Douglas MacQueen's blog

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB Scotland) is a charitable organisation that works to promote conservation and protection of birds and the wider environment. They have been objecting to the Scottish Government decision in 2014 to give consent for four major wind farms in the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Tay.

This weekend saw 219 bands with 8,000 pipers from 15 nations take park in the World Pipe Band Championships in the Scottish city of Glasgow (Scottish Gaelic: Glaschu). The contest is now in its 70th year and some 35,000 people attended the two-day event. The Scottish Inveraray and District Pipe Band won the Grade 1 contest, beating Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band from the north of Ireland into second place and St Laurence O’Toole Pipe Band from Dublin who came third. Organisers gave thanks to every one who played, competed and came to support and watch the Championship.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is to issue its first polymer £10 note to the public on 4 October this year. It is to feature images of Scottish mathematician and astronomer Mary Somerville, her hometown of Burntisland in Fife, and two otters. Mary Fairfax Somerville (26 December 1780 – 29 November 1872) was a Scottish mathematician, geographer and astronomer, who was born in 1780 in Jedburgh but her childhood home was at Burntisland in Fife. When she died in 1872, Mary Somerville was hailed by The Morning Post as "The Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science".

Standing on a rocky knoll on Sgorr Chalum, Dùn Deardail is an Iron Age hillfort above the River Nevis in Glen Nevis. Located at a height of 1,127 ft (347m) Dùn Deardail is overlooked by the mountain of Ben Nevis (Scottish Gaelic: Beinn Nibheis) and is thought to have been constructed by the Celts in the first millennium BC (1000 BC to 1BC). The fort is associated with Deirdrê of the Sorrows, the tragic heroine in Irish pre-Christian legend, whose story is told in the ancient Irish mythology of the Ulster Cycle.

As reported in a recent article in the Scottish newspaper The Press and Journal on the call for Scottish Gaelic to be granted Unesco status: 

News item from YN COMMMEEYS CELTIAGH - CELTIC NEWS MANNIN about the imprisonment of two protesters at the Faslane nuclear base in Scotland.

'Nuclear protesters imprisonment condemned'

A resolution adopted at the AGM of the Celtic League this weekend (held on the Isle of Man) condemned the imprisonment of two protesters is Scotland on charges related to disrupting the movement and storage of nuclear warheads at the Faslane Nuclear base. The protesters have since been released.

Orkney (Scottish Gaelic: Arcaibh), is an archipelago situated off the north coast of Scotland. Orkney comprises of approximately 70 islands, 20 of which are inhabited. The islands have been inhabited for over 8500 years. Originally occupied by Mesolithic and Neolithic people and then by their descendants the Picts. Orkney was settled by the Norse and came under the control of Norway in 875 before being annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland in 1472. 

Scotland's Celtic Psalter dates from the 11th Century and contains hand-written psalms in bold, clear Irish miniscule script giving a text of the Psalms in Latin. The 1,000 years old psalter, which is the oldest Scottish book still in Scotland, has Gaelic and Pictish Celtic illustrations. With its extraordinary illuminations in vivid green, red, purple and gold, it has been described as Scotland's version of the famous Book of Kells in Dublin. The Book of Kells/Leabhar Cheanannais is kept in the library of Dublin's Trinity College and was made by Celtic Monks around 800AD.

The remains of the wooden hut where Saint Columba was thought to have meditated and prayed on Iona have been dated to his lifetime. Saint Columba (Gaelic: Colm Cille) is credited with spreading Christianity in Scotland. He was the great-great-grandson of Niall Noígíallach, Irish high king who reigned in the late 4th and early 5 centuries, and ancestor of the Uí Néill family who were dominant in Ireland from the 6th to the 10th century.

Catalonia (Catalan: Catalunya) is located on the northeastern extremity of the Iberian Peninsula. It has its own language, laws and customs. Catalan nationalist parties won an absolute majority in the 135-seat regional assembly in 2015 and voted to start the process towards independence. An independence referendum has been called for October 2017 and the question to be voted on will be: "Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state in the form of a republic?