Owning Scotland's Land
The white saviours, led by Benedict Macdonald, are again taking up the white man's burden to save Scotland's 'Wild Land' from the wild Scots. His business model is essentially to rent-seek off subsidies provided by the Scottish government intended to support rural communities and rural development, and divert the money, instead, to his friends in the City of London. Yes, this is just the latest cover of a very old tune, but it's long past time we said 'enough'.
The Right Solution
Where's the Steel?
From the discovery of iron working techniques, about 3,200 years ago, up until the widespread exploitation of fossil fuels, about 250 years ago, iron and steel were rare, precious materials. The average person, across the whole world, almost certainly had less than 500 grammes of it. A knife, probably; some tool of their trade, possibly. Even members of the elite — warriors who fought in full armour, for example — probably owned no more than 30kg of iron and steel.
The use of fossil fuel changed all that, of course. There's about one car for every two people in the UK, and the average car now weighs 1857Kg, so that's almost a ton per person in cars alone, not to mention all the steel we now have in buildings and infrastructure. But it's fossil fuels that have made that possible. In future, we can't use them. So how much steel will we have?
An elegy, of sorts
This is a wee graveyard, as you can see; but it's my graveyard, the graveyard local to me. And I've come here to talk about truth, and belief, and honesty, and death, and Scotland's place as a nation, and contested versions, because it's a good place to do that.
This is my mother's grave, and my wee sister's. My mother was a historian, and a Quaker, as I was much of my life; she wanted a plain gravestone, with just her name and dates, in the Quaker tradition. My wee sister Jenny was not a Quaker, as I'm not now; and she was mischievous and iconoclastic and kept hideous pug dogs; and she wanted her dug on her stane; and her death was so unexpected and so tragic that we'd none of us the heart to deny her.
Death, glory, and computer games
Let's suppose for a moment that you're a member — the most junior member, the rookie — of a squad. Your squad may be police, it may be corporate security, it may be a criminal gang; this doesn't matter. What does matter is that it exists in an environment in which all these things exist, and compete; in which they compete using lethal force.
As the rookie, you've been issued with a weapon. It isn't a very good weapon; it's old, worn out, not particularly powerful; and you're not yet very skilled in its use. But this doesn't matter; there are half a dozen other folk in your squad who are all more experienced and better armed than you. Your leader is a very experienced — famous, perhaps notorious — combat veteran. You feel safe, and your squad is moderately successful.
On Violence, with reference to the invasion of Ukraine
the photograph shows the Czech activist Jan Palach burning himself to death in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact invasion. Note that I am not certain whether this is an image of Palach himself, or of an actor playing him in a film of the event made in 2018.