Vita, Veritas, Victoria to the Oak Wood of Calgaich or Colmcille

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

from Seamus Heaney's Death of a Naturalist

Well last night the city of my father, my father's father, my father's father's father and at least his father as well* was awarded with the privilege of being the UK's first City of Culture in 2013. Doire, Lunnonderrie, Daire Calgaich, Doire Cholmchille, the Maiden City, Stroke City call it what you will, Derry/Londonderry is about to make history.

As well as Nobel Laureate Mr Heaney above, Restoration Dramatist George Farquhar, authors Joyce Cary, Seamus Deane, Jennifer Johnston and Neil McCafferty all add to the rich history of culture in Northern Ireland's second city. Which is being build on all the time by new contributions to culture of a variety of forms.

Then there are the City Walls the only remaining intact example in Ireland and one of the finest in Europe dating from 1613-1619. The history dates back to the 546 when St. Colmcille,like a lot of my family crossed just over the county boundary from Donegal to set up his monastery.

In the 1600s it was the livery companies from London who came over as part of the plantation to built the City on the West side of the Foyle across from the earlier monastic settlement. It was the first planned city in Ireland with roads off the the central diamond within the walls leading to the four gates of the strong defensive pattern that was followed by many of the North American British colonial settlements.

So from the architecture, through the literature, to music and even the mural of both communities and other aspects there is a thriving culture in the City. Like myself there are Donegal influences in there as well as rural Londonderry and Tyrone. It is a river community and a last stopping off place for many emigrants embarking on the trip to America. But now it is embarking on a new trip to prepare for the future as the City of Culture to showcase the best that the place has to offer to draw people in rather than bid them goodbye.

The City motto is 'Vita, Veritas, Victoria' - 'Life, Truth, Victory'. In 2013 they will embrace life to the fullest, the city probably won't ignore the truth of its past but move forward to a shared future and make the most of this victory with the eyes of the country upon it.

* Beyond that needs some more genealogical digging.

Robert Tannahill

On this day 200 years ago the body of Robert Tannahill was found in a culvert in Paisley, he had taken his own life. Like another famous Robert he was a poet and indeed was in the eyes of some comparable to Scotland's bard.

Here is one of his poems.

Eild

The rough hail rattles thro' the trees.
The sullen lift low'rs gloomy gray,
The trav'ller sees the swelling storm,
And seeks the alehouse by the way.

But, waes me! for yon widowed wretch,
Borne doun wi years an heavy care;
Her sapless fingers scarce can nip
The wither'd twigs tae beet her fire.

Thus youth and vigour fends itsel;
Its help, reciprocal, is sure,
While dowless Eild, in poortith cauld,
Is lanely left tae stan the stoure.

Muggles are Following JK Fast

I got news not from the Daily Prophet but Muggle.Net that a certain someone was starting to Tweet. Less than 10 minutes ago I became JK Rowling's 4458th follower on Twitter, however we noticed that her followers were growing fast. I guessed she would pass through the 5000 mark within 10 minutes by 19:48. I was wrong she made it at 19:43 and I managed to capture the moment for posterity*.



With the time now 19:52 she has 5,547, she's getting approximately 100 followers a minute at the moment.

* I'm quite good at guessing these things, but at the rate she was gaining followers even I was impressed by catching her at the moment of her 5,000. We were on constant refresh for a while and getting 3-6 every time we did that.

Irfan is Right and Wrong on Email

Irfan Ahmed seems to have developed either a paper or newsprint allergy I'm not quite sure which. But he's advocating a whole hearted shift from literature to email and he is right and wrong.

He's right of course in that we should be living up to our environmental credentials and moving away from the amount of paper we want to use. He is also right in that the electronic age is upon us and we should be using more use of website and email shots etc.

He's wrong in that there is no directory of everyone's email, whereas we do have a list of every elector in the constituency. Even the emails that some of us give when we return our form are only for internal use and not for the full register publications. In fact I can't remember all of my own email addresses, or on occasion a couple of their passwords (yeah some required changes and now I'm lost thankfully not the major ones). Indeed many people have more than one. I have one for work, one for home, one for campaigning, one for my MSN etc as well as several others of the original ones that I still check for various reasons.

We still need to garner people's email addresses and having worked in a call centre where part of the business people are often asked for that as part of their details people still often refuse to give that. Indeed people are far more willing to give their address than their email. Just look at the recent crash of the mobile phone directory server when it was overwhelmed by the number of people wanting to unsubscribe to show how unwilling people are to give away that sort of information on a wide scale.

Also not everyone, even in this day and age, has and uses their email account regularly. However, everyone does use their front door on an almost daily basis and will check their mail.

Yeah people are likely to not read some of our literature put through their letterbox, put isn't the same also true of unsolicited emails, if not more so with spam filters. At least with deliveries we do know the message has reached the desired voter. Email addresses don't tell us when someone moves even sometimes their work one only alerts us they have left long after the IT crew decide to clean up the addresses.

Yeah we should be moving towards email as much as possible, it is more time efficient way of delivering the message. But we need to gather the email addresses that we need to move wholly over to that. Even in our key target seats with email lists in the thousands we still have less than 10% coverage of the whole constituency, obviously in some of our held seats this figure can be higher, though often is lower. If we are looking to win new seats we need more than 10% penetration which needs we still need to be out there. Delivering leaflets of course isn't just about putting bits of paper through letter boxes and many experiences leafleters will tell you of conversations they have had with people as a result of doing so. Heck, I even first encountered our current local party chair that way.

So Irfan yeah you are pointing in the right direction but the party and indeed the world still has a long way to go with that one. We don't have access to everyone electronic inbox but we do have access to every voter's letterbox.

Poetic Injustice

I've been told by others that I write some pretty decent poems. Some examples of which have on occasion made it unto this blog. The problem is trying to get any earnings from the best of them. Now it appears I realy should write far worse prose as it looks like being more profitable.

A set of 35 of William "the worst post in the world" McGonagall's poems are heading to auction and are expected to sell for £6,500. Now that's £185 pounds a poem which is better than most literary publications give for publishing one poem. Only down side is McGonagall has been dead for 106 years so I'll not be making that money until at least 2114.

Cameron Flip Flops on Jonathan Ross Show

Watch out for Friday Night with Jonathan Ross tonight. You will hear David William Donald Cameron say that Blair was right to go to war in Iraq and said that those who had supported military action should 'see it through'.

Is this the same David Cameron who was quoted on an election leaflet earlier this year in Dunfermline saying?:

"Issues that once divided Conservatives from Liberal Democrats are now issues where we both agree. Our attitude to devolution and the localisation of power. Iraq."

I happen to remmeber the appearance of that quote on election literature because when I returned from deliveries to see the offending comments. Must people's reaction went something like this:

Iraq? Iraq! IRAQ!!! When have we ever agreed with the Tories on Iraq?

In fact I remember poor Michael Veitch my Conservative opponent in last May's General Election being the only one of the candidates to support the war in Iraq from the platform during hustings.

So is this another Chameleon moment for Dave? Saying one thing to try and not be totally wiped out in Dunfermline but having to maintain the party line on a national platform? Or is this a flip-flop in the extreme within such a sort period? Does Dave really know his mind and what words are coming out of his mouth?