Recent content by oldman

I once saw the late Ron Brown and Nicholas Fairbairn MPs on a flight to Heathrow. Fairbairn was in a dreadful state, barely able to lift his feet. It was quite touching to see Brown gently nursing his political enemy (calling him 'Nicky') along as he shuffled out of the aircraft on to the bridge.

That is totally meaningless. It was always a three-way contest, as the polls indicated. Each party attacked the other two. Happily the 1-2-3 turned out the right way though there wasn't a lot in it. A lot of the journalist chatter wrote down the new MP because he avoided media interviews...

How dare you - it's official, it must be true. According to scotland.org, 'brought to you by the Scottish Government' and Ostensibly this is for the outside world, but it also speaks to an internal audience for Scottish exceptionalism.

An unpleasantly strong performance by Reform in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, even though they came third. Comparing percentages with the last election: SNP 46 down to 29 Labour 34 down to 32 Reform 0 up to 26 Tory 17 down to 6

I live not far from Craig Proclaimer and have often seen him waiting for a bus.

SPT's evenings and Sundays 137 runs Carnwath-Lanark-Forth, which needs a change at other times. It then continues to Braehead (Lanarkshire) which has no other bus service.

A lot of 20 mph limits have been applied to streets where it would be hard to go faster anyway - many of the 'main' roads are still 30. Edinburgh's problems are narrow roads for modern vehicles, too much on-street parking, lots of traffic signals, a lack of routes avoiding the city centre...

Robbie Williams at Murrayfield on Saturday will be a good test for the system.

The idea of stop re-spacing was coming from the council officials, but fortunately the councillors disagreed. I don't know whether Lothian Buses wanted it. I doubt if it would solve anything - the problem is congestion and poor bus priority.

The complaint from some people in Wales is that official policy goes far beyond 'keeping Welsh going', as with Gaelic, towards defining Welsh-speaking as an official indicator of national wellbeing, alongside poverty, pollution, public safety and the like. Is it a good idea to foster division...

I think that would be unusual, especially for the mundane offences covered by the 40/- notices, given they had the power to make byelaws with fines. There was a separate 1845 act for Scotland with similar provisions for byelaws and notices, with different court systems for enforcement. Both...

The Railway Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 allowed railways to make byelaws with a maximum fine of £5. However the same act also sets 40/- as the maximum for non-payment of fares and for not fastening gates. I guess £2 was considered to be a reasonable penalty for a lot of offences. Railways...

I doubt it. The companies want to flog expensive tours e.g. Princess Cruises advertise shore excursions from South Queensferry including 'Edinburgh on your own', for which you get a coach transfer to and from the city and a map, all for a very reasonable $109.95. Lothian is for people who do...

The Tory line (according to a clown on Newsnight) is that the agreement was a temporary deal (necessary evil) which would have been replaced by something more restrictive (taking back control) after 2026. This may or may not be true.

Liberal intellectuals often struggle with the idea of national identity, partly because it is basically irrational. But many people do identify with a national identity, even if they can't define it, and rather than sneering at it with lager and curry gags, it would be a good idea to try and...