“They left their windswept crofts behind looking for adventure and the promised land”
Did he really say that about the folk burned and driven off their land in the Highland Clearances? I haven’t watched it but others are tweeting about this angrily.
It’s been some time since Oliver, BA Archaeology 3rd Class with Merit in Grubbing, has caused me to froth against him but this gives me the opportunity to remind everyone of his suggestion that Indyref2 was a cancerous presence in Scottish politics and his petty attacks on the personal appearance of the great Prof Tom Devine when the latter suggested that he, BA Archaeology, 3rd Class with Merit in Grubbing, was unfit to present a BBC History series.
On Indyref2:
On Devine:
At the time [2016], Devine questioned Oliver’s competence to present a new national history series, given his lack of a history PhD or, indeed, any history qualification. Calling for a real heavyweight academic historian to present the series, Devine allegedly described Oliver as ‘a pygmy on giants’ territory’, as being ‘hapless’ and as having ‘a sad lack of authority.’ Oliver struck back at Devine’s lack of dress sense and compared him to an old man in the Muppets series. Oliver was awarded the Grey & Browne prize for dress-style in 2009.
Furthermore, Oliver’s appointment as President of the National Trust and the refusal of 38 Degrees to host a petition against him triggered an even more frothy and perhaps divisive rant from me in 2017. Here it is:
It seems we cannot campaign online to have Neil Oliver removed from his new post as president of the National Trust. The campaigning website 38 Degrees, whose petitions I have often signed, said:
‘We removed the petition from the 38 Degrees website as it calls for an individual to lose their job. Neil Oliver was appointed by members of the National Trust, not members of the public. Therefore, the petition breaks our Terms and Conditions.’
The National correctly described this as a ‘fudge’ because the petition to remove the Queen is still up there and it has allowed several other petitions calling for public figures to be removed from positions, including BBC’s Scots political editor Laura Kuenssberg and the former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
You’ll remember Oliver once described IndyRef2 as a ‘cancerous presence’ and is a vociferous opponent of Scottish independence. Kinder voices have described him as ‘divisive’ but he has compared Scotland’s pre-eminent historian, Professor Tom Devine, to a character in the muppets merely because he justifiably questioned Oliver’s academic credentials to present a history series.
I don’t really care I if he is president of the National Trust. I’ve got no time for the organisation in the first place. It largely preserves symbols of Britain’s disgustingly brutal and unequal past and in so doing helps to glamorise and thus justify greed, inequality, opulence and bad taste in the present.
I don’t visit stately homes. I don’t visit castles. I’d knock them down or at least let them crumble naturally and build children’s play-parks or memorial gardens where they stood. In maintaining them and facilitating working people to visit them we’re helping to celebrate historical suffering, brutal poverty and state violence. The stately homes were built often with money from the slave trade and by workers who lived in hovels, whose children died more often in infancy than they lived on to adulthood and who survived on near-starvation diets at times of the year. Often villages of the poor were cleared to avoid spoiling the views from these nauseating symbols of greed. As for the castles, they were, like Fort Apache, placed to keep down the natives; in this case, our Scots, Irish and Welsh ancestors. These were places of lifelong confinement without trial and of horrific torture. The Norman castles in Wales are brutal ugly monsters on the landscape. Fort Augustus and Fort George and the others are reminders of our subjugation and of ethnic cleansing. Nobody thinks its a good idea to preserve and celebrate the buildings associated with Nazism so why preserve these?
If you’ve got a National Trust subscription, cancel it and tell them why.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
When the Chairman of the Scottish National Trust used his official position to attack independence, he claimed independence supporters were using the Commemoration of Bannockburn to further the cause for Ind, I cancelled my subscription and let them know why.
Yip, the Chairman of the SNT, complaint about Bannockburn being a beacon for Ind.
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You really have to wonder how he got the jobs , is it all the networking he had to do to get noticed, is it all the fore lock tugging he had to do is it that he is very willing to circumvent the history of his own country to another country’s advantage for recognition, is it a mixture of all , it’s not a third in archeology that’s for sure ! .
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Good to see BBC placemen getting a weel deserved skelping from Tom Devine and your good self .All power to you arms , I’d propose yon Merton man join the queue for a touch of the Lochgelly Leather .
