Lord Dunderheid

On Wednesday the 15th of February 2023, just after eleven in the morning, Nicola Sturgeon sent shock wave through Scottish and UK politics when she announced she was stepping down, after over eight years, as SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland. I have decided that it would be a good idea to take a look at her successes and her failures - along with a look at how I think the SNP and the independence movement is going to progress support for independence from this point onwards. The first thing to say is that my phone has presented me with many articles addressing this. I have deliberately not read any to avoid taking on board the thoughts of others (although I’ve not been able to avoid several TV programmes which also considered this topic). On the negative side, she was unable to advance support for independence, with most polling indicating support the same as immediately after the 2014 referendum (and if Ashcroft’s latest poll was accurate then we’ve actually lost ground since ...

 This post covers two islands, Erraid and Iona, rather than just the usual one. This is because both are quite small and both are inhabited satellites of Mull. The next post will also cover two of Mull’s four inhabited, satellite islands; Ulva and Geometra, but for this post I will start with Erraid as it is the southern most of all four islands. Located at the south western tip of the Ross of Mull, Erraid is a small, tidal island that is almost square in shape, about a mile in length on all four coasts. Erraid’s main claim to fame is, in fact, as a tidal island in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped where this aspect of it’s geography is of importance to a section of the story (David Balfour, the hero of the story, thinks he is stuck on the island before he discovers he can walk over to Mull when the tide is out). It is separated from Mull by a narrow channel of water wrapped around the north and east coasts of the island - when the tide is in. When the tide is out then that chann...