We had a family get-together for my other half’s birthday. I am always impressed by what civilized offspring I have when I consider the standards of behaviour which are tolerated these days in society at large. In my opinion, a lot of it is due to slack standards across the board, in education and in discipline.  Who learns Latin nowadays? You may think that is a pointless exercise, but ask yourself what language is used overwhelmingly in all science? Latin. It is the same in Medicine and Law. If you want to understand what “ultra vires” means, for example, do you have to have a law degree, or simply to have studied basic Latin? If the latter, then you would understand it. As it is, we now have doctors and lawyers who don’t understand the very terminology they use.

If science and the Law aren’t your thing, perhaps language is? Latin is the basis of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and forms a large percentage of English and many other European languages. If you learn Latin, you learn grammar, which means that you learn how to use language so that it can be precise and meaningful. You don’t think that language is important? Well, then you need to read some history, which is something our politicians here in Scotland would do well to do. Wars start because of the use, or misuse of language and an ignorance of history.

The words in the original Declaration of Independence of the USA referred to the use by the British Government of, “Scotch and other, foreign mercenaries”. However, as a lot of the people signing the Declaration were, themselves, Scots and the revolutionaries did not want to antagonize the considerable number of Scottish colonists in New England, that was scored out. The Americans saw themselves as being predominantly English at the time and there was still prejudice against Scots. The revolutionaries recognized that they needed all the colonists on their side and that it would not be sensible to split them up into opposing camps.

Another instance is the case of a war which broke out between Great Britain and the Boers in southern Africa in the late nineteenth century, over a comma! Yes, indeed.

If we do not educate, we do not learn. If we do not know history, we do not learn from our earlier mistakes and lies are accepted as truth. A perfect case in point is the film, “Braveheart” which has convinced some Scots (mostly male, I suspect) that it is history. It is not. Yet, for all that, it has instilled hatred of the English in many who credit it with being something it is not; namely, an accurate historical representation of events.

In terms of discipline (from the Latin, “discipulus“, a pupil), we have a generation who live in a society which has pressure groups who think that chastisement is assault. As a consequence, we live in a world in which feral children cause problems which are vastly greater than their numbers would suggest. Their crimes can even be that of murder, as was seen in a particularly nasty stabbing seen in London by hundreds of people recently.

If the penalty does not fit the crime, then it will not work. The penalty needs to be seen to be a penalty by the criminal, not just by a liberal society. Moreover, when they are in prison, they need to be given every benefit of the education that most of them have never had. Punishment, yes. However, punishment which merely releases trained criminals onto the streets with a vendetta against society helps no one.

We need to look at our decadent society and recognize that, alongside business opportunity, which is very much here,  certain values must be maintained. We must not allow values which contradict ours to be accepted in any part of our country – by that, I mean those “values” that certain groups think are right, such as female genital mutilation – or to have the opposite side of the coin thrust upon us either, in the shape of ultra-liberal desires for equality between modes of living that are not the same and do not require amending. Perhaps, what I am saying is that we need a sort of muscular Christianity and a recognition of and return to traditional values.

This was a week in which business success seems to have been showing its first green shoots, to paraphrase Mr Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer back in the 1990s. There seems to be a change in tempo; quiet, perhaps, but still there, nonetheless.

Well, we deserve it, do we not? We have all struggled through the worst recession since the 1930s, as the pundits would have it. It’s always Joe Public who has to carry the can for the errors (or worse) of the rest. For the “rest”, use whichever comes to mind – banks, mortgage lenders, government etc.

I have been experiencing the delights of having new, “soopah-doopah” street lights being put in on my street. Guess what? Maybe I am particularly popular around here; maybe not. However, the people who deal with these things have succeeded in putting a light outside my middle sitting-room window. Isn’t that nice? Now, when I sit down to watch TV after sundown, I have something akin to a lighthouse shining into the room from about 10 yards away. No. I’m only kidding; 8 yards. Guess what the bedroom view is? Let me show you!

This calls for action. I have telephoned the relevant department. Result so far? Nothing. You know what? Councils only need us for one thing and that’s the rates we pay them. Beyond that, we are simply an inconvenience. All those in agreement, say, “aye!”

I had a few good bits of news this week. Not only have my recent ventures been successful – a pint, please, barman! – but some joint-venture stuff is looking good too.

You may have read some of my occasional burblings about this and that. Probably more that than this, if truth be told, but, the main thrust is about attaining business success, often woven into a tapestry of reminiscence, politically incorrect rants, idle fancy plus  the odd picture.

