Visit Scotland

Scotland is a scenic place and we should all encourage people to come and visit. I do agree with our esteemed Member of Parliament, Mr Angus Brendan Macneil, on that. During a speech in the Commons on the occasion on the Queen's 90th birthday, he invited everybody to come and visit his constituency (Na h-Eileanan an Iar). He should have added a call for people to come and WORK here, set up businesses and create sustainable employment.

Thursday 28 April

I have not been making regular postings on this blog in recent weeks, and I am not foreseeing that happening again any time soon. Over the past week or so, I have been down with a nasty cold, which is only just beginning to shift. Today has been singularly cold, something I don't really mind. The day opened with snow and a very hard frost for late April, -4C. I have completed the upload of war grave pictures on findagrave.com, 813 memorials and 1,836 photographs. The pics aren't just of gravestones, they also include portrait photographs. This is supplementary to the information on the Scottish War Graves forum.

My blogging has shifted to Facebook, which does not lend itself to lengthier postings. In a way, a shame. But times change. In the past, this early morning photograph might have featured the MV Isle of Lewis. That is now the MV Loch Seaforth.

Ten years ago this month, I had some fun on the Arnish Lighthouse blog with the dating extravaganza at the Dell Fank. This (doctored) picture was to have been the conveyance for amourous couples to the Fank on 1st April 2006. Ahem.

Echo from the past

In a Dutch graveyard on-line, I discovered a reference to a name of infamy in WW2 history. The woman dubbed "the Black Widow" has her gravestone inscribed with the words "Waarheid maakt vrij". Dutch is closely related to the German language, and the German version of the above line is "Wahrheit macht frei", not far off that chilling line at Auschwitz: "Arbeit macht frei". What does it all mean? The line on the gravestone means "Truth liberates" and the Auschwitz line means "Labour liberates". However, the Black Widow, who died 9 years ago, was the wife of collaborator Rost van Tonningen, who headed up the Dutch Central Bank during WW2, assisting the occupying Nazi forces whichever way he could. After liberation, he was incarcerated in Scheveningen jail at The Hague, and jumped (his widow always maintained that he was pushed) over the parapet of a balcony, from which he fell to his death some 17 feet below. The truth that she refers to is slightly different from the commonly held view. Common parlance is not to speak ill of the dead. On the subject of the Black Widow, I shall therefore be silent henceforth.

The fish is dearly bought

104 years ago this week the Titanic sank
119 years ago next month, the whole male population of Pabbay, near Mingulay, was wiped out in a fishing tragedy

104 years ago this year Mingulay was abandoned
This week, three fishermen died off Mingulay
 
The funeral took place this afternoon of fisherman Christopher Morrison of Leverburgh, Harris. He died a week ago when his fishing boat, the Louisa (SY 30), sank for reasons as yet unknown. Two other crewmen also perished, Martin Johnston of Caithness and the skipper, Paul Alliston, who is still missing. In the small community of the Western Isles, this has struck a hammerblow. The residents of Uist and Barra are scouring the coastlines of their islands to look for the missing man. It could so easily have been one of them, their son, father, uncle or nephew. It could so easily have been they themselves.
 

In Dutch literature, there is a famous quote by Herman Heijermans, from his play "The Good Hope" [Op Hoop van Zegen]

The fish is dearly bought

* For those in peril on the seas *

Anne Frank

71 years ago yesterday, Anne Frank died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Rather than being frog-marched through her former home in Amsterdam.

Rather, even, than reading her words from all those years ago, knowing now what she could not.

I'll just sit quietly and look out into the April showers of 2016, remembering the innocent who had to meet their premature end at the sharp end of a diseased ideology seven decades ago.

RIP

MFV Louisa

The fishing vessel Louisa was lost off Mingulay in the early hours of today, 9 April 2016. Her emergency positioning beacon was activated when she went down, and Coastguard sped to the scene. Two crew have been found deceased, one was airlifted to hospital in Stornoway with non-life-threatening injuries and one remains missing. We remember the deceased and keep their family and friends in thoughts at this sad time.

Louisa was launched exactly 7 years ago for a family from Marvig, South Lochs under the registration of SY30. She fished for crab around the Western Isles. In February 2014, she was on the Goat Island slipway for repairs, which is when I took this image.

The Dutch referendum

The Netherlands went to the polls in a referendum yesterday, which was to advise the government how the people felt about the EU trade deal with Ukraine. About two out of every three people said 'nee', [no], they didn't like it. This coming from one of the founding members of the European Economic Community of the 1950s is profoundly disturbing. My personal assessment is that this no-vote was brought about on the back of the migrant crisis, currently gripping Europe, as well as the political uncertainty in Ukraine. Don't forget that that is a deeply divided country, where the western part would like to be more integrated with Europe, whereas the eastern part would like to be more integrated with Putin's Russia. The civil war in Ukraine, fomented by Putin, has subsided after our Vlad decided that it wasn't getting him anywhere and it was all backfiring on him - I refer to #MH17.

However, there is more to this issue than just the EU and Ukraine. It is about dissatisfaction with the European bureaucracy, which is held to be undemocratic and not properly held to account. The UK is going to the polls on its membership of the EU on June 23rd, and this result will be viewed with interest this side of the North Sea.

Further analysis is given on the link to the BBC news story.  

104 and 112 years ago

104 years ago today, RMS ‪Titanic‬ arrived in Southampton for her maiden voyage to New York. 112 years ago next June, the SS Norge departed Christiania (modern day Oslo) for New York. Both ships were to founder on voyage. Did you ever hear of the Norge? On 28th June 1904, she went down at Rockall, 250 miles west of Scotland, with the loss of 635 souls. A naval inquiry in Scandinavia found that there were insufficient life-saving apparatus on board for all passengers and crew. A recommendation was made for all ships to carry enough lifeboats etc to account for all on board. Had this recommendation to have been enshrined in law around the world, Titanic's sinking would not have been prevented, but the number of people saved would have been much, much higher.


Tombstone for victims from the Norge, who succumbed after landing at Stornoway


Memorial plaque to the Norge in the Stornoway ferry terminal