This is an article written by Bob Cranwell, author of the website Amateur Emigrant. He worked in adventure and tailormade travel as a Tour Leader and driver, an Operations Manager, Country Manager, Travel Agent and Tour Operator. He has done a vast array of different jobs from emptying cesspits using a bucket nailed to an old oar, to creating documents which formed part of a submission to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Read more…
This is not a history of Scotland, this is a history of much of the world where people have been displaced from ancestral lands and commons by bullies. People have been dispossessed from lands at various places and at various times by others who have stolen it by force or by cunning, but it all too often amounts to the same thing – sorrows and harms being unfairly visited upon those at a disadvantage. Read more…
This is a conversational interview recorded with Dr Gillian Dooley about the editorial work which she is involved with in Australia and other parts of the world. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English after having retired from Flinders University Library where she had been Special Collections Librarian from 1999 until 2015 and Publishing Support Librarian 2016 from 2017. Read more…
“Set justice aside then, and what are kingdoms but fair theivish purchases? ….if the thievish ragamuffins grow to be able to keep forts, build habitations, possess cities and conquer adjoining nations, then their government is no longer called thievish, but graced with the eminent name of a kingdom, given and gotten, not because they left their thievish practices, but because they may now use them without danger of the law. Read more…
The people we call the Lapps are known by a variety of other names, including Lopar, Sabine and Sami amongst others. The origins of our name for them has also provoked a number of explanations; some say it comes from the old Swedish “lopar” – meaning “to run”, and presumably referring to the speed of their movement on skis, achieved with a loping action. Still others say it comes from the Mongolian “lu-pe” – going northwards, or from the archaic Finnish term “lappes” – meaning “banished”. Read more…
In the following discourse I shall endeavour to shed light on how, and perhaps why, a serious disease has not been taken seriously for nearly half a century. The disease is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Many people think it is the same thing as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but I shall also explain why I do not believe this is the case. To achieve these goals I will give a brief history of major events in the history of this disease. Read more…