
people shouted today that they are Catalan and Spanish …</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You
think they feel Spanish and Catalan? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>That’s
what they said.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It
is what they say now, because they are forced to say so. But it is not
true. Ten years ago, these people would not have said they were Catalan
at all. They would say they were Spanish. Now they say they are Catalan
and Spanish, we have to live together. It is a strategy. Again, it
is like a joke. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Ton
Barniles, 46, General Manager of the Catalan Alpine Club</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">If
they produce violence in us, they win. It’s what happened in the Basque
country. We will use non-violence and humour. Like the
placards of Tweety Pie (Piolin)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>I won’t find trouble here, from what
you are saying?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Oh
I don’t know. I wouldn’t be naïve. But on the citizen’s part there
will be no violence. I think now the Spanish government is quite afraid
of this, because they saw the reaction after the recent arrests.
They thought they could smash this. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There
has been an increase in support, simply because of their violence. And
more people want to vote now. For example, the Mayor of
Barcelona, she is not for a free Catalonia, but after the police intervened,
she said ‘Enough.’ She will do a “white vote” (she will go to
vote – but abstain).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Monica,
47, a journalist/publisher, who didn’t want to give her surname </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
need the right to vote. I am not going to say whether I will note yes or
no, I am not some kind of independence nut, but I am here to defend the right
to vote. I’ve always thought there should be a referendum, to
settle this issue. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
need Catalans to express what they think, whether it is yes or no. The
Spanish government crossed a red line with its behaviour in the last week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">But
I don’t like the Catalan government. They cheated to create this
referendum. They changed the law to make the referendum happen, it wasn't good. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">They
haven’t been clean, but equally the attempts by the Spanish government to
outlaw the referendum are ridiculous.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Many
Scots who voted “No” in the Scottish independence referendum because they
said they felt Scottish and British. Do you feel Catalan and Spanish?
</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I
like to live in this grey area. I feel Catalan, it is the motherland.
I used to feel Spanish but not anymore. For me it is a very sad
situation. I wish I could have both. But I am more Catalan for
sure, because you always feel attached to the motherland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Laura,
a reporter for a Spanish-owned TV station, did not want to give her name</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It
is hard to work for the Spanish media when my heart is here. From
the Madrid point-of-view, what the press has been saying has not been fair at
all, it doesn’t reflect what people feel and what is happening here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some of the journalists from our station made an anonymous protest, and I was part of
that. For example of on the day of the terrorist attack, there was a big
protest, but my channel simply didn’t show that, it didn’t show all the people
who turned up. Forget about what you do or don’t believe in, it just wasn’t
a true portrayal of what happened. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Spanish media is poor – you can’t believe what you see and read. People get
their new from international media.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Imagine.
My work is my money, but my heart is Catalonia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We
should just be open about what is happening in Catalonia, a referendum with
campaigns for Yes and No - this is what should have happened.
That’s why I am here, now. So that people can vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sunday morning write-up</span></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyoc1RvslMrTBUodvFrK7QPMAJ5tWZRHzZImpTyLdgGKkEXrMDLBom8Dgg2cbSbU4fra_IoXZyqyxNqexirJw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">When
polling finally opened in Pau Casals school, Monserrat Llajuirri, 83, was one
of the first to vote. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>"For
so long, I lived under Franco,” she said, recalling the Fascist leader, who
died in 1975. “Now I can die with the satisfaction of helping my children
and grandchildren to freedom. I voted Yes for the liberty of my country
and to stop repression.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Outside
the school, Carrer de la Providencia, a narrow street in a crowded residential
area, had been filling up with people over the four hours before the referendum
was due to begin. They had come to vote and to defend this polling
station. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MIeldbv421TSeVrh5cLZj-rj5VB-W1nTrhJFZqjMsL8BqCGVOfWB205cjpB6YRuJDWHuhuBuvPq3d2RaaOv-6IESzFpVGinFM7vv9vNVuiHMVrQdUd58DaEwTFjpidWQ54-K9GpsmnFB/s1600/0D87EDAF-A692-473E-BA3D-F93E3312892B.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MIeldbv421TSeVrh5cLZj-rj5VB-W1nTrhJFZqjMsL8BqCGVOfWB205cjpB6YRuJDWHuhuBuvPq3d2RaaOv-6IESzFpVGinFM7vv9vNVuiHMVrQdUd58DaEwTFjpidWQ54-K9GpsmnFB/s200/0D87EDAF-A692-473E-BA3D-F93E3312892B.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>At 7am, two officers from the Mossos, the local police, advised the crowd of about 1,000 they were breaking the law, but said they would do take no more
action. There were cheers and applause, as the officers pushed through
the crowd and walked away towards a café at the end of the street. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>But
soon, by the packed entrance to the school, people were sharing mobile phone
footage of attacks by Spanish police, wearing hard hats and riot gear.
“This is a school on the other side of the city,” said one woman fearfully. “My cousin
is there.” </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> She showed a picture of two police in riot gear hauling a
woman away.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>“We
have been warned about secret police,” said Lena Oliverez, 22. “They
come in pairs and in plain clothes. They will come and seize the ballot
boxes.” These officers might be armed with tasers, she warned.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>It
took longer than expected to open the poll. The destruction of ballot
papers and the confiscation of ballot boxes forced the organisers to
improvise. Huge cheers went up when plastic boxes were held aloft
for the crowd to see through the plate glass entrance. Ballot papers were
freshly published on office printers. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Yet another problem arrived when an app went down linking the polling station to the
electoral roll. Miguel Collomae, an economist, came to the doorway to explain the difficulty had been anticipated – the Spanish government had closed
down other internet channels. “We have contingency plans,” he assured
those eager to vote. “Be patient. You will vote.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9O_sPUgZSVxReLlXqZPQP3qvq_uOOr1e2yU2jCsvdZRM_KgP9TDG2wAbHalnf193gkPCQQEwYzyDGTBomNhRXejvb1nvK-IRiINpIcrbHMZrrKLV4uNhpIs1grskVo0Nu4lpR3p69-o4/s1600/IMG_7634.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio9O_sPUgZSVxReLlXqZPQP3qvq_uOOr1e2yU2jCsvdZRM_KgP9TDG2wAbHalnf193gkPCQQEwYzyDGTBomNhRXejvb1nvK-IRiINpIcrbHMZrrKLV4uNhpIs1grskVo0Nu4lpR3p69-o4/s200/IMG_7634.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>They were patient and they were rewarded. Maria
Dolores, 81, was second to cast her vote, when polling opened. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>“I am
ridiculously happy, she said, her eyes filling with tears. “We don’t have
anything, they are squashing us all. We are peaceful people, not
animals. They cannot deny us our freedom.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Notebook: Lena Oliverez, 22</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><o:p></o:p>Lena returned from Argentina a month ago, after completing an interior design degree. She stayed in the school overnight and was one of about 20 people who came out to mingle with the huge crowd outside. She was weeping as she embraced her friends and family, and sometimes was overcome by tears during the interview.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was coincidence that I finished my studies and was able to come back, just in time for the vote.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It was a very special for me last night. It is just a year since my grandmother died. She was 91. She was very emotionally involved with this: it is important to me to vote for the people who are no longer with us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Why is it important that Catalonia is independent?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two things. It is important for my family to come to Barcelona because they had so many problems when Franco was alive. My grandparents, and parents came from Granada: Barcelona gave them everything. It is so hard to explain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Catalonia and Barcelona has a deep meaning for them?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes. All those things that happened in those days: we don’t want to be part of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Did you think like that, even before the brutality of the last couple of weeks?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>But isn’t it time to move on from the Franco era?</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What we see in Spain, is Franco is very present. Posters, organisations, defending Franco. This hasn’t disappeared. A lot of things that are happening now, happened when Franco was in power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Sunday
afternoon write-up</u></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>At
5pm, Marcel Graell, 21, a politics student, addressed a crowd of an least 1,000
in the quadrangle outside Barcelona’s Industrial School.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">By
then, 500 people had been seriously injured in police attacks on crowds across
Catalonia, and footage of the brutality widely shared on the internet.</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>In
a passionate speech, delivered through a megaphone, he urged the crowd to
“calm, peaceful, determined”. The crucial thing was not to provoke
the police. “We have videos of them being violent and us being peaceful,”
he said. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> “These
are the images, the attitudes we want the world to see. Then our
president can carry on his strategy of taking our message to the world.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Mr
Graell emergence as a charismatic local leader was the direct result of
the heavy-handedness of the Spanish government. </b></span><b style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;"> Two
weeks ago, he told me, he was undecided about how to vote in the referendum.</b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>“I
don’t hate Spain,” he said. “I don’t hate Spanish people. I have been all
over Spain. A nanny who helped bring me up is from Aragon – I love her as
a second mother. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQwdUN0Z3x-LPZhoc3-OQSgzvP_duDd1psmTWkJCBqZSrAjqFvNcJONKe47VciJddnfVQriOHzjt9NaPGKx93dp-wvSid0qj3RHGN0P2r4Nq-TBoWh3R5D-rp5Z4_fBEgKaow3Vz4b0tS/s1600/IMG_7668.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeQwdUN0Z3x-LPZhoc3-OQSgzvP_duDd1psmTWkJCBqZSrAjqFvNcJONKe47VciJddnfVQriOHzjt9NaPGKx93dp-wvSid0qj3RHGN0P2r4Nq-TBoWh3R5D-rp5Z4_fBEgKaow3Vz4b0tS/s320/IMG_7668.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>“Over
the past two weeks, our institutions, our Catalan government has been taken by
the Spanish institutions. It meant I voted yes without hesitation.” <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Mr
Graell was among a group of 50 people who occupied the Industrial School on
Friday night, when fears grew that Spanish police would attempt to shut it,
ahead of referendum day.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>"I
seriously doubt the police have the means to dissuade us. We will sit on the floor, hands wrapped together. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>"If they do use violence to enter the college, they will have won the battle to defend the college but we
would have won the moral battle, because we would have been peaceful."</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The pic at the top was taken at about 8pm, when Mr Graell declared the ballot closed, thanked the people who had turned out to protect the polling station, and thanked the international press. The barricade was at the back of the industrial, opposite a hamburger joint. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>There was no violence at either the Pau Cassel School, or the Industrial School. The brutal actions by Spanish police appeared to die off about lunchtime. About that time, we tailed a convoy of police vans through the city, expecting them to stop at a polling station, and deploy their truncheons. Instead they parked up in a layby, as if they had been stood down. </i></span></div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-45850394000178117022016-09-14T22:12:00.000+01:002016-09-15T07:56:01.667+01:00'It was an apology when I wrote it and it is now ... Back in the day, it was too raw so I never played it live'<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FDDILYH16TyIiS0MN9jZt5GK6gQx_bijLdVURfmxkoCsYqpwybMLcGI0ZqNSaRjjd4t-qozRv9GUTnPJavjG1w-lcfoixe6ffqnyFGu8vAf3s6uU_jGnN8fPGdWG6rUsww5oyU7nij_l/s1600/FullSizeRender+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3FDDILYH16TyIiS0MN9jZt5GK6gQx_bijLdVURfmxkoCsYqpwybMLcGI0ZqNSaRjjd4t-qozRv9GUTnPJavjG1w-lcfoixe6ffqnyFGu8vAf3s6uU_jGnN8fPGdWG6rUsww5oyU7nij_l/s320/FullSizeRender+5.jpg" width="232" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b>From the brae above Crail harbour, Kenny Anderson leads the way into a rambling old house, then down a corridor cluttered with the detritus of building work. Finally, he throws open a door.</b></span></div>
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<b>“This is it,” he says, “the nerve centre”.</b></div>
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<b>The place looks like a high-end junk shop. What might, in estate agent-speak, be described as “a practical kitchen-dining room” has morphed into a monument to his own musical life, and to <span class="il">King</span> <span class="il">Creosote</span>, his alter ego.</b></div>
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<b>An ancient LC Smith typewriter is at the centre of a neatly-organised, crowded desk. Every shelf and cupboard groans under a weight of LPs, CDs, scrapbooks and homemade fanzines from down the years. There’s no computer in sight, we are in a mobile phone black spot and on any other day Anderson would be left entirely to his own devices.</b></div>
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<b>Vinyl copies of his latest album are piled up on an easy chair in one corner of the room. Even the title, Astronaut Meets Appleman is ironic. It’s not some hi-tech flight of fancy, but a joke about a “toy”, made Louie Wren, his younger daughter, from what her dad says was “a gnarly old apple” .</b></div>