What I endeavour to tell you is what I have learned about the world and the people in it; the business that you can do and the way to think about things. By that, I mean to suggest using the simple expedient of thinking positively. Now, to many people, that sounds just plain daft. What possible difference does positive thinking make, they ask, with a faint sneer. Well, if nothing else, it defines how you interact with other people, which, I would submit, m’lud, has rather an effect on how they perceive you.

If you were to meet someone who is a glum depressive, would you be likely to be influenced by them, or would you head to the nearest exit? However, if you met someone who glowed with enthusiasm and who saw the upside, rather than the downside consistently, you would probably have much more time for him. Indeed, I tell people that I engage with that they must adopt that attitude in life. Indeed, although I may not have mentioned this to you before, one of my claims to fame is that I actually train people. I train them to be successful. I tell them why they can be successful and I tell them that they will succeed.

Do you know why I do this? Do you think, perhaps, that I lie to them? Well, the truthful answer is that I do not lie to them. Now, you may say that this cannot be true. Not everyone can be a success. Not everyone can be positive and succeed just because I tell them that they can be. Well, allow me to disagree.

I listen to what people tell me . I analyze what they tell me and I then tell them what I have found, warts and all. That is because honesty is the best policy. I then tell them that the business success that they are looking for needs to be viewed through a prism. That prism is often one that they have never looked through before, because they were unaware that it existed. They needed the perspective of someone outside, who could look at them anew, without prejudice and see what was invisible to them.

So, if you are thinking about trying your hand at some new venture, try to take a look at yourself and consider where you have done best and why. Consider your strengths and weaknesses – be honest with yourself, which is tough – but, out of that analysis, you may come to understand that you have got some little spark, some slight edge in an area which is unusual.

Now, think about what you can do. No one ever succeeded by thinking how they could NOT do something. Make it something small, at first. One little victory; one first step. Chart it. Write it down, “today, I achieved this!”

Aim to do a little more next time and build slowly, but surely. Realize that there will always be set-backs, but learn from them and you will increase in strength and knowledge.

Remember the motto of the Royal Air Force, “Per Ardua ad Astra”  – which means, “Through Adversity to the Stars”. That, I suggest to you, says it all.

The Shetland Ferry

As a change from our scheduled programmes, please watch this instead (just click on the words above to see it).

Laugh? Oh, yes.

Then, of course, there is the remarkable discovery and publication of a recording made by one of Scotland’s great inventors, Alexander Graham Bell, way back in 1885; one of the earliest recordings made, but only capable of being replayed with modern technology. His voice has a distinctly Scots, east coast accent (Edinburgh).

Alexander Graham Bell Speaks 1885

Of course, Mr Bell made rather a name for himself for his invention of the telephone. However, of late, there have been attempts made to rubbish that claim. Mr Bell, it is said, stole ideas from another man who applied for a patent of his invention later on the same day that Mr Bell did. Guess what his name was? No ideas?

OK. It was Gray, just like me, but no relation. However, for all the poo-pooing of Bell’s reputation, this recording, which preceded Edison’s own efforts, I believe, shows that Bell was, indeed,  a great inventor, whatever people say.

Business success, such as Alexander Graham Bell attained, is not necessarily due to great genius. Sometimes, it can be down to hard work and a little good luck. Sometimes, fate just plays into your hands. However, I find that one of the best ways of getting business success (and I have set up and run a number of businesses and sold them all) is to know what other people are doing. Observe and improve is probably the best approach to take.

My own take on that is to keep a grip on things that I am doing. This entailed my visiting sunny Manchester and even sunnier Dundee this week. Manchester demonstrated that wearing new shoes and engaging in long distance walking, with a deadline to make, are two things that should never appear in the same sentence together! In Manchester, I succeeded in arriving 40 minutes later and almost crawling when I arrived, because my feet were so sore!

I compounded matters later on by catching the wrong darned train home and had to return to Manchester to catch a later train. However, Dundee was a success and, in the end, all was well and my feet recovered.

A week which was dominated by one event; the death of Margaret Thatcher.

Love her or hate her, Maggie, as she was known, was a very effective leader. Like any political leader too, she did things which some people liked and others loathed. Indeed, there are many on the left who actually celebrated her death with parties, which is not the way we normally do things in this country.

However, something which must be borne in mind is that, by facing up to the unions, she caused a climate change in the way the UK became “open for business”.  On the other side of the argument, there are many who are open to influence from those who talk about “social justice” and who are letting themselves be conned by very effective operators who say one thing and do another.

