celticman's blog

The BBC commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, 70 years ago, the site of almost one million murdered, but also a symbol of the six million other Jews killed and hundreds of thousands others killed in a genocidal purge of the pure Aryan-Nazi race that took place in a ring of hundreds of other camps. As a Catholic the service itself was one I was familiar with. The solemn intonation, readings from extracts of Primo Levi, If This is a Man ...

It’s difficult to summarise a book that spans over 300 years, rich with knowledge and learning, which runs to over 600 pages. But it’s really quite simple. He who own the land owns the people. The Highland Clearances are an example of this. But Devine notes the Scots were always a nation on the move. Only Ireland and Norway have exported more of its people. But neither of these nations have done as well as the expatriate Scot abroad. Start...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1vhr I don’t watch many silent movies. I’m not as old as some people make out. The only time I watched silent movies when they were on the telly on a Saturday morning and there was nothing else on. And that’s going back a few years. I guess you could say I came to appreciate the genius of Harold Llloyd and Laurel and Hardy. Ok, Laurel and Hardy weren’t silent but they were geniuses. This is the kind of era in...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02dlcf3 Lots of folk may be asking why I’m watching Insane Fight Club when I live in Dalmuir and am living it. Well, quite simple. I went out to watch the Celtic game in the Horsie and we couldn’t watch the second half because the internet was buggered and it was a crap game. That’s the kinda insanity I’m forced to put up with and if I put insane before most of my actions it makes them looking slightly...

Being Scottish we take a perverse pride in the weather. It’s too cold. It’s too wet. It’s too sunny. And that’s just in a morning. Made in Scotland. It’ll never last is the common refrain. That’s just about right. We do however take a particular delight in snow. Kids love it, for ten minutes. Adults love to moan about the state of the roads. Everybody’s happy because they are unhappy. This week it’s meant to stay below zero. Ho. Ho. Ho. We say...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04yn2yq/the-superrich-and-us-episode-2 This is the second episode of Peretti’s investigation into the relationship between the super-rich and us – the other 99% of the population. He begins with a sobering statistic, but only if you’re drunk, eighty-five people own the equivalent of half the world’s population. I quite like that statistic. But it’s unfathomable by its sheer immensity. Sure you can divide...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/angry-white-and-proud Jamie Roberts spent a year of his life making this documentary. I’d guess at a cost to Channel 4 of about £250 000. Compare that to estimated £1 million ‘kettling operation’ in which police officers flung a cordon of men, woman and horses around far-right-splinter groups, (‘Engl-i-and, England, England till I die’) protesting about Muslim Pakis abusing white girls in Rochdale. Protesting...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is perhaps best known for his creation of the fictional figure of Sherlock Holmes. Keen Sherlock Holmes aficionados suggest a link between Holmes and nineteen-century Edinburgh medical school lecturer, Joseph Bell, grandson of forensic surgeon and pathologist, Benjamin. Keen observation and deductive reasoning were the hallmarks of Bell and Holmes’s observations. Joseph Bell, for example, would demonstrate this ability to...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04xw2x8/the-superrich-and-us-episode-1 It’s no longer enough to say people are rich. We don’t for example say: the super poor and us. There’s nothing super about being poor and it’s less easy to play with such words and quantify meaning by adding another layer of description. Let’s just say that if a hypothetical me existed on less than £8K a year and Peretti is on about say ten times as much, for example, £...

I thought the idea of half a yellow sun, a poetic idea, a trope with no real meaning. I knew nothing of Nigeria. Ignorance is not an excuse, but it is an alibi. However unfeasible I associated Biafra with tearstained and potbellied children starving to death. I wasn’t far wrong. Half a Yellow Son was the emblem worn on the sleeves of Biafran soldiers during the Nigeria-Biafar war, when the latter fought for independence, to become a separate...