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<b>The collection represents the world as seen from a distinctly lo-fi corner on Fife’s East Neuk. </b><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Musically, <span class="il">King</span> <span class="il">Creosote</span>’s old busking, bluegrass sound is pumped up by bagpipes, a harp, a violin, and driving rhythms; lyrically It’s funny, sad, sharp, suspicious and painfully human.</b></div>
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<b>Down the years, Anderson’s bittersweet songs have been wilfully obscure because, as he says, he’s always had “a sense of being a bit wary of what I say and about who”. Yet this time around there’s a poignant touch, drawn from personal circumstances.</b></div>
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<b>Anderson, 49, lives alone in this house. He is devoted to two-year-old Louie Wren, but though she helped name the album, and even makes her recording debut on it, she lives a couple of miles down the coast at Anstruther with her mum, Jen Gordon, Anderson’s former partner.</b></div>
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<b>The couple broke up a while ago, but Anderson’s respect for Jen is obvious, in conversation and on the album. The lyric of Faux Call sails mournfully in on the back of a sad cello: “And I’m so sorry I let you down again / This was my call now I’m stalling / The pretence of being just friends / I wish was better at helping you through all of this /I wish I could call, have a good cry, hold you again.”</b></div>
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<b>Anderson says: “It was an apology when I wrote it and it is now. Back in the day, it was too raw, I never played it live. But over time … it’s not raw any more.”</b></div>
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<b>A year ago, he would hardly have spoken of such things. Now the song could be his next single. “I rely a lot on intuition,” he says. “Musically it’s evolved, I dropped it a tone so weirdly I could go higher. There are certain lines I like, a bit ouchy, but it just felt the time to do it again.”</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLj3Xkz8PgrrvFj8-m4bRCks2CBw30enK0pbdbwtl4t3C9Mf0bzQUF_S98-yDVuXpopjt_hL6f9nVzx5_JEFkkhRlKugwMcJzxmcL-E7BH2j4bqhU7CW_GvhB8Lkgz2SKlP475IRgg7On/s1600/FullSizeRender+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSLj3Xkz8PgrrvFj8-m4bRCks2CBw30enK0pbdbwtl4t3C9Mf0bzQUF_S98-yDVuXpopjt_hL6f9nVzx5_JEFkkhRlKugwMcJzxmcL-E7BH2j4bqhU7CW_GvhB8Lkgz2SKlP475IRgg7On/s200/FullSizeRender+6.jpg" width="200" /></a><b>Anderson is talking ten to the dozen as he leads the way through his Victorian house. His grandmother had a flat here but he’s bought the whole thing and embarked on a conversion. He’s had to plug the roof, but the local joiner is stalling on a loft conversion. And that hallway’s a mess, he complains.</b></div>
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<b>Get him on to a pet hate, and he really goes off on one. Melin Wynt, one of the album’s most successful tracks, is the Welsh for windmill. It’s Anderson tilt at the turbines he loathes.</b></div>
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<b>“Do you know what I would have done, if I was in charge of energy policy?” he says, suddenly angry. </b><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">“I’d have taken out Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, got rid of all that crap. Maybe you wouldn’t have to sink banks of servers under the ocean. Then, if we still need power, perhaps put up a turbine. But why stick up an army of turbines to offset a massive power bill for all this non-essential guff?”</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>In Crail these things matter. “Coming home, taking in the view around the peninsula, it’s beautiful,” he says. “May Island, North Berwick law, the Bell Rock Lighthouse, the Forfar coastline, right the way round to the law at the back of Dundee.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>“But now?” He thumps the turbines onto an imaginary map: “Bang, bang, bang. These ugly fucking things. It’s like taking a beautiful picture and putting a smear of shit across it.”</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>This is bloke with an umbilical connection to his homeground. The eldest of four children, Anderson grew up in St Andrews. Elizabeth, his mother, is a fisherman’s daughter. His father, Billy, from an East Neuk farming family, is a professional accordionist, and still plays at funerals (“celebratory but sad, it’s perfect,” reckons his son). Lynne, his sister, emigrated, but Anderson’s twin brothers still live nearby. Een (Iain) - “the best musician in the family” - makes musical instruments; Gordon - “the best songwriter” - was a member of the Beta Band.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Anderson excelled in maths and took a degree at Edinburgh University in physics and electronics. By then he was playing accordion and at 19 he began to write songs. He would spend two years busking in France, but declined the offer of a teaching job at a music school in the Dordogne, to return to Fife.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJARAEuJOEbm8fvBkmrdOA3AWIFQZcLJ20EwsBOxrZ3YTpM3KdBQGf0wG0Bn_lCJL64qnKJK60vK_7lg0lVl3WBnQeyoaXeIT7d-YC4C0EE0uQ7mGpnTKVIuBPzDW4dDESmCDtGdbyQe9d/s1600/FullSizeRender+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJARAEuJOEbm8fvBkmrdOA3AWIFQZcLJ20EwsBOxrZ3YTpM3KdBQGf0wG0Bn_lCJL64qnKJK60vK_7lg0lVl3WBnQeyoaXeIT7d-YC4C0EE0uQ7mGpnTKVIuBPzDW4dDESmCDtGdbyQe9d/s200/FullSizeRender+3.jpg" width="161" /></a><b>The rest is legend. Back home he founded the Skuobidh Dhu Orchestra, a post-punk busking band, and went on to establish the Fence collective, nurturing a unique musical culture, which ever so slowly put Crail on the musical map.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Along the way, he eked out, among others, a certain Kate “KT” Tunstall. He was 25 at the time, and had a day job in St Andrews Woollen Mill, about ten miles from this house.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>“A friend of hers asked me to go and see her singing in a café,” he recalls. “She was absolutely incredible. At 16. I got a grilling from Kate’s mum, the kind of thing you might get from your girlfriend’s parents. ‘What’s my daughter playing at? You should be more responsible. Make sure she follows a sensible career, not this.’ I said: ‘I’m not going to dissuade her, she’s a natural.’ Kate still gives me brownie points for that.”</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>By 2005, Tunstall had a big label and a CD at the top of the charts. <span class="il">King</span> <span class="il">Creosote</span> took longer to reach a wide audience, but in 2012 Diamond Mine, recorded with Jon Hopkins, was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Its successor From Scotland with Love brought a breakthrough in sales. Retailers in Edinburgh say Astronaut meets Appleman, released last Friday, is their biggest seller since Adele’s 25 hit the shelves two years ago.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>But life has its downs too. In 2011, intent of formalising business arrangements around Fence Records, Anderson set up a limited company with Johnny Lynch, his good friend and long-time musical collaborator.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>He was soon ill at ease, he says. “The mentality of it was different. I’m sure someone with a financial background would look at it and say ‘that’s a great thing’. But I’m not from that school of thought.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>“I found myself really unhappy and artistically stifled. I’d never gone into anything thinking, how much profit will this make? For me, it’s about a gang all getting on with it.” Within little more than a year, the limited company was over and the friendship with Lynch hit the rocks.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Now, here in the “nerve centre” Anderson has “gone back to the tiny”. He is quietly ramping up the number of record releases organised under the old, unlimited Fence banner, supported by the fanzines he makes himself.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4MTmwUvZHGY3MbuMoREBhhW-BjX-yOe3RIWwC51imJ1WFvheb8nZ3fEoHHBE8COgm5mJBBgOGVyIL-As1fBQhfi92j0-lrGeG8FVSTKphNXghNMH-N8y-nrKWn9-627gnUvTZt6vmu_d/s1600/FullSizeRender+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="155" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW4MTmwUvZHGY3MbuMoREBhhW-BjX-yOe3RIWwC51imJ1WFvheb8nZ3fEoHHBE8COgm5mJBBgOGVyIL-As1fBQhfi92j0-lrGeG8FVSTKphNXghNMH-N8y-nrKWn9-627gnUvTZt6vmu_d/s200/FullSizeRender+4.jpg" width="200" /></a><b>“I keep all the artwork” he says happily, yanking a bale of it out of a cupboard. He’s already drafting publicity for the 50 small gigs he has planned next year in a hotel up the road, to celebrate his own half century.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b>Would he ever leave Crail? “You’re joking,” he laughs. “It’ll take me ten years to sort this house out.” In the fields beyond, the Fife countryside is singing with life. “I love this season,” Anderson says, “when the cornfields are ripe, there’s the deep blue sea and the deep blue sky. My heart rises, I’m jubilant. On drives from here to St Andrews, I want my life to be 300 years long.”</b></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></b></div>
<div>
<b style="font-size: 12.8px;">Questions in the Key of Fife </b></div>
<div>
<b>When were happiest? </b>At the birth of my daughters, Beth and Louie Wren.</div>
<div>
<b>Desert island song? </b>A Talk Talk ‘B’ side, It’s Getting Late in the Evening.</div>
<div>
<b>Favourite place:</b> The Dutch village in Craigtoun Park, St Andrews.</div>
<div>
<b>Favourite destination?</b> (outside Fife): Easdale.</div>
<div>
<b>The best advice you’ve had? </b>My dad said, ‘ Whatever you do, look after your feet.’ It came out of nowhere.</div>
<div>
<b>What advice would you give an aspiring young musician? </b>Listen to yourself. Even when you haven’t found your true voice, you learn from that. It’s that will make you a songwriter. Ignore advice.</div>
<div>
<b>Do politics make a difference in life? </b>No.</div>
<div>
<b>Does music a difference? </b>Music absolutely makes a difference. </div>
</div>
</div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-73186600546696429552016-05-24T09:10:00.001+01:002016-05-24T09:10:52.226+01:00Better late than never - Leith lauds its conquering heroes <div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Once
every millennium is about right for this kind of affair. As the world
and his wife knows, Hibernian last won the Scottish Cup at the
beginning of the last century. Yesterday, Edinburgh city centre, and
more especially the old port of Leith, came to a halt when unlikely
sporting heroes returned home, 114 years later, with the trophy.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 0.48cm;"><b>Overnight,
council workers found themselves obliged to plant “Special Event —
No Parking” signs from the Royal Mile to Leith Links to make sure
that the victory bus made the journey in good time. As tens of
thousands of well-wishers flooded out of bars and tenements on to
Leith Walk it took the full 90 minutes to cover a distance that might
take 25 at a brisk trot.</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 0.48cm;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Some
of the fans had, as the song says, walked 5,000 miles for this
moment. Ian Borge, 57, is one of four members of the Hibernian
Supporters of Alaska and had a green banner to prove it. “I go to
every final Hibs play in,” he said. “That’s two this year.”</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 0.48cm;"><b>Mr
Borge, 57, grew up in Leith and moved to Anchorage half a lifetime
ago to work for BP. Kenny Radin, 58, his friend, went in the opposite
direction and has spent much of his life in Sydney, moving recently
to Jakarka with his wife.</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 0.48cm;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Mr
Radin was at his mother’s deathbed in 2012 when Hibs played Hearts
in the Scottish Cup final. He asked the hospice nurse if he should go
to the game. She said: “What would your mother want you to do?”
He went to the game. Hibs lost 5-1; his mother died.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Had
he no fears on Saturday? “Do you know, I thought we’d do it?”
he grinned. “And to be there. Grown men crying. Kids, marriage,
whatever — that was one of the best days of my life.”</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>These
two have seen some changes while waiting for their team to triumph.
The pub they had chosen, the Mousetrap, they once knew as the
Volunteer Arms, the violent “Volly”; another stamping ground was
the Victoria, now a Scandinavian Bar. And they’d visit Robbies, now
a respectable real ale bar.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><b>“<span style="font-size: 11pt;">We
used to say ‘The Volly for a swally,” said Mr Radin, “the Vicky
for a quickie and Robbies for a jobby,’” Carnival in Leith.</span></b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>As
anyone ensconced in EH6 knows, this party had started 24 hours
earlier. Not everything is lovely around a high-spirited football
crowd, drunk on victory and everything else.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Outside
Leith Dockers Club, four women argued about who would go back home to
look after the kids, while the rest remained to celebrate. A man
walked by in a maroon top, his pit bull on a short lead.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>By
The Marksman, two women in saris smiled at the crowd gathered on the
pavement holding glasses, the flotsam occasionally tumbling on to the
road.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Further
up the street a crowd with scarves and banners gathered around a
drummer outside the Hing Sing Chinese supermarket. Within the hour, a
police cordon had formed to keep them off the road. By midnight, with
the street blocked to traffic, the rules were: “dance” in the
middle of the road, sleep propped by a wall at the side.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Next
morning, at Picardy Place, Sherlock Holmes was wearing a Hibs scarf
and waving a green chequered flag. The statue marks Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle’s birthplace. The author, who was a goalkeeper and believed
in fairy stories, would have felt vindicated by the sight of the
trophy which last passed past this way in the year that The Hound of
Baskervilles was published.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0.13cm; margin-top: 0.13cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 0.48cm;"><b>Banners
hung from every other tenement; women dangled the feet over window
sills; a man with a green and white flag blasted Sunshine on Leith
from his berth above a hairdressers.</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="color: black;">When,
at last, the victory bus turned into Constitution Street, two young
men clinging to the statue of Queen Victoria, raised their arms and
shouted: “We are amused!” Or words to that effect. </span></span>
</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Mr
Sherry, a Sikh shopkeeper, had gone to Saturday's game with his sons
and grandsons, three generations of the Singh family. They came out
to celebrate again, clad in green and white turbans, and Hibernian
tops emblazoned, “Singhs go marching in”. </span>
</b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br />
</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 11pt;"><b>Mr
Sherry, 57, has been to every big final since he was youngster.
