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Electric Scotland News
My Canadian Experience
Added more videos on topics such as the Prime Ministers visit to the UAE and also the visit from the Swedish Royal family.
I do hope we'll go with the Swedish Griffen fighter jets instead of the F35's. Seems to make a lot more sense.
Also the visit to the UAE could end up with Trillions in new investment for Canada.
You can learn about this and more at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/canada_add27.htm
I should note that I have been trying to keep this in date order but it's been pointed out to me that it actually makes it harder to find what's new. Of course this is meant to be work in progress so changes will take place and items can be added or removed during the month.
So if you wish to read along during the month I can just add material as I come across it but as an archive I'm not sure that makes sense.
Perhaps you can let me know what you think if you're reading along with me each week?
--------
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Here is what caught my eye this week...
Polish PM says railway explosion was 'unprecedented act of sabotage'
Poland's prime minister has said an explosion on a railway line leading to the Ukraine border this weekend was caused by "an unprecedented act of sabotage", and vowed to catch those responsible "regardless of who their backers are".
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo
Vatican returns dozens of indigenous artefacts to Canada
The Vatican has returned 62 indigenous artefacts to Canada, 100 years after they were taken from tribes to appear in a missionary museum in Rome.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93xv530kxeo
Sunday Post Short Story Competition 2025
Winners revealed
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/sunday...ners-revealed/
Police trial drones to counter illegal e-bikes on our streets
Police in Scotland are using drones to tackle the growing menace of illegal e-bikes and e-scooters. In recent years, a rising number of electric vehicles - including ones that have been modified to go at alarming speeds - have been linked to dangerous driving, crime and antisocial behaviour.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/police...n-our-streets/
Scotland is approaching a political reckoning
Reform has become a serious force in Scottish politics but do not count out the SNP
Read more at:
https://thecritic.co.uk/scotland-is-...cal-reckoning/
A classical education would civilise our children
Despite endless discussions about ‘raising standards’, our education system remains unsure about what it is actually for. Today's schools are adept at producing competent test-takers, but neglect the harder task of cultivating human beings. It's time to revive the 2,500-year-old tradition of classical liberal education.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/a-classical-educatio...tains-children
China Just ENDED America’s Tech Leverage
Here's How
Watch this at:
https://youtu.be/2t5Czh8kCTw?si=aEElHAAXEmR9k_9E
Electric Canadian
Construction
Added volume 12 of this publication (1919)
You can read about one of Canada's great building projects in this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/maga...nstruction.htm
Margaret Currie
Her Book by Margaret Currie (Montreal Star) (1924) (pdf)
Great book and I've added the first chapter as the story for this week and you can get to this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...iehe00curr.pdf
Rod and Gun in Canada
The Outdoor Man's Magazine Volume 5
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/magazines/rodandgun.htm
The Story of the Peace (River)
By Ralph Harris (1919) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ofthepeace.pdf
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 16th day of November 2025 - Seasons
By The Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...r-2025-seasons
The Beaver Magazine
Added No. 2 Outfit 263 September 1932 (pdf)
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...tember1932.pdf
Electric Scotland
The Salt-Foot Controversy
As it appeared in Blackwood's Magazine; to which is added a reply to the article published in No. XVIII of that work; with other extracts, and an appendix containing some remarks on the present state of the Lyon Office (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/books/p...rove00ridd.pdf
The Riddell Papers
A Catalogue of the annotated books & manuscripts of the late John Riddell, Esq., Advocate (1863) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/books/p...00riddgoog.pdf
Gunning, Robert Halliday
Scottish surgeon, entrepreneur and philanthropist
You can read about him at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...ing-robert.htm
Remarks upon Scotch Peerage Law
As connected with certain points in the late case of the Earldom of Devon; to which are added, desultry observations upon the naturem, and descent of Scotch Peerages, &c., &c. by John Riddell, Esq., Advocate (1833) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00riddgoog.pdf
Recollections of a Military Life
By Sir John Adye (1895) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00adyeiala.pdf
The Edwards in Scotland A.D. 1296-1377
Being the Rhind Lectures in Archeology for 1900 by Joseph Bain, FSAScot.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00baingoog.pdf
Military Life in Italy
Sketches by Edmondo De Amicis, Army Officer translated by Wilhelmina W. Cady (1882) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00deamiala.pdf
Fact Stranger than Fiction
Seventy-Five years of a busy life with reminiscences of many great and good men and women by John P. Green (1920) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...than00gree.pdf
Story
Margaret Currie’s Chats THE COMMON LOT
Every girl is a dreamer of dreams. From the time she is old enough to read, she is fed on fairy-tales; of Cinderella who fled from her ashes to the arms of her Prince; and later on, of the shop-girl who married the millionaire; of the little girl who is heard singing as she washes the front steps and who becomes the idol of the London stage and marries into the nobility.