In the 1970s, Britain was  a basket-case. Almost every week, there were strikes, often “wild-cat”, meaning that they were sudden and often called by shop stewards without any consultation with the workers themselves. I have heard it said that some of the trades union leaders were in the pay of Moscow, which aimed to bring down the democratic government we have and to install a communist regime here. That was their ultimate ambition, of course and they never pretended otherwise, stating that it was “inevitable” in Marxist thinking.

The various clashes that occurred during  her time in office were nasty and characterised by violent protests, especially in the Miners’ Strike which was called by Arthur Scargill without any consultation with his men. If the coal mines were destroyed by anything, the year-long strike was the last straw. The same was the case for the decrepit industries which had been nationalised by Labour and which were costing the country billions. She did not believe in helping lame ducks any more than she believed in bailing out state-owned industries and many companies that could have survived closed as a consequence. That was not ideal and it caused the de-industrialisation of much of the UK.

So, her time in office was like the parson’s egg; good in parts. However, on the defence front, she was brilliant. She dealt firmly with an armed attack and occupation of the Falkland Islands whose crime, it would appear, is that they have not allowed the Argentinians to take them over as they did the lands of the native peoples whom they slaughtered to create their European state in South America. Margaret Thatcher did not give in to the United States’ attempts to let the Argentinians keep their ill-gotten gains and she sent a task-force to throw them out, which they did with great courage.

Had Thatcher been a bland, ineffectual leader, she would have gone virtually unnoticed when she died, as happened with her predecessors. She was certainly not an angel. She was not a saint. She was, however, someone who changed Britain from a country under the very real threat of financial collapse, facing active undermining by the  Soviet Bloc. Their support was given to  the IRA (you should have heard how they were spoken of on Radio Moscow’s English language service) when they were bombing and killing our children in the Birmingham Pub Bombing. They also attempted to ruin British industry by stopping production through strike action and various “work to rule” and “go-slow” actions with picket lines. Dead bodies were left unburied, ambulances were not collecting the seriously ill and rubbish piled up in the streets the length and breadth of the nation.  They made our goods uncompetitive and Britain was called “The Sick Man of Europe”. She changed that  to a nation that has much leaner and efficient industry which produces top-class goods.

The price of freedom can be high, whether it is fighting terrorists who bomb your population and kneecap their own followers who stray, or defeating nasty military regimes that murder their own people in South America and then invade barely defended islands they have never owned to keep their own, fearful population on side.

I am not a cheer-leader for Margaret Thatcher and, indeed, the only demo I  was ever on as a student was against her. I regret the damage that was done to British industry and the over-reliance on financial and other services that followed. I am also very critical of the mess that we have been landed in with the European Union. It was Mrs Thatcher’s signing of the Single European Act that started the utter shambles that the EU is now in. For that, her government must be to blame.

However, on balance, her government was for the overall good of this country, whereas, I would say, many other governments have been either neutral in effect, or absolutely terrible, like the Labour Government that preceded hers.

So, she will be long-remembered after the uniforms worn at her funeral have been packed away.  She will be remembered by the people in the isolated Falkland Islands for freeing them from foreign occupation. She will also be remembered by the people in the old pit villages that now have little employment, or where the men were offered jobs in new offices where their masculinity meant little or nothing and where brains rather than brawn mattered. They, out of all of us, illustrated the change from old heavy industry to new service industry that characterised Mrs Thatcher’s legacy to this country.

A week of various experiences which underline the variety of things we can get up to in a few days, from developing a cracking bruise on my left hand from an accidental thwack from an epee at fencing last week which is now technicolour, to a visit to Dundee, which evokes memories of childhood.

On the positive side (and I am a firm believer in that cast of mind) things have started to move in the business sense since Easter. In great measure, we are the playthings of the Gods, as the economy of Europe is suffering from the pestilential euro, which is causing all sorts of shenanigans in the southern economies like Greece, Italy, Portugal (called the PIIGS, due to the initial letters of the countries’ names). That is slowing any attempt at recovery, since they cannot dig themselves out from under with the interest rates favouring Germany and not them. Pretty basic, really, but until something is done about it, they will drag down everyone else too.

Add to the depressing effects of the Europeans on our economy and add in the separatists here in Scotland who continually talk Britain down  (they think they are clever and that Scotland is some sort of El Dorado, but I am in  business here and know that we aren’t) and the effects are magnified. However, the response to this scene has to be a positive one. When in doubt, work.