Witnessing victory at last was a joy, but “ruined a bit” by the
crowd invasion, which has sparked a police investigation. He was
smiling now though. “I thank my father and my Sikh faith,” he
said, “they have made me a proud Hibee.”Proof, if any were
needed, that, in Leith football is a religion.</b></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<b><br />
</b></div>
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<div align="LEFT" style="border: none; line-height: 0.48cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; orphans: 1; padding: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-20070202426800784992015-08-15T11:26:00.002+01:002015-08-16T08:46:03.191+01:00From Scotland with love - and a little bit of badness <div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.eif.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/event_header_image/public/media/2015/king-creosote-2-140815.png?itok=7iOqCc7L" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.eif.co.uk/sites/default/files/styles/event_header_image/public/media/2015/king-creosote-2-140815.png?itok=7iOqCc7L" height="226" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Today, the Edinburgh International Festival will stage a production of the most beautiful film to have been produced in Scotland during the year of its independence referendum. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
<div>
From Scotland with Love is a mesmerising account of the country in the 20th century, assembled from newsreel footage by Virginia Heath, and set to a soundtrack by Kenny Anderson, known as King Creosote.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
First reviews were unanimous. “A magical window on Scotland’s past” ran one headline; “delicate and beautifully observed” said another. But almost as soon as the film was released, it proved a battleground for Anderson, who will perform the soundtrack live at the Hub on Friday and Saturday.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
All the strife, he admits, was partly his own fault. The singer-songwriter may be a Scot born and bred, but cocooned in a creative bubble, he had never really considered the impact of releasing the most emotive of titles at such an historic moment. “I know I was an idiot,” he says, mock apologetic, “but I just didn’t see in coming.”<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
Now, ensconced in a Glasgow rehearsal room, he can remember the shock when he sat down for the media calls which followed film’s release. “First interview, early question: ‘You’re obviously going to vote yes, so how are you going to feel when you wake up and there’s an independent Scotland?’ I’m like: ‘Whoa, wait a minute, where are you getting that?<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
“It just went on from there. More annoyingly it was always Yes-loaded. Everyone who asked about the music assumed I was pushing for independence. Every interview, I had to say. ‘Isn’t there an argument that I can love Scotland as part of the UK? Why am I less Scottish in your eyes if I have alliances with different people around the place?<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
“In the real world, best pals I had through school and university were hitting me with this nationalist, ‘We are better on our own, without the English.’ Worst of all, I was being lambasted for having a different opinion from them. And of course I was being negative, because ‘No’ is negative.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
“When I saw it happening in my family, my brothers picking on my mother. I thought, ‘What is going on? It’s ridiculous that some wedge has been driven in.’”<br />
<br /></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Kenny Anderson, Glasgow: He was like: "Go on, stick it to them.</b>"</td></tr>
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Things came to a head at a packed gig in Dennistoun, Glasgow. The memory is hazy, something about Anderson announcing his intention to vote ‘No’ in preference to the alternative, “a <span class="il">banana</span> <span class="il">republic</span>”.<br />
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He grins. “I’ve got that little bit of badness in me. I thought, ‘I’ll see what happens if I say something about the No side. Derek (O’Neil) on keyboards is from Blantyre, staunch Labour, he was like, ‘Go on, stick it to them.’ I did. People were shouting: ‘We are here for your music, not your politics!’<br />
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“One guy shouted: ‘Shut up!’ I yelled back: ‘No, you shut up!’ People were leaving, there were boos. But then this big guy, right at the front, stretched out his arm and just yelled ‘Nooo!’”<br />
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After the gig came the backlash. “At the heart of the storm, people would say: ‘Who’s going to buy your record now?’ I’m like: ‘Get over yourself. I might lose less than half my Scottish sales? And what are they going to do? Burn the albums? Not like my music any more?”<br />
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He doesn’t take part in social media, but when friends told him about the abuse being heaped upon is head, he couldn’t resist a peek. “I saw one guy, ‘King Ringpiece’ he called me. I was like ‘Bring it on!’ That’s Scotland, right there.”<br />
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He loves the little details in life. Anderson was born on Candlemas, 1967, and brought up in St Andrews. His mother came from a Crail fishing family and his father was a professional accordionist.<br />
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Aside from taking an electronics degree in Edinburgh, and two years busking in France, he has spent all his life in north east Fife. The essence of the place, the swathe of rolling green countryside, the people, the pretty villages and the sea beyond formed his outlook and a music, spanning more than 40 lo-fi albums.<br />
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Like the Crail boats that used to trawl for herring between Portsoy and Great Yarmouth, he doesn’t acknowledge conventional boundaries he says. There are far more King Creosote fans in “music towns” like Norwich, <span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Nottingham or Manchester, than in Dundee and Kirkcaldy, places which are a bike ride from where he lives.</span><br />
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His background helps to explain his attitude to the film project. Aside from some of the most recognisable events and locations – images of ‘Main St’ St Kilda or tanks in George Square, Glasgow – he insists this isn’t about Scotland. Any faded colonial power could have supplied the archive of screen image: mines, steel works, factories, dance-halls, fun fairs, harvesting, holidays.<br />
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A year since From Scotland with Love caused so much angst, he remains “wrankled constantly” by the mood he still sometimes encounters . ‘People are like ‘Grrrr, f*** ing no voter,’” he says laughing.<br />
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As for the “machinations” of the SNP at Westminster, he detests the party’s assumption that it speaks for the whole of Scotland, and the breach of faith which has allowed ‘once in a lifetime’ to become another referendum in a year or two.<br />
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“The amount of times I have thrown my rubber-soled shoe at the telly when Nicola Sturgeon comes on ….,” he says, with a shake of the head.<br />
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“I know if I met these people I would probably like them, but I just don’t think that Scotland has all the answers. I think it’s a horrible thing to even try to say: ‘O no we are way more sociable and socially inclusive up here. We are different. We are better.’<br />
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“We are not better. We are colder and wetter, but not better.”</div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-91102476170573603492015-03-23T16:43:00.000+00:002015-03-23T16:43:11.378+00:00Salmond extends the hand of friendship <div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>The early morning mist hangs low over the polling station in Alex Salmond's Aberdeenshire constituency. This is Strichen – pronounced, unpromisingly, 'stricken' - and the first minister has just cast his vote in the village hall. He is sauntering across the damp gravel when I blurt out the question I've had in my head for three years. “Haven't you been been campaigning for a redrawing of the Act of Union, rather than independence?”</b></span></div>
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<b>Salmond stops, leans back in surprise. “You're almost right,” he says.”I am redoing the union of the parliaments, not the union of the crowns. Of course, the United Kingdom is first mentioned as the Union of the Crowns.” He starts walking again. “I'll talk to you about this when I get chance.”</b></div>
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<b>He will too. Anyone who has seen Salmond at close quarters knows there's nothing he likes better than to lecture on matters historical. Five minutes later, the first ministerial limousine is pulling away from Ritchie Hall, and I am in the back seat, absorbing a lesson on the constitution.</b></div>
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<b>“You're absolutely bang on historically,” says the First Minsinster, enthusiastically. “This is re-establishing the Constitutional relationship of the 17<sup>th</sup> century – if we lose <span class="il">Cromwell</span> for a second. By definition a United Kingdom comes from a Union of the Crowns (1603) not the Union of the Parliaments. (1707)”</b></div>
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<b>He leans forward. “Go down to the lake, Alec,” the First Minister tells his chauffeur. The car turns left down a driveway, before rolling slowly to a halt.</b></div>
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<b>The lesson recommenceth. From Salmond's point of view it seems the notion of renegotiating a treaty sounds a lot less threatening to people south of the Border, than the bolshy idea of Scots breaking away. So, in 1997, he introduced this historical angle into the first consultation documents on independence, known as the National Conversation.</b></div>
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<b>The historical point proved too complex, he claims. “Apparently you have to be aware of clouding or confusing an issue, and being seen to be too clever by half. Therefore we had the straight question (on the referendum ballot paper): 'do you want Scotland to be an independent country.'”</b></div>
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<b>His academic background in history explains key strands of his thinking. Salmond is, for example, an unabashed monarchist, anathema to today's Radical Independence supporters as much as it was to his left-leaning comrades in the SNP '79 Group, the cadre of young politicians formed to champion devolution in 1979.</b></div>
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<b>“I argued (then) against republicanism as a policy, I thought it a daft thing to do,” he recalls. “If you were starting the constitution of a country now, it would seem anomalous to have a monarchical position.</b></div>
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<b>“But my view is the monarchy epitomises the social union and in my consistent support for Queen Elizabeth as Queen of Scots, and her heirs - obviously I have deep respect for Her Majesty the Queen – I am also trying to get across the point that there is a social union beyond the Westminster Parliament.”</b></div>
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<b>This “social union” - the cross-border network of family, friends and business ties – may seem an baffling concept to many south of the Border. Salmond is convinced it will be the glue that make could make new arrangements as tolerant as before.</b></div>
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<b>The public meetings he held recently in Liverpool, Newcastle or Carlisle showed him articulating this comradely position, he says. “Some people accepted the point, but a lot haven't. People often see the thing through the prism of received wisdom. That will certainly change if we carry the day. I will articulate these sentiments very positively in terms of how we move forward.”</b></div>
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<b>Friendly relations can persist even in the vexed area of defence. The SNP's only sine qua non, he says, is the removal of Trident. Everything else is up for negotiation. “We are perfectly happy to co-operate in anything else that is appropriate and proper”, he insists. Moreover, It would “rather anomalous” if Scotland, given its geographical position, were not allowed to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.</b></div>
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<b>The hand of friendship extends further. With the agreement of Westminster, Scots should be able to sign up for the Royal Regiment of Scotland, just as the Irish Guards are an integral part of the army. Similarly, British troops could be based and train in Scotland, independent or not.</b></div>
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<b>A dog-walker, passes by. Weak sunlight twinkles on the lake, and the first minister, takes a moment to contemplate the political landscape in an independent country. The SNP may have won the day, but their victory is likely to reinvigorate both the radical left and the Conservative right.</b></div>
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<b>“As of tomorrow, if there is a new dawn over Strichen I suppose one of the ironies is that lots of people from a variety of political positions will have great encouragement,” he says. “What could be better than having a vital representation of people's views in that first Scottish election?”</b></div>
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<b>A few years ago, I tell him, a prominent banker reported a conservation with the first minister. The banker said to Salmond: “What you want from this referendum is an amicable divorce', isn't it?” Salmond replied cheerily: “And co-habitation.'”</b></div>
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<b>Is the story true? “I wouldn't demean the debate in these terms.” retorts the first minister, with the possibility of a twinkle in his eye. “Can we take Mike back to the village?” </b></div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-74206698059780840122014-04-29T07:39:00.000+01:002014-04-29T07:46:30.932+01:00Poles in Scotland could swing independence vote <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A wave of new arrivals from Eastern Europe could play a decisive role in the fate of the 300-year union between England and Scotland, pushing Alex Salmond over the winning line in the Scottish independence referendum.</div>
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For campaigners like Ania Lewandowska, a 29-year-old who works for Alyn Smith, the SNP MEP, these are exciting times. She has no doubt that many “new Scots” will vote yes in September’s ballot.</div>
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“They know that change can be for the better,” said Ms Lewandowska, “but also they are not afraid of it. Of course, some are still undecided, but that’s true of any sector of Scottish society. But in my mind most Poles will decide Yes.”</div>
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About 55,000 Polish-born people were living in Scotland at the time of the 2011 census, an 18-fold increase since EU enlargement in 2004. By the time of the referendum it is possible the population will have almost doubled again, though because many younger immigrants work in the hotel trade, the total is hard to assess.</div>
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Maciej Wiczynski, a passionate SNP supporter has pooled information from local authorities and found 30,000 Poles on the electoral register, though he has still to receive data from Edinburgh, home to Scotland’s largest single Polish community. With these kinds of numbers, the immigrant vote could be decisive.</div>
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Mr Wiczynski, a health worker, arrived in Scotland four years ago. At first he says he was sceptical about independence, but “engaged and did my own research,” emerging a passionate Yes supporter. “Money is not the issue,” he said. “It is more to do with social justice. Westminster is not working for the people of Scotland. We are more centre left.”</div>
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Tomek Borkowy, 61, agreed. An actor and well-known Edinburgh Fringe promoter, he has been in Britain since 1982 when he fled martial law in his own country. For the last 25 years he has lived in Scotland, sufficient time to come to a view on the political situation.</div>
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He drew parallels with 19th century when parts of Poland were incorporated into Austria-Hungary. It was “quite like Scotland and England,” said Mr Borkowy, “we had a lot of freedoms, but still it was not our own country.”<br />
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He went on: ”There is a very nice English saying: ‘small is beautiful’. Recently I needed to speak to someone in the Scottish Government. I asked to see John Swinney. In a month’s time, I was having lunch with Cabinet Secretary for Finance. Me, a foreigner, living in Edinburgh.</div>
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“Would that have happened if I had approached George Osborne? Absolutely not. Small is beautiful, small is better government. This is now my country. I will vote for independence and I believe most Poles will. This is a no-brainer.”</div>
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In Edinburgh. there are plenty of opportunities to test opinion. Michal Uarwat, one of the half of the team behind the Polish sandwich shop at Holyrood, puts his thumbs up for a Yes Vote. His business partner, Piotr Balcer, is a sceptic: “Heart says yes, head says no,” he said.</div>
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In Leith, Pawel Nuckowski, 41, took a different approach. This filmaker has lived in Edinburgh for 18 months with his wife and son. Inclined to the Yes cause, he is unlikely to vote. “How would Poles feel if British people moved in and decided on the future of my country?” he said.</div>
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In his shop on Leith Walk, surround by Polish hams and pickles, Marcin Wilkolaski took a dim view of the Yes campaign, even though “Tak” – a Yes Leaflet – is available from a community newsstand in the corner.</div>
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“Scotland and England have been together for centuries and there has been no war between them – that is very profitable for everyone,” said Mr Wilkolaski. “There are no boundaries in Europe now either. There’s been a huge recession for years, but no fighting. Countries are cooperating. It is better that way.”</div>
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Mr Wilkolaski may be in a minority. Such data as exists indicates that Scottish residents born outside the UK are almost twice as likely to vote for independence compared to residents who were born elsewhere in Britain.<br />
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Even now, the community remains too small to register in many pollsters’ surveys. The numbers involved, and the transitory nature of a substantial part of the population, make some inclined to dismiss the notion that Pole could influence the result of September’s referendum.</div>
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John Curtice, Professor Politics at the University of Strathclyde noted that only 8 per cent of the country’s population was born outside the UK and Ireland. He said: “EU citizens are less likely to be on the register, partly its motivational, partly it’s circumstantial. How much they engage in politics is debatable.”</div>
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But if it is a Yes vote, and by a narrow margin, David Cameron will only have himself to blame, said Mr Borkowy. The prime minister should have been prepared to offer ‘Devo Max’, additional powers to the Scottish Parliament.</div>
