Scotland

Scotland is a wonderful country, a country of diverse contrasts, and this is most evident in the countryside. Many folk in Scotland live in rural areas where getting to the local supermarket is a full day trip rather than a simple jaunt around the corner or popping along to the outskirts of the city in which you live. When it comes to Christmas shopping can be something of a problem and as I live on a very remote island I thought it worthy of mentioning my experience of shopping in Scotland this time last year... Read More

I write for a number of sites and I was recently writing for Virtual Scotland about Tony Blair when I just totally lost it. The article started of reasonably well with a basic rundown of his life but by the time I got to his days as British PM I found that all the good I had to say was negated by the war in Iraq and the likes. I had decided that I was going to write her about the wonderful Scottish city of Aberdeen and why it was such a cool place to take a weekend city break but I can not help but think about all the choas that seems to be going on there at the moment so I will add a quick bit about that first... Read More

Game is a well known high street store selling computer and console games but for those people who live any distance from one of their stores making a purchase from them could spell disaster! Seriously, in this present economic climate is it any wonder that high street stores are failing at an alarming rate when they continually fail to satisfy the very customers that keep their companies alive? Well, Game has a serious problem that is incredibly short sighted of them, they simply refuse to behave as a company and, in practice, behave more like a franchise (and a very cold one at that – worse than the dreaded burger franchise)... Read More

April this year saw the astonishing revelation from the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM) that Scotland’s Higher Music exam is failing pupils. You may have read my other blogs, about this very serious issue, on this site already but I have just discovered that you can NOT sing Scottish songs in the vocal element of the said exam – how disgraceful is that?.. Read More

Very early on in my interest in the Isles of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland I learnt that a great many famous and rich people can trace their roots back to these small islands in the Atlantic ocean. The first name that I heard that was associated with the islands was Donald Trump closely followed by Lord Leverhulme (who helped set up Lever Brothers with his father and brother). The later interested me most as I had a little knowledge of his family and that of his wife but, most recently, it is hard to avoid missing the sight of Mr Trump as his plans for a luxury golf complex in Aberdeen are forced forwards (I may let loose my opinion on this matter at a later date)... Read More

2008 has been a wonderful year for some accommodation providers in the Western Isles and for others it has been the worst. For some time now Enjoy Hebrides has been researching this in great detail and our initial findings were alarming. We discovered that those businesses which spent time and money promoting their businesses online and offline were reaping great benefits whereas those who were still relying upon the Tourist Board, Visit Hebrides and Visit Scotland, were suffering. With this in mind we decided to research the search engines in more detail as the Internet is, by general consensus, becoming increasingly important to all business especially tourism... Read More

Yet again I find myself writing about the Isle of Harris in the negative. This is something of an update on my post “Harris School Provides Teacher In A Box“ in that the complaint made against the Council with regards to the lack of music lessons in the Harris School – Sir E Scott, Tarbert, Isle of Harris, has been concluded in favor of the lazy teacher who refused to teach!.. Read More

Grrrrrr I hate lazy people. There is simply no excuse for laziness especially if you are getting paid really well for it. For a long, long time I have complained very strongly about the lack of teaching from certain teachers at Sir E Scott School in Tarbert on the Isle of Harris. There is one teacher that refuses to teach outright! How can this be allowed to continue?.. Read More