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Good points John, though there is a difference between preserving historic monuments lest we forget and preserving them as something great. I also hate stately homes, but I fair love a big pile of old stones.
News just in:
https://mobile.twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1231264628417662981
Joanna Cherry plans to stand for Holyrood elections. A few more step changes like this and I might not be so pissed off if I don’t get my 2020 referendum (maybe).
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Wonder if Angus will go for a different seat now , perhaps Douglas Chapman or Liam Kerr , that’s more his neck if the woods , we could do with both at Holyrood.
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Could be, John, it’s an interesting development anyway, we’ll have to see how things pan out – I do think MPs and MSPs are better off closer to their home territories anyway. I was a bit shocked to find out that LibDem leader woman had a seat in Milngavie while living down south,,, how do you represent people you know nothing about?
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Well. It turns out Angus is resident in Edinburgh central – so it was Moray he wasn’t local to! That’ll learn us not to speculate too soon 🙂 He could have moved mind you. That being the case, I’m sure their selection process will run its course.
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Two seats Cherry – not a good look.
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Hopefully she will give her Westminster seat up .
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Aye but fine if the Tories do it eh Legerwood?
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Fair enough but two criteria? If it was a place of torture? If was based upon the exploitation of others? Knock the fucker down.
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I believe you feel strongly about this John! I wrote hastily before going out there, to really say about Joanna Cherry, but then also wanted to comment on the article – that a ‘merit in grubbing’ made me laugh there, but you make some very good, and serious, points about how history is portrayed in this country – and we should not be celebrating the big houses of the rich l’landowners’ – they didn’t come by that land from benevolent means. But some places of torture, parts of them, are preserved as monuments (e.g. Auschwitz) to remind us of the evil that has been in the past, to show past suffering has meaning maybe? (Meaning, never let this happen again).
I meant that I would happily see any stately home as a pile of stones. I love visiting Roman remains, piles of stones and ditches – not to bask in their lordly empire-ness, but to remind myself of the devastation and destruction they spread throughout Europe and through the Scotland, also to learn about where the concept of empire came from and what it is capable of – anyone that admires the Romans, or empire, has very suspect morals – and my interest is certainly not in any way linked to feelings of admiration! ‘Know thine enemy’ is closer.
See, I just can’t do brief comments!
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“”Contrary
February 22, 2020 at 10:49 pm
Aye but fine if the Tories do it eh Legerwood?””
How on earth do you reach that conclusion?
Two seats is not a good idea who ever does it. The people in those constituencies deserve, and indeed should expect, the undivided attention of the person they elect to represent their concerns and to the issues they wish the person representing them to raise/pursue on their behalf.
Certainly Mr Salmond came in for some criticism when he occupied seats at Westminster and Holyrood as did the Labour MSPs/MPs such as Cathy Jamieson when they occupied two seats.
Of course it may be that Ms Cherry intends to keep one of them warm for Mr Salmond’s return
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I’d love to see Alex back if, of course, innocent. Feet of clay no doubt like all of us but a a warrior we could do with.
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On the subject of erroneous speculation in order to inject snidey little remarks, sometimes it is better to wait for actual information before subjecting everyone to negative ill-informed wild assumptions: Joanna Cherry has released a statement that she’ll be standing down as MP if she gets nominated/elected:
https://mobile.twitter.com/joannaccherry/status/1231520031546257408
Of course, that would release up an MPs position in her constituency, if it happened. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of political manoeuvring in the weeks/months to come. I know it’s just the game of politics being played out, but I think it’s good to see some of it in the SNP, it gives a greater sense of dynamism, less of the stuck-in-a-rut feeling. It’ll make the nomination processes more interesting anyway.
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Vile as he is I don’t see him as a cancer. Cancer is something to be understood, treated and cured. I see him more in terms of smallpox….
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Maybe not smallpox either, ‘The Pox’ would be nearer the mark methinks, lol.
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Actually, they do preserve some of the concentration camps built by the Nazis in order to educate younger generations about the horrors inflicted upon our fellow man by those fascist scum. Perhaps if we had preserved the concentration camps built by the British in South Africa and Kenya, we would be better educated now.
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‘Kneel’ Oliver , (on his knees for English gold), won an award for dressing like a tramp with zero fashion sense? HOLY POOP!
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