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“What did Westminter do? Decided not to offer more powers. They must be kicking themselves. The stupidity, the lack of forward thinking at Westminster is something we can do without.”</div>
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Like Mr Wiczynski, Mr Borkowy easily identified with “we” Scots. “We should escape,” he said. “We have the possibilities now, an historic chance to change everything.”</div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-17560492066736515712014-04-13T10:58:00.001+01:002014-04-13T11:21:57.102+01:00Kiss for the groom as gay marriage is legalised <div class="byline-timestamp" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 10px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="font-size: 1.5em; line-height: 18px;"><b>Half an hour after his wedding, the memory was already a blur for Jerry Slater. “The lady minister finished speaking and suddenly there was a big bang,” he said. “There was confetti all over the place. There was a choir. A politician gave a speech. Larry had to sit down.”</b></span></div>
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<b>Things get a bit confusing, apparently, if you are one half of a gay couple whose symbolic wedding was as public as it could be, right outside the Scottish Parliament.</b></div>
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<b>Inside, a few hours earlier, MSP had passed the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Bill by 105 votes to 18.</b></div>
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<b>This was one of the “great historic days” said Alex Neil, the Health Secretary, “because of the message it sends out about the new Scotland we are creating: live and let live.”</b></div>
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<b>For Larry Lamont, 80, Mr Slater’s partner, the historic day had been a long time coming. The brutal discrimination and abuse he had suffered as a young man only stopped when he “had the wisdom to marry” his wife in 1965.</b></div>
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<b>“My life was transformed, the trouble suddenly all stopped,” said Mr Lamont, an Aberdonian. “I had a happy marriage. I’m sure my wife must have known [about my sexuality] though it was never mentioned. But I think she strongly suspected the vicar who married us.</b></div>
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<b>Sadly, said Mr Lamont, his wife had died of cancer after 21 years. He didn’t rush out and take control of his life, but continued working as a psychiatric nurse. The truth about his sexuality eventually dawned in 1991, when he watched the BBC film adaptation of David Leavitt’s The Lost Language of Cranes. It told the story of a married father who is secretly gay.</b></div>
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<b>“I thought, ‘Dear God, I am that very man,’” recalled Mr Lamont, dressed for yesterday’s ceremony in a Lamont tartan kilt. “I knew what he was going through: he was gay, trying to live out his life in a married world. I thought: ‘I must do something about this. I can’t just waste the rest of my life waiting on the grave.’”</b></div>
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<b>He rang a helpline in Newcastle, close to where he was living. “I said to the young girl who answered: ‘I’ve always had gay feelings, but I’m 60-odd.’ She said, ‘O, you’ve years to go yet’ and sent me a copy of Gay Times. There was an advert for old gays looking for company. I sent a cheque off and the cuts came back a month later but I couldn’t find anybody. Another ad came up, so I sent another 15 quid. That was how I met Jerry.”</b></div>
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<b>The two moved in together in 1994. Marriage was important, said Mr Slater, 73. “Equality is the main thing, something we have been denied all our lives. Larry has had to live from times when homosexuality was illegal. Now equality is in kissing distance and it’s fantastic.”</b></div>
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<b>Outside the parliament, the crowd slowly dispersed, and the handful of protesters from United Christian Witness against Same-Sex Marriage began to pack their placards into the boot of an estate car. “Be sure your sin will find you out,” read one banner; “Where will you spend endless eternity?” inquired another. “In heaven or hell?”</b></div>
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<b>The Equal Marriage legislation reflected neither majority opinion in Scotland, insisted Donald John Morrison, from Inverness, nor the message of the Bible.</b></div>
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<b>“The first time they discussed this in Parliament was on 20 November — to us that was Black Tuesday. Within three weeks a helicopter fell out of the sky in Glasgow. At this moment there are floods and winds that are causing havoc. These are God’s judgement on our land and on our nation.”</b></div>
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<b>Just 50 yards further on, Sister Ann Tici of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence could find no words of encouragement for Mr Morrison. “We have equal marriage but many more things need to happen — polyamorous marriage for one,” said Sister Tici, whose white make-up almost concealed his beard. “There needs to be a helluva a lot more rights. When we have finished with this country and the countries round about we will spread out across the world until every single person can wake up and not feel threatened or unequal in their society. We are all essentially human.”</b></div>
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<b>A rainbow burst out over the Parliament building. There was no plague of frogs.</b></div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-18558155576839544852013-07-15T10:41:00.000+01:002013-07-15T10:50:05.464+01:00Portrait of an artist who thinks most contemporary art sucks <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ken Currie’s work divides opinion. The story goes that when his ghostly painting Three Oncologists was delivered to the back door of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in February 2002, the porter took one look at it, and, horrified, rang up the head curator. “You’d better come down,” he whined. “We could have a problem.” The curator ran down, fixed his gaze on those three haunted faces, then turned to porter and said: “No problem. That is a masterpiece.” </div>
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Curators are paid well to be correct. A decade later, Three Oncologists is critically acclaimed, the gallery’s top-selling postcard and a never-ending source of fascination for visitors of all ages. This week, it will be joined in Edinburgh by 11 new pieces by the artist, in Currie’s first big show in Scotland for a decade. The exhibition, timed to attract the biggest festival crowds, is not portraiture at all, but a bleak meditation on mortality.</div>
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New Works draws out Currie’s obsession with death masks - “strange objects, haunting things” - which began when he saw Himmler’s likeness in the Imperial War Museum. He recalls the perfect, shimmering white of the mask against the rich black velvet on which it rested. Beautiful, yet this was the last image of the most reviled mass murderers in history. It was, he says, a disconcerting sensation. </div>
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That was the early 1990s, but the feeling stayed with him. Ten years on, he took casts from the three real-life surgeons and used them to complete the Oncologists at his studio in Glasgow's east end. The moulds helped him work out the play of shadow across living faces. </div>
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The latest paintings draw even closer to death. Masks or the process of making them feature in four of these disconcerting images, with their dead or dying subjects encountered in eerie timeless stage sets, as if in a dream. A fifth canvas, Bath House, evokes David’s The Death of Marat, “one of the greatest paintings ever made,” he says. </div>
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It might seem that Currie, 53, has moved away from his famous life-affirming murals commissioned for the People’s Palace in Glasgow in 1987. Not necessarily. </div>
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“As someone pointed out, even in those pieces, which were meant as a sort of glorification of the march of labour, there are a lot of ambiguities and tensions.” he says. “That was one of the problems I had with the Left: everything had to be this pitched-forward thing. Politics is always about certainty. Temperamentally I was never that kind of person. I am riddled with doubt.”</div>
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Fundamentally, he believes, his politics haven’t changed. In 1992, with, among others, the novelist William MacIlvanney and the poet Liz Lochhead, he helped found Artists for Independence. He remains passionate in his support of the Yes Campaign and believes “separation” (Currie rather likes the word) can make a fairer Scotland. </div>
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There are other continuities. Along with Peter Howson, Steven Campbell and Adrian Wiszniewski, Currie was part of a last great generation of painters to emerge from Glasgow School of Art. He remains the consummate technician with only contempt for the ephemera of the more fashionable end of the contemporary scene. </div>
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He recalls a timeline at Tate Modern charting the evolution of art into the 21st century and rattles off the list of great names. “Manet, Monet, Van Gogh,” he chants, “into the Cubists, through the Vorticists, then post war, Rothko, Pollock, Warhol. Then, it started to get mushy and ended with all the recent Turner prize winners. Their names in that pantheon! I was rolling on the floor with laughter.”</div>
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People have become spectacles, he complains and fame can come without talent. He says: “Too many artists are like that. ‘How do I get the big lens of the media to look at me? I know, I’ll do something crazy like having an exhibition where the lights go off and on.’</div>
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“The Turner Prize is not really about art, it’s about media and artists have become media personalities. Everyone has a band; everyone has tattoos; everyone could take fashion photos if they turned their hand to it.” <span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">The alternative? “This is the thing I’ve learnt. Ideas are important but there are six million people on Earth and all of them have ideas. What makes an artist’s pearl of wisdom any more important? What's different is a painter has the ability to physically realise the idea. That involves technique. Painting is entirely about technique.” </span></div>
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He taps his chest. “I do sense there are works to come, in here. I feel there are paintings that need to be made, sense them boiling up. Sometimes I don’t know if they are actual thoughts or just fragments of dreams, but they are there. There is a sense of where they want the work to go.”<br />
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New Works will shock. Pray we all live long enough for Currie’s Future Works to emerge.</div>
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* Ken Currie - New Works, from 20 July, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. </div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-76824707048085812152013-07-08T22:35:00.000+01:002013-07-08T22:35:37.855+01:00'It means so much for us as a town. We all pull together here.' <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>In the second row of seating in the Dunblane Centre, a large blonde lady is on her feet shaking her fist: “C'mon Andy this is your time!” she yells. Within seconds, a roar has erupted around her, making the walls bulge as if they might explode. A ball from Novak Djokovic has hit the net and Andy Murray, the local boy, is Wimbledon champion, a national hero.</b></div>
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<b>This was a beautiful day in Dunblane; joyous, exciting, friendly, fulfilled: four hours when locals mingled with the scores of daytrippers, determined to be in this place, at this time, to witness sporting history.<br /><br />“In Dunblane, we are so grateful to Andy for positive reasons.,” said David Spooner, a trustee of the centre, above the hubbub. “Anywhere you go in the world, people say, 'Where are you from? Dunblane? Where Andy Murray's from? It means so much for us as a town. We pull together.”<br /><br />It is almost impossible to overstate Murray's importance in this place. At one level, he is the ultimate role model, a young man whose success on the professional tennis circuit has boosted junior membership of Dunblane tennis club tenfold over the last seven years.</b><br />
<b><br />More than that, he has helped to eclipse the town's association with the killing of 16 infants and their teacher at the primary school in 1996. Murray was eight when a gunman burst into the gym at the school and opened fire. He and his older brother, Jamie, who was ten at the time, were on their way to the gym and hid under a desk in the headteacher's study.</b><br />
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<b>Money flowed in from well-wishers all over the world to help the community recover, and the Dunblane Centre was built with that cash. Yesterday, Mr Spooner and his staff were able to welcome incomers from almost every corner of the world to watch an astonishing and cathartic game live on the big screen.<br /></b><br />
<b>One man, driving from Somerset to Caithness, had broken his journey to come here, because he felt Dunblane's magnetic pull. “He told me, 'I'm so chuffed I saw Dunblane celebrate,” said Mr Spooner. “That's the magic of this place.”<br /><br />Geraldine Diggins, a retired Californian on holiday in Scotland, was rocking in disbelief. “It was absolutely worth the visit,” she said. “I could hardly watch half of it. My head was in my hands for that last bit.”<br /><br />All day, under a perfect blue sky, the excitement had built. At morning service in the imposing medieval Cathedral, the Rev Sally Foster-Fulton's homily seemed at first a little contentious for some of her parishioners.<br /><br />“There is a certain tennis match going on today, but God doesn't have favourites,” Ms Foster-Fulton announced, with mock severity. Then: “But we do. Good luck Andy!”</b><br />
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<b><br />Ten minutes later, in the Church Hall, Elizabeth Smith was taking issue with the minister. “I think everyone has had a secret wee prayer,” said Mrs Smith, who has retired and works in the Mary's Meals Charity Shop. “It will be tense, but I won't even leave the room when the tension gets bad. I think he will do it. This is Andy's year.”<br /><br />Along the pretty high street of this little town , shop after shop had its window display, its gimmick, its banner. The Beach Tree Cafe was selling green and purple tennis cup cakes, but had a sign in the window announcing: “Due to Andy's Success, we will be closing at 1.30 today so we can all support him.”<br /><br />A few doors down in McIntyre Funeral Directors there were two notices. One read “SMART. Peacefully in the wonderful care of the team at Strathcarron Hospice.” The other: “Come on Andy You Can Do It!”<br /><br />He did too. In front of the man from Somerset; a Sicilian called Gianfranco, who was holidaying in nearby Perthshire; a group of tennis mad former students who made a reunion out of the day trip; a family of five who had traveled from John O'Groats to share in the magic of the Dunblane Centre. And 150 more, locals and visitors crammed into the community hall, built as a symbol of enduring humanity, all cheering and hugging each other.<br /><br />“This is such a lovely community, such a friendly place,” said Mrs Diggins, her face lit up by her huge smile. “I am so delighted, so pleased for them all.”</b><br />
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-78078806451164406852013-03-24T12:28:00.000+00:002013-03-24T12:28:10.795+00:00Drive-by theatre and ferry tales on the road to Unst<br />
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Against the black of night and in a shower of sleet, a gang of young men is picked out in car headlights, tumbling around an old Volvo. To the left and right, ballroom dancers spin to a rhythm, completing a surreal scene.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This is Brae harbour on a remote Shetland coast, as far from theatreland as is possible. Yet here, buffeted by an Atlantic wind, Ignition is being staged, a fusion of dance, drama and driving, exploring “our bittersweet relationship with the automobile”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This ambitious project is a far cry from the road safety show first suggested in memory of Stuart Henderson, a local boy who died in a car crash in 2007. Developed at a cost of about £170,000 by Shetland Arts and the National Theatre of Scotland, Ignition has generated exhibitions and songs, staged parkour classes and mounted story-telling sessions on local buses. It has even created a piece of public art, a knitted car made in sessions of “makkin and yakkin” (knitting and talking) proof that Shetlanders know more than one way of spinning a yarn.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The piece de resistance is the finale, drive-by theatre performed in and around a community hall, and requiring the audience to take cars between venues and even light the stage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">At the centre of all this artistic activity is the character of the White Wife, a latter-day legend brought to life by Lowri Evans, the project’s hitchhiker-in-residence. Rarely out of her ghostly costume, over the last six months Ms Evans has hitched rides by car and ferry all over the archipelago recording the 157 stories behind the show. Last September, her first night on Shetland ended with a hen party on Unst, the most northerly populated island.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I’d got on a ferry, because the last drive had taken me to Yell,” said Ms Evans, 30, a performance artist from Manchester. “I saw Scooby Doo walk across the deck. There were hens and stags going between the islands. The young girls were dressed as old grannies and I just squeezed in on the back seat beside them.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In Lerwick she met Nepalese waiters from the Gurkha restaurant. “They’d ping-ponged around the world and ended in Shetland,” she recalled. “I gave them tea, fancies and sandwiches from a camper van. I danced in the rain with the manager. It was a really nice exchange.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Ms Evans even helped recruit the Ignition cast. Just before Christmas, in character as the White Wife, she encountered Barry and Wendy Broadbent on the No 9 bus from Walls to Lerwick. Now, clad in white, husband and wife are each spending ten nights acting out their own strange hitch-hikers’ tales, as they sit beside audience members during Ignition’s peripatetic performance. “Barry will kill me if get my lines wrong,” said Mrs Broadbent. “We must have rehearsed 600 times.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">If the cast all live on the island, key figures in the creative team are outsiders, recruited by the National Theatre of Scotland. Wils Wilson, Ignition’s director, is from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire; Rob Evans, is its Glasgow-based writer. Hugh Nankivell teased out the soundtrack from local song-writing sessions. Mr Nankivell’s home is Torquay, roughly 700 miles away.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Jacqui Clark, a Shetlander who has helped script the show, believes the outside help was essential.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There have been people brought in by NTS, but they haven’t inflicted their opinions on us,” said Ms Clark. “They have taken the time to listen to the folk who’ve engaged with us. As a local you can see the legacy, folk learning, picking up new skills. It’s important for a small community like this.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Is the final production worth a round trip for a West End enthusiast? It is nothing if not striking and while some of the songs have the sound of the community workshop, the parkour is exciting; the car theatre is intense and unsettling.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Outside Brae Community Hall, Davy Cooper, one of the show’s story tellers, is delighted with the premiere. He reveals that the key to good drama is to base it on truth not fiction.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My uncle Charlie died in 1940, before I was born,” said Mr Cooper. “He was a whaler and had overwintered up north, when his ship couldn’t get back because of the wolf packs of U-boats. They finally sailed home in a convoy. But within a week he had died in a boating accident just 100 yards from the house. He was found standing up in the water, dead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Now that would be difficult to make up.”</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">* Ignition, various venues, Shetland until 30 March</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">.</span></i></div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-37457307655996769402012-08-18T11:17:00.001+01:002012-08-18T11:19:28.902+01:00I'd sit in the park, glueys on one side, spliff smokers on the other, and I’d read Jane Austen. 'Weirdo,' they said.<br />
