Reading the Dunfermline Press of Thursday April 9 2025 I was struck by an article about a former Fife Council official, 70 year old James Beveridge, of Kelty, who had posed as a good Samaritan to gain access to the home of an 80 year old lady with dementia only to sexually abuse her there.…
Taking notes under pressure at Trust HQ. When in August 2006 I had viewed the draft supplementary charter in the boardroom of the Trust—under the watchful eye of a member of staff who cautioned me that I should only take brief notes of any of the Trust’s charters—I had sat at the table taking notes,…
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…
The boom times. The Carnegie Dunfermline & Hero Trust survived two World-Wars, The Wall Street Crash, and the Great Depression that followed, and was in a very healthy position when it celebrated its half century in 1953. In a publication commissioned to mark the event, the Chairman, William Dick, boasted of the vast property portfolio…
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…
Brown drops business-school bombshell. In November 2005 various press articles appeared suggesting that a Harvard-style business school was being considered for Scotland. Harvard and other US educational institutes denied any involvement in such a project. LINK In late January 2006—during the period when, unbeknown to the public, the Trust’s secret charter application was…
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…
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…
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…
I believe that freemasonry in Fife is largely sectarian. My perception of freemasonry in Fife is that it is largely sectarian and this influences me as I am largely Irish-descended, and, nominally at least, Roman Catholic. While it is self-evident that freemasonry is sectarian in the narrow sense of the word, I believe that in…
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