Nicola Sturgeon with SNP Holyrood candidate Roza Salih. A photo of the two women was also used to illustrate Gerald Warner s comment piece. A FORMER top Tory advisor has been accused of making “basic mistakes” after he published an opinion piece which appears to include inaccurate quotes from the First Minister. In the article, Gerald Warner states that the Scottish public are “about to award a further four years of governance” to the SNP. The Holyrood parliamentary period is five years, having been extended by a 2020 Act of the Scottish Parliament. A former special advisor to Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth (below), Warner also attacks the SNP’s record on education in his article published today by Reaction.life, a London-based website chaired by Tory peer Robert Gascoyne-Cecin.
IT was 70 years ago today that one of the great mysteries of the 1950s was resolved, rather than solved, when the missing Stone of Destiny was recovered from the grounds of Arbroath Abbey. On Christmas Day, 1950, four young Scottish nationalists – Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Alan Stuart and Kay Matheson – pulled off a stunning coup that briefly electrified the world. I have called them the Stone Raiders, because they secreted themselves inside Westminster Abbey and removed the Stone in a plan that had first been thought of by stonemason and SNP councillor Bertie Gray, who had made a replica of the Stone as early as 1929.
The alarm was raised early on Boxing Day. Police patrol cars were ordered to be on the look-out for a Ford Anglia saloon, which was last seen at 5.15am; the car’s occupants were thought to be a man and a woman “said to have Scottish accents”. Hotels, boarding houses, and restaurants were searched by the CID. Road blocks were set up on the routes into Scotland. The authorities were determined the perpetrators should not escape from London. There had been warnings in the past that something like this might happen. And now it had. Seventy years on, the Stone of Destiny and its removal – or “liberation”, “theft”, “restoration”, whichever word you prefer – from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 has become one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Scotland’s constitutional affairs.
From the Northern Times, 25, 50 and 100 years ago By Caroline McMorran Published: 19:00, 06 March 2021
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From the newspaper of March 8, 1996
Historic Kildonan Church, centrepiece of some of the worst memories of last century s Sutherland Clearances, is to revert to estate owner Mr Edward Reeves of Suisgill, exercising his right of pre-emption as proprietor from the General Trustees of the Church of Scotland. The redundant church, which has not been used for several years, had attracted the interest of Helmsdale Heritage Society. Their council wished to preserve it for posterity along with the graveyard which contains the remains of the parish minister, father of the Clearances historian the Rev Donald Sage. Heritage Society chairman Mrs Mary Dudgeon confessed they were disappointed on learning the news of the acquisition.