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Russell Kane won the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2010, and is one of the best known stand-ups in Britain. His comedy schtick is very much his tough upbringing in Enfield, his surly father, the bleakness of his surroundings. When I heard, like many comics before him, he had written a novel, I was pretty skeptical. But when I started reading The Humorist, I was impressed, so I approached him for an interview. This is what he said about how he discovered books. </div>
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<b>“Part of it was to try to piss my dad off,” he reckons. “Some people did drugs or got involved in crime or slept around. I wanted to be different. I thought ‘I’m going to read everything just to show I can.’</b></div>
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<b>“I used to sit in the park, glueys on one side, spliff smokers on the other. I had my own gear, my own spliff, waiting for my friends, and I’d read Jane Austen, just to make people say, ‘What are you doing, weirdo?’ Accidently it fell from rebellion into love.”</b></div>
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<b>At first, it was a torrid affair and grew into something beautiful only because Kane was incorrigible. He read slowly and when he could, kept a dictionary and an encyclopaedia by his side. <i> “</i>Pride and Prejudice was the first proper book I read,” he recalls. “Every word I encountered that I didn’t know got its own index card with a meaning written on it, then I’d put it in a pack, which I carried around in a bag. I went through it again and again until I had expanded my vocabulary.”</b></div>
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<b>He was, he says, 14 when he started creating his portable dictionary, but then corrects himself. “I’m exaggerating, because I’m ashamed. I was about 17. I’m ashamed I did it that artificially, that late in life. But eventually ‘impudent’ became a word I was comfortable with. That was the first word: impudent. The first word I ever wrote down on a card.”</b></div>
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<b>He collected 3,500 cards over the years. “I would pick a pack up, and I would go along the street, and I would say, ‘Oxymoron – what does that mean?’ The card was discarded when I felt the word naturally occur to me, when I could use it without thinking. I thought, ‘I now own that word, I know what oxymoron means, I’ll never forget it.’ And I never forgot any of them.”</b></div>
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You can read more about <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/article3510177.ece#" target="_blank">Russell</a> at The Times website. The photograph is by <a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/" target="_blank">James Glossop</a>. </div>
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Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-1602580180754276122012-08-07T09:45:00.000+01:002012-08-07T09:49:09.060+01:00Lasseter on Jobs: "I get to work with Dad today"<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">John Lasseter is the creative genius behind Pixar. He achieved worldwide fame as director of Toy Story, and is now chief creative officer for Disney and Pixar. He has a long connection to Scotland, first visiting on a Eurorail pass when he was a student. I interviewed him when he returned in June to promote Brave ahead of its US premiere. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The interview was set up as part of the "junket", the huge publicity splurge around the film, that brought 150 journalists over from the states. Disney had hired a couple of floors of the Balmoral Hotel to service the hacks, and reaching Lasseter, was like getting into Fort Knox. I got a military 45 minutes with the Big Fellow, in which time I got to ask about eight questions. This is what he said about Steve Jobs, who co-founded Pixar, and bankrolled it for ten years before Toy Story was released. </span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Jobs became his sounding board, a confidante, a decision maker, both a father figure and “like a brother” . Jobs’ death from pancreatic cancer last October was a desperate loss. Life must be difficult without him?</b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>“It is,” says <span class="il">Lasseter</span> carefully. “I miss him a lot. The way I describe Steve, he’s like I was with my sons, learning to ride a bike. You run alongside and you hold on to the handlebars, then you let go and they wobble and you’re still running beside them. But pretty soon they are riding by themselves and you stand and watch them. Steve was like that with us. He had no desire to ride the bike, but he wanted to be there to help.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Jobs contribution is built into Pixar’s bricks and mortar. Its headquarters at Emeryville near San Francisco has been dubbed “Steve’s movie” because Jobs spent four years designing the perfect Californian office space to house what he called "a community of collaborative filmmakers''. </b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>And he was a creative influence. “He wasn’t there crafting the stories, but he was my fresh set of eyes that I’d show to all the time,” say <span class="il">Lasseter</span>. “I’d get a note from him and I was always like: ‘I didn’t even think of that. Wow!’ Or he’d simply say, ‘I just don’t get this, right here.’ I’d been too close to something, but he’s the one who makes me look at it from a distance and say, ‘Man, he’s right.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>A year after Toy Story was released, Jobs returned to Apple – “I was so proud of him” says <span class="il">Lasseter</span> - but he never dropped his connection with Pixar. Six years ago, when the two animation giants merged Jobs became Disney’s biggest individual shareholder, and <span class="il">Lasseter </span>its driving creative force.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>The two men remained close. “I would go down and visit him (at Apple) all the time,” says <span class="il">Lasseter</span>. “It was like ‘I get to go to work with Dad today’. It was really special. We used to talk all the time. I miss him.”</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Read the 2000-word interview at <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/film/article3495846.ece" target="_blank">The Times Review cover story</a>. Picture shows Lasseter with Julie Fowlis, the singer</span></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-49875903370466098872012-06-04T10:27:00.001+01:002012-06-04T10:39:21.619+01:00Disneyfication is not a dirtry word<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDZk9pcYsuB4O47FMnxoKX0-zV_57AO86iDxoMxW3XsqPq_Ue2EKZo-62s-Ib2J7Hzpos6ha6GWIzVHWgtasDKkZaFsr5LDQXs73PZWovga69oYCikKKfumTJStQ1IcBybT89xTyIAD9U/s1600/brave-movie-pictures-aea55.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxDZk9pcYsuB4O47FMnxoKX0-zV_57AO86iDxoMxW3XsqPq_Ue2EKZo-62s-Ib2J7Hzpos6ha6GWIzVHWgtasDKkZaFsr5LDQXs73PZWovga69oYCikKKfumTJStQ1IcBybT89xTyIAD9U/s400/brave-movie-pictures-aea55.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
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Here's a little extract from today's Times coverage of Pixar's Brave junket in Scotland. Click <a href="http://tinyurl.com/7mz2vdh" target="_blank">Brave Express </a>to read the full story<br />
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<b>Welcome aboard the Brave Express,” drones the train announcer. “Please take time to familiarise yourselves with the safety information notices.” </b><br />
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<b>It’s Saturday morning and the largest press trip ever organised by VisitScotland is chugging out of
Edinburgh. About 150 film journalists — Hollywood’s finest — are grinning at each other across lochs of complimentary whisky and mountains of haggis-flavoured crisps. This is what a national tourism agency does when the latest computer-animated Disney Pixar blockbuster is set on its own turf, offering the chance of almost unprecedented publicity. </b><br />
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<b>Brave is a fairy story set in an ancient Scotland that never quite existed, yet its backdrop is tantalisingly accurate.
Pixar put years of research into its Scottish buildings and landscapes; little bits of Edinburgh, Dunnottar and Eilean Donan are to be found in the fictional DunBroch castle. The Callanish Standing Stones, a real and eerie presence on Lewis, are depicted as truly magical in the film. </b><br />
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<b>Over two days of private screenings and briefings in Edinburgh last week, the Disney vision was revealed to the Hollywood press corps. The Brave Express, as Mike Cantlay, chief executive of VisitScotland, puts it with commendable chutzpah, is “where legends come to life” and where, hopefully, a modern country gets
written into the ensuing coverage.</b>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-71716250099618532252012-05-26T11:17:00.000+01:002012-08-18T11:28:06.771+01:00Yes, it was really was that bad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">This is extracted from my sketch of Friday "Yesscot" campaign for Scottish Independence. You can read the whole thing on </span><a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/scotland/article3427104.ece" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;" target="_blank">The Times</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"> website. The photograph is by </span><a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;" target="_blank">James Glossop</a></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>It was all bafflingly bad, not least because the
SNP, more marketing organisation that political party, have shown themselves to
be the most adept electoral machine in Britain over the last five years. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>They’ve done so, in large part, by carefully
following public opinion and tailoring their vision of independence to what the
public will accept. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>The monarchy, the pound, the army, the BBC, the
DVLA, all of these apparently will be part of an independent Scotland, because
that’s what the focus groups say Scottish people like. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s an intriguing vision, this “social union”, as
the SNP call it - but how would it w</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">ork, what would it look like? Yesterday no-one
would or could say.</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Just when it couldn’t get any worse for those
Nationalist strategists who are so wedded to public opinion, Patrick Harvie, the
leader of the Scottish Greens, produced the one visionary speech, describing
what an Independent Scotland might look like. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Doubling up with Mr Salmond in the “progressive”
political alliance of the Yes Campaign, Mr Harvie’s intervention was a
bean-eaters’ charter for a joyless future. He dissed North Sea oil, the
mainstay of Scotland’s economy, called for a new economic model, and spoke of
“the delusion of everlasting economic growth”. Vote winners all. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>At the end, Mr Salmond was still sitting smiling
with one of his new friends, Alan Cumming, posing for photos. One of this odd
couple made his name in the movies as Floop, a childish character with a maniacal
secret agenda to take over the world. </b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>The other? The Yes campaign launch left
that question unanswered. </b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-49150863836926553962012-03-24T08:34:00.001+00:002012-03-24T10:52:21.548+00:00Sketch: Health of the nation<br />
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<b>Ever since the Coalition government set about “reforming” the NHS in England and Wales, Alex Salmond has made healthy progress by presenting himself as the reincarnation of Sir William Beveridge, the founder of the welfare state. None of Andrew Lansley's ham-fisted surgery skills are being deployed on health services in Scotland, so things must be better here, right? </b></div>
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<b>In fact, no-one knows. No reliable data has been available for comparisons with outcomes in the rest of the UK, meaning the claims of Mr Salmond, that the sick of Scotland have thrown away their crutches and can walk again, have so far gone unchallenged. </b></div>
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<b>Until yesterday, at FMQs. Enter Johann Lamont, the Scottish Labour leader, armed with medical opinion, and a disconcerting bedside manner. Was Mr Salmond aware, she wondered, that the Royal College of Nursing had concluded there are “not enough nurses to provide basic, safe care”? Or that Audit Scotland and the Centre for Public Policy in the Regions said Scotland is lagging behind England in resourcing the NHS? </b></div>
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<b>Well if he was aware, the First Minister wasn’t letting on. Instead he rambled on like a patient still woozy with anaesthetic. He did come up with a statistic of his own: for every eight nurses in Scotland, there are 5.3 in England (that O.3 of a nurse works in the urinogenitary clinic in Cockfosters, apparently). But aside from this, his random targets appeared to be with the Welsh Labour Party (offered no right of reply) and the Shadow Health Secretary. </b></div>
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<b>The latter is, of course, Jackie Baillie, such a substantial figure that she played a very large part in proceedings without actually asking a question. It was Ms Baillie who earlier this week had drawn attention to a supposed shortage of bed covers in the Greater Glasgow Health Board, an assertion that drew a blanket condemnation from Mr Salmond.</b></div>
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<b>Gradually it became clear that the FM had a health issue of his own, a kind of weird, intermittent hearing loss in the presence of Conservatives. When Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader asked why Mr Salmond spent £130million on free prescriptions, when most people were prepared to pay for their medicines, he obviously didn’t hear at all, because he didn't answer. </b></div>
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<b>Then Mr Salmond launched a paean to “the lost leader”, Murdo Fraser, whom he mistakenly thought had spoken, before hearing just one word in two whole questions from John Lamont. That word was “separation” a term that made the FM's eyes bulge. "Separation? Separation? I look forward to the United States of America celebrating their Separation Day,” frothed Mr Salmond. Nurse, the screens!</b></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-89844743127491325942012-02-24T10:30:00.000+00:002012-02-24T10:32:56.556+00:00Helping the Masai farmers when the pop stars have all gone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzGqs3_LirvoYRyxgPTCyyPfYzw_yGxpR1IFM7capCE3Rg8oFxK80RC75Z3XIc9hPbFbcoymzoNPIwS_NfIwmBvTycITtRjg5AzczjYs0zCoWiUUMy7CB7MRVSFhKuZmpLJ4PFkbgGOwR/s1600/tanzania_07_13774c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzGqs3_LirvoYRyxgPTCyyPfYzw_yGxpR1IFM7capCE3Rg8oFxK80RC75Z3XIc9hPbFbcoymzoNPIwS_NfIwmBvTycITtRjg5AzczjYs0zCoWiUUMy7CB7MRVSFhKuZmpLJ4PFkbgGOwR/s400/tanzania_07_13774c.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It is a little after dawn in the Masai district of Engarenaibor in northwestern Tanzania. Amid a prehistoric landscape of rolling grassland and acacia trees, Paolo Lemorongo, a farmer, is rounding up cows, so that his visitors can see for themselves the tiny yellow tags that have been attached to each animal's ear. The tag signifies an animal inoculated against the deadly Ndigana kali, better known as East Coast fever.<br /><br />"Before the vaccination became available, most of my animals died," says Mr Lemorongo. "If the cows delivered 80 calves, only five would survive. Of course, when vets first brought the treatment here somepeople were suspicious, but when they saw that so many animals survived, suddenly everyone wanted it."<br /><br />Mr Lemorongo, whose home is a four-hour drive by Land Rover from Arusha, the nearest city, is understandably delighted to be the beneficiary of a ground-breaking aid project, developed byGalvmed (Global Alliance for Livestock Veterinary Medicines). This Edinburgh-based charity was founded five years ago with the aim of halting East Coast fever and 12 other deadly livestock diseases that lay waste to millions of animals every year across the African continent andthroughout the developing world.<br /><br />It seems an unfeasibly large ambition. In the Masai communities of Engarenaibor, disease has for generations been a brutal fact of life for farmers such as Mr Lemorongo. In the good times cattle represent the food and currency he needs for his own survival. Cows supply the rich, untreated milk that is the staple diet here; when there is a surplus of healthy animals, some can be sold at market to provide the funds to send his children to school. But should the cattle die, whole communities will be impoverished.<br /><br />In recent years, the statistics have made grim reading. It is calculated that in East Africa, 1.1 million cattle succumb annually to Ndigana kali — a tick-borne disease that infects the lymph glands and causes high fever— with only three per cent of calves surviving into adulthood. Yet here in Engarenaibor there has been a 95 per cent reduction in deaths from the disease since the vaccine was introduced.<br /><br />It is just a beginning. Last Thursday in Arusha in the presence of government ministers andofficials from Tan-zania, Uganda, Kenya and Malawi, Galvmed formally launched its new international campaign against East Coast fever, taking the battle across all four countries, with the willing support of all the governments concerned. The charity was able to confirm that "disease action plans" were being drawn up to tackle swine fever and other killers that destroy huge populations of pigs; to combat sheep and goat pox and Rift valley fever, fatal to smaller animals;and to defeat the infections that kill poultry.<br /><br />These programmes — designed to be enacted over a decade—represent a fundamental shift in the provision of aid to the developing world. Instead of the crisis management of famine or flood, with all its pop records and television appeals, Galvmed is creating a permanent continent-wide framework that will preserve livestock, and protect the communities who rely on their animals for their very livelihoods. The audacious scale of the project has been enough to convince the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to contribute £17 million in support. The UK Government's Department for International Development has contributed a further £7 million.