I am now casting my net much wider than usual and aiming high – “This time next year, Rodders, we’ll be millionaires!” as Del-Boy says in, “Only Fools and Horses” – you have to have that attitude.

Enough of boring real politik, however. I will close this week’s entry by describing a personal experience, the memory of which was prompted by my visit to Dundee. When I was a child, I remember a visit to Dundee, which commenced with a crossing of the River Tay in afternoon sunshine with a great, white plume of smoke as the engine (“The Flying Scotsman”) could be seen ahead of us, pulling the train into Dundee station.

Later that evening, after supper, cooked on the solid fuel range in my granny’s kitchen by her cook, who was a lady whose fiance had died in Flanders fields in the Great War, I retired to bed. However, before I did so, I was allowed to watch someone called, “Leerie Lamplighter” turn on the gas lamp outside in the street and then, with a great, long pole,  ignited the gas.

Such memories were brought to mind by my passing my grandmother’s house which is still almost unchanged, but for a different paint on the windows-sills and doors. Otherwise, the street could still be the same one I walked along as a boy, many a long year ago.

In some ways, life is a journey which illustrates how things change, but in others, it can show us how things stay very much the same. Often, the changes are in style, not  substance. In that very way, working on the internet is much the same as working in the old world of newspaper advertising. The email you read is simply the post that we once had. My wife’s grandfather was able to write a postcard to his wife from the golf-course to tell her when he would be home for dinner that very day! That was the immediacy of the old-fashioned world. It was as immediate as today.

When I started working, I could get hold of people by more than simply the telephone or post. I could send a telegram and it went straight to them, almost as quickly as an email. Equally, as you read this, you are simply doing what your ancestors did one hundred and fifty years ago in a magazine article. The medium (a computer screen) differs from the former one (a paper sheet), but the substance is the same.

Think, therefore, when you are contemplating setting up an internet business, of what the equivalent would have been, forty, or a hundred years ago. Many of the lessons that applied then, apply now too. Whereas you would have looked for postal addresses then, you want – well, what do you want now? – the postal address is just as useful, if not more so. However, post costs money and email doesn’t.

The basic lesson is, however, would you want to buy what you are trying to sell? If not, then other people probably won’t either. Does it meet people’s desires (not their needs)? If not, why would they buy it?

Also, as I do in my business, remember that it is far better to sell one thing at $1,000 than try to make that amount by selling things at $2. How many of those sales do you need to equate to $1,000?

Think about it.

Yes. It’s the best part of a year and I have not been keeping up. Guilty as charged.

We have seen a lot of developments in the last year. Not many of them are ones I would wish to see, if truth be told. I am against the idea of our press being regulated in any way. Freedom of speech is central to our way of life. That has been undermined for far too long by our membership of the European Union. That Union is run by unelected Commissioners who cannot be removed. That is dictatorship. The “Parliament” of the EU cannot initiate legislation. It is told what to talk about by the Commissioners.

I was brought up to believe in certain values that made this country the best in the world. Like Andrew Marr (broadcaster), I believe that it is an amazing stroke of luck to be born British. The trouble is that the EU and the last Government, believed that everyone else in Europe should be able to come here with precious little scrutiny (sometimes, it seems, absolutely none) and settle down, claim benefit (often for children who then go home, but  for whom we still pay) and then vote on our affairs.

Well, that is one big bug-bear of mine. Another, is the culture which has been carefully cultivated in Scotland, of thinking that anything done in Britain that does not immediately come Scotland’s way (only if it is positive, of course) is some form of anti-Scottish prejudice. We hear the sounds of spiteful Nationalists calling other Scots who do not subscribe to their point-of-view as being “anti-Scottish” and we can find analogies in 1930s Germany. There are lots of flags and costumes to be seen in Scotland these days. Marches are held in the same way and there is an increase in a view of “us” and “them” arising, which is worrying.

Scotland has a lot to offer the world. Since the Union, we have probably contributed more to the world in terms of scientific discovery (eg inventions like logarithms,  the pneumatic tyre, the telephone, TV, radar, the test-tube baby and the world-famous, deep-fried pizza and deep-fried Mars Bar), but also, our literary influence has been amazing (Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, RL Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Kenneth Grahame, John Buchan and – our current Ian Banks, who has just announced that he is dying of cancer – what a loss he will be).

