Duncan Spence

It’s (not) shite being Scottish

Duncan Spence 12.08.1959-21.07.2022

Will be available soon on kindle, paperback and hardback.

On behalf of Duncan Spence

Sadly but peacefully my husband Duncan Spence succumbed to his ten year life with cancer and died on Thursday 21st July 2022. His final days were spent surrounded by family and his friends were in touch. This has been a one hell of a journey for him and one which he readily shared as only he could. His words were his passion, how to express using language to engage in friendly discourse to reach as many people as possible was always his aim. Fascinated by different view points, interested in everyone’s take on whatever subject came up, not afraid to seek a truth and find a common ground. Before he died he held his book. The biggest achievement yet and oh how happy he was.! It is available on kindle and will shortly be in paperback and hard back too. His funeral will be held in Cupar at 1.30pm New Cemetery there is also a live stream for those who would like to attend but can’t. I will try and link the funeral details and live stream in another post. My husband loved to write and his only wish was to engage with the world, equally interested in others words too.. Thank you for reading. Shona

Raw Propaganda

Grouse Beater

**UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss beefing up her dimwit image**

THE RISE OF RAW PROPAGANDA

by John Pilger

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the U.S. and Britain. On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. Whatisnew is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a…

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Finding stillness

In a world of perpetual pain, finding stillness is the greatest achievement

Drifting in and out of sleep and denial, I imagine bringing a body into conditions of complete quietude, its only movements the autonomic responses sustaining its being alive.

The last Munro

If the past is memory and the future fantasy then the fleeting nothing of the present is all there is

I have been dreading the writing of this post, putting it off and vacillating, finding other things to do, or nothing, in order not to engage with what must be written, lest my story be left hanging in the air. I suspect too it will the post my readers will have been fearing for a while and might find difficult to read.

Quirks and charms

Peter A Bell

Previously, I have written about various oddities in the case which saw Craig Murray imprisoned for contempt of court. One such quirk is the very concept of ‘jigsaw identification‘. This ‘offence’ occurs when details are published which when combined with other details already in the public domain can lead to the identification of a person or persons who have been granted the privilege of anonymity by a court of law. This is getting quirky already. The individual charged is being prosecuted not for identifying the person afforded the protection of the court. They are being prosecuted for publishing details which when combined in a particular way with other information might make it possible for someone sufficiently interested and determined to identify the person being protected.

The details published don’t have to identify anybody and nobody need actually be identified for an offence to have been committed. There is no…

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Our Police State — Grouse Beater

Former ambassador and human rights activist, Craig Murray, released from Saughton Prison The ludicrously over-the-top jail sentence handed down to human rights activist Craig Murray, for a minor infringement of a presposterous court rule called ‘jigsaw indentification’, together with the hurried embracing of a ban on assembly around our Parliament building, is yet more warning […]
Our Police State — Grouse Beater

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ABOUT TRANSWOMEN? TAKE THE TESTS — Gordon Dangerfield

This is a very clever piece of writing. It fits beautifully into the rubric of the shiteness of being Scottish and will either infuriate or entertain.

The Scottish Government believes that transwomen are women and that this statement is so self-evidently true that it is not even up for debate. I believe that transwomen are not women, and that this statement should not require debate in any rational society. Which of these two opposite beliefs you hold is important because which […]
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ABOUT TRANSWOMEN? TAKE THE TESTS — Gordon Dangerfield

Legally (just) Sex is Immutable, But is the Law Impermeable?

Guest essay by Scottish Casandra

The WordPress blogosphere echoes with more voices than just bloggers.

Road trip

Since we met on the slopes of Ben Dorian at the start of 2017, Martyn has talked with great animation about his mountaineering club’s hut near Achnasheen, how well placed it is for Torridon, West Monar and much more besides. Circumstances have thwarted all our previous plans to stay here for a few nights and to use it as a base, but last week we were able to coordinate other commitments, and Martyn booked two nights during a period of particularly fine weather. Two days after we returned, despite considerable stiffness and pain round my pelvis, I got out of bed and realised that I was able to stand with both feet flat on the ground, with my knees level, my legs straight and my hips perpendicular to my line of motion.

I consider this to be utterly miraculous.