Her dreams hold only three things, a handsome husband, money or fame. And with her eyes fixed on the heights above, she often overlooks what Rebecca West calls “the miraculous beauty of the common lot.”
After all, the greatest millionaire eats, sleeps, marries, is ill and dies just like ordinary mortals. He is marked as the prey of fortune hunters, of grafters, of women who lack virtue and of dishonest employes. He trusts no one and could he go back to the easy friendship of his boyhood days, he would sacrifice much to have just one soul in whom he could have confidence.
The wife of a millionaire? Do you realize just what that would mean? All you think of is the luxury that would be yours, the limousine, the delicate food, the clothes, the jewels, the servants. But for every step up you take in the social scale, your responsibilities increase. The conscientious wife of any man who is highly-placed is the busiest woman on earth. She has her charities, her household, her social engagements, and they keep her occupied every minute of the day and usually, far into the night.
Her husband has his separate engagements and sometimes they scarcely see each other for days at a time. To them, the luxury of settling down in front of the fire-place with a good book for a quiet evening at home, is unknown. Even summer carries them to a repetition of the same social life with practically the same crowd.
Society is a treadmill. You go round and round in the same circle and you must never falter or hesitate because if you do, your place in the charmed circle is taken and you are on the outside, looking in.
You want the money? Yes, money is desirable but after all, no-one has ever beaten that recipe for happiness where money is concerned—to earn a little and to spend a little less.
You would like to be a great beauty? Beauty dies and when it has gone, what have you? You have spent your life, worrying over wrinkles and grey hairs, dieting to keep your figure and in the end, the knife will go through your heart when you hear someone describe you casually as “wonderfully well preserved.”
Fame? You envy the woman who has become a great singer, a great artist, a great writer? In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, she has arrived at her pinnacle of fame by a long and difficult path, of troubles, temptations, heart-breaks, despair, sorrow, and loneliness—worst of all, loneliness. You think the woman who is famous either for beauty or brains, must be happy; must have “loads of friends.” She is like the millionaire—she does not know who are her real friends, who would stick to her if she lost her beauty, or her place in the world. If you are placed high, you are always the object of envy, hatred and malice, the target of gossip, usually untrue. The spirit of the famous woman is bruised by the things people say about her, and yet she must go on smiling—or lose her place.
George Eliot said, “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history,” but very few women believe it. Even the war, with its disruption of the established order of things, does not seem to have made them realize that happiness to a woman means an absence of drama and events. The young wife in her tiny apartment, looking after her very new baby and doing all her own housework, is apt to rebel at her lot but some day she will look back on those first years with her hard-working young husband, and realize, at last, “the miraculous beauty of the common lot.”
HAVE YOU GRADUATED?
June is the time of the year when the world is full of the “sweet girl graduate,” dear to the poets and writers of fiction who rhapsodize over reams of perfectly good white paper about the fair young thing who “is standing, with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet.”
We are so used to meeting her in magazine fiction, clothed in white, mystic, wonderful, reading the valedictory while her proud father and mother look on— their hearts swelling with pride—that we have grown accustomed to thinking of her as something super-fine.