However, turning in upon ourselves is not the solution, any more than immersing ourselves in a massive organization like the EU can be. The EU has removed two elected national governments in the last couple of years (Greece’s and Italy’s) and it has forced the Cypriot Government to accept a bail-out which depended upon their elected parliament NOT being allowed to vote on it. That’s EU democracy for you!

Many of you reading this may think that my views are wrong, or unacceptable. I doubt, however, that many of you who think so would disagree with my basic tenet that we have to have freedom of speech and freedom of government. Without those, we are sunk.

I have been made aware of how dependent I am (as most of us are these days) upon IT. I lost my pc to some malfunction last year and managed to recover pretty much everything. I then had a similar occurrence earlier this year. Again, although I may have lost some things, I had sufficient backup to be able to cope. Nonetheless, it highlights the fragility of our knowledge-base in this computer age. A solar flare, back, I believe, in 1859, startled the world when telegraph wires transmitted messages, even when they were not powered up. Another, similar event, in our age of electronics, could be disastrous. Not only could we lose screeds of information; we could also end up with very dead astronauts and cosmonauts in the International Space Station and potential hazards being created in nuclear power stations world-wide. In such an event, how would the onboard computer systems of aircraft cope?

I am a creature of my age and my time. Although I am writing this on my keyboard, tapping out the letters, finger-by-finger, I do still entrust certain things to paper. All my business contacts are noted in pen. I write my diary by hand. I print hard copy, which is what I read. Do you read things at length onscreen? Really? Hmmm.

I sometimes take the mickey out of people by telling them that I have a system which is the most bang-up-to-date way of never losing data; of knowing exactly where to be and when; of people’s telephone numbers and addresses. My system never crashes, I tell them, tongue-in-cheek. What is it? Well, it’s pretty obvious, really. It’s a hand-written notebook.

I suppose that, as we age, we become more reflective. I know I do. I have memories that speak to me from decades gone by. I remember the first “coloured” person I ever saw. I had been excited when I was told that there was such a man in my home village. I envisaged someone whose skin would be the colours of the rainbow, rather like the sheen of petrol you see on the surface of a puddle. In the event, I was very disappointed. He was just a sort of muddy brown and didn’t look especially different from anyone else. Same number of arms and legs. Eyes on both sides of his nose. A bit like me, really, apart from shade of skin. However, it illustrates the fact that seeing someone who was not native British was a real event, because they were not to be found outside the likes of London.

I remember my Granny’s up in Dundee. A shotgun sat in an umbrella-stand, just inside the front door and eighteenth-century duelling pistols hung on the wall all the way up the stairs, along with old, black and white photographs of my grandpa’s soldiers in the Boer War. His regimental flag, in a glass case, sat in front of the fire and the dining-room was hung with collections of family medals back to the Peninsula Campaign. It was like stepping into the nineteenth century when I visited her, as I did, every fortnight when I was a teenager.

My Great-Grandfather, Col. William Smith

Of course, she would now be the oldest person in the world, if she were alive. However, knowing her and the house she lived in was an experience; whether it was watching “Learie Lamp-Lighter” turning on the gas light in the street outside, with a long taper which ignited the gas, or sending a letter to Santa Claus by thrusting it into the wood, or coal-powered range which was used by her cook to make the family meals.

My father would tell me about his memories, as a boy. He told me how his father had one of the first cars in Edinburgh. It was a Stanley Steam Car. Evidently, whilst driving to the village in the Borders from which my great-grandfather had walked to Edinburgh some decades before, they passed a road-mender. As the car passed him by (I presume it was moving quite slowly), this man leaned on his shovel and enquired, “Whit’s that fur? Brakkin’ stanes?” (“What’s that for? Breaking stones?). Clearly, he had never seen such a contraption before!

This blog of mine was initially started up as part of an exercise in making money online. In truth, it has not ended up being a money-spinner, as such. It is more a way of thinking aloud, I suppose. In a world which is very unsettled, rather than unstable, I feel that there are things that need to be said. Most people keep their heads down and hope that everything will be all right. In this country, we face a dual difficulty; we have an uncertain political situation internally, due to the wish of the SNP (Scottish Nationalists) to break Scotland way from the rest of the United Kingdom. Simultaneously, we have a European Union, of which the UK is a leading member, going through all sorts of difficulties with their currency, the euro.

The effect of the combined shenanigans of the two sides in the Scottish debate have caused the Scottish economy to sit on its hands and not to invest in growth. Property prices are not doing much, because people do not know where they might end up if the Nationalists win. In fact, many thousands would leave, but the property market would be saturated and prices would drop. There would also be a knock-on effect in England, of course, especially since we are a Union and we would then cease to be one. That is great for historians to write about retrospectively, but rather less fun to be caught up in.

