Secret Scotland

Discovered on the BBC’s Antique Roadshow in 2007, a series of diaries written by Thomas Livingston, a Glasgow clerk, are due to be published later this year.

Bought for £300 from a Northumberland auction house, the diaries describe the writer’s life, together with his wife Agnes, and their son, Wee Tommy. Providing a unique record of life at the beginning of the 20th century, the six diaries cover the years from 1913 to 1933, thereby including World War I, include pencil illustrations, and were valued at £2,000 on the show.

While Thomas Junior has been identified in a 1951 photograph taken at Glasgow University, where he won a bursary and went on to become a lecturer, no photographs have been located of Thomas Senior so far, and it is hoped that the publicity arising from the publication may lead to something being found.

Tommy Junior stored the diaries in a shoebox until he died, in 1951, a year after his mother, in 1950.

The first diary, covering the years 1913 to 1919 will be published in the autumn.

The Dundrennan Range within the Kirkcudbright Training Area in south west Scotland has featured in the news this week, with the commencement of five days of test firing of tank ammunition using Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons.

Scottish Environment Minister Mike Russell MSP said, “The Scottish Government has not been consulted on this issue and it is clearly disappointing that the MoD has not taken local opinion into account.

South of Scotland SNP MSP Alasdair Morgan said he was also concerned at the decision.

This test programme is said to be the first using DU shells on the range for some five years.

Local campaigners have planned to stage a protest in nearby Kirkcudbright against the test firing.

The MoD said comprehensive environmental monitoring had been in place around the military range for several years, and that the the results had shown that the DU shells did not pose a significant risk to the environment or people in the area.

Depleted uranium is an extremely dense, heavy, and hard material, used to make armour piercing shells and bullets. They carry no explosive payload, penetrating and destroying their target by virtue of the energy their high velocity produces when they impact on it.

While the prospect of hovercraft flitting across the Firth of Forth is probably not associated with any particular environmental concerns, there were definite fears for the impact on the Fife coastline, and the economy of the area a few weeks ago, when the Forth Ports Authority decided to reject an application by SPT Marine Services to allow ship to ship oil transfers in the firth. The Port Authority withdrew its earlier support for the application after consideration of the risks involved - the transfers would have involved the pumping of some 7.8 million tonnes of crude oil between ships moored in the firth.

Although this individual decision has seen the end of this particular application, there are no regulations or legal procedures in place to stop any future applications being made, and councillors in Fife have said they will continue to seek the implementation Government legislation and regulations to make the application process for such activities more stringent, and in accord with European directives.

We recently noted the occasion of a council vote taken in the Highlands, which had the potentially surprising subject of bilingual road sign deployment in the area as its subject - bilingual signs survived, by 36 votes for to 29 against.

The Gaelic Language Act has seen significant developments in how the language is promoted and protected, and this is also being supported by the impending launch of the recently approved Gaelic Digital Service on television, radio and online, to be operated by the Gaelic Media Service, tin partnership with the BBC, which recently launched a Gaelic-language news website.

This week sees the announcement of a study by public agencies into the effect Gaelic has on economic growth in Scotland, funded by Careers Scotland, Bòrd na Gàidhlig and Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Part of the study will consider how many organisations have staff employed where Gaelic is deemed an essential skill for the work they do. Some 250 organisations in Scotland will be sent questionnaires aimed at identifying key aspects of jobs and communications where the use of Gaelic is relevant or essential, such as translators, teachers, broadcasting and creative industries.

Highland Council has also indicated its plans to set up a Gaelic translation unit, which would provide the authority and other public bodies with a quality translation service, and will be seeking approval to start setting up the unit within the next few days.