Per Wikipedia:
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) (also known as Robbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide…
He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world…
One celebration, per PBS:
Walk around the market town of Dumfries, Scotland, and at first glance you’ll see what looks like a kind of graffiti in the windowpanes — faint etchings in some, and in others verses written boldly in thick black pen. A few are the surviving work of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, etched into the glass centuries ago when he stayed at the Globe Inn. Others are the work of contemporary poets, writing to pay him tribute.
January 25th marks the 255th anniversary of Burns’ birth, and around the world, Scots and devotees of the poet alike will gather to commemorate the event with Burns Suppers — eating haggis, raising a wee dram of whisky (whiskey to us Americans), and most importantly, reading his poetry aloud. Burns was only 37 years old when he died, but was a prolific writer, giving the world “Auld Lang Syne,” “A Red, Red Rose” and “To a Mouse,” among others…
Also this song:
Bystander
Don’t miss some of Burns’ lesser known works.
Burns is getting bawdy
MikeJ
If we start talking about tim’rous beasties eventually we’ll have to worry about werewolves.
WereBear
To Robbie!
Alexandra
Good memories of tatties, neeps and haggis after exploring the old town of Edinburgh on a cold, foggy February day. No scotch, though.
Fairly sure the Scots will not vote for independence from the UK later this year.
OzarkHillbilly
Thank you Anne. Burnsday sneaks up on me every year.
Baud
So, every day is Burns’ day in Scotland?
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah for like the second day in a row I learned something about Scotland here …. and my family came from Scotland many, many years ago. And by many years I mean 1867.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bystander: Link not working for me. Not sure if it’s the link or my computer/satellite or the God Digitalis who is filled with a burning hatred for me.
Tommy
Wow I didn’t even realize postage was going up to .49 cents. I do almost everything online at this point, but I do buy postage in bulk. Like 50 at a time. I always mail my clients a thank you card when our project is done. Since I do web sites and you know email marketing they always find it a nice touch to get something from me in the mail. And maybe we ought to all mail stuff cause our postal service rocks and I really hope it stays around.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: If you’re doing it right it is.
JGabriel
Alexandra:
Hell, if I were there I’d vote for it — if only to keep the likes of David Cameron from ever being foisted upon us again.
HeartlandLiberal
I tracked down the lyrics to the Burns poem. The last two verses, by which point all were singing along in the Scottish Parliament.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
Note: To bear the gree means to win or hold first place.
I am debating with myself what utter lunacy it would be to imagine our current crop of Congressional and Senate elected officials even entertaining or discussing the themes in Burns poem. I feel certain it would be denounced as socialism, and class warfare (against the wealth, of course).
Glad I am getting over the miserable cold my wife and I shared this week. I shall drink a wee dram of Glenmorangie today, and raise the glass to Robert Burns.
mai naem
OT, Locked Up Abroadon NatGeo has become must see teevee for me. I have no idea why. I’ve watched quite a few now and it does seem formulaic. Most of them seem to be people who are in bad financial straits thinking they cancure away their financial ills and get away with smuggling a kilo of cocaine/heroin from wherever and, inevitably they end up in prison for several years in a foreign country. All of them regret what they’ve done to their families. The drug dealer on the American side is inevitably a Hollywood stereotypical black guy and the contacts in the other country inevitably get aggressive with the mule. There’s other stuff too. They’ve also had a gay male nurse in Saudi Arabia, a gold smuggler in India, a Brit journo in Pakistan and hikers captured in Colombia by FARC. Anyhow, interesting show.
TS
@JGabriel:
They can’t afford independence – like so many of the red states – they take much more than they give from/to the public coffers.
OzarkHillbilly
@HeartlandLiberal: I had to swear off the Scotch a while back as I was enjoying it a little too much. I think I will follow your lead today however and give it a sip or two. Sadly, all I have is the last of a bottle of Glenlivet Nadura and I do have a decided preference for the peat.
Punchy
I just came back from Scotland and they talked up this day as if its their Superbowl. Parties galore. For a damn poet. Made me (secretly) chuckle.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: there is Always a reason to drink
NotMax
There is zero, zilch, nada evidence from sources from Burns’ time that he ever was called Robbie (by himself or by others) .
Like unto referring to a well-known American poet as Bobby Frost.
