“The Spec” Harmless oddball students or sinister, quasi-masonic networkers? Oddball students?: Is the case made by several members who have stuck their heads above the parapet, but is perhaps most eloquently put by extraordinary member Humphrey Errington, producer of Lanark Blue Cheese, who laughed off the claims of an old boy network, Errington said it…
Published on: Dec 22, 2021 1850 Irish Navvy Riot or Dunfermline Ethnic Cleansing? Part One: What the papers said. Having lived almost all of my life in the Burgh of Dunfermline I was surprised and shocked to read an online article from The “Wild Geese” website by Kieron Punch entitled “Paddy the Navvy”, which told…
The beginning of the end of life as an employee The beginning of the end of my life as an employee. My days of working ‘on the tools’, mainly on trade union, National Agreement sites, were brought to an end following a strike I took part in. The strike was unofficial and we were dismissed…
Magic Circle Man In “My First Lawyer” I told of how my first experience of the legal profession had been less than positive. Around about the same time that I was becoming disenchanted with the Bruce law firm the engineering business I had formed started to take off and as it became bigger and more…
Published on: Jul 6, 2018 Piper Alpha: To mark the 30th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster I felt I needed to write something about it, as, like so many in Scotland, my working life and to some extent my social life was influenced by the North Sea oil industry in general and that oil…
William, George, Billy & Scotch Myths re the Cullen Report on Dunblane This blog deals mainly with my concerns about the treatment of “Billy” (William Burns) by “William”, the then law lord William Douglas Cullen. But first some clarification regarding Baron George Robertson of Port Ellen & Baron Cullen of Whitekirk in connection with the…
THE FOUR EDITIONS OF THE ‘MEMORANDUM ON THE EARL OF ELGIN’S PURSUITS IN GREECE’ In 2002, my dormant and somewhat uninformed interest in the so called ‘Elgin Marbles’ was awakened by the writings of Professor Epaminondas Vranopoulos, who in turn was interested and angered by an anonymous Memorandum used to support Elgin’s bid to sell…
I confess that for some time I had a soft-spot for the lassie from East Lothian. I have long had a certain amount of sympathy for Mary Nisbet (18 April 1778 – 9 July 1855), unlike my feelings for her husband, father and friend Philip Hunt. Mary married an impoverished land-owning aristocrat on the opposite,…
Published on: May 7, 2024 at 07:52 Andrew Carnegie Mass Murderer? The above headline poses a question that might seem far-fetched, but it is plausible based on recorded facts, which is more than can be said of the rose-tinted, dewy-eyed, self-aggrandising rubbish accepted as fact in Carnegie’s autobiography. Perhaps what’s more revealing is something that…
This NOTE is pinned inside a Camphorwood Chest at my home in Dunfermline. For some years now I had been meaning to write a note about the purchase of this camphorwood linen chest and pin it inside, but it was only when Russell Darnley, an Australian author, sent me an audio book of his…
How did Jim fix it so that his child abuse was never examined? As was the case with Thomas Hamilton after the Dunblane tragedy, many people seem to have known about Savile’s abuse, but why was nothing done about it at the time it was taking place? Did whistleblowers try to get the authorities to…
UPDATE 13/08/2021 Visitors to this blog will know that in 2004 and 2009 I complained to the Metropolitan Police on the basis that the British Museum contained stolen property and also to the Fife Police that Broomhall House, the home of the Earls of Elgin, also housed stolen property, which constituted the crime of ‘reset’…
1816 – 2016 To mark the bi-centenary of the sale of the so-called ‘Elgin Marbles’ to parliament in 1816, I decided to review my 2004 entry and update it with new information and arguments that I feel were not adequately covered in my 2004, ‘Elgin Cheated at Marbles’ blog. At the moment it looks as…
Was Israel created in Edinburgh……by candlelight? As today is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Balfour Declaration or Balfour Letter written by the then Conservative Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, it seems appropriate that we take a look at the background to his Magnum opus. But first a look at…
If Burns lived today would he have voted for Brexit? Prior to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 many newspaper articles posed the question: “How would Robert Burns have voted?” So as we approach the anniversary of The Bard’s birth I thought it would be a good idea to pose the same question…
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