If they want to get away from it all without taking to the sea, English royals can spend time at Balmoral, their country house in Scotland. In truth, it's a 50,000-acre estate. What is it they're leaving behind when they take such trips? Only Buckingham Palace, a 240-bedroom manse...
The samurai (the word is the same whether singular or plural) served many functions in Japan. However, the role in which they are best known is that of warrior. But what is it that makes a samurai different from other warriors in other parts of the world? Wearing armor and using a swo...
In early 18th-century Scotland, you might turn up in mid-summer at someone’s house – hoping to get them to do some work for you – only to be informed that they had ‘gone to London’ and that they would be ‘back by Christmas’. But if there was anything urgent that needed doin...
The interconnections between health and the economy are well known and well documented. The funding gap for realizing SDG3 for good health and well-being, however, remains vast. Simultaneously, economic growth, as expressed and measured in SDG8, continues to leave many people behind. In addition...
Policymakers try to deliver governance reforms within a complex policymaking environment over which they have limited understanding and even less control. In many cases, they settle for theappearanceof success, based on the popularity of their response or narrow indicators of outcomes, without addressing...
Grants are now so low that those from the lowest incomes are taking on the most of that living cost debt. Equally, at high incomes, many students will be borrowing nothing. Defending existing policy in Scotland means defending this outcome. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons ...
Of Norman lineage, the storied Hamiltons had been in Scotland since at least 1271 with a record of one Walter FitzGilbert Hamilton.) Hugh’s great grandson, Alexander, established Newtownhamilton in Co Armagh but he himself had settled in Knock, Co Dublin. Alexander’s son Charles sold the ...
so citizens have become inured to falling ‘service’ standards and to not getting redress for things going wrong. From 2005 on, efforts to get asingle public sector ombudsmanfor England (on the same lines as those in Scotland and Wales) and improve compla...
teaching our youth that with SO MANY (yeah, sure) “holidays” being celebrated throughout December, that any public celebration of Christmas would be an act of intolerance. But where is the ADL or the ACLU when the 40 foot Hanukkah Menorah is put up on the White House Lawn every year,...
. 6. Washington was a Virginian. This is equivalent to five Talents. Virginian Geese are all Swans. Not a Bearne in Scotland is more national, not a Lad upon the High Lands is more clannish, than every Virginian I have ever known. They trumpet one another with the most pompous and ...