So has she grown accustomed to thinking of herself along those lines. She imagines she is distinctly out of the ordinary and that she knows so much she never needs to study again. She is through with books forever.
It does not seem to occur to her that she is mentally shutting up shop, and that if she wants to progress in business, in office, or in the home, she is never through with study. She must go on and on and on.
To succeed in the business world means really hard work—the hardest kind of mental and physical exercise as well.
The girl who utilizes her brains in planning new frocks and ways of amusing herself in her leisure hours, instead of in thinking out ways to get on with her work, is never going to be an efficient worker.
The girl who prides herself on her independence and boasts, “No one is going to put it over me” is usually mistaking a stubborn and foolish pride for independence. None can give orders until she has learned to take them.
All beginners make mistakes and it is foolish to resent correction.
It is stupid to take criticism as an insult and if you continue in that attitude you become absolutely impossible to yourself and everyone else.
If you regard life as a greater school where everyone you meet can teach you something, you will succeed.
Perhaps the girl worker starts with the fatal mistake of thinking her time outside the office belongs to herself, and it “is no-person’s business” how or where she spends it.
But it is your employer’s business—very much so. If you dance all night, you cannot possibly get to business feeling fresh and fit the next morning. If you are tired and sleepy, you perform your duties in a “sloppy” fashion, you forget to give your employer an important message, and you neglect some detail that means a serious monetary loss to him.
If you are going from school to a home of your own, as soon as your trousseau can be prepared do not think that marriage is all roses and rapture.
It is a business partnership, and if you are to hold up your end, you must know how to cook and sew, to buy intelligently, to plan your menus with wisdom, to order your house with diligence and thrift, to keep accounts, to understand banking—indeed, marriage. with its necessity for knowing all about the art of home-making, is the most exacting profession of all and requires the most constant study to make it a success.
Whatever your profession may be, you will never really graduate. There is always more to learn.
END.
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair
My Canadian Experience
Added more videos on topics such as the Prime Ministers visit to the UAE and also the visit from the Swedish Royal family.
I do hope we'll go with the Swedish Griffen fighter jets instead of the F35's. Seems to make a lot more sense.
Also the visit to the UAE could end up with Trillions in new investment for Canada.
You can learn about this and more at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/canada_add27.htm
I should note that I have been trying to keep this in date order but it's been pointed out to me that it actually makes it harder to find what's new. Of course this is meant to be work in progress so changes will take place and items can be added or removed during the month.
So if you wish to read along during the month I can just add material as I come across it but as an archive I'm not sure that makes sense.
Perhaps you can let me know what you think if you're reading along with me each week?
--------
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Here is what caught my eye this week...
Polish PM says railway explosion was 'unprecedented act of sabotage'
Poland's prime minister has said an explosion on a railway line leading to the Ukraine border this weekend was caused by "an unprecedented act of sabotage", and vowed to catch those responsible "regardless of who their backers are".
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo
Vatican returns dozens of indigenous artefacts to Canada
The Vatican has returned 62 indigenous artefacts to Canada, 100 years after they were taken from tribes to appear in a missionary museum in Rome.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93xv530kxeo
Sunday Post Short Story Competition 2025
Winners revealed
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/sunday...ners-revealed/
Police trial drones to counter illegal e-bikes on our streets
Police in Scotland are using drones to tackle the growing menace of illegal e-bikes and e-scooters. In recent years, a rising number of electric vehicles - including ones that have been modified to go at alarming speeds - have been linked to dangerous driving, crime and antisocial behaviour.
