I hear the Irish are huuuuuge, especially the northern Irish, but that may just be a dumb racial stereotype (of course I don’t have any personal data).
Oh, and Mr Hill, sir, may I adminster the paddling to Edgar Allen and BFM?
[quote=“Buttercup”]Oh, and Mr Hill, sir, may I adminster the paddling to Edgar Allen and BFM?[/quote]Me first !! 
One of Scotland’s own, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson has earned a fortune estimated at £25m, owns a 15,000-acre farm on the Isle of Skye, and has been a Highland Businessman of the Year.
(source - BBC News)
Double post.
[quote=“Mer”]One of Scotland’s own, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson has earned a fortune estimated at £25m, owns a 15,000-acre farm on the Isle of Skye, and has been a Highland Businessman of the Year.
(source - BBC News)[/quote]
And is one of the biggest pricks you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet. He lives “next door” to one of my sisters and drinks (or used to, at least) in the same pub when he’s on Skye which thankfully is hardly ever these days. First he raped Strathaird estate by covering it in sitka spruce, then he set up a bunch of salmon farms to pollute the sea lochs. Makes a bunch of money by raping the land AND the sea.
I DO love Aqualung, though. And Heavy Horses.
Scotland’s greatest musical group chose a name by blindly sticking a pin into a map.
Hint below.
(They hit a small town in Michigan).
There’s a town in Michigan called the Sensational Alex Harvey Band? How quaint!
[quote=“sandman”][quote=“Mer”]One of Scotland’s own, Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson has earned a fortune estimated at £25m, owns a 15,000-acre farm on the Isle of Skye, and has been a Highland Businessman of the Year.
(source - BBC News)[/quote]
And is one of the biggest pricks you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet. He lives “next door” to one of my sisters and drinks (or used to, at least) in the same pub when he’s on Skye which thankfully is hardly ever these days. First he raped Strathaird estate by covering it in sitka spruce, then he set up a bunch of salmon farms to pollute the sea lochs. Makes a bunch of money by raping the land AND the sea. [/quote]
You obviously don’t know the whole story. And what’s wrong with planting trees, and providing employment in an otherwise bleak environment?
THE SCOTSMAN-11 November 1994-IAN ANDERSON SELLS STRATHAIRD
tullpress.com/sc11nov94.htm
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE-December 1997-FROM AQUALUNG TO A WATERY INVESTMENT
tullpress.com/ihtdec97.htm
Heh! I used to know a shitload more about the man and his business than any Scotsman reporter, I’ll tell you that.
And you obviously don’t know much about the environmental damage caused by large-scale conifer planting if you liken it to “planting trees” as if it were some kind of “greening” of the environment – its the complete opposite.
As for employment? With the modern heavy plant used for stripping out softwood conifer plantations these days, 15,000 acres could be covered by probably a half-dozen men. Certainly Strathaird was not a big employer up there.
Anderson is an astute businessman but he’s no “country squire.”
With employment, I was talking about the salmon farming and fish processing business, not Strathaird.
How does salmon farming pollute the lochs?
Fair enough on that point.
Hoo boy! That’s a can of worms. I’ll try digging up some links if I have time, but even a cursory search should point you to some disturbing stuff. Primarily, the pellets used to feed the fish and the fish shit expelled by the fish add so much nitrogen to the water that it becomes basically poison, especially when combined with all the medicine they have to add to keep the fish alive and disease- and parasite-free.
Did you know there are hardly any wild salmon running the rivers and burns of the west coast any more? Not because of overfishing but because they’ve been decimated by previously unknown fish diseases up there, carried by these drug-filled farmed fish. I could go on and on about this but it would rapidly degenerate into a spittle-encrusted rant and it’s getting way off topic. Suffice to say that neither large-scale conifer planting nor aquaculture are in ANY way environmentally friendly but in fact the very opposite.
It’s worth it though I suppose, if you can produce lots of cheap newsprint and inexpensive, if chemical-laden, farmed fish.
Me no likee that at all.
Well done!
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band . . . City Rollers . . . alltime greatest, Scotish everything!
Way off topic here…
Read a while ago about a bunch of hippies who, in the sixties, decided that cars were the root cause of most of our problems and symbolically buried one to show their rejection of the whole shebang.
Twenty years later they dug it up and disposed of it responsibly, having realised that the world was a bit more complex than they had thought.
At about the same time, some or other musician (it might have been one of the guys from Slade) was being given a hard time by some environmental group. He had invested some of his money into tree-farming, and appeared on TV looking a bit mystified. “I thought planting trees was good,” he said.
Not defending Anderson, but farming is going to have an impact on the environment, and it’s possible for people to not really understand the impact of their actions. It doesn’t always mean they don’t care.
And the guy had to invest his money somewhere. Perhaps he should have just bought oil stocks instead?
I’ve seen Jethro Tull in concert twice. They were crap both times. Absolutely no energy or enthusiasm by the man with the flute. He seemed to be just going through the motions.
What years were those?
I’m assuming you’re talking about having seen them in the 90’s or later. In their hey-day, they were the shit. I can’t imagine you’d have seen Ian Anderson ever lacking in energy or enthusiasm, as he is the quintessential showman, IMO. A true professional. Concert reviews will back me up, not to mention world-wide concert ticket sales.
I have only seen Tull once, and it was in 1992, well past their prime. I was born too late to have seen them when they were quite the prolific live act. Despite my intense love for the band though, I do believe they should have packed it in long ago.
It seems not everyone is totally enamored with Anderson’s business pursuits. That’s fine. There are worse things he could have done to make a fortune. I still think he’s a pretty extraordinary individual, and someone Scotland should be proud of.
The Norwegians destroyed the smoked salmon market by introducing cheap farmed white-fleshed salmon dipped in a sort of orange oil to make it look and taste “smoked”. A pox on them. With their pink food colouring (farmed salmon are white) and medicated feed.
hey didja say farmed salmon? you’re gonna get the canadians/vancouverites panties in an enormous pink-stained knot.
we got the same problem; vancity is famous for the pink smoked salmon, but according to my mom note: she makes no mistakes the farmed salmon is healthier, because the mercury/polonium/other non-KISS heavy metals salmons that you find in the “ocean” are far more dangerous for yr health
If you have a problem with this comment, please flame my mom at
hey frank, your mum’s email address is wrong.
jah be not happy wid ya
anyway, my little known factoid is: scotland is not a main trading partner of any caribbean nation.
-
Most of the clans’ mottoes are in French or Latin. (Normanization e.g. de Brus -> Bruce)
-
Tartans were not worn in the famous Highland Charge. Instead, men charged wearing only their shirts and swords/claymore/targe.
-
The heir to the Jacobite Pretender Stuart line is in the House of Liechenstein.
-
One ben looks pretty much like another ben in the Scottish rain. [same goes with the lochs]
On the 1999 “Avengers” cartoon (based on a Marvel comic), the character of Namor the Sub-Mariner–water-breathing King of Atlantis, like Aquaman with anger-management problems–had a Scottish accent. This was apparently based on the comics, where he was adopted by Scots and given the surname MacKenzie.
Scotch Tape (sellotape) was neither invented by a Scot nor in Scotland. Legend has it the first user of the tape complained that the manufacturer (3M) was cheap for only applying adhesives to the edge of the tape, referring to them as “Scotch bosses.” Scotty Mctape became the mascot for the product shortly afterwards, kilt and all.