Blogs

An exhibition is underway at the National Museum of Scotland on Scotland’s Early Silver. Supported by The Glenmorangie Company the exhibition shows how for Scotland, unlike other parts of Europe, it was silver, not gold, that became the most important precious metal over the course of the first millennium AD. Scotland's Early Silver traces the first thousand years of the Scottish love affair with silver.

Alun Hugh Cairns is the Member of the UK Parliament (MP) for the Vale of Glamorgan (Welsh: Bro Morgannwg) in South Wales and is also Secretary of State for Wales. Given his level of responsibility he is expected to be accountable and as the saying goes is someone you need to 'keep on their toes'. Its always good to know that a politician takes this seriously, but maybe not quite as seriously as Alun Cairns cleary felt pressurised into doing a couple of days ago.

The French Government’s war on Breton, the Celtic Tongue of Brittany, has taken a bizarre turn in a jaw dropping example of the pettiness of the state bureaucracy in France.  A couple in Brittany wanted to call their newborn baby boy Fañch, a traditional name in Brittany.  However, the local registrar rejected this Celtic name and refused to record the birth unless the parents chose an “approved” French name. Fañch is a name borne notably by two Breton writers, Fañch Peru and Fañch Broudig, and is the Breton version of the name François.

The following was published in September 2013 by the Multilingual Early Language Transmission (MELT) project, a partnership between four language communities: Breton in Brittany, the Frisian language in Friesland, the Swedish language community in Finland, and the Welsh language in Wales. The project was funded by the European Commission, and was running between November 2009 and October 2011. The report was published on the web site of the Network To Promote Linguistic Diversity (NPLD), a European wide organisation dedicated to the importance of linguistic diversity.

Two prominent Catalan independence leaders, Jordi Sanchez of the Catalan National Assembly, and Jordi Cuixart of Omnium Cultural, were imprisoned on Monday night (16 October). They have been sent to prison by Spain's National Court while they are investigated for alleged crimes of sedition. Omnium immediately condemned the ruling as "intolerable in a democratic society". On Twitter they said: "The mobilisation continues, they won't be able to imprison an entire people!". The imprisonment of two of the best-known Catalan independence leaders has provoked outrage in Catalonia.

This item from Yn Commeeys Celtiagh - Celtic News Mannin draws attention to the recent anniversary of the Windscale Fire at the nuclear plant (now renamed Sellafield) on the English Cumbrian coast which borders the Irish Sea. The Windscale fire of 10 October 1957 was the worst nuclear accident in British history, ranked in severity at level 5 out of a possible 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. At the time, the British government released only sketchy details of the accident and minimized its seriousness.

There has has been much reported in recent months about community groups seeking to buy the lands in which they live and those trying to reclaim lands from which their ancestors were evicted during the notorious highland clearances.  Scotland has one of the highest concentrations of land ownership in Europe.

The Royal National Mòd (Scottish Gaelic: Am Mòd Nàiseanta Rìoghail),  referred to as the Mòd, is underway in Lochaber in the west of the Scottish Highlands. The event takes place from 13th to 21st October and began with a torchlit procession through the streets of Fort William (Scottish Gaelic: An Gearasdan). The Royal National Mòd is the most important of a number of  Mòds that are held annually in Scotland and is a festival that celebrates Scottish Gaelic literature, song, arts and culture.

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The Scottish Wildlife Trust, RSPB Scotland, Buglife Scotland, Plantlife Scotland, Butterfly Conservation Scotland and the Marine Conservation Society have combined to urge the public to oppose a proposed gold course at Coul Links in Sutherland, Scotland. They point out that the 18-hole golf course would be on land they describe "an irreplaceable piece of Scotland's natural heritage" and  that the golf course would destroy one of Scotland's last remaining coastal dune systems.