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/police...n-our-streets/
Scotland is approaching a political reckoning
Reform has become a serious force in Scottish politics but do not count out the SNP
Read more at:
https://thecritic.co.uk/scotland-is-...cal-reckoning/
A classical education would civilise our children
Despite endless discussions about ‘raising standards’, our education system remains unsure about what it is actually for. Today's schools are adept at producing competent test-takers, but neglect the harder task of cultivating human beings. It's time to revive the 2,500-year-old tradition of classical liberal education.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/a-classical-educatio...tains-children
China Just ENDED America’s Tech Leverage
Here's How
Watch this at:
https://youtu.be/2t5Czh8kCTw?si=aEElHAAXEmR9k_9E
Electric Canadian
Construction
Added volume 12 of this publication (1919)
You can read about one of Canada's great building projects in this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/maga...nstruction.htm
Margaret Currie
Her Book by Margaret Currie (Montreal Star) (1924) (pdf)
Great book and I've added the first chapter as the story for this week and you can get to this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/life...iehe00curr.pdf
Rod and Gun in Canada
The Outdoor Man's Magazine Volume 5
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/magazines/rodandgun.htm
The Story of the Peace (River)
By Ralph Harris (1919) (pdf)
You can read this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...ofthepeace.pdf
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 16th day of November 2025 - Seasons
By The Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...r-2025-seasons
The Beaver Magazine
Added No. 2 Outfit 263 September 1932 (pdf)
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...tember1932.pdf
Electric Scotland
The Salt-Foot Controversy
As it appeared in Blackwood's Magazine; to which is added a reply to the article published in No. XVIII of that work; with other extracts, and an appendix containing some remarks on the present state of the Lyon Office (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/books/p...rove00ridd.pdf
The Riddell Papers
A Catalogue of the annotated books & manuscripts of the late John Riddell, Esq., Advocate (1863) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/books/p...00riddgoog.pdf
Gunning, Robert Halliday
Scottish surgeon, entrepreneur and philanthropist
You can read about him at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...ing-robert.htm
Remarks upon Scotch Peerage Law
As connected with certain points in the late case of the Earldom of Devon; to which are added, desultry observations upon the naturem, and descent of Scotch Peerages, &c., &c. by John Riddell, Esq., Advocate (1833) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00riddgoog.pdf
Recollections of a Military Life
By Sir John Adye (1895) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00adyeiala.pdf
The Edwards in Scotland A.D. 1296-1377
Being the Rhind Lectures in Archeology for 1900 by Joseph Bain, FSAScot.
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00baingoog.pdf
Military Life in Italy
Sketches by Edmondo De Amicis, Army Officer translated by Wilhelmina W. Cady (1882) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...00deamiala.pdf
Fact Stranger than Fiction
Seventy-Five years of a busy life with reminiscences of many great and good men and women by John P. Green (1920) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...than00gree.pdf
Story
Margaret Currie’s Chats THE COMMON LOT
Every girl is a dreamer of dreams. From the time she is old enough to read, she is fed on fairy-tales; of Cinderella who fled from her ashes to the arms of her Prince; and later on, of the shop-girl who married the millionaire; of the little girl who is heard singing as she washes the front steps and who becomes the idol of the London stage and marries into the nobility.
Her dreams hold only three things, a handsome husband, money or fame. And with her eyes fixed on the heights above, she often overlooks what Rebecca West calls “the miraculous beauty of the common lot.”
After all, the greatest millionaire eats, sleeps, marries, is ill and dies just like ordinary mortals. He is marked as the prey of fortune hunters, of grafters, of women who lack virtue and of dishonest employes. He trusts no one and could he go back to the easy friendship of his boyhood days, he would sacrifice much to have just one soul in whom he could have confidence.
The wife of a millionaire? Do you realize just what that would mean? All you think of is the luxury that would be yours, the limousine, the delicate food, the clothes, the jewels, the servants. But for every step up you take in the social scale, your responsibilities increase. The conscientious wife of any man who is highly-placed is the busiest woman on earth. She has her charities, her household, her social engagements, and they keep her occupied every minute of the day and usually, far into the night.
Her husband has his separate engagements and sometimes they scarcely see each other for days at a time. To them, the luxury of settling down in front of the fire-place with a good book for a quiet evening at home, is unknown. Even summer carries them to a repetition of the same social life with practically the same crowd.