As to the EU, we can only hope that the UK (remaining united, I very much hope) develops its historic trading  links with the rest of the world, so that the EU becomes a minor player in our economy. The effects of the euro on world trade will be bad enough, but for us to have almost half our trade with the eurozone is very dangerous.

In the meantime, family life goes on and the next generation are taking their first steps into the future. Like many parents, I have immense pride in my children. If they are the future of this nation, then Britain has a lot to look forward to. They have all the qualities that made us great in the first place, hard work being merely one of them. However, although looking forward is something important, it is also important to acknowledge where we learned the things that make us who we are.

When I was at school (well, my last school, as I was at four, all told), I had a teacher who was nick-named, “The Major”. He was in charge of the school “Corps”, or officer cadets. He was also a History teacher. In later life, he became Headmaster of two other schools. Now, as I may (or may not) have told you already, I studied History as a (second) first degree and, later, at postgrad level, covering Medieval History (as it was spelled). This was due, in great measure, to the amazing interest “The Major” had aroused in all my class in his subject. He could cause waves of laughter about anything you cared to be looking at. He would bring a German pickelhauber” (First World War helmet, with a spike sticking out of the top) in to let us see what it looked like. He put genuine, First World War recruiting posters up in the classroom to let us see them. They were vandalised, of course. He had a huge contraption at the back of the class which would enable him to project images from books and magazines onto the wall to illustrate what he was discussing and there was always a board-game being played at the back of the room during breaks. These were usually things like the Battle of Stalingrad, or El Alamein and boys like me would gather there to watch the progress of the two armies as they tried to battle it out and change the course of history.

Well, I decided to find out where my old History master was and I contacted the last school at which  he had been  Headmaster. They agreed to forward a letter to him, on my behalf, so I wrote to him, simply to thank him for the inspiration he had given me to progress to the academic study of the subject. History tells us who we are and where we come from. It is an immensely powerful, yet underestimated subject which is regularly used to spread disinformation and motivate people to believe in something which is often utterly untrue. A case in point was that which the Nazis disseminated in the 1920s and 1930s. They claimed that Germany had lost the First World War because the Jews had “stabbed them in the back”. This enabled them to make the Jews a scapegoat and get themselves off the hook. Their generals were exculpated from their responsibility for losing the fight; their soldiers were equally let off the hook and the Kaiser, whose own engineering of alliances had led to Germany being surrounded by foes in the first place was not held to account.

The end result of the lies that the Nazis spread was the Second World War and the attempt to eradicate a whole race from Europe. Germany herself was split in two and Communism sprawled across Eastern Europe; a tyranny only slightly less repulsive than the one that had gone before.

This is one reason why I studied history, because I see similar claims being made about the history of Scotland. The mytholigization of history is always a dangerous thing and it is happening here. Hollywood helps with out-and-out tosh about William Wallace in “Braveheart”, but to many Scots, it WAS history, not myth. A generation of young Scots now believe that the events portrayed in that film are an accurate illustration of what happened during the Wars of Independence against the English.

We are becoming bogged down in an attempt to “Celticize” Scotland. This is being done as a direct attempt to make Scots a different people from the English and it is quite brazen. We have “Celtic” events – a music festival in Glasgow, for instance – and there are efforts to line Scotland up with Ireland and Wales as a group of people of like race. The English are something “other”. This, of course, is utter lies. The fact of the matter is that there is barely an iota of difference between the English and the Scots, if you look at DNA evidence. The language which came to dominate Scotland when it was still a separate nation, was “Scots”, which is descended from Anglo-Saxon, just as is English.

Do you know where the finest English cross is to be found? Well, it is in Scotland, in fact.

The south-east of Scotland was as Anglo-Saxon as the north-east of England. For centuries, it was part of the kingdom of Northumbria, as was much of the south-west, as well. You may have heard of Prestwick, where Scotland’s “fog-free” airport that used to be the place whence you flew to America? It means “priest’s farm” in Old English.

Equally, up in the north and west of mainland Scotland, in the Western Isles and, especially the Northern Isles, a strong Viking influence has left a distinct genetic trace in the population. Moreover, many other peoples have settled in Scotland over the centuries. The Stewarts were a Breton family that settled in Scotland and became (usually disastrous) kings. The Frasers, it is said, came from a Flemish background and many other families can trace their ancestry back to that area. Indeed, the name, “Taylor”, which features in my own genealogy, is a Flemish name.