<br /><br />In a statement to coincide with the international launch of the vaccine, Gregg BeVier, senior programme officer of agricultural development, for the Gates Foundation, heaped praise on the charity. "GALVmed and its partners should feel great pride in this important achievement," he said. "We hope this success will drive additional investment and innovation to benefit those who depend on livestock, and help them build better lives."<br /><br />The week's good news should not be allowed to divert attention from the long struggle to overcome livestock diseases, according to Dr Hameed Nuru, an Edinburgh-trained vet, who worked extensively for the African Union before he became Galvmed's senior director of policy andexternal affairs.<br /><br />Dr Nuru deplores the fact that although many livestock diseases have long been treatable, a mixture of Byzantine bureaucracy, prohibitive cost and political short-sightedness has stymied progress. The statistics speak for themselves, he says. Agricultural aid represents just five per cent of the total aid budget in Africa, but over 30 years that still amounts to a staggering £1.25 trillion.<br /><br />So why are there so few signs of a long-term improvement? "I ask myself, what is the food status of Africa, why do children keep going hungry?" he snaps. "There is good leadership in the African Union, we have people who are very switched on—but the logistics do not keep up with changing times, and there is a very bureaucratic set-up. People of talent do not move through quickly enough and by the time they emerge at the top of the ladder, they have lost the initiative. What is the point of putting so much money in if so little changes?"<br /><br />By contrast, Dr Nuru insists, Galvmed approaches problems on a continental scale. It is not a question of ignoring international boundaries, but of bringing different governments into play to ensure the vaccination campaign does not stop at border checkpoints.<br /><br />Crucially the charity has successfully lobbied the pharmaceutical industry, expediting the production of expensive drugs and persuading huge multinationals to live with lower returns. At grassroots level that means the creation of pharmaceutical supply chains to ensure vets andpara-vets are supplied with the vaccines they need to tackle diseases, and profit from their work. Mr Lemorongo paid 10,000 shillings (£5) for each vaccine he bought this year, in the knowledge that a healthy calf will yield him 70 times as much at market — and his good fortune bounces back along the economic chain.<br /><br />Last week, there were real hopes that Ndigana kali will finally be defeated, and that, like so many skittles, the other diseases will tumble. Yet, for all their hard work in fostering animal welfare, there are some problems that remain utterly intractable for Galvmed. In 2009, the rains never came to Engarenaibor and famine devastated the local herds: thousands of cattle died.<br /><br />The consequence are all too apparent at the village school, where just nine teachers are responsible for 700 local children. In a formal presentation to a Galvmed delegation, Anna Remi Nchira, the headmistress, explains, with great dignity, the problems she faces.<br /><br />The essence of her speech is this: because the rains never came, no one could make money by selling cattle; as a result there was no money in the community and the school could not build new classrooms or accommodation for additional teachers; and because there was no accommodation, the government would not send more teachers to the village. "Can your organisation help us?" Mrs Remi Nchira asks.<br /><br />Stuart Brown, a Galvmed official, responds in the best way, by telling the truth. He says: "Our organisation is focused on the vaccine for Ndgina Kali, and other diseases, and we know it will benefit the pastoralists in the future. It is important for us not to make promises we can't keep but to concentrate on what we do best. What I can assure you is that we will pass on your messageand always advocate your cause. "Mrs Remi Nchira nods her appreciation.<br /><br />"I understand," she says. "Your work has already helped these children and the new generation to come. Thank you very much and God bless you."</b><br />
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<b><i>The battle to beat Ndigane Kali, the disease wiping out Masai herds </i></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeVUYRBdKyb5WTJeqjBWb-jGA6Y8Xkfoa4pYNzxJUi8_co8wZie62C0sfbIRvsD6eGxsQ-OLeOS_NUh3037ndUDr3yTTyCLcGL0OzDJOEkOuObeTGz1raZlTjG5J0TkM21Xtx4U9MbWgF/s1600/tanzania_11_13778c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaeVUYRBdKyb5WTJeqjBWb-jGA6Y8Xkfoa4pYNzxJUi8_co8wZie62C0sfbIRvsD6eGxsQ-OLeOS_NUh3037ndUDr3yTTyCLcGL0OzDJOEkOuObeTGz1raZlTjG5J0TkM21Xtx4U9MbWgF/s200/tanzania_11_13778c.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: white;">Beating Ndigane kali— the deadly East Coast fever—has been a long time coming. A vaccine was developed in 1972 but the production process proved complex and costly. Potential manufacturers were reluctant to invest while governments declined to endorse the use of such an expensive remedy. Tanzania was the exception, with the government's livestock service latching on to the heroic efforts of Lieve Lynen and Beppe di Guilio, a husband and wife veterinary practice.<br /><br />When she moved to Arusha in 1996, Dr Lynen began to import vaccine for the sole manufacturers in Kenya, and soon proved its efficacy among the smallholders whose cattle live right in the heart of Arusha's ramshackle, teeming metropolis.<br /><br />Over the years, with government support, the couple's reach has expanded beyond any economic bounds. It was Dr Lynen who first inoculated Paolo Lemorongo's cattle in Engarenaibor, though his herd is a four-hour drive from her home.<br /><br />Then, in 2006, vaccine supplies ran low. This, coupled with the privatisation of the Tanzanian veterinary service, threatened to end the inoculation campaign - until Galvmed stepped in to smooth relations with governments, to reassure the manufacturer, and to guarantee supply.<br /><br />"It is a simple equation," says Dr Hameed Nuru of Galvmed. "Without us, there would be no more ECF vaccine."</span><br />
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<b>Pastoral care</b><br />
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As well as tackling East Coast fever, Galvmed will shortly launch campaigns to control Rift Valley fever, transmitted by mosquitos, and fatal to humans and animals, as well as Newcastle disease, a deadly killer that can wipe out poultry flocks<br />
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In Africa alone 589 million chickens are at risk<br />
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The charity is also working to make available the vaccine for porcine cysticerosis, a disease that causes thousands of pigs to be destroyed across Africa, Latin America and Asia. PC can also affect humans, causing cysts on the brain, causing 20-50 per cent of late onset epilepsy cases around the world, and said to be responsible for 50,000 deaths every year in the developing world.<br />
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In the longer term Galvmed is developing disease action plans for other diseases affecting cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and poultry<br />
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In total, around 700 million people rely on livestock for their livelihoods— but despite the vital links between animal health and human health, livestock and livelihood, less than 5 per cent of international aid is directed at agriculture in developing countries, according to figures released by the World Bank in 2007.<br />
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<b><i>The photos were taken by <a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/" target="_blank">James Glossop</a></i></b><br />
<br />Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-54145927133370601552012-02-20T13:39:00.000+00:002012-02-20T13:43:21.141+00:00Football? It's much more important than that<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>From the back of a McGhee’s bakery van a man emerges with a tray of cakes, for delivery to Rangers Football Club. He’s about to hand them to the chef, who has opened a door under the Main Stand, when he pulls up short.<br />
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“Hang on, pal,” the baker chuckles. “My boss says I’ve got to take the money off you first.” <br />
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Underneath his big white hat, the chef’s strained smile speaks volumes. It’s been like this all week for Rangers staff, their club in administration, with debts of perhaps £90 million. <br />
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That kind of figure spells potential disaster for the community around Ibrox stadium. In this tough neighbourhood, south of the Clyde, thousands of lives are nurtured by the football club, nourished by a river of fans that pours up Paisley Road West every other weekend. <br />
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It’s not just the match-day scarf sellers or the Sportsman chippy who make money from football. Even the local hardware shop can cash in on Rangers. <br />
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Among the paint ponts and drill-bits that fill up Harjit Singh’s window, are Rangers key rings and fridge magnets. A cardboard mask of the club manager, Ally McCoist, is pressed against a window pane. <br />
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“I got them in for the Christmas party season, but demand has slipped a bit recently,” lamented Mr Singh. “It’s been strange round here this week. For the first couple of days after it happened the whole area seemed really depressed, people were genuinely affected.” <br />
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<b>At the foot of Ibrox Street, Mary Clark has noticed the change in mood too, and she’s worried because she relies on Rangers for a bit of custom in her hairdressing salon. <br />
<br />
Not from the pampered players, she pointed out, but from fans who come along on Saturdays, long before kick-off, stamping up the steps from Cessnock station for a £6.50 trim, before they head off for a pre-game pint.<br />
<br />
“Aye, it’s good for trade,” she said, before she addressed the most popular topic of the day. “Rangers got £24 million in advance season tickets sales just before they went broke. Where do you think all that money went?”<br />
<br />
Other businesses feed off the club, like tick birds on a rhinoceros. Susan Dawson works in one of five burger stalls, each emblazoned with the Rangers crest, stationed round the stadium. <br />
<br />
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By 11 o’clock this morning, well before kick-off, she and three friends will be ready to sell thousands of burgers and square sausage rolls to the hordes, or that great football delicacy, chips with cheese and gravy.<br />
<br />
Wasn’t she worried that Rangers will go out of business? “Oh no. Definitely not,” she said, shaking her head. “Celtic couldn’t survive without their arch enemies. Scottish fooball needs Rangers.” <br />
<br />
Barman John Davis struck a similar note of optimism, from inside the Louden Tavern. <br />
<br />
“At first, when we went into administration, there was a lot of anger among the regulars,” he recalled. “Since then it’s changed. People are saying, if this is the road we have to go down, then that’s what it will be. We’re Rangers and that’s it. We’ve got to back them 100 per cent.” <br />
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The pub is one of three in a chain, each one profitting from the thirst of Rangers fans. The walls are plastered with mementoes. Jim Baxter and Davie Cooper, club greats, are depicted in two stained glass windows, because here Rangers is religion. <br />
<br />
Mr Davis is adamant: “The city knows that there is absolutely no way we can let Rangers go out of business. That’s 140 years of history right here. You can’t just let that die.”</b><div>
<b><br /></b>
All the excellent photos are by <a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/">James Glossop</a>. </div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-54569778357507402012-02-11T10:50:00.001+00:002012-02-11T10:54:15.138+00:00Donald Trump: No, really, I like Mr Salmond<br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>The winds of change have blown across the “Great Dunes of
Scotland”. This morning, Donald Trump and Alex Salmond, two of the most
substantial egos in the Northern Hemisphere, are at war with each other over
the fate of an as-yet-unfinished Aberdeenshire golf resort.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>At issue is an array of 11 giant off shore turbines that, subject
to planning approval, soon could overlook Mr Trump’s golf resort in Aberdeenshire,
to the businessman’s horror. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Last night, one of the protagonists, high in Trump Tower, shouted
insults from across an ocean. The world is “laughing at you” bellowed the
billionaire. The other, the politician, stuck to his
conviction that wind energy would remain forever at the core of the
Scottish Government’s energy policy, golf course or not. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Hostilities opened on Wednesday, when, with a characteristic note of
self-satisfaction, Mr Salmond told a conference that Mr Trump would “get
on board” as soon as Scotland was established as a world leader in
renewable energy.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>That intervention brought an almost apocalyptic response
from Mr Trump’s New York headquarters, in a letter addressed to “Dear
First Minister Salmond”. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Mr Trump wrote: “You seem hell bent on destroying Scotland’s
coastline and therefore, Scotland itself - but I will never be on board’, as
you have stated I would be, with this insanity.<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>“As a matter of fact, I have just authorised my staff to allocate a substantial
amount of money to launch an international campaign to fight your plan to
surround Scotland’s coast with many thousands of wind turbines — it will
be like looking through the bars of a prison and the Scottish citizens will be
the prisoners.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Last night, in an interview with The Times, Mr Trump made clear
that his anger had deep roots, founded on what he regarded as a breach of faith
by Scottish ministers. While his first golf course would open in
June, he insisted the remainder of the resort — including a luxury hotel and
hundreds of houses — would be halted if the wind farm went ahead. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>“Hey, would you build a hotel that looks directly into a turbine?” said
Mr Trump. “The turbines are right outside the windows practically. I’ve
made myself clear. Those turbines will destroy Scotland and destroy the tourism
industry. There won’t be any reason to build a hotel.” <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Mr Trump insisted his argument was not about personalities — “just the
opposite, I like Alex Salmond” — but was based on a point of principle. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Seven years ago, when he was considering options in Scotland and Northern
Ireland for a £1 billion golf resort he was given assurances by the
then Scottish Executive that there would be no offshore wind farm near his
Menie estate, the businessman said. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b> “The previous government — I assume it is one government and not
just a series of people — said ‘We want you to build this’,”
recalled Mr Trump. “I’ve spent £100 million in Scotland and I don’t even
have a mortgage on it — it’s not a lot of money for me. II was going to spend
£1 billion over the whole job, but not any more. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Mr Trump added that Jack McConnell, the former First
Minister, had promised the wind turbines would not be built. He recalled:
“I said: ‘Do I have your word?’ They said: ‘You have our word. We are not going
to build the windmills.’ I didn’t get it down in writing. I didn’t think I
needed to.” <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Ironically, it was the first SNP administration who finally granted Mr
Trump approval for his resort in 2008, even though it is being built on
a Site of Special Scientific Interest. At the time Mr Salmond endorsed
the development and said it was “entirely right and proper” that his government
should support a scheme that would provide 6,000 jobs. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Now the same ministers have to decide whether the wind farm goes
ahead. Supporters of renewable energy say it could create 130,000 jobs in
Scotland, and Aberdeen is seen as its natural home. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>Last night, a Scottish Government official stressed its enthusiasm for
off shore wind, which could “enable us to generate enough electricity to
power Scotland seven times over” by 2050. <o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b>He added: “Claims made by Mr Trump refer to the position some six years
ago, when he was submitting his Menie planning application – before the
current administration took office – and therefore we have no record or
knowledge of what was said then.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-50859588274025176612012-01-31T18:07:00.000+00:002012-01-31T18:07:19.451+00:00Ireland owns up to its shameful past<br />
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The Irish Government has indicated its willingness
to make a complete break from the “moral bankruptcy” of the past and pardon
thousands of soldiers who deserted their units to fight with the Allies against
the Nazis.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
In a
landmark speech before Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow, Alan Shatter, the
Justice Minister, linked the “untenable” treatment meted out to Irishmen who in
1939 fought for democracy, with their Government’s decision to deny visas to
Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The
Administration of the day, led by Éamon de Valera, had “utterly lost its moral
compass”, Mr Shatter said.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The
minister’s intervention comes after an intensive campaign to pardon the 4,983
men who left the Irish Defence Force to fight for the British.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
At
the end of the war those who survived were stripped of their pension and
benefits rights and placed on an employment blacklist, condemning them to
poverty.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Mr
Shatter unambiguously connected the fate of the deserters with the attitude of
de Valera’s Government to the Jews. It was an “inconvenient truth” he said,
that the Irish State had done nothing to aid Jewish refugees in the 1930s.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
After
Hitler gained power, Charles Bewley, an anti-Semite who was Ireland’s
Ambassador in Berlin, ensured that “the doors of this State were kept firmly
closed to German Jewish families trying to flee from persecution and death”,
said Mr Shatter, who is Jewish.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
“We
should no longer be in denial that, in the context of the Holocaust, Irish
neutrality was a principle of moral bankruptcy.” The shameful position was
compounded, he said, by de Valera’s visit to the German Ambassador in 1945 to
express his condolences on the death of Hitler. “At a time when neutrality should
have ceased to be an issue, the Government of this State utterly lost its moral
compass.” This was a lesson from the past, Mr Shatter said, and it affected
perceptions of the present.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
“Many
who fought in British uniforms during that war returned to Ireland and for too
many years their contribution in preserving European and Irish democracy was
ignored,” he added. “It is untenable that we commemorate those who died whilst
continuing to ignore the manner in which our State treated the living in the
period immediately after World War II, who returned to our state having fought
for freedom and democracy.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Only
about 100 of the deserters are still alive. Gerald Morgan, a campaigner for the
deserters, said that the Irish Government was morally right to pardon the men.