Bystander
Let me try again.
Burns’ bawdy verses.
Tommy
Just watching Up and I have to think Chris Christie must really dislike Steve Kornacki at this point.
Lymie
Return to Rory’s Music
The Joke
An Englishman is being shown around a Scottish hospital.
At the end of his visit, he is shown into a ward with a number of patients who show no obvious signs of injury. He goes to examine the first man he sees, and the man proclaims:
Fair fa’ yer honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain e’ the puddin’ race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
painch tripe or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
as lang’s my arm.
The Englishman, somewhat taken aback, goes to the next patient, and immediately the patient launches into:
Some hae meat, and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
This continues with the next patient:
Wee sleekit cow’rin tim’rous beastie,
O what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
wi’ bickering brattle.
I wad be laith to run and chase thee,
wi’ murdering prattle!”
“Well,” the Englishman mutters to his Scottish colleague, “I see you saved the psychiatric ward for the last.”
“Nay, nay,” the Scottish doctor corrected him, “this is the Serious Burns unit.”
— From Rampant Scotland, Scottish Snippets, 23-Feb-02
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Poopyman
Exxxxxcellent!
Tommy
@Poopyman: Glad I am not the only person that thought that when I first saw the post title :).
Suffern ACE
@mai naem: I went through a locked up abroad mania a few seasons ago. I remember not feeling sympathy for a lot of the smugglers and feeling frustrated and smug. The US and British folk somehow expecting that local police would be lenient or incompetent enough to miss that kilo of hash. The young woman who met the handsome local lad and let him pack her bag….arrrrgh!
Tommy
It must be hard to be a Republican these days. Watching Up on MSNBC and they have a Republican Assembly member on and he is arguing that the elected body he is apart of shouldn’t look into Christie, I kid you not, cause they don’t have the ability to arrest and prosecute somebody.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Well, I used to have my ex, but she’s in prison now. Then there was her husband who felt that it was the height of fun to make and get his friends to make death threats, but he collapsed and died last week (“Sit by the river long enough and your enemies will float by.”- Confucius) Then there were my sons but the oldest is in St. Louis and the youngest is in Baton Rouge. Which leaves me with my wife and she’s why I quit the Scotch.
So now, in general, I drink only wine. Does that count?
Tommy
@Suffern ACE: I saw Midnight Express and that was all I needed to see on this topic to know it might be a good idea not to get arrested for smuggling drugs in some far off third world nation.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Wow never amazes me how much we have in common or similar things in our lives. Oh Baton Rouge. Where I was born when my father was at LSU. Where I went to school. I head there for almost a week each year. It is a place I flat out love.
MikeJ
@Tommy: Republicans also claim Dinesh D’Souza and the Gov with the
magicultrasound wand are being persecuted by Obama.http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/01/how-dinesh-dsouzas-indictment-became-proof-obamas-conservative-inquisition/357351/
(below here – testing a new greasemonkey script that replicates emacs spook mode. Adds random keywords for NSA consumption)
espionage Uzi Sears Tower class struggle Echelon
Lee
The initial judge in the Texas case withdrew because her campaign treasurer is the general counsel for the hospital that is keeping the woman as an incubator.
Here is the story. A local reporter did a bit of journalism in order to expose this.
From what I have heard the general counsel is a pro-life extremist and more or less set this up hoping no one would find the link between him and the judge. I see a large check being written by the hospital in its near future.
MomSense
The temperatures are warmer today but it doesn’t feel like it. The sky is gray white and the wind is howling. The cats are going from window to window looking for some sunlight.
I think Mother Nature may be trying to kill us.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bystander: That worked, thanx, and funny stuff too.
Violet
@Tommy: Previous post disappeared for some reason. Was at the post office this week and heard a customer tell the counter clerk he only uses the post office not other shipping services. That he loves the post office. Wonder if the sentiment that we need to save it is getting out there.
dmsilev
@MikeJ: You need to update your script; it’s the ‘Willis Tower’ now.
Tommy
@Violet: The Post Office rocks. For less than two quarters somebody comes by your house six days a week and will delivery something to you.
Heck my parents live across the state from me. 2.5 hour drive. If my father mails something to me in the early AM (the 9 AM pickup) it often gets to me the next day. Ponder that for a few.