The most enigmatic of peoples in this land were the Picts. Although claims have been made as to genetic markers that identify them and academics with whom I have spoken have claimed them to be speakers of a “Celtic” language, the truth is that we are still unsure. They left precious little information, since their writing appears to be carvings in “Ogham Script” around the edges of their carved stones. Such carvings are, to say the least, enigmatic and often seem to consist of letters that make no sense. Their legacy of stones left scattered about the countryside of Aberdeenshire and the north-east especially, is simply wonderful. The Roman writer, Tacitus, who saw them, thought they were Germans, as they were tall, red-haired men, but who knows. Maybe, one day, we will find out.

The “Maiden Stone” near Inverurie (about 10 feet tall)

However, the Scots are, in short, what I call, “Heinz 57”. We are a thorough mixture of peoples and it is disingenuous to make us out to be one lot, when that is only part of the truth. I do wonder what people would make of it if the story came out that we were Germanic warriors, just as a certain political party did in another northern European country in the 1930s. Changing the race to “Celtic” is just as obnoxious to my mind. It’s something we can well do without. Indeed, when I was invited to fence in a “Celtic” event in Wales, I asked them, tongue-in-cheek, whether I would be allowed to take part, as I came from a non-Celtic area.

However, lest any of you reading this should doubt what I am saying, do what I have done over the decades. Go to a sporting event – let’s say an international rugby match – and wander in to a beer tent. Watch the people there. If you cannot tell an Irishman, or a Welshman from a Scotsman, I would be very surprised. They just look different. The Scots around Edinburgh particularly, are indistinguishable from the English, however. Interesting, eh? Also, for those of you who doubt what I am saying, it was, I believe, William McIlvanney who I saw on television some years ago, telling how, as a young man, he used to find that gangs would stop him and ask him the question that may still feature in the west of Scotland; “What foot do you kick with?”

To those of you outside Scotland, who have no idea what that means, let me explain that the Protestant Scots of the Glasgow area call Catholics, “left-footers”. The Irish immigrants of the nineteenth century were overwhelmingly Catholic and that was a way of distinguishing them from Protestant Scots. The man I saw, who may have been McIlvanney, said that he learned, very early on, to distinguish an Irish face from a Scots one and then to give the “correct” answer. That way, he avoided being beaten up.

If the propaganda which says that the Scots (especially in the west) are of Irish descent was true, there would not be any such distinction. Indeed, an eminent Scottish historian (an academic) has explained that the archaeology of the original Scottish settlement in Mull of Kintyre shows that the traffic with Ireland was FROM Scotland TO Ireland, not the other way round. That will present future historians with a few problems, as it confounds the origin myth of the Scottish people.  To my surprise, this is now accepted by some, to the extent that the official Scottish education website confirms it. If you want to explore this a little more, go here:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/britonsgaelsvikings/dalriata/index.asp

Anyway, rant over. We are just people. We are very clever people. We have done more than any other comparable people of our numbers (five million)  to create the world we all live in. We have created everything from logarithms to television (John Logie Baird invented the first full-functioning television, before Philo Farnsworth invented the electronic television we use nowadays), radar to penicillin, Long John Silver to Peter Pan and the first fart-powered flight across the Atlantic. No. I made that last one up, actually. Even so, we  are still doing things. Indeed, I know someone who is part of a team which has developed a chicken that can lay antibiotic eggs, which means that you don’t need a factory any more. You have an organic one that lays its supply daily.

So, I have consigned a whole year to one entry. I may also change the layout of this blog and remove some of the information which is aimed at the internet. I have found that the online world is no more likely to yield millions that the “real” world. Most of the so-called “gurus” made their money in old-fashioned ways. Indeed, a number of them, when you read enough, actually started off with newspaper advertising and mail-shotting people by post. They may well operate in the new world in the internet, but they use the experience gained in the world of the printed page and the letter through the letterbox.

My advice to those of you who want to make money is to spread your bets. I do make money online, but I do not do it in the way that many of the fast-talking lizards who send you their latest way of selling snake-oil for $47, or $67 claim to. I am as sick as you of slick videos featuring people in unlived in houses with rented planes and rented Ferraris in Florida, who are out-of-work actors trying to sell me systems that don’t work.  I always type in the name of the system and the word, “scam” in Google before I buy anything. Yes. I do buy things, if I think that they tell me something useful and there are people I think are genuine out there, but there are a lot of sharks as well.

