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World politics - The U.S. Presidential election

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 On Tuesday 5th November 2024, the people of the USA voted for their next president. To my utter dismay and despondency they voted Donald Trump back into the White House. For some reason, that I cannot comprehend, this was always going to be a close race but all the unbiased opinion polls that I’d been watching indicated that Kamela Harris had a slight lead and stood a good chance of being the first female president of the US - but, instead of voting for what appeared to be a reasonably decent human being, they voted back into power a criminal who clearly lies and cheats at everything he does - and is a despicable, narcissistic, moron to boot. Let me be clear: I don’t live in the US so I couldn’t care if the US vote Republican or Democrat, as both are too right wing for me. As far as I’m concerned Bernie Sanders is also too right wing. I’ll be quite happy if the US suffers over the next four years because they will only be getting what they deserve. What upsets me, however, is that peo
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Inhabited, west coast Scottish islands - Skye

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Continuing south to north, then east to west, the next island on my bucket list journey is Skye. Skye, at 639 square miles (1656 square kilometres), is the largest island of the Inner Hebrides, the second largest in the whole of the Hebrides (and Scotland) and the fourth largest of the whole of the British Isles, after Great Britain, Ireland and Lewis & Harris. Lewis, at 683 square miles, without Harris, is still larger than Skye but, as you can see, not by much. Skye is known as the ‘winged isle’ and if you look at the map you will see why: with a central area, containing both the Black and the Red Cullins, it is made up of a collection of peninsulas radiating outwards in all directions. These include Trotternish, Sleat, Minginish and Vaternish (sometimes listed as Waternish). Over the years, especially during my time living near Kyle of Lochalsh, I’ve spoken to many tourists who told me they were going over to see Skye for a day, who then looked at me as if I was mad when I sugge
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Scottish politics - the 2024 general election and the fall of the SNP

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 On the night of July 4th I went to bed about 23:00, shortly after seeing the general election exit poll. This was the first time in about sixty plus years I hadn’t stayed up until about 06:00 watching the results roll in. Why go to bed early, this time? Well, it was pretty clear what the outcome was going to be and while very happy that the Tories were going to be well and truly kicked out of office, I also didn’t want to sit and watch the SNP lose seat after seat (which they did). Also, any joy that the Tories would be taking a beating was balanced by what appeared to be a very right wing Labour Party - which, from what it was saying, was going to be far away from the left wing Labour Party I’d have welcomed. But that indicates one of the reasons why I support Scottish independence; in UK terms, the Labour Party can only get into power by going to the right (just like Blair did) - and this time that was against a Tory government increasingly disliked by even the majority in England.
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World affairs - The Israeli Hamas war (genocide) continued.

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It is now over seven months since the despicable attack on Israel by Hamas and Israel still continues to extract revenge in what can only now be seen as an attempt at genocide. Israel, of course, denies this claiming that they are just defending themselves by seeking to totally get rid of only Hamas (not all the Palestinian people) - but the shooting, bombing and starving of ALL Palestinians strongly suggests otherwise. Note that I describe the Hamas attack on Israel as ‘despicable’: this is the case but, as I’ve pointed out before, if you back a wild animal (or a human being) into a corner then it is liable to strike out viciously and violently. Even Israel’s allies have moved, if not sufficiently, to condemn Israel’s actions - only to be rebuffed by the same old, tired lies of the right wing Israeli government. I repeat what I said in my first post on this issue: it is impossible to remove Hamas while Israel continues to subjugate and oppress the Palestinian people and while some of
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Scottish politics - the (deserved) demise of the SNP (another rant)

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Foreword and forewarning: This post has grown into being another rambling rant about the SNP and Scottish independence - when it was originally intended as a fairly brief analysis looking at why the SNP’s standing in the opinion polls has collapsed in the way it has. Unfortunately, new factors came to light as I wrote - and things got a bit out of control as what I was writing grew to encompass this additional information. So, advance apologies.   Anyone with an interest in Scottish politics will be well aware that the SNP is currently in a free fall situation as regards it’s standing in opinion polls. What follows is an attempt to understand why that has happened - with maybe a pointer as to what comes next and how to fix the problem (if it can be fixed). Firstly, a background as to what I think went wrong. During August 2021 Scotland’s SNP government made a power sharing deal with the Scottish Greens. In my view a serious mistake which inexorably led to support for the SNP collapsing
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Inhabited, west coast Scottish islands - Canna and Sanday

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The island of Canna is the western most of Scotland’s Small Isles. It is also the second smallest, after Muck - if, that is, you consider Canna along with Sanday as a single island (which is usually the case). If you consider them as two islands then Sanday is the smallest (even smaller than Muck) and Canna then becomes the third smallest (or third largest). Take your pick. In this post I’m going to do a bit of both: together and separate as it is sometimes impossible to tell (from the articles I read) to know, one way or the other, if the information is solely about Canna or Sanday or both. This meant that I, too, had to write about both islands in the same post, just to reduce my chances, as much as possible, of providing inaccurate information. Canna is sausage shaped (long and narrow), lying roughly horizontally east to west, with a bit of a waist in the middle. It would therefore be more accurate to describe it as two fat sausages joined end to end with a wee bit of a bealach join
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Inhabited, west coast Scottish islands - Rùm

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The isle of Rùm is the largest of the Small Isles at roughly 10.4 hectares. It is also the most northerly. I’ve read it described as diamond shaped (as in playing cards) but I see it more as a square which has been twisted through 45° such that one corner points to the south while the other three point east, north and west, respectively. What is the difference? In a diamond, the distance between the north and south corners is usually longer than the distance between the east and west corners. No difference apart from that. Rùm is also the most mountainous of the Small Isles (or, perhaps, hilliest when taking real mountains into consideration). There’s very little level land to be found on Rùm. The area towards the southern corner holds the highest of Rùm’s hills/mountains, with five between 2000 and 3000 feet (but without any reaching the magic 3000’ of a Munro). The highest peak, at 812 m (2664 ft) is Askival. Every other corner of the island, however, is hilly with many summits betwe
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