“This puts into context the sacrifices these individuals made,” said Dr Morgan,
a lecturer in English at Trinity College Dublin. “They went off to fight, but
paid a huge price.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The
campaign for a pardon was kick-started little more than a year ago by<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Spitting on a Soldier’s Grave</i>,
by Robert Widders, a former soldier from Liverpool, and taken up powerfully by the
Irish Soldiers Pardons Campaign, organised by Peter Mulvany. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Observers believe the Queen’s visit to Ireland was
of huge importance, particularly her gesture of reconciliation when she laid a
wreath in Dublin for those who died fighting for Independence.<o:p></o:p><br />
Last
month Mr Shatter referred the case for a pardon to Máire Whelan, the
Attorney-General, whose final decision is expected within weeks.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<b>Behind
the story</b><o:p></o:p><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
Éamon
de Valera became President of Ireland’s Executive Council and later Taoiseach a
year before Hitler came to power and left office in 1948, three years after the
end of the Second World War (Mike Wade writes). His government retained a
position of neutrality despite the persecution of the Jews and Britain’s
struggles against the Nazis.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
To
some, de Valera epitomised the new Ireland. He was slightly exotic (his father
was Cuban) but he was a Gaelic speaker and a former leader of the Easter
Rising. In a country that had only signed a treaty of independence in 1922 and
in which anti-Englishness was rife, he was a national hero.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
With
the fall of France in 1940, de Valera called for volunteers for an Irish
Defence Force to protect against the possibility of invasion. When the Nazi
threat receded after the Battle of Britain, thousands of the recruits headed
north to Belfast and “deserted” to British units.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-1550343076105768062011-12-31T17:40:00.002+00:002011-12-31T17:41:49.784+00:00Should auld acquaintance be forgot?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
Fireworks over the castle and crowds on Calton Hill. This Hogmanay in Edinburgh may look like any other, but when the new year dawns and the fog of whisky fumes has cleared, something will be different. <br />
<br />
Like a glacier advancing, political opinion has slowly shifted in this city over the past year. Behind genteel Georgian façades I’ve seen dinner parties descend into shouting matches; listened in bars as people, once Labour supporters, talked about “taking control of our own lives”. Interviewees have turned the tables on me and asked: “You’re the journalist. You must know. Are we going to be independent?” <br />
<br />
It’s the biggest question Scotland has faced for 300 years, let alone in my lifetime. Just months after the SNP’s historic election victory, pale-faced “unionists” (in Scotland the SNP has even seized control of vocabulary) stare at each over their coffee cups, enumerating the forces lined up in the great debate. The nationalists have a leader, a message, they appeal to youngsters and have the best and richest campaign machine in the country. On the other side, the Brits have ... well, no leader and apparently no campaign at all. <br />
<br />
Every week has brought some new sign of the SNP’s onward march: the almost daily spectacle of Alex Salmond riding roughshod over his political rivals in Scotland; his constant point-scoring over Westminster. Whether it’s public-sector strikes or European walkouts, the First Minister deftly blames the coalition Government for all Scotland’s ills. <br />
<br />
At SNP HQ there is, these days, an almost palpable confidence in the air. Without once uttering the word “zeitgeist”, Peter Murrell, the chief executive, argues that the party is almost completely in tune with “the nation”. The latter is a term he uses often. <br />
<br />
The Scottish nationalism of people like Murrell, who has the mild demeanour of a clergyman, is far removed from the hairy, firebrand politics of its ancient heroes. These days it feeds off focus groups and consensus politics, fires up young people and embraces incomers from Pakistan and Poland, binding allcomers to the cause. “Outside of the political classes, people tend to say ‘Why not?’ and that gives us confidence,” says Murrell, who used to work for the Church of Scotland. “We’ve already come a long way. We are heading towards the final bit of the journey.” <br />
<br />
This view appears to have a firm foundation. This month, the annual Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, produced by the National Centre for Social Research, confirmed that most Scots favour a revised constitutional settlement known as “devo max”. In other words, a system of government that would give Holyrood control over all tax and spend decisions, yielding only defence and foreign policy to Westminster. These findings, as Murrell points out, demonstrate that the population already wants more powers for Scotland than any political party — apart from his own — has so far been prepared to offer. <br />
<br />
“People simply don’t want the status quo,” he says. “The nation is far ahead of Labour, two thirds of the way towards the independence position. Our responsibility is to define the independence bit of it, and that is what we are starting to do.” Then, with a tight little smile: “We can have everything.”<br />
<div>
<br />
Everything? Unionists will mutter, “There they go again”. But in fact, what “everything” means to the SNP remains a moot point. Around the Scottish Parliament, the party’s MSPs and researchers are working on a “referendum prospectus”, a holy book that will define a vision for the new Scotland. It has already emerged that the SNP wants to retain at least two great British institutions, the monarchy and the BBC. Up for discussion are the economic settlement and the division of oil revenues, the roles of the Civil Service and the military. One senior Nationalist has already raised a question, apparently crucial for his party: “Is there a need for a separate DVLA or even Ordnance Survey?” <br />
<br />
According to Nationalist logic, separation from the rest of Britain will be made palatable to doubters by “the social union”, the mesh of family ties that link those 800,000 Scots-born people in England with the folks back home, not to mention the connections shared by 400,000 English people who have drifted north of Hadrian’s Wall. Why these myriad family ties should work in favour of nationalism is not immediately obvious but, according to Angus Robertson, MP, the social union will apply a kind of healing balm to those inflamed by the notion of an independent Scotland. <br />
<br />
“Independence will be underpinned by that sense of shared historical experience — the fact that we are not strangers or foreigners in the nations of these islands,” he tells me when I speak to him at Westminster. In other words, there will be no need for border controls or passports, at least from a Scottish perspective. (English politicians may have other ideas should economic migrants head to Scotland, and then decide to take the high road south.) </div>
<div>
<br />
With so many weighty matters on their minds, it’s little wonder that the SNP is keen to postpone the referendum. That, and the fact that they suddenly have the resources to fight a long campaign. When the poet Edwin Morgan died this year, he left the party £1 million. A couple of months later, Chris and Colin Weir won £161 million in the Euromillions lottery, and gifted a million, with (so rumour has it) much more to come. SNP activists talk excitedly about having £20 million to spend up until June 24, 2014, when, it’s a fair bet, the referendum will be called. That date, after all, is the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.<br />
<br />
The party is rich in another way. Murrell and his team are the best campaigners in Scotland by a very long street. The digital strategy at the heart of May’s victory has drawn much admiring attention from beyond Holyrood. Daniel Teweles has worked in the White House with Barack Obama as a digital consultant, and advises on politics and social media all over the world. He watched the Scottish election with growing excitement. <br />
<br />
“Let’s be honest, Scottish politics were not really on the international map — but they firmly placed it there,” Teweles tells me. Starting from second place in the opinion polls, in the 60 days before the May election the SNP transformed its prospects, in part at least, by cleverly integrating its doorstep campaign with, in geek-speak, a “single digital platform”. <br />
<br />
In other words, activists were able to use a new party website linked to Twitter and Facebook feeds to swap information continually between their online campaign and party workers on the streets. In practice, this meant that SNP workers could trace every user who typed “SNP” into social media boxes. From watching online conversations they identified non-members who were championing the party. They could track down any user who was interested enough to open an e-mail from the party. That one digital platform helped the canvas, raised funds and dragged out the vote. It was quite simply brilliant, says Teweles. “They didn’t separate online and offline at all. It’s an arbitrary difference anyway. In the Western world we live our lives between online and offline, with our phones and laptops. The SNP understood that.” <br />
<br />
So is the union doomed? The party’s opponents take their crumbs of comfort from a notion that the Nationalist surge in the May poll was apparently little to do with rising support for independence. This a thought confirmed by John Curtice, professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, who has worked on the Scottish Social Attitudes survey since 1999. </div>
<div>
<br />
“As SNP support grew over the last four weeks of the election, it became less and less of an independence vote,” Curtice tells me. “You could see that very clearly if you tracked YouGov’s polls. The Labour Party had no vision and ran a useless campaign against one of the most charismatic politicians in the UK, and a government which was seen as effective in representing Scotland’s interests. This just wasn’t a contest.”<br />
<br />
Where Murrell and his team see support for “devo max” leading inexorably to independence, others discern a line in the sand once those tax powers have been granted to Holyrood. A crucial question arises when people are asked: would Scotland be better or worse off with independence? </div>
<div>
<br />
“In most areas of life, people think independence won’t make a difference,” says Curtice. “The one area where that isn’t so true is when you come to the economy. Then opinion splits — a third think things will better under independence, a third no difference, the rest think it will be worse. This is the most vital part of the argument that the SNP has still to win. Once you start trying to predict for and against independence, the economy is very important.” <br />
<br />
Factor in the sovereign debt crisis and the traumas in the Eurozone, and other questions arise. “In the short run, the SNP want to keep sterling — but who’s going to let them keep sterling?” muses Curtice. “The UK Treasury? Without conditions? Does the UK Treasury want an independent Scotland to be using the pound and potentially engaging in debt? Then, by the time Scotland joins the euro, there will have been consolidation. So does independence offer more fiscal freedom than ‘devo max’? It’s not so obvious any more.” <br />
<br />
Back at SNP HQ, Murrell, unflappable, believes that there is time enough to make the economic case. And if the opposition arrives at the referendum, as they did at the election, with no leader, no message and no strategy, who knows what can happen? On that Curtice agrees. “The unionists ought to win,” he says. “But so far they have displayed a remarkable ability to screw things up.”</div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-36335031595363061842011-12-17T10:05:00.000+00:002011-12-17T10:09:46.202+00:00"I went to art school to meet exciting people and luckily I did"<br />
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Everywhere Martin Boyce goes in Glasgow School of Art someone calls his name, extends a
hand or offers a disbelieving smile. It starts in the foyer, where Seona Reid,
the school’s director, has asked to meet him briefly to offer her
congratulations. Next, a man in the lift, grinning from ear to ear, shouts his
praise. Then a slack-jawed student almost drops her sheaf of prints as she sees
the artist walking along the corridor.<br />
<br />
This, apparently, is the price of fame in Glasgow’s friendly world of contemporary art. On Monday night, after
ten years or more on the judges’ long-list, Boyce, 44, was finally awarded the
Turner Prize, after Richard Wright and Susan Philipsz, the third successive
graduate of this school to claim the prize.<br />
<br />
In his dignified acceptance speech on Monday, Boyce had no doubt about the importance of this great
institution in his own development. After thanking the Baltic (the gallery is
the first non-Tate institution to host the show and it has been a barnstorming
success, with 120,000 visitors to date) and his mum and dad, he ended by
saying: “I want to acknowledge the importance of teachers.” It’s why we’re
meeting here. His worries are now for the next generation, who may never get
the same opportunities he experienced.<br />
<br />
“Would I go to art school today? I don’t know. It was easier to go to then. Just the sheer economics of it today
... Funding, cuts and all these kinds of things. The fees ... ” He lets that
thought linger.<br />
<br />
In Scotland, home-grown students don’t have to pay fees, but English, Welsh and Northern Irish incomers can
expect to pay £27,000 if they arrive in Glasgow to study art. It’s even worse
in other schools, particularly English colleges, where the number of arts
applications is down by 16 per cent, according to the National Union of
Students. For architecture you might need the Turner Prize winnings of £25,000
and half as much again to complete the five-year degree these days.
There are grumblings among teaching staff on both side of the Border that art schools are becoming elitist
playgrounds and the arts will suffer if only a certain type of person can
afford them.<br />
<br />
Glasgow’s magnificent Mackintosh Building bears the marks of straitened times. Boyce, a friendly self-effacing
guide, has agreed to lead a tour of the school’s famous building. Designed by
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, it’s a mad, ornate, draughty and utterly marvellous
place. The most famous rooms — the library, the lecture hall, the Mackintosh
Room itself — are places to linger, and think. But even the eerie stairwells
and dark wood corridors are full of inspiration: a name and date — “Izzi 78” —
carved into the wall is a jagged echo of the details in some of Boyce’s own
work.<br />
<br />
When he was a schoolboy, this place inspired him, and even now Boyce can hardly contain himself. “There was
something about the art school, before I came here, and this incredible
building,” he says. “I wanted to come here; then to be accepted as part of it;
then to come to the building every day.”<br />
<br />
His success at Monday’s Turner prize-giving, along with the triumphs of his immediate predecessors, suggests
that the Turner’s shock factor, epitomised by Damien Hirst’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Mother and Child Divided </i>and Tracey Emin’s<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>My Bed</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(which didn’t even win) has receded.