Long story but I don’t often use the Post Office, yet I drive by mine all the time and the parking lot is always pretty full. So a lot of people are using it.
I am a firm believer the Republicans want to “break” government so they can say, look government doesn’t work. The Post Office runs a profit with no government funding. They are only in trouble, and I realize I might be preaching to the choir here, cause Congress made them fund their pensions for somebody that is 25. The last I saw they have $37B in that fund, paid for with profits they made.
dmsilev
@Lee: The latest update on that tragedy/travesty was that a (different) judge ordered the hospital to respect the family’s wishes and take her off life support. No word yet on whether the hospital will appeal the ruling.
MikeJ
@dmsilev: I just used the emacs source. I don’t think anybody has updated it recently.
—
John Kerry world domination beanpole White House Ft. Meade
OzarkHillbilly
@Violet: Few people appreciate the miracle that is the post office. Stick a letter in the mail in Providence RI and less than 3 days later it miraculously appears at the proper address in San Diego. Or take a package to the Post Office in Grubville MO and you an have the same in Spotted Horse WY in less than 24 hours for half the cost of Federal Express.
And this happens billions of times a day, all over this continent spanning country. Almost with out fail. We just take it for granted. Stick it in the mail and forget about it.
And if the package or letter arrives 24 hours later than expected? Wait for the freakout. Truly a First World Problem.
MC Simon Milligan
@Poopyman: I was saying “boo-urns”.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Modern politics is about not appreciating the things we have. Sadly, there isn’t necessarily a partisan divide. It’s all about who can out-cynical whom.
PurpleGirl
Just after college I became a big fan of Burns and his poetry. I’m not sure when that slacked off, though. Thank you AL for the reminder, and the memories it invokes. So tonight I’ll raise a dram of whisky, find some Burns on the net and celebrate his life and work. But no haggis… previous plans for dinner will stand (tempura shrimp and veggies.)
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: I think you could argue the Post Office is like the hub of my town. I recall talking about the Post Office in another online forum and a few people from and/or who had lived in Europe jumped in. Said their Post Office was a wifi hub. You could buy phone cards. Basic banking. All kinds of services. Then smarter people then myself linked to a few laws passed by Congress that restricts our Postal service from doing any of this. Let them compete.
Baud
@Tommy:
Part of the conservative dogma is that private capital should never face competition from the government. Same reason why so many places have laws prohibiting city-owned broadband services.
Tommy
@Baud:
My city is about to step in there. My little rural town got $750,000 from the Recovery Act and put in a fiber backbone and wired every public building. We have a three tier plan. First wire businesses. Then FREE wireless. Then fiber directly into homes. My town isn’t the most liberal town, but practical. We think this will attract business. Attract home owners. And therefore we’ll get more in taxes.
Right now it costs $55/month for broadband access (30 Mbps). That is out of control.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: For several years I was the editor of an APA and in charge of collating the issues and mailing them out to the members. Material came to me from the England, Canada, Australia, South Africa besides the US. I saw first hand how long it took the foreign contributions to get to me and how much they members paid. Hands down the most efficient and least expensive postal service was ours.
Citizen_X
Thanks for the reminder. I’ll go home, pick up the guitar and sing an angry round of Ye Jacobites by Name in his honor. He wrote it about the Bush crew, you know. ;)
WaterGirl
@Tommy: If you really use a lot of stamps, you could buy a bunch of forever stamps NOW if you can afford it.
Oh, and thanks for the teaser about UP. Will have to watch it when I return from the market.
rikyrah
Once Financially Secure, a Mother Is Fighting a Life of Poverty
A former airline worker finds herself in a cycle of poverty from which there is little chance of escape.
By: Leila McDowell
Posted: Jan. 24 2014 5:00 AM
Josephine Wiles Warner’s cozy town house in Herndon, Va., is filled with the laughter of her four children—children she brought into her home when their natural parents could no longer care for them. And Warner became their mom, but not through foster care, so she receives no aid.
Now the lights and water are off and she is being threatened with eviction. The cold caused the children to get bronchitis and pneumonia.
“It’s a nightmare,” Warner says.
Warner is one of millions of people who discovered that it often costs more to be poor than rich.
