I was on an internet search engine checking which websites are linking to this one at the moment. I came across several sites that claim to monitor a site’s visitor traffic, search engine ranking, and all that other good stuff. Not a single one of them was anywhere close to accurate as regards this site. Big deal, you say. Well, it’s not a big deal at moment, but suppose to help cover the cost of registering and running this site I was prepared to carry some advertising. The first thing a potential advertiser would check would be how many visitors the site by got by going to one of these supposed monitoring sites. Now there’s even one monitoring operation claims this site gets one visitor a month. The interesting thing was that several of the sites offered to do an “audit” of the site for a couple of hundred pounds. I’m guessing that’s when they would discover the real visitor figures and number of incoming links, etc. So, basically, I have to give them a couple of hundred quid if I want them to tell the truth. Interesting. And while I'm being grumpy; what's this with making-up new words when we already have good existing ones. I read recently about a food being "healthful". What's wrong with "healthy". I once made up a word, but you won't find it in any dictionaries. I even got into print, in a column for the Shetland Times. I thought a word was needed for people who could work in both Imperial and Metric measurements. The word was bi-calibrate.

I was online checking for stories about the possible disbandment of one of the battalions of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and the fate of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, who are also facing the chop in the next round of ill-advised defence cuts. Anyway, one of the arguments for axing one of the Highland battalions is poor recruiting numbers in Scotland. But some of the stories I found state that the regiment has actually been beating its recruitment targets in recent years by something like 10%. I don’t know who to believe. I know the British Government tells lies. It lied in the 1970s about estimated oil reserves in the North Sea. If the true figure had come out, the Scots might have decided independence was financially viable. A look at prosperous Norway demonstrates that. The Norwegians have invested their oil royalties well. The London Government has not. And on top of that it has sold-out the Scottish fishing industry and who knows what else to its European Union “partners”. Whatever the United Kingdom got in exchange for selling-out Scottish fishermen, I have a feeling that the benefits of the deal were felt far south of the border. Which brings me to another set of interesting figures. The English media, which often claims to be “national” trots out on a daily basis some figures which purport to show that English tax-payers heavily subsidise the Scots. But there are also figures that calculate things differently and show that tax-payers living outside of London and the Home Counties actually subsidise those living in the already prosperous South-East of England.  Once again, I don’t know who to believe. There are lies, damned lies and Government figures. What those figures state depends on what the Westminster government wants to do at the time they are released.
On a happier note, it’s been decided that the colours of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers should be laid up at the regimental museum in Berwick upon Tweed. This is not only a vote of confidence in the museum but also the successful campaign to bring the flags to Berwick is a clear demonstration that the Scots do care about their regiments. Let’s just hope the museum’s landlords at old barracks complex in Berwick, English Heritage, take note.

I think it’s worth making the point again that destruction of one of the Royal Regiment of Scotland’s five regular battalions is a big mistake. The British Army is already too small for all the jobs it’s required to do. The RRoS may indeed have recruitment problems. But the answer isn’t to cut its numbers. The answer is to make the Army a decent career again. With wave after wave of redundancies in the past few years from the Army I’m not sure I’d be rushing to sign up. The Army doesn’t seem to be a good career choice these days – it’s down there at the bottom of the pile with deep coaling mining and print journalism.
The British Government has always had a bad record when it comes to supporting the Army. If it hadn’t been for the French in both World Wars, the tiny British Army would have overwhelmed by the first waves of Germans. We might not have time in the next war to equip and train a reasonably sized army before whoever the next Bad Guys turn out to be over-run us.
The rest of the British Army is wondering why the Scots are getting so uptight about the threat to the RRoS. “What’s so special about the Jocks,” many ask. “The English and Welsh infantry have been being amalgamated into super-sized regiments for the years and yet the Jocks have somehow survived. If the Scots really care, they should vote with their feet by joining up.” While at first sight these arguments have a lot of validity, they miss the fact that supplying good infantry is part of the Scottish national identity. Four out of 10 of the British Army infantry divisions which fought in NorthWest Europe in 1944 and 1945 were Scots. The Scots lost more men per head of population in the First World War than any of the other Home Countries and that was mainly because so many fought in the meat-grinder that is the infantry. But the Scots are not stupid, until the British Army is prepared to make infantryman a half-decent job choice, how can they be expected to join the RRoS?

Reports are that the British Government has backtracked on stripping the battalions of the Royal Regiment of Scotland of their historic names. In a weak sop to national and regimental pride, when the new regiment was formed in 2006 four of the five battalions were allowed to retain their old names in addition to their new battalion numbers. The exception was Royal Scots Borderers (1st Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland), which had been formed by the merger of  The Royal Scots and King’s Own Scottish Borders. The British Army would rather the present battalions were simply referred to as 1 SCOTS or 2 SCOTS, and so forth, and their historic identities forgotten. But the battalions have clung to their old identities, such as the Royal Highland Fusiliers, the Black Watch or the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and also to their distinctive coloured Tam o’ Shanter hackles. A forthcoming shake-up of the Army was expected to see the historic names being axed. That’s now supposedly off the table but it still looks as though one of the five battalions will be getting the chop. There’s talk that whichever battalion is disbanded, and that seems likely to be either the Highlanders (4 SCOTS) or the Argylls (5 SCOTS), its historic identity should be perpetuated by one of the Scotland’s two Territorial Army battalions. In view of the two most likely candidates for the chop, this will mean a change of identity for 51 Highland (7 SCOTS). That name was chosen to honour the 51st Highland Division which served with distinction in both World Wars. It also neatly avoided giving precedence to any of the Highland regiments based in its recruiting area. The proposed name change will alter that. I wonder how, say,  the Dundee-based Territorials, with their strong historic links to the Black Watch, will feel about becoming Argylls. The regional and historic name links are actually more relevant to the part-timers than they are to the regulars, many of whom have from sometime been assigned to the Scottish battalions almost regardless of home town. That’s not to say that individual regimental pride and tradition are not important when it comes to morale and efficiency, but the most important thing is the quality of a battalion’s present-day senior officers. Some battalions have had better luck than others in recent years when it comes to keeping things on an even keel. I can’t help feeling that Scotland’s infantry would not be in such a state of disarray if some of the senior officers had been less politician, Whitehall Warrior, and more soldier.

In 1927 the Scottish National War Memorial was opened at the highest point on Edinburgh Castle Rock. It honoured the approximately 150,000 Scottish dead from the First World War. Entry has always been free – and rightly so. That was no problem when entry to the whole castle complex was free but when an admission charge to castle was introduced things got a little trickier. Visitors to the memorial had to promise that they would not go to any other part of the complex. Until recently, that promise was good enough. Then some clown of a writer for a budget traveller guidebook revealed that it was possible to get into the whole castle complex for free by claiming to want to visit the war memorial. The pathetic people who took advantage of this changed everything. Now visitors to the Royal Mile area  who only wish to spend a few minutes at the memorial to remember their dead relatives are made to feel like suspected criminals. They are sent to the visitor centre at which they are required to sign a formal undertaking to go straight to the war memorial and return. Names, addresses and email addresses are requested. The visitor is required to wear a special tag around their neck which must be visible at all times. Their progress to and from the memorial is monitored by castle staff using walkie-talkies. The tag has to be returned to the visitor centre after the visit to the memorial and no doubt the time it has been checked-out for is noted. Now, I don’t blame the staff at the Castle for this sad state of affairs  - it would be harder to find a more helpful bunch of people at a major tourist attraction. Their trust was badly abused in past. No, the blame lies with the despicable smart-arses who decided to use the deaths of 150,000 Scots as a way of visiting a major tourist attraction for free. I’m just glad all those deaths were not in vain.