How would he describe his work? “Ooof,” he exclaims, as if he had never been
asked. “You really could say it is like landscape painting. It’s not far off
that.”<br />
<br />
At the Baltic in Gateshead, Boyce converted three large white gallery pillars into concrete trees, scattered
leaves from wax-coated crepe paper across the floor, and introduced a wonky,
out-of-place library table (scarred with what appears to be student graffiti).
He sealed in the strangeness of the setting with a canopy of white-metal
leaf-like panels.<br />
<br />
“I was always interested in arrangements of things,” he says.
“You collect things, you arrange them in your bedroom or on your wall. In a way
it’s an extension of that process. I guess I’m as interested in an idea of a
place as much as the things themselves. There’s something, a relationship with
memory, but the installation also triggers snapshots of things, fragments that
come together.”<br />
<br />
By now we are wandering along a ground-floor corridor, with Boyce leading the way past the college war memorial
and a phalanx of Classical statues. Outside a studio, he fills in the
chronology.
Born and raised in Hamilton, it was a gifted schoolteacher who switched him on to art and piqued an interest in
post-punk design.<br />
<br />
Cosseted by a student grant (remember those?) he matriculated
in 1986, arriving serendipitously, just after a key moment in the school’s
history.
A couple of years earlier a department that once had been “murals and stained glass” was transformed by
tutors Sam Ainsley and David Harding into something called environmental art.
At that point, says Boyce, there was a rebellion by “determined, mouthy,
dynamic” students — Douglas Gordon, Roderick Buchanan, Iain Kettles, Nathan
Coley, Ross Sinclair, Christine Borland — and Harding decided he should sit
down and redraft the course curriculum with his lippy undergraduates.<br />
<br />
It was a teaching revolution. By the time Boyce arrived, the department had acquired a magic all of its own, and
was based in a former girls’ school, near the Mackintosh Building. This too was
an alluring place: Boyce remembers a couple of intertwined staircases; you
could walk all the way up and hear someone coming down, but never meet the
person.<br />
<br />
“David Harding said context had
to be 50 per cent of the work,” says Boyce. “The classes and the teaching
extended into the bars and people’s flats, with folk throwing parties and
socialising all the time. David and Sam were great at getting people together.
David would start a song and people would sing. It was natural for David, and
his personality just rubbed off on the students.”<br />
<br />
This was an irresistible mix to a 19-year-old, who studied environmental art from the beginning of his second
year. “It was the kind of people as much as anything,” he agrees. “I remember
seeing the work coming out of the department. There was a bit of a pop
sensibility, it seemed interesting, something was going on. But the people you
saw in the Vic Bar [the college bar] and around the school — they were so open
and friendly. I remember when I was accepted on to the course, Roddy Buchanan
stopped me in the street and congratulated me and welcomed me into the
department. That kind of feel is important.”<br />
<br />
During studio time, there was no sense of hierarchy. “Even in my second year I’d be doing a project and stay
late, and I’d go down to the old gym hall, where Roddy and Douglas and the
others were in ‘the Big Studio’, and I’d hang out, talking late into the night.
There was no sense of, ‘beat it’. There was a desire to engage. I loved it. It
was the whole reason I went to art school, to meet those kinds of people. You
have an idea that you will meet exciting people, and luckily I did.”<br />
<br />
The broad definition of environmental art — it really just meant “art in a place” — opened a window on
every kind of discipline. Painting and sculpture, collage and film could all be
studied and purloined from inside the Mackintosh Building. Scavenging had a
literal meaning too, in the streets around the college.<br />
<br />
“People used to get into the old Metropole theatre and drag out all sorts of amazing things,” recalls Boyce.
“There was the whole thing of using found objects. There was — not quite a gang
mentality — but a group identity within environmental art. There was a sense of
doing things together.”<br />
<br />
After graduation, that sense of togetherness remained. Many of the school’s young artists lived in Garnethill,
just a street away from the Mackintosh building. “We were always in and out of
each other’s flats, especially the ones who made good soup,” recalls Boyce. “We
used to joke that it was a little like that scene in the Beatles movie where
they all walk into separate front doors of terrace houses only to reappear in
the same big open house.”<br />
<br />
This shared experience translated into Transmission, an artist-run gallery in Glasgow, and quickly into
international collaborations and worldwide recognition. Douglas Gordon was the
first Glasgow-trained Turner prizewinner, in 1996. Boyce, too, rapidly emerged
with shows across Europe culminating in<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Our
Love is Like the Flowers, the Rain, the Sea and the Hours</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>at Glasgow’s Tramway in 2002. “You should have won the Turner for that,” another well-wisher tells him, as he
passes on a gloomy staircase.<br />
<br />
Yet amazingly, all this recognition began with something like abject failure. Boyce was unsuccessful in
his first application to the school, and spent a year signed up to life-drawing
classes in the Mackintosh Building, creating a new portfolio for his second
attempt.
“You got one lesson a week,” he recalls. “But full-time students from the college would come in too, to get an
extra lesson. I was talking to this guy and he thought I was a proper student.
That made me think. I started coming in twice a week and sitting in the
students’ lesson when I wasn’t meant to. So I got extra lessons. It seemed to
work.”<br />
<br />
By now, we have reached the basement studio, where Boyce spent that first year at college. The famous
Turner prizewinner pushes open a door to reveal a strange and colourful
interior of fabrics and felt, occupied by a middle-aged woman, a would-be
student who is putting the final touches to the portfolio that she hopes will
gain her entry to the college next year. This large lady looks up from her desk and regards Boyce with
irritation. “Who are you? Do you work in the college?” It is perhaps as well
that Boyce is indifferent to fame. “No, I’m an artist,” he says, with a wan
smile. “I occasionally come in . . . every so often they ask me to come in.”<br />
<br />
Portrait by <a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/">James Glossop</a>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-61125554478282256812011-12-01T08:12:00.001+00:002011-12-01T12:23:31.197+00:00"We're all in this together"<br />
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<b><br /></b><br />
<b>From first light in Edinburgh city centre, it was obvious that something was up. Every government office, each law court, museum, clinic and hospital, had its own little crowd, the gaggle of people that signified the biggest public sector strike for a generation was under way.</b></div>
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<b>The last time people came together en masse like this was — as many Scots would have it — in the dark days of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.</b></div>
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<b>Yesterday’s action, like those of the 1980s, might simply be caricatured as a battle between resolute government and self-serving union leaders. But now, as then (in Scotland at least) it would be a foolish politician who chose to ignore the sense of dignified outrage among these protesters.</b></div>
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<b>By the end of the afternoon, the strikers’ case against government attacks on public sector pensions had been articulated by many an earnest speaker. Hours before in the bright morning sunshine, Alex McKay, a picket outside the High Court, put it as well as anyone.</b></div>
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<b>“Public sector workers are just a ridiculously easy target for the government,” said Mr McKay, who on any other day would wear a little white wig, and go about his business as a clerk of the court. “They don’t look at Trust Funds, or stopping tax frauds, they just take the easy option.</b></div>
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<b>“The Government like to play off the private sector and the public sector, but the truth is we’re all in the same boat. The people who run supermarkets might say ‘Well, we pay a huge amount of tax’, but it is the government who has to fund tax credits, to help out all the low paid staff who work for them. We should come together and say, ‘Enough is enough’.”</b></div>
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<b> This was a protest, that, like the beer adverts of old, hit parts of the establishment that other protests don’t hit. It wasn’t just the courts that suffered. A mass walkout by 34 members of UCATT closed the stonemasons and carpentry workshop at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh; Pete Smith, the only carpenter at Edinburgh Castle withdrew his labour for the day.</b></div>
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<b>Nurses were quick to try to scotch the notion that they had put lives at risk or had even so much as upset a passing patient. </b></div>
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<b>At the Edinburgh Eye Pavilion, Paula Johnston, a Unison shop steward, said that members had decided not to picket outside the Sick Kids Hospital, because it was “inappropriate to picket a paediatric hospital or alarm the kids at all”. </b></div>
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<b>Outside the Blood Transfusion Centre, another health service picket, Tom Hiddleston, made a different kind of point. “We’re allowing the collection of apheresis platelets,” he said, “the kind of red blood cells that which might be used in children’s operations of cancer treatments.”</b></div>
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<b>Gradually, to the toots of support from passing motorists, all these people assembled themselves into a march of 10,000, delighted apparently to find themselves among so many of like mind. Among them were many who might be have once considered themselves Conservative, or Liberal Democrat, parties which have become endangered species in Scotland.</b></div>
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<b>But it is not only the Coalition Government who the strikers have in their sights. The SNP administration at Holyrood, whose ministers spent much the day criss-crossing picket lines are also under scrutiny.</b></div>
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<b>“We welcome the verbal support of many of the issues from the Scottish Government but this is about actions,” said Jude Ritchie, Edinburgh organiser for the PCS trade union.</b></div>
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<b>“If they just pass on the cuts that will make no difference to our members. They are better than the Tories, but they can’t just pass the buck.”</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>Pic by <a href="http://www.jamesglossop.com/blog/">James Glossop</a></b></div>Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3692520545176324012.post-19022668558796327812011-11-15T20:59:00.001+00:002011-11-15T21:28:29.501+00:00Mr Pooter comes to Scotland<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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“We settle down in our new home, and I resolve to keep a diary.” Not since these Charles Pooter’s opening words in Diary of A Nobody, has the journal of an ordinary bloke gone on to cause such a sensation. Yesterday, scarcely 18 months after Sir Peter Housden moved from London to take up his post as permanent secretary to the Scottish Government, his collected business bulletins were published.
And, to the astonishment of critics, a sheaf of on-line documents revealed – unintentionally or otherwise – a comic masterpiece.<br />
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Written every week for the benefit of thousands of civil staff, Sir Peter’s letters to his subordinates might be expected to show the cares of state weighing heavily on such a powerful mandarin. Not a bit of it. From the adventures of his cat, to his domestic struggles with a damp proof course, this author gives his domestic life equal billing with government business.<br />
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Many of his most painful agonies are felt, not in the concrete corridors of Holyrood, but out on the golf course, thumping balls around in the rough. "I won’t tell you about my quite disastrous 106 in the Spring Competition,” he writes. “Suffice it to say that I lost four balls in the first four holes, and a fifth later on. I wish I could blame the wind.”<br />
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But whatever the trials of his own life, Sir Peter — who earns £175,000 — appears to know how to fire up his colleagues with enthusiasm. Every letter is signed off: “Have a great week.”<br />
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This first collection of the permanent secretary’s writings appeared in response to a freedom of Information request, but earlier this year, some teasing extracts were released. Those seemed to show that Sir Peter had “gone native” and actively supported Alex Salmond’s drive for independence. He criticised the Coalition Government’s plans to devolve more powers to Holyrood as “lost in the mists of time” and, responding to the SNP’s election victory in May, urged his staff to recognise the “new political trajectory”.<br />
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The unexpurgated text however reveals the man in full, in all his humdrum glory: his love of vinyl records, the shopping trips down Rose Street, the afternoon teas in the modern art gallery (“don’t they do a good soup?”).
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On an Away Day with the Culture Division he falls - “inevitably” into a discussion about music. “When pressed,” writes Sir Peter, “I did ask Culture colleagues to reflect on the absolute perfection of ‘Echo Beach’ by Martha & the Muffins. Lots of people nodded. Well, a few anyway.”<br />
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Throw away paragraphs are deliberately comical. When Sir Peter turns up on “Wear Your Trainers to Work Day” he is devastated to find he is the only one who has joined in the fun, and scours the building looking for any besuited civil servant shod in Nike.<br />
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“Finally, I saw a woman zipping across the forecourt in trainers and stopped to congratulate her,” he writes. “She shouted back over her shoulder that she didn’ae work here, and was just dropping off her husband.”<br />
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Over one weekend he’s delighted to visit the public rubbish tip three times and by his purchase of “one of the those pressure washers”, a reflection that immediately puts him in mind of his wife. He adds: “Thursday was the 38th anniversary of the first time that Maureen and I went out with each other. I am the one who remembers these things in our house.”<br />
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The letters bear witness to the rapid tartanising of Sir Peter’s cultural reference points. In the early bulletins, from June last year, he remains solidly metropolitan, musing of the failings of the English football team, watching cricket at Lords and walking from St John’s Wood to Holland Park “to see a beautifully sung Fidelio.”<br />
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By the turn of the year, Scotland has entered his veins. His cultural highlights of 2010, he writes, are And the Land Lay Still, a pro-nationalist novel by James Robertson, Caledonia, a play about the Darien adventure – a key moment in the history of political union – and a performance of the Marriage of Figaro, by Scottish Opera.<br />
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Then, suddenly, after months of writing, Sir Peter’s tone changes. Her patience eroded by the weekly maunderings of her boss, one of the cabinet secretary’s minions has finally snapped, and fired in a letter of complaint.<br />
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It is a chastened Sir Peter who returns to his keyboard on September 12 this year. “Last week,” he says, “I was very nicely taken to task by a correspondent for not giving enough information in this column on the work I am doing.” Finally, he is ready to tackle the question, “What do I actually do?”<br />
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For the next 800 words he picks over his duties, including a hospital visit, the approving of a paper on Corporation Tax, a forthcoming cabinet meeting, and a date with some Hong Kong dignitaries - but the poor man cannot help himself, at the end looking forward “hopefully, (to) a trip to the range over the weekend to do something about my short game.”<br />
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Sir Peter’s diary ends last month, with a comment on David Croft, whose death is a cause for reflection on the scriptwriter’s TV comedy creation, Are You Being Served?<br />
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“I was struck,” writes Sir Peter, “by the character of Captain Peacock. Lower-middle class England of my youth was somehow full of lost souls like him, using their military titles and not quite finding their place in Civvy Street... I wondered whether it is just in fictional representations that such characters are so prevalent, and this has fed back into memory. Appearance and reality, eh?”<br />
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Too right. Who would have thought that in real life, a comic book Pepys from the English shires could rise so effortlessly up the greasy pole in Scotland?<br />
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Have a great week.Mikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17496451637223875493noreply@blogger.com0