She used to own the townhome. For 20 years she worked as an airline customer-service agent but left to care for her terminally ill mother in 2010. “I had no idea that it would mean a spiral into poverty,” Warner says. Even with three college degrees, she is unable to find work in her field.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2014/01/poverty_trap_ensnares_a_former_airline_worker.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=57e27aa525&mc_eid=1e0cf17cc4
rikyrah
New Investigation Demanded in Mysterious Death of Alfred Wright
Thanks to a three-part report on the facts surrounding the disappearance and death of the Texas father, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee met with Wright’s family and has asked the Department of Justice to launch an investigation.
By: Stephen A. Crockett Jr.
Posted: Jan. 24 2014 4:17 PM
The Department of Justice is being asked to join a family’s fight for truth regarding the mysterious disappearance and death of Alfred Wright, CNN reports.
The 28-year-old Jasper, Texas, father disappeared last November. After the police called off their search, Wright’s family took up the cause, launching their own search team.
His family found his remains a few miles from where they reported him missing. The local sheriff has stated that there was no foul play involved in Wright’s death, but Wright’s family believes that he was murdered.
Last week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 launched an in-depth three-part report that had investigative reporter Deborah Feyerick shining a national spotlight on the facts surrounding the case. Feyerick reported Thursday night that Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee met with Wright’s family Wednesday for several hours after seeing the show.
Now the Texas congresswoman’s chief of staff says they’re drafting a letter to the Justice Department, Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. attorney in Beaumont, Texas.
“We have no specifics just yet on the kind of investigation or assistance they’re going to ask for from the Justice Department,” Feyerick reports, “but it would include things, for example, like civil rights violations, hate crimes, public corruption—for example, corruption within law enforcement.”
According to KLTV News 7, the East Texas News obtained a copy of the first page of an autopsy report performed on Nov. 26, 2013, and prepared by Dr. John W. Ralston, a forensic pathologist with Forensic Medical Management Services of Texas’ Beaumont office. The pathologist listed “combined drug intoxication, including cocaine, methamphetamine, and amphetamine.” Ralston’s report also stated that Wright’s body had shallow puncture wounds to the abdomen, left thigh, left lower leg and palm of the left hand, KLTV News 7 reports.
The report also stated that there was no evidence of severe trauma.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/01/new_investigation_launched_in_mysterious_death_of_alfred_wright.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=57e27aa525&mc_eid=1e0cf17cc4
rikyrah
Fox News Host Somehow Connects Justin Bieber’s Arrest to Obama
Greg Gutfeld, one of the hosts on Fox’s The Five, admittedly “shoehorned” the president into the topic of Bieber’s arres
By: Breanna Edwards
Posted: Jan. 24 2014 12:13 PM
Co-host Greg Gutfeld of Fox’s The Five found an interesting way to link pop star Justin Bieber’s recent arrest to President Obama.
Gutfeld admitted that he had “shoehorned” the president into the issue by linking teenage-girl fanaticism over the star to the way the president is treated by the press.
“The real culprit: the mindset of the teenage girl … that suspends critical thinking, replacing it with mindless euphoria driven by hormones and a desire for acceptance. But enough about Obama,” Gutfeld quipped. “True, his poll numbers have a Bieber-esque quality, adored by people who pay more attention to dimples than direction. It’s a direction we can predict, for, like Bieber, Obama has no friendly speed bumps, no trusted critical eye to stop the decline with helpful advice. They’re too scared to hurt the pinup’s feelings, which is why there’s really nothing to see here, ’cause we’ve all seen it before.”
Indeed, there’s nothing to see here.
After Gutfeld finished his self-diagnosed shoehorning, co-host Bob Beckel remarked that it was “an interesting connection, to say the least.”
As for Gutfeld, he smiled and said he was “kind of proud of it.”
http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2014/01/fox_news_host_somehow_connects_justin_bieber_s_arrest_to_obama.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content&mc_cid=57e27aa525&mc_eid=1e0cf17cc4
rikyrah
Friday, Jan 24, 2014 07:30 AM CST
Chris Christie’s Texas horror: Meet the scandalous prison company he’s long promoted
A corporation Christie’s lobbied for and long pushed runs notorious detention center with a slew of vocal opponents
A controversial company promoted by Chris Christie runs an immigrant detention center in Texas slammed by advocates as one of the nation’s worst. The facility is used by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to house immigrant detainees who are seeking asylum in the United States.