Society is a treadmill. You go round and round in the same circle and you must never falter or hesitate because if you do, your place in the charmed circle is taken and you are on the outside, looking in.
You want the money? Yes, money is desirable but after all, no-one has ever beaten that recipe for happiness where money is concerned—to earn a little and to spend a little less.
You would like to be a great beauty? Beauty dies and when it has gone, what have you? You have spent your life, worrying over wrinkles and grey hairs, dieting to keep your figure and in the end, the knife will go through your heart when you hear someone describe you casually as “wonderfully well preserved.”
Fame? You envy the woman who has become a great singer, a great artist, a great writer? In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, she has arrived at her pinnacle of fame by a long and difficult path, of troubles, temptations, heart-breaks, despair, sorrow, and loneliness—worst of all, loneliness. You think the woman who is famous either for beauty or brains, must be happy; must have “loads of friends.” She is like the millionaire—she does not know who are her real friends, who would stick to her if she lost her beauty, or her place in the world. If you are placed high, you are always the object of envy, hatred and malice, the target of gossip, usually untrue. The spirit of the famous woman is bruised by the things people say about her, and yet she must go on smiling—or lose her place.
George Eliot said, “The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history,” but very few women believe it. Even the war, with its disruption of the established order of things, does not seem to have made them realize that happiness to a woman means an absence of drama and events. The young wife in her tiny apartment, looking after her very new baby and doing all her own housework, is apt to rebel at her lot but some day she will look back on those first years with her hard-working young husband, and realize, at last, “the miraculous beauty of the common lot.”
HAVE YOU GRADUATED?
June is the time of the year when the world is full of the “sweet girl graduate,” dear to the poets and writers of fiction who rhapsodize over reams of perfectly good white paper about the fair young thing who “is standing, with reluctant feet, where the brook and river meet.”
We are so used to meeting her in magazine fiction, clothed in white, mystic, wonderful, reading the valedictory while her proud father and mother look on— their hearts swelling with pride—that we have grown accustomed to thinking of her as something super-fine.
So has she grown accustomed to thinking of herself along those lines. She imagines she is distinctly out of the ordinary and that she knows so much she never needs to study again. She is through with books forever.
It does not seem to occur to her that she is mentally shutting up shop, and that if she wants to progress in business, in office, or in the home, she is never through with study. She must go on and on and on.
To succeed in the business world means really hard work—the hardest kind of mental and physical exercise as well.
The girl who utilizes her brains in planning new frocks and ways of amusing herself in her leisure hours, instead of in thinking out ways to get on with her work, is never going to be an efficient worker.
The girl who prides herself on her independence and boasts, “No one is going to put it over me” is usually mistaking a stubborn and foolish pride for independence. None can give orders until she has learned to take them.
All beginners make mistakes and it is foolish to resent correction.
It is stupid to take criticism as an insult and if you continue in that attitude you become absolutely impossible to yourself and everyone else.
If you regard life as a greater school where everyone you meet can teach you something, you will succeed.
Perhaps the girl worker starts with the fatal mistake of thinking her time outside the office belongs to herself, and it “is no-person’s business” how or where she spends it.
But it is your employer’s business—very much so. If you dance all night, you cannot possibly get to business feeling fresh and fit the next morning. If you are tired and sleepy, you perform your duties in a “sloppy” fashion, you forget to give your employer an important message, and you neglect some detail that means a serious monetary loss to him.
If you are going from school to a home of your own, as soon as your trousseau can be prepared do not think that marriage is all roses and rapture.
It is a business partnership, and if you are to hold up your end, you must know how to cook and sew, to buy intelligently, to plan your menus with wisdom, to order your house with diligence and thrift, to keep accounts, to understand banking—indeed, marriage. with its necessity for knowing all about the art of home-making, is the most exacting profession of all and requires the most constant study to make it a success.
Whatever your profession may be, you will never really graduate. There is always more to learn.
END.
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair