The first draft of Jeremy Corbyn's remarks on the subject of Scotland in his address to the Labour Party Conference 2015

"Comrades

"The people have spoken. I have been elected with an unprecedented mandate to bring change to our party and to our country. Today offers us an historic opportunity to set aside the past and debate the new course that will lead us to a brighter future.

"I stand before you on this podium having been propelled here by the votes of 251,417 members, supporters and affiliates. But let us not forget another people have spoken. The people of Scotland have rejected us.

"It would be easy for me to stand here and patronise the Scots for the supreme folly of abandoning our party. It would be easy for me to castigate the SNP administration in Edinburgh with a series of casual and cynical inaccuracies and misrepresentations. It would be easy for me to cast them in a variety of villainous roles, caricatures that originate only in our own imagination. I am confident I would reap the applause of those whose tribal animosities are confirmed by my doing so.

"But we have an historic opportunity for change. We have a window of opportunity. We must seize that opportunity, take our chances, before that window closes once more for a generation. We must open up to those who now sit to the left of us on the green benches, and who have occupied a position to the left of us ideologically for some time now.

"We must be humble. If we want to lead in Scotland, we must learn to follow. Mobilisation of a formidable grass roots movement in England gives us no right to usurp the movement that already exists in Scotland. We must kick the habit of complacency and condescension and entitlement for which we have been punished repeatedly at the ballot box in Scotland.

"Keir Hardie did not found this party only for it to be used by the British State to manage communities ravaged by inter-generational post-imperial decline with empty rhetoric and broken promises. But in Scotland that is what we have become. We offer beads and blankets to the natives while feathering our own nests.

"Keir Hardie spoke of 'Home Rule' for Scotland, yet we took that phrase and twisted and perverted it to form the basis of the 'Vow' with which we conned  the people of Scotland into thinking a No vote was a vote for change in the Independence referendum last year. We must offer our confession in all humility, we must admit to ourselves and to the people of Scotland that we stood on the wrong side during that campaign, and in doing so revealed what we have been doing for generations: the dirty work of the British State.

"So let there be no talk of 'winning back' Scotland, as though it were a possession of which we have been temporarily deprived. Let there be no talk of voters 'coming home' to Labour, as though they were errant children unable to decide things for themselves. If we want to move on from the disasters that have befallen us in Scotland we must first acknowledge and take responsibility for those faults that led to them.

"We do not own the opposition benches. I cannot rely on the mandate given to me by the voters while ignoring the mandate given to those with whom we share those benches. Let us not act as though we hold a monopoly on ideas, as though we are the doorman at the 'anti-austerity' club, as though we have unique and privileged access to some oracle that describes how to achieve social justice. Where we find common cause let us make concerted effort.  Let us not quibble over credentials then fail to act. Let us oppose, not abstain.

"Let us rid this land of the obscenity of Trident. Let us topple the grotesque totems and confound the deceitful shibboleths of the warmongers. Let us turn away the arms dealers from our shores and welcome the refugees that flee their guns. 

"I will work with, not against, the SNP, who provide the 56 members with whom we share the green benches, to achieve this. And I recognise the sovereign right of the people of Scotland who elected them to decide for themselves their best form of government."

(History records that this first draft was discarded and in the final draft the leader's position reverted to the one adopted by previous leaders with respect to the question of what to do about Scotland) 

Do you speak Mitchell?

Here is David Mitchell's considered critique of Gaelic road signs ...

 Whereas this is an American girl's request that we all speak Americanish ...

(Update, 2023-07-18: I see that video is no longer available. Here's another: link)

It's difficult to tell them apart, isn't it? I mean, they are essentially making the same point, aren't they?

Mitchell. Noun. That sense of disappointment and sadness you feel when you realise a person you used to admire and think was really cool and clever and funny is actually just a twat.

Language attrition is a very well studied topic. "UNESCO operates with four levels of language endangerment beyond 'safe' (not endangered), based on intergenerational transfer: 'vulnerable' (not spoken by children outside the home), 'definitely endangered' (children not speaking), 'severely endangered' (only spoken by the oldest generations), and 'critically endangered' (spoken by few members of the oldest generation, often semi-speakers)." 

It took me literally two seconds to find that out using Google and Wikipedia. So contrary to Mitchell's dire prognostications, Gaelic is not even vulnerable, let alone on its last legs limping towards death (my own children speak Gaelic "outside the home").  

Mitchell's feigned concern about the status of Gaelic tells us much more about his own fantasies of English language supremacy and his own lazy assumptions than it tells us anything about the health of Gaelic. He claims Gaelic is, to all intents and purposes, dead, only because it would suit him if it was dead. Either that or he is inexplicably unfamiliar with the workings of the internet.  

He requires the insight displayed by the characters in a classic Mitchell and Webb sketch who asked themselves "are we the bad guys?" 

This whole thing bothers me because the man is not an idiot, the evidence presented here notwithstanding. When he talks, people listen, so when he talks rubbish, he must be contradicted.   

The Prodigal Party

We have heard a lot of left-wing critics of Scottish Independence talk about workers' solidarity. How often have we heard how much the workers of Leith have in common with the workers of Liverpool. As if somehow the British State is the unavoidable intermediary in all fellow-feeling.

But let's be clear: the status quo has proven itself a better instrument for resisting progress than achieving it.

Let's not kid ourselves on that those who would deny us self-determination do so in the interest of the Brotherhood of Man.

Let's not kid ourselves on that those who oppose our Independence offer as an alternative some benevolent world order.

They offer a state that institutionalises injustice. They offer a jingoistic vaudeville nationalism that belittles and degrades us and limits the way we respond to events to the basest instincts and knee-jerks, all the while complaining vehemently about "nationalism". The concept of a country they offer does not liberate us wholesale. It enslaves us piecemeal. Then it pits us against each other.

They advocate the obscene paradox of a national interest that is served by arms sales and is threatened by refugees who flee those self-same arms.

The Independence we seek turns that on its head! The Independence we seek is the Independence we need to take the world in our embrace and act on the basis of that which unites all people. We want a country that turns away the arms dealers and embraces the refugees created by their profiteering, not one that criminalises refugees and provides guns to their persecutors.

Independence doesn't stop us acting in solidarity with workers in the rest of the UK. However, the UK does prevent us acting in solidarity with people around the world. The workers of Leith do not want to limit their sympathy to the workers of Liverpool.

So when these left-wing critics re-iterate their tropes and totems and shibboleths it is not because they sincerely believe them. We have seen their policies governed by convenience rather than principle all too often. It is because they want us to remain distracted and beguiled by the punch and judy show they are part of.

The Labour Party in Scotland does not exist to promote workers' rights. It ceased to do that decades ago. The Labour Party has been tolerated by the British State as a form of crowd control. It has traditionally dominated local authorities where the British State has required local management of inter-generational post-imperial decline, with all the lip service and necessary illusions that requires.

But when a new idea is articulated, based on an optimistic inclusive vision of the future, one that does not require us to martyr ourselves as victims of historic forces they claim to oppose, they are first to deride it, and reveal themselves to be an integral part of the problem whose solution they present themselves to be.

And now they find themselves staring into the abyss, because circumstances finally force them to confront their historic hypocrisy. The only way back from the brink is a full and frank confession.

They have to admit that the Yes Movement was right.

They have to admit that they were on the wrong side during the referendum campaign.

Agreeing with its objectives but then claiming to offer the only way of delivering them is now such a threadbare deception as to be beneath ridicule and contempt. Every scared and starving Syrian child camped outside our gates provides an obscene and blatant counterexample to their lies. Every scrap of anti-union legislation passed at Westminster demonstrates their impotence.

But if they could only, for one instant, demonstrate genuine humility, and confess their errors, would we not slay the fatted calf and welcome them home ... 

Marilyn 2015

Big hearts versus small minds

'It's "you're", Michael' ... returning the favour of his condescension

The Scottish Labour Pouters (users of the hashtag #SNPOut) jubilantly declare that Corbyn outflanks the SNP on the left. Not because the Pouters are particularly pro-left, of course, but just because they hate the SNP.

Before the odds shortened on Corbyn they were among the loudest in writing him off in their cynical but ultimately wrong-footed manouevring. They celebrate his victory only because of their thwarted tribalistic sense of entitlement that is affronted by the SNP in office. They find themselves celebrating the election of a leader who has more in common with their enemies than with them. It is a ridiculous and pathetic spectacle, behaviour bereft even of sufficient intelligence to merit being called hypocrisy.

They fail to see that the SNP has not been outflanked by Corbyn's victory. Rather, it is their own opportunistic neo-liberal pro-austerity "consensus" that is now completely encircled by both the Scottish pro-indy left and the a rUK indy-agnostic left. They can unite in opposition to this inhumane global dogma without needing to agree about a union of the kingdoms. 

As one common voice is raised against Trident, against austerity, against illegal military adventures, and in support of refugees, and green energy, and social justice, all the lies and false dichotomies will be overthrown. The failure of the rejected Labour establishment and their media henchmen to appreciate this demonstrates just how completely out-of-touch they are.   

And as the supporters of Scottish Independence find common cause with the Corbynistas in the name of universal values of peace and justice it is clear that the Yes Movement was never about imposing borders, but always about transcending them, was never about independence from people, but from the governments that abuse the consent lent to them by the people, was never about shutting ourselves off, but about reaching out with an embrace that extends as far as the world's teeming refugee camps.

The Independence we seek is a Universal Independence from heartless, inhumane governance whose impacts are felt from the foodbanks of Yoker to food distribution centres of Yarmouk, an Independence that allows us to reclaim Scotland from UK governments that uses the apparatus of states and borders to deny universal human rights of refugees, an Independence we can share with the world, that unlocks our most generous and compassionate instincts.  

And so the Yes Movement was always informed by a greatness of heart that can never be understood by the small minds of its opponents, who mistakenly, bizarrely even, believe they have secured some advantage in the election of a leader who opposes the policies they have spent their political careers advocating.

How real is real? (Part 1)

In an idle moment I was messing around with some equations.

I took

• The equation relating the entropy of a black hole to the surface area of its event horizon,
• The equation for its Schwarzschild radius, to calculate the area, and
• The equation relating the entropy of a system to the number of its (accessible, equally probable) microstates,

to work out the number of microstates of the smallest possible black hole, just out of interest.

By setting the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole to a Planck length, as giving (intuitively) the smallest possible black hole, you end up with the number of microstates being e^π, and not one, which I had (intuitively) thought would be the minimum possible number of microstates. I thought this would be the "unit" black hole as it were, with a single (integer) microstate, and was not expecting a transcendental number instead of an integer number of microstates.

What did this mean? Certainly, e^π is equal to -1^-i, which neatly expresses everything in terms of unity, but leaves me none the wiser regarding physical interpretation. However, I remember conversations with people much smarter than me about how we cannot rely on physical or geometrical interpretations, that these are inevitably naive. Indeed, we would be paralysed, crippled, in our scientific endeavours, if we always had to relate our subject to something that can be comprehended by analogy with our limited everyday experience, even if such analogies are a source of awe and enthusiasm. The motivations and the manifestations of our scientific endeavours must always remain distinct. 

Nevertheless I asked my friend Aidan Keane what the physical meaning of this was, because he is actually a proper published cosmologist and black hole expert whereas I am just some schmuck with a degree in astronomy and physics. Chin stroking and head scratching ensued on both his part and mine and then he pointed out that e^π - otherwise known as Gelfond's constant - is equal to sum of the volumes of all even-dimensional unit (hyper-)spheres.

Now we are getting somewhere, I thought: a geometrical interpretation.

So maybe there in an inconsistency in the approach to area and volume, maybe the problem is my naive approach to calculating the surface area of the black hole, and maybe adopting an approach that includes higher dimensions would make it all cancel out to give unity instead of e^π. After all, the event horizon is in a sense not part of the universe: we can observe objects approaching it but never actually reaching it in all reference frames other than the reference frame of the event horizon itself, due to relativistic time dilation. It is misleading to think of the microstates of the black hole in the same way one thinks of the microstates of a thermodynamic system hypothetically contained within the event horizon in the same sense a ball contains air. The event horizon is the black hole. There is nothing beyond it. It is the end of time and edge of space. We are discussing the microstates of the event horizon itself, whose dimensionality transcends the observable universe.

But what's special about even dimensionality then? Apart from turning the argument of the gnarly gamma function in the expression for the volume of an n-dimensional unit sphere into an integer. "Collapsing tesseracts" in the movie Interstellar?

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking again about some ideas I had about finite state machines twenty years ago back when I was writing a master's dissertation on random number generation. My thinking then about the states of a finite state machine are equally applicable to the microstates of a black hole here, I think.

Let's consider a system which at any given time can be in one of a finite number of possible states, and makes a transition from one state to another as a consequence of an interaction with its surroundings corresponding to an exchange of information between the system and its surroundings: input and output. 

Let's imagine the possible transitions do not include all possible pairs of states though. Each state has a list of possible successor states which includes some, but not all, other states. The possible predecessor states are therefore similarly limited to some, but not all, other states.

All states may be equally accessible and equally probable over time, given a sufficiently long (random) sequence of transitions, satisfying the requirements of a macroscopic observable like entropy based on the total number of accessible, equally probable microstates of the system.  Crucially, however, the probability of an individual "eventual" state after a number of transitions depends on the initial state if the (random) sequence of transitions is not sufficiently long. (N.B. I am using the term "eventual" rather than "final" because I am reserving the term "final" for states from which the system cannot make a transition, states which are their own successor). This difference in probability is because not all states are possible successor (or predecessor) states of each other. Given an initial state, the list of possible eventual states only increases to include all states after a sufficient number of transitions.  Similarly, given the eventual state, the list of possible initial states with which the sequence of transitions commenced only includes all states for sufficiently long sequences of transitions.    

So we have one entropy, a macroscopic entropy, related to the number of states that are accessible to the system after a "sufficiently long" sequence of transitions, and we have another entropy, a sort of "incomplete" or "interim" entropy, related to the number of states that are accessible only after a sequence of transitions that is not "sufficiently long", that is, a number of states that is less than the total number of states reflected in the macroscopic, observable entropy. This still holds even if the system is in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings and the macroscopic entropy is constant.

We can consider a "forward" and a "backward" incomplete or interim entropy related to the number of possible eventual and initial states for each intermediate state. That is, we can calculate this incomplete entropy working backwards from some intermediate state to a list of possible initial states, or working forwards to a list of possible eventual states, for a given sequence of transitions. The forward and backward incomplete or interim entropies of intermediate states may not be equal because they arise from different lengths of sequences of transitions. That is, the intermediate state may be “closer” to one or other of the initial and eventual state in the sequence of transitions.

However, even when the lengths of the sequence through which the system transits before and after the intermediate state are the same, the incomplete entropies (backward and forward) might not be equal. We can think in general without reference to specific initial or eventual states. The incomplete entropy arising from the number of possible initial (forward) and eventual (backward) states will not be equal if states tend to have more successors than predecessors (or vice versa: fan-in versus fan-out). The number of possible eventual (or initial) states will not be the same except within sets of states connected by sequences of transitions such that the number of successor and predecessor states are the same. 

One can consider a "residual" entropy for each intermediate state related to the difference between these two incomplete entropies, which is zero for sufficiently long sequences as both tend to the same macroscopic value, but which is not zero for shorter sequences where the rate at which successive states acquire either predecessors or successors differ as the sequence of transitions in which they are embedded increases in length. The residual entropy of a state is zero for sufficiently long transition sequences, corresponding to observable macroscopic entropy, since the backward and forward incomplete entropies are "completed" and equal to the macroscopic entropy and so cancel. So the residual entropy is globally zero, but may be locally non-zero if individual states have different numbers of successor and predecessor states (and may also be locally zero).

There is a another thing to consider. The state of the system changes as a result of an interaction between the system and its surroundings in a way that is not unphysical. This is where we stop talking about mathematics and start talking about physics. This is where our experimental observations about how one thing depends on another, our data, are involved. The state changes as a result of an interaction with the surroundings in a way that involves an exchange of information to which we have access.

This consideration is important because this is the reason why we would consider finite transition sequences that are not sufficiently long to result in a macroscopic observable entropy in the first place (without having to impose some non-physical, artificial constraint on the system in order to do so). 

Each transition is associated with an exchange of information between the system and its surroundings. The specific nature of that information selects pairs of state between which a corresponding transition can be made, like the input of a finite state machine. That is, there is a finite number of transitions (less than the total number of possible transitions) with associated pairs of states, to which a given input corresponds. For a given information exchange, there is a number of candidate pairs of states between which the system can have made a transition. This list of pairs does not include all pairs between which transitions can be made. There is therefore a list of possible initial states which does not include all states.

A subsequent information exchange resulting in another transition reduces this list of possible initial states of the sequence further, since the possible initial states entail a list of possible successors, some of which are eliminated by the observation of the subsequent input and related restriction of the list of possible transitions in the same way as before. This proceeds until the sequence uniquely identifies the initial state.

The importance of this is that each state is uniquely identifiable entirely on the basis of the properties of the system itself. The states do not require arbitrary labels. The input (and output) sequences that make these properties manifest do not need to have any special properties. They can be finite random sequences in the way discussed by Kolmogorov and Chaitin. The precise "values" of the input (e.g. binary digits) do not matter. The only thing that matters about the label is its uniqueness, not the characters with which it is written. The process can be repeated with different random sequences and the uniqueness will persist, since it arises from properties of the system, not the input submitted to it. We do not require any "divine intervention" to differentiate between the states: we do not require an arbitrary injection of information to make the system understandable by the application of arbitrary state labels. The system is completely self-contained. 

These finite sequences that uniquely identify the states of the system, the state labels that are intrinsic to the system itself, are subject to the arguments above regarding residual entropy, by definition, since they are based on limitation of states addressed by a sequence of transitions to a number less than the total number of possible states. This is the reason why these considerations regarding residual entropy were entertained in the first place: as a way to describe a kind of "dynamics" which the states will exhibit in so far as they can be uniquely identified.

Which brings us back to black holes. Earlier I reserved the term "final state" for a special purpose. We can consider a black hole to represent a final state, one from which the system will never exit, one whose only successors are itself. This could, in this model, correspond to a single unitary final state, or a collection of states all of which are connected to each other, so that they are all possible successors of each other. As transitions occur between them, the list of possible initial states does not decrease as the list of successor states is unrestricted, and the process by which an initial state can be uniquely identified by an intrinsic state label is truncated before it is complete and reaches a conclusion. We cannot uniquely identify any states in this structure. All we can know is the residual entropy of eventual states up to a certain horizon of this structure. The dimensionality of the structure is infinite since the states are connected to themselves.    

The exchange of information which prompts the transitions is lossless, by which I mean physically they happen at the speed of light (with no information lost in directions transverse to the direction in which information is propagated to describe inequalities between the energy density of magnetic and electric fields, for example). The trajectories along which transitions progress from one state of the system to the next are null geodesics and  their statistical description assumes a geometrical interpretation. The thermodynamic characterisation of a black hole in terms of a surface area indicates the possibility of a statistical or combinatorial formulation of General Relativity that may allow us to build a bridge with quantum theory. We should relate the geometry of space-time to its information content rather than its matter-energy content.

However, if space-time geometry is to be considered in terms of the residual entropy of the states in which we observe the cosmos, we are faced with a paradox. The residual entropy is not observable to the system's surroundings, where only macroscopic entropies are manifested. The universe can only be observed from within, where residual entropies are manifested. To describe the universe requires us to be part of the universe, in accordance with the (final) Anthropic Principle. Our direct experience of the universe, and our ability to describe it at the most fundamental level on the basis of that experience, without resort to divine intervention or any other arbitrary sources of information beyond the content of the universe itself, vouchsafe its, and our, reality.

Battlestar Gadelica

Literal interpretation

In Matthew 4:19 the Master said
"Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,"
and straightaway the disciples put down their nets
and left their homes. He did not mean
raising from the sea the dead bodies
of those who left their homes in Syria
only to find they could not walk on water.

The far shore

I wrote this a long time ago, but it has acquired a sad topicality ...

The far shore

Given enough time, all things find their way to the beach.
Every fragment and splinter chipped and chiselled from us
by the prompt, implacable, urgent intrusions of the restless world
is robbed of its sharpness, and is rounded, smoothed, polished
and eventually deposited among the rock-still shingle.

The Universe does not find its demise in shimmering entropy
but in something altogether more strange: an eternal present
where past and future, life and death, memories and dreams
are folded together, and the needle-nosed oystercatcher
sews up the surf as it shuttles across oblivion's brink
stitching shut the day that holds these thoughts together
in me, upon this beach of ceaseless sound,
beneath the hottest sky.

Midday is a hammer blow of light. The threnodious lament
of distant distressed gulls is carried on hot azure wings
across the sun-shattered sapphire of the sky, glimpsed
through half shut eyes in the drowsing driftwood tangle
of my thoughts, while within my grasp a sand fly drones, 
the scope and snare of sense both intimate and cosmic
on this beach where I have escaped the city, fortress of ego,
and now dismiss my insistent hallucinations of selfhood
as I lie among my fellow flotsam.

A boy rejoices in the breaking waves at the water's edge
and my heart both leaps with him and breaks like the waves:
He has found the world, bright and alive, shares its delirium,
and I cannot find it with him, or for him, or share it with him.
The encounter must be his alone, and so my heart is spent
like the spume and passing spindrift. I feel my eventual absence
as keenly as his perfect presence and patrol that other edge
which shares this beach with the margin of his dream,
where, with every wave that breaks, life and death
indefinitely tuck each other away.

We know what we have to do now

We had no choice. We had to watch.

The policeman had to carry the little dead boy in the red t-shirt from the beach. He has to walk those steps forever now, long after that perfect little boy is buried out of reach. We had to watch.

A mother had to grieve, wishing she could melt into the sea to simply cease feeling her unendurable pain. Or if she drowned first, she had to die knowing she could no longer help her little boy in the red t-shirt, knowing she could not save him.

We had to watch, while they had to flee homes reduced to rubble and dungeons where the screaming never stops.

And we know what we have to do now.

We have to open our borders, our homes, our hearts, we have to overthrow frontiers and turn Europe into a map of the human heart. Our governments have failed us and it is up to us to assert our own humanity. We have to help the refugees, and if we can't, we have to help anyone in a position to help them. 

We have to take responsibility for the choices we make that create the conditions they suffered, for every drought and famine that triggers off a civil war that starts with the emissions from our society's tailpipes, for every bullet and bomb sold to keep our pension fund portfolios buoyant.

We have to hold our children close and cherish every second given to us to fill their lives with joy.

And the next time we visit the beach, we have no choice but to remember a little boy in a red t-shirt who will no longer raise his castles on the sand.

Thaidhcu nan Gaidheal / Gaelic Haiku

Haiku is a form of writing that provides an interesting test of language itself. Reading or attempting to write haiku presents problems unique to the language in which they are rendered. Haiku very effectively penetrate the expressive capacity of a language to reveal something of the limited nature of each.

And so in Europe we find that polite Romance languages and refined hybrids such English fail to replicate the directness delivered by Japanese, having been used as vehicles for diplomacy and evasion for centuries. In contrast, languages like Scots or Danish combine muscular engagement with a subject and ironic circumspection to create haiku that are formidable poetic outcomes English cannot reproduce. Nowhere does translation seem more inadequate.

I encountered a third scenario when attempting haiku in Gaelic.

At first I thought the language, sharpened and optimised by the passage of millenia into an instrument ideal for highly nuanced social interaction, with its array of prepositional pronouns and aversion to crude formulations of possession or attribution, allowing eloquence in praise and subtleties of expression of which English is incapable, would be one the sudden paradoxical realities of haiku might elude while it concerned itself with lyric pleasures and mythic introspections.

However, I found that, in Gaelic, three related haiku in succession could deliver a cumulative effect that exploits the unique characteristics of the language in a way a single haiku does not achieve. I present a couple of examples of these triple haiku below. 

Rionnagan soillear
torr smuirneanan ri cheile
creutairan le tlachd:

ged a tha i fliuch,
frasach fo cheò is ceò-bhraon,
dearrs mo rionnag fhathast.

Deoch kamikaze,
bainne neònach's daorachail:
bó chama-chasach

Bright stars, heaped particles,
sparks celebrating together,
delightful creatures:

even if it rains
with smirr beneath the mist and cloud,
my star still shines

as I swill my kamikaze drink!

A strange and intoxicating milk
from a bow-legged cow.

An talamh tràighte,
aonarach ás déidh uisge
fo baideal neòil

Na h-eoin sàmhach,
balbh mar beul falamh,
lag gun càil ás ùr,

pit tioram 's ìotach
gun facal mìorbhaileach
air bile gaoithe.

The drought-drained earth
yearning, aching after water
beneath battlements of cloud

The birds, quiet,
dumb like an empty mouth,
a hollow without anything new,

a vulva, parched and dry
missing the miraculous words
upon the lips of the wind.

There has been an unfortunate outbreak of anti-Gaelic sentiment in Scotland recently, with politicians and newspapers uncritically repeating demonstrable falsehoods to promote a rabble-rousing agenda that appeals to the basest instincts of intolerance among a monoglot mob hostile to Gaelic.

As a national community it is our responsibility and privilege to curate that portion of the world's cultural patrimony that has been transmitted to us by previous generations. This task falls to no-one else. While we rightly celebrate and participate in contributions to our continually evolving society that originate elsewhere, adopting and adapting them until they too become something we will transmit to future generations, we alone have a duty of care towards Gaelic culture on the world's behalf.

I hope my discussion here goes some way to encouraging understanding of the value of language beyond the merely utilitarian. Words do not just enable us to instruct and respond to colleagues, clients, and business partners. They equip us to say how we feel, and to know ourselves, using an apparatus that has been refined and improved through all of our ancestors encounters with success and failure alike, providing us with a literature that enriches us with their achievements. Our ecstasies and despondencies are not the first, nor will they be the last, and they find their utterance all the more easily for what went before.