daibhidc: (Default)
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In my nightmare vision of the future, it's celebrated by even more STV programmes about how haggis is made and how we invented tarmac.
daibhidc: (badscience)
Somehow, possibly connected to never reading the papers, I missed the "clone milk and beef" shock horror, despite the fact the farm in question is just down the road, until I heard The Now Show parodying the scare stories this evening.

But at one point, they played the Today programme's report, and I'm pretty sure[1] the newsreader said the clone-cows were "created with eggs from champion American cows and sperm from ordinary bulls".

Now, I realise that biology was my weakest subject when I took my National Certificate in Science, but surely if a cow is made with an egg from a mummy cow, and a sperm from a daddy cow, it's not a clone!

(Edit: After extensive further research [glancing at The Scotsman], it seems that the point is mummy cow was a clone. But the actual cow the milk came from still wasn't. It's not like mummy being a clone makes any difference[2] - which I suppose just highlights what a nonsense the scare stories were.)

[1]I'd check, but it's not on iPlayer yet, and I can't get the podcast to work.

[2]As far as I'm aware - I've not heard of any abnormalities in Dolly's lambs, anyway.

Aaargh!

Jun. 24th, 2010 06:44 pm
daibhidc: (Default)
Just spent a really frustrating hour trying to convince the new "improved" BBC Homepage that Inverness is actually part of the UK, and I'm rather more interested in Radio 4 and local weather than BBC Canada and English as a second language, before giving up in disgust.
daibhidc: (Default)
I know we're supposed to go on about the English not registering Scotland as a real place, but honestly, the Lallanders can be just as bad.

Glaswegian comedienne Susan Calman was on The News Quiz talking about (grr) D*nny Al*x*nd*r, and she said "No-one in Scotland has heard of him. Most Scottish people thought he was the new signing for Celtic."

I know it's an easy mistake to make but Glasgow != Scotland.
daibhidc: (Default)
This is interesting. I've noticed several online reactions I've seen to "The Time of Angels" mention that the BBC saw fit, due to complete insanity, to have an animated Graham Norton telling us that his Wizard Of Oz thing was on next during the cliffhanger, in case we'd missed the trailer immediately before DW, and the suspense of waiting two more minutes to find out what the next programme was killed us.

And I thought it was weird that I hadn't noticed this. I attributed it to having been distracted by explaining what was going on to my neice.

But I've just watched it again; we used our new Sky Plus box to record it for my sister, who was away on a course this weekend. And the reason I didn't notice it is it's not there.

I can only assume that this was due to a sudden bout of sanity at BBC Scotland.
daibhidc: (Default)
...with Labour's Moray candidate getting sacked for foul-mouthed tweets about the elderly, ethnic minorities, women, and other Labourites

Sheesh, what is it about Scottish politicians and their inability to grasp that if you put something on Twitter, the public can see it? At least Patrick Harvie (who tweeted about how dull his meal with Brown and Salmond was, during the meal) was just a bit ill-mannered...
daibhidc: (Default)
I've just got Spider-Man: 1602 #3. I enjoyed it (I'm a sucker for alternate versions of existing characters), but there was one part that had me staring at the page in disbelief.

Peter goes to see a theatrical troupe called "The Watsonnes of Scotland" (who, of course, include a red-haired daughter named Marion-Jane Watsonne). And for the first time, it's revealed he's Scottish[1]. And then the leader of the troupe says this:

"...My family has travelled a great way to entertain you from our small borough of Staffordshire."

Things wrong with this sentence, in ascending order of importance.

1) In Scotland, "borough" is spelt "burgh" (and pronounced "burra"), as in Edinburgh.

2)"Burgh" or "borough" refers to a town. Anything "shire" is a county. The Royal Burgh Of Inverness is in the county of Inverness-shire.

3)Staffordshire isn't in Scotland! It isn't even near Scotland. It's in the Midlands. Even when Scotland included a fair chunk of Northumbria, the border was nowhere near Staffordshire, and that was long before 1602.

Seriously, how hard is it to check these things?

(Then again, Mark Millar is actually Scottish, and he cheerfully had a caption in Ultimate X-Men read "Land's End, Scotland"...)

[1]This is fair enough - he kept quiet about it since he was apprenticed to a man working directly for Good Queen Bess. I'm less certain about the claim that "Parker" is a Scottish name (it isn't, although "Watson" is, as in George Watson's College), and that the reason he was going by "Parquagh" - which looks pseudo-Gaelic - was to cover this up.
daibhidc: (badscience)
So here's the details on the Sunday Post thing.
click here for long rant )
daibhidc: (Default)
Saw an interesting schools programme today, part of the BBC's "Scotland's History" thing. It was part one of a two-parter about the Jacobite rebellion. The idea is they show two opposing viewpoints. This week's, "Ye Jacobites By Name" is about the arrogant Italian "Young Pretender" making an ill-advised attempt at usurption. Next week's "Charlie is My Darling", is about the dashing Scottish "Bonnie Prince Charlie" boldy trying to reclaim his throne. They're presented by different people, and the opening scene had them bickering, with a neutral presenter trying to keep order.

The interesting bit was how outrageous I found this guy's opinions. I actually have a lot of sympathy for this view of the rebellion. (I live in Culloden; it's hard to have a romantic view of a mass grave on your doorstep.) But when this guy started going on (and on) about the Stuarts being Catholic, I started thinking he was one step away from wearing a bowler hat and playing a flute. When he finished by calling the Duke of Cumberland the true hero of the rebellion, I was literally tense with irritation.

Obviously, this was intentional, and at the end the neutral presenter did say "Wasn't the Duke of Cumberland called the Butcher?" But I was surprised at how far it went. I don't think the programme makers agree with him; quite the reverse, in fact[1]. So I'll be interested to see if next week's show makes the Jacobite presenter just as obviously prejudiced, or tones it down a bit.

[1] When your presenter wears a Union Flag tie, and says "even in Scotland - or as I prefer to call it, North Britain", the message is quite clear - if you're a patriotic Scot, you disagree with him.

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