Scottish Wildcat breeding
The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland plans to breed and release Scottish Wildcats:
The first of 16 Scottish wildcats has been introduced to a new "breed-and-release" wildcat centre created in the Highlands.
The plan is to release kittens born at the captive breeding centre at the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, at selected locations.
RZSS is running the Saving Wildcats project in partnership with several other groups, including the Cairngorms National Park Authority and Junta de Andalucía, an organisation involved in wildlife reintroduction programmes in Andalusia in Spain.
I'd like to see someone breed domestic cats that look like Scottish Wildcats, because they are very cute.
Estonian military planning
Estonia plans guerrilla war against Russia:
“We just have to stay alive,” Ms. Barnabas said of the main idea behind the Jarva District Patrol Competition, a 24-hour test of the skills useful for partisans, or insurgents, to fight an occupying army, and an improbably popular form of what is called “military sport” in Estonia.
The competitions, held nearly every weekend, are called war games, but are not intended as fun. The Estonian Defense League, which organizes the events, requires its 25,400 volunteers to turn out occasionally for weekend training sessions that have taken on a serious hue since Russia’s incursions in Ukraine two years ago raised fears of a similar thrust by Moscow into the Baltic States.
Since the Ukraine war, Estonia has stepped up training for members of the Estonian Defense League, teaching them how to become insurgents, right down to the making of improvised explosive devices [...] Another response to tensions with Russia is the expansion of a program encouraging Estonians to keep firearms in their homes.
Maybe after independence the Scottish army could send special forces to train with the Estonians.
ScotRail to be nationalised
ScotRail will be nationalised when Abellio's franchise runs out in March next year:
Scotland's train services are to be run by a public sector body, the Scottish government has announced. Dutch firm Abellio will stop running the ScotRail franchise at the end of March next year. After this an "arms-length" Scottish government company will take over the running of services.
Abellio has been running the franchise since 2015 but had its contract ended early amid criticism over cancellations and performance levels.
Privatising Britain's railways has not worked out, so this is probably for the best.
It would be nice if after nationalisation some of the people on ScotRail's board were season ticket holders and frequent rail travellers.
Wee Ginger Dug contra Galloway
Paul Kavanagh writes:
if you asked the average Scots speaker to describe George Galloway with a four letter word that starts with a C and ends with a T, “Celt” is probably not the one that would first come to mind.
The background of this is that Humza Yousaf apparently wrote a tweet:
Happy St Patrick’s Day to our celtic cousins in Ireland! Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!
To which George Galloway apparently replied:
Well #Humza you’re not more Scottish than me. You’re not a Celt like me. You’re not working-class like me. You didn’t go to a state school like me. You’re not more socialist than me. So stop pretending. You’re a poseur. @Alliance4Unity.
(I say "apparently" because Kavanagh doesn't give links for either of these tweets, and I'm too lazy to look them up myself. When you're quoting what someone has said on the internet, you should always give the source where possible, otherwise how can anyone know whether you're quoting out of context, or indeed just making things up? To clarify, I am not accusing Kavanagh of making anything up. I am accusing him of not linking to the original discussion.)
For what it's worth, I do not speak any Celtic languages nor do I describe myself as a Celt.
Kavanagh ends by saying:
We are all Jock Tamson’s bairns, but the truth is that Humza Yousaf is far more Scottish than George Galloway could ever hope to be. That’s because Humza’s loyalties are to Scotland. George Galloway’s loyalties are only to himself.
Like Kavanagh I want Scotland to be an independent country.
Unlike Kavanagh I do not believe that people who're on my side are inherently more virtuous than my political opponents. That's just yay-ingroup-boo-outgroup tribalist thinking, and clearly a cognitive bias. While I cannot read people's thoughts, I will say that both Yousaf and Galloway are human, and humans are very good at convincing themselves they are doing things for noble motives when in fact they have an eye to self-advancement.
Boris gets a briefing room
Boris Johnson has a shiny new media briefing room. A snip at only 2.6 million quid!
ITV News can reveal a £2.6m renovation of No.9 Downing Street that will be used to televise White House-style media briefings. The project has proved controversial, already suffering a number of setbacks and delays at significant cost.
Am I the only one who thinks the decor is tacky and gaudy?
ITV News understands there are questions being raised over the involvement of a Russian owned company, which was hired to carry out crucial work installing equipment - including microphones, control desks, cameras and computers.
I'm sure the Russians were happy to install lots of microphones at number 10, and would be pleased to install more, at no extra cost!