And, noting Christie’s “long and very close relationship with Community Education Centers,” the private company running the facility for ICE, one critic told Salon, “I think it’s time people start asking questions, because this company’s practices are not confined to New Jersey.”
“I’ve visited a bunch of detention facilities in Texas, and that’s by far the worst,” said the opponent, Bob Libal, who directs the prison reform group Grassroots Leadership and visited the Polk County Adult Detention Center with other activists in 2012 and 2013. His allegations echo a 2012 report from the Detention Watch Network, a coalition including the ACLU and the American Immigration Lawyers Association as well as Libal’s group: “Inadequate medical care, poor nutrition, lack of access to legal services, absence of meaningful programming, and a willful neglect of those who are imprisoned there plague the Polk detention center.”
Spokespeople for Christie and for CEC did not provide comment in response to Thursday inquiries.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/chris_christies_texas_horror_meet_the_scandalous_prison_company_hes_long_promoted/?source=newsletter
rikyrah
Friday, Jan 24, 2014 06:43 AM CST
GOP’s plot against democracy: Why it really wants to depress the vote
Bipartisan reforms to our embarrassing voting system have been proposed. Here’s what’s holding up their passage
Alex Pareene
The Presidential Commission on Election Administration has released its report and recommendations, and reasonable people everywhere rejoice. The bipartisan commission was formed by Barack Obama following the 2012 election, which was a bit of an embarrassment for a nation that considers itself something of a model democracy. Across the country (but mainly in urban areas and black and Latino neighborhoods), Election Day featured hours-long lines, broken voting machines, inaccurate voter rolls and confusing ballots.
“The Editors” of Bloomberg View declare the report “so resolutely practical that it’s hard to imagine its recommendations stirring much debate, much less controversy.” (They acknowledge that “not all politicians want to make it easier for Americans to vote,” but they fail to specify that that’s more or less part of the Republican Party platform.) Jeffrey Toobin calls it “an unexpectedly bold document.”
The commission’s key recommendations are eminently reasonable: Expand online voter registration, expand early voting, improve and modernize voting machines, and improve efficiency and alleviate wait times at polling places with better training and techniques that have been proven to work elsewhere. Everyone should be able to support all of this, and, best of all, the commission’s recommendations don’t require any federal action at all. They just need to be voluntarily implemented by state and local officials. And how hard could it be to convince state and local officials to make voting easier?
Here’s the first problem with the commission’s report: We already know what’s wrong with American elections and we already know how we should fix those problems. The last bipartisan commission on American elections released its report and recommendations less than a decade ago. That report followed up a major piece of federal election reform, the Help America Vote Act, which was the bipartisan response to the travesty that was the 2000 election. The Help America Vote Act created another bipartisan commission dedicated to making voting easier, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. That commission is supposed to have two commissioners from each party. Republicans in Congress have effectively killed that commission by refusing to appoint or approve any commissioners at all.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/gops_plot_against_democracy_why_it_really_wants_to_depress_the_vote/?source=newsletter
rikyrah
Friday, Jan 24, 2014 06:44 AM CST
The right’s fantasy is shattered: Why Obamacare has already succeeded
Conservatives want you to believe that Obamacare is “beyond rescue” — but the data tells a very different story
Brian Beutler
Last week, conservative Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle and American Enterprise Institute fellow Scott Gottlieb debated New York magazine’s liberal columnist Jonathan Chait and former Assistant Surgeon General Douglas Kamerow over the proposition that Obamacare is “beyond rescue.”
If you have an hour and a half of free time and a nearby brick wall to repeatedly smash your head into, you can watch the whole debate here. In the event that you’re unfamiliar with Salon dot com, suffice to say, I stand with Chait and Kamerow.
I didn’t write about this earlier because, even though McArdle and Gottleib won the debate in the eyes of those in attendance, I thought the proposition (which presumably they didn’t pick) was almost impossibly unfair to them. They had to convincingly argue that Obamacare had fallen into a persistent vegetative state; Chait and Kamerow could win simply by convincing people that it might come out of its coma at some point.