If you look at my page, “Essential Reading”, you will find a very interesting book called, “Success Engineering”, by Phil Gosling. Now, Phil Gosling is a straighforward guy who started in pre-internet sales and has continued over into the present world. He tells you how things are in reality and how he has made a success of his life (and become a millionaire too). Why not grab a copy for yourself? I strongly recommend it.

Spring is in the air. I did a bit of repointing of one of our garden walls. When we moved into our house, many years ago now, we had a slightly unfortunate experience. Our next-door neighbour was quite an aggressive man. He had lived all his life in the same house and, during that time, he had seen our place gradually fall apart.

When I bought my house, it was down to the bare brick on the inside and bare boards on the floor. The neighbour clearly expected that the house would continue to deteriorate and he was fairly hostile. Matters were compounded when, within a couple of months of our moving in and having the builder make off with our carpets and cooker (!) before doing a vanishing act himself, our mutual back wall fell down one night.

You can imagine that our neighbour was not a happy man. Well, neither was I! However, we sank our differences and  both managed to persuade our respective insurers to pay their share. That wall still stands, though the neighbour has since moved away. However, I am assiduous about repointing the wall on the other side to ensure that it stands for as long as may be necessary.

To a great extent, both success in life and business success depend upon not only seeking out new opportunities, but also in ensuring that you keep the existing clientele happy. Well, I invested quite heavily in a database of potential clients this week, but it may be a risky investment as the list is one of postal addresses. That means spending money on envelopes and stamps. Let’s see what comes of it.

My other half developed a very sore tooth during the week, which may turn out to be an abscess. I have had a couple of these myself, on one occasion at the weekend, before they had emergency surgeries at the dentist outside normal working hours. I knew at the time that if I went in to see the dentist at the emergency clinic, he would probably pull my tooth out to relieve the pain, so I simply took a lot of Codis (very effective for that sort of pain) and managed to make it through to Monday morning. Mind you, I felt like banging my head against the wall with the pain!

In one case, I went to the dental hospital that still existed in Edinburgh at the time. I had two dentists struggling to extract the blessed tooth. I could feel my jaw bend (or so it seemed) under the pressure, before it (a big one on the lower left) came out with a fearful crunch (sorry about that graphic description). I still have a gap where it was. Too late to do much about it now. However, I still went to work.

At least we don’t do what a young lady who once worked for me told me about one of her Irish ancestresses. Apparently, this lady was given a wedding present that would have made me opt to remain single. She had all her teeth pulled out. Can you imagine that? I gather that it was to prevent her having any problems with her teeth as she got older. Well, she couldn’t, if she didn’t have any teeth, could she? Weird, or what?

A return to the fray after the Easter break. Things are moving, which is always good news.

I used some of my free time to do work on my family tree. It is interesting that, although we may be able to go back a certain distance in terms of written records, it is only a very short way back and, inevitably, we end up reaching a point before which we cannot go, or where a particular ancestor was less than frank in his or her record of their family. In my own case, it has simply reached the point before it was compulsory to keep records. One ancestor simply does not exist in one census in the nineteenth century, though he was in a later one, showing, by the age quoted that he was alive (as his birth certificate shows) before the earlier one.

Now, of course, we have the benefit of science to tell us where we came from. Well, in fact, it seems that we all come from Africa, if you go back far enough. However, many of us want to know whether we are Britons, or Anglo-Saxons, Picts or whatever. It is interesting that the people that most of us want to be is Vikings. Perhaps there is a romance (in Britain, we place the emphasis on the second syllable of that word, as RO-mance is American) about the wild men of the north. Without doubt, the Scots character is substantially added to by these nordic warriors, as the genetic footprint in the Northern Isles (the Western Isles and the north of mainland Scotland were all part of Norway for many centuries) shows substantial Norwegian origins. Indeed, I believe that our national hero, Robert the Bruce, escaped the clutches of the English by heading north of Inverness. There, he was outside Scotland and subject to the protection of the Norwegians.

Well, whatever our origins, there seems to be some difficulty in separating one tribal group from another (except the Norwegians), according to FamilyTreeDNA, an American company with whom I have corresponded. Whereas, in the UK, we can have our DNA analyzed by genetic specialists who will tell us that we are Picts or Anglo-Saxons, the Americans say that they know of no tests that can do such a thing. I am perplexed. Surely they can’t both be right?