Insulting Erdogan is a crime in Turkey
Turkey arrests women for insulting Erdogan:
In an operation ordered by the Istanbul prosecutor’s office against 18 women’s rights activists, the Istanbul police detained 13 of them, including a 17-year-old child, late on the night of March 10. The five others presented themselves to the prosecutor the next day.
The women are under investigation for “insulting” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a criminal offense in Turkish law punishable with a one to four-year prison sentence
I wonder whether Erdogan has insulted Turkey by portraying the Turkish government as thin-skinned power-crazy thugs?
Tories characterise indyref2 as "divisive"
(from Reddit)
In reality the divisive referendum was the Brexit ref held by the Tories in 2016, which divided Scotland -- against the will of the Scottish people -- from the EU.
Indyref2, if it happens, will seek to re-unite us with Europe. So it won't be divisive, it'll be the exact opposite!
Journalists conspire to lie
Glenn Greenwald reports that journalists conspired to tell the lie that the CIA believes that the Hunter Biden revelations were a Russian disinformation operation.
Eager to obtain vindication for the pre-election falsehood they spread about the Hunter Biden story, journalists falsely claim that the CIA blamed Russia for it.
Journalists with the largest and most influential media outlets disseminated an outright and quite significant lie on Tuesday to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, on Twitter.
CNN’s Marshall Cohen actually said this:
Think about that: to a CNN reporter, evidence-free assertions from the U.S. security state are tantamount to “confirmation.” That they really do think this way is nothing short of chilling. But that is the standard liberal media posture of harboring reverence for the U.S. intelligence community and treating its every utterance as Truth without the need for any corroborating evidence.
Maybe these people need a new job title, since "Journalist" isn't quite accurate. How about "Professional Liar" or "Propagandist"?
In an independent Scotland I'd like to see two types of publications, legally defined as a "Newspaper" and a "Liespaper", and every publication would have to say which it was.
Newspapers would have strict standards of truth, and would receive preferential tax treatment. Liespapers would be allowed to tell as many lies as they liked but they would have to say prominently on every page that they are a Liespaper, and would also pay more tax. Claiming that something is a Newspaper when it is in fact a Liespaper would consequently amount to tax fraud.
Scot Goes Pop would support Salmond
James Kelly writes that he would give his list vote to a party led by Alex Salmond, if such a party existed:
I would get behind an Alex Salmond-led list party, if one were to be formed. [...] Alex Salmond is the one person who might actually be capable of successfully gaming the system. Why? [...] Alex Salmond would be able to produce that effect due to the trust and loyalty gained from his twenty years at the helm of the SNP - he'd be able to convince a substantial minority of SNP voters that 'SNP constituency, Salmond party list' is a natural extension of their usual partisan choice.
HMS Queen Elizabeth
(photo by @SheilaLWier)
Aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth sails up the Clyde prior to deployment off Japan for joint exercises:
The Royal Navy’s flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) is set to drill with Japanese maritime forces in the Pacific during its maiden deployment this spring, the U.K. Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday.
“Japan and the UK have forged a close defense and security partnership that is being elevated to new heights this year when the UK Carrier Strike Group visits the Indo-Pacific,” UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said.
Start school at a later age
Grumpy Sccottish Man thinks children shouldn't start formal education until they are 6 or 7:
The Scottish Lib Dems suggest that for youngsters to have a “truly play-based” education, the change could be part of improving Scotland’s education, tackling the attainment gap and giving youngsters the best start in life. Beatrice Wishart MSP insisted education will “still be mandatory” under their proposals, but would “focus on child development, social skills, outdoor learning, and physical and mental health”. She said: “Countries excelling in education and equity show that this approach better prepares children to shine in literacy and numeracy.
Most children in EU countries start school at 6 years old with some as late as 7 years old
The Lib Dems will lose this debate, but they shouldn’t, this at the very least should be considered.
I agree. And trialled.
WallStreetBets adopts gorillas
Subreddit r/wallstreetbets has adopted 6500 mountain gorillas:
Around 3,500 gorillas have been adopted by Reddit's WallStreetBets community in six days.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, a charity for the protection of endangered mountain gorillas, has also received more than $350,000 (£252,000) in donations. Its president Dr Tara Stoinski has thanked the Reddit community for the adoptions.
Dr Stoinski's video in which she thanked WSB for their "incredible support", was posted on the subreddit and upvoted more than 159,000 times.
She told BBC News: "They've truly made a difference for our world and shown what can be accomplished when people come together. When we save gorillas and we save forests, we save our world."
If you have any links/stories you’d like to see in next week’s links roundup, put them in the comments below.