But then on Tuesday, McArdle imported many of the comments and arguments she used on the debate stage into a column called “Resolved: Obamacare Is Now Beyond Rescue,” so if she at any point believed the burdens of proof were stacked unevenly against her, I think it’s fair to assume that like so many conservatives she’s now completely certain that her position is correct and her arguments unassailable. Obamacare is beyond rescue.
I think this is almost definitionally wrong for two reasons, one technical and one philosophical.
http://www.salon.com/2014/01/24/the_rights_fantasy_is_shattered_why_obamacare_has_already_succeeded/?source=newsletter
rikyrah
RNC eyes major calendar changes
01/24/14 05:15 PM
By Steve Benen
The race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 wasn’t pretty. The interminable, mind-numbing process dragged on endlessly, alienated the American mainstream, and generally made the candidates look ridiculous. Party officials couldn’t be sure who’d run in 2016, but they were determined to create a less destructive process.
The Republican National Committee took a step in that direction at their winter meeting. Aaron Blake reported:
In advance of every cycle, there’s some chatter about the early-nominating states losing their exalted role, but as has always been the case, the discussions didn’t amount to much. The Iowa caucuses will still go first, followed by the New Hampshire primary. The Nevada caucuses and South Carolina primary will follow soon after. Those four contests will be held in February 2016.
What about states that intend to test the status quo by moving their nominating race earlier? According to the new RNC plan, if you’re not one of the first four, you can’t vote earlier than March 1. States that try will face stiff penalties, including the forfeiture of most of their delegates to the convention.
But perhaps the biggest news is the convention schedule.
A shorter nominating process means a longer general-election process, which necessarily means an earlier convention. The late-August/early-September convention is out; the late-June/early-July convention is in. That means an early choice of running mates, but also earlier legal access to funds raised specifically for the post-primary, general election phase.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/rnc-eyes-major-calendar-changes
Joel
People actually drink whisky in dram quantitites? Do they use an eye dropper?
Tommy T
Burns can’t hold a candle to Ewen McTeagle.
Origuy
@Joel: A fluid dram is 1/8 of an ounce, just enough for a taste. In Scotland, however, it just means a small amount. If you get a “wee dram” in the tasting room of a Scotch distillery, it’s about a half ounce or so. More if they’re feeling generous.
JoyfulA
@JGabriel: All my Scots friends are for independence, but that might be the kind of friends I have.
Robert Sneddon
I’ve not decided yet how I’ll vote in the upcoming referendum for independence. My heart says “Yes! Let’s go!” and my mind says “Wait a minute…” It’s a big step and I’m tending towards the idea that it’s a step too far. I’m not sure what a truly independent Scotland would be like; it already has a lot of the trappings of independence and it’s always had a separate judiciary and policing system but the final break from Britain is one giant leap into the unknown.
Scotland as a nation would be more socialist and left-leaning than the current version of Britain it would be leaving behind and as I age into retirement I’d see that as a good thing, but it is still true that for a lot of younger Scots the brightest future for them lies along the road south to England and especially to the south-east and London. It’s the same with Ireland, of course, even during the Celtic Tiger era, and I don’t see that ending with independence.
We’ve got some oil and gas left and in theory we’ve got renewables (hydro, wind and tidal mostly, you can forget about solar this far north) but as the subsidies start to come off renewables on the presumption that after a decade or so such technologies are now mature and commoditised more and more energy projects are being abandoned as not financially viable while at the same time folks are screaming about the ever-increasing costs of energy for heating and lighting. There are other Scottish cash-cows such and finance and education to create local wealth and pay for a social state (pensions, healthcare etc.) but whether they can produce ENOUGH wealth to keep the lights on is another matter.
If you’re interested ask me later how my decision is firming up and when the referendum is held ask me how I voted.
Oh, and it’s Rabbie Burns, I never heard him called Robbie in my life. Sir Walter Scott was the posher face of literary Scotland and he’s got the fancy monument along Princes Street in Edinburgh. The Burns memorial is much smaller and a bit off the beaten track but it has a better view across the valley over Holyrood to Arthur’s Seat, and we don’t celebrate Scott’s Night for good reason.
noodler
UK Embassies all over the world host a burns nite for the diplo community. it’s really quite something in a 3rd world garden spot. ours was Thursday. Really great time.
mclaren
Especially appropriate, given the vast mass of “wee, sleekit, tim’rous beasties” misnamed Democrats who inhabit this forum.