Craigmaddie Reservoir PHOTOS at Mugdock, one of our best local places to walk. Often the reflected light here is very moving and beautiful.
Sunday, 30 November 2025
Scots actor Sam Heughan of Outlander
Scots actor Sam Heughan Is one of our world class stars. He came to fame in the major Scots TV series OUTLANDER – which will screen Season 8, in 2026, now on MGM+
The story centres around an English military nurse Claire, played by Cailtriona Baife who time travels back to a war torn Scotland of 1743. Two years before the Jacobite rising of 45. Where she falls in love with a highland warrior Jamie Fraser played by Sam Heughan
Its a mix of love story, time travel and historical drama. The second season travels to the Caribbean. Later series travel to France, and then to America. The series is based on the books by American and academic author Diana Gabaldon.
**I took these photos at the Edinburgh international book festival 2025, at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
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Language Colonisation of the mind
Language Colonization is cheaper and more effective
In Ireland the Irish language was criminalized back in 1366 in the Statues of Kilkenny.
(Edmund Spencer, author of Faerie Queen. Pamphlet 1596. A View of the Present state of Ireland.) He argued language was the best means of bringing about the erasure of Irish memory.
“It hath been the use of the conqueror to despise the language of the conquered. The marginal status of Irish in its own land, did not come about by some kind of natural evolution.”
The decline of Irish in its own land was brought about through conscious political acts and educational policies.”
“The colonisation of the Irish language would make the Irish forget who they were, weaken their resistance and therefore make it easier for the English to conquer and subdue them.” Writes Edmund Spencer 1596
“Language conquest unlike the military form, is cheaper and more effective: the conqueror has only to invest in conquering the minds of the elites, who will then spread submission to the rest of the population. The elite becomes part of the linguistic army of the conqueror.
What’s culture got to do with politics, The National Alan Riach
The Unionist purpose is to delegitimise any claims Scotland has a national culture and identity of its own which justify and underpin its right to self determination.
“The trauma initially wrought by the colonial education system is thus passed on, inherited. Abnormally becomes normalised. The colony of the mind prevents meaningful, nationally empowering innovations in education.”
..control by the coloniser of the colonised is inherent in the inequality of the education system. Education may become a process of mystifying the cognitive process and even knowledge. “
“Here we need to make a distinction between education and knowledge. Knowledge is a question continuously adding to what we already know in a dialectical play of mutual impact and illumination.”
“The normal cognitive process starts form the known and heads towards the unknown. The new known enriches the already known, and so on, in a continuous journey off making dialectically related connections.
Knowledge of the world begins where one is.”
‘Colonial education was never balanced or inclusive.”
*BOOK
Decolonising the Mind, Kenyan writer, Nguqi wa Thiong O
Insisted the erasing language is the most lasting weapon of oppression.
Where the Seas meet the Skies
There’s something ethereal about the way the light reflections of soft blues shimmer where the seas meet the skies. It’s a place of escapist dreams, new hopes and horizons. The ever changing light. Depending on location.
The light in Orkney is much softer than on mainland Scotland.
Watching the light is everything with capturing photography.
Watching the light is everything with capturing photography.
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