A couple of new links - June 2007

Just a couple of new links this time:

Granite City - Mark McDonald is a recently-elected SNP local government councillor in Aberdeen. I came across his blog a month or so before the recent elections, but then his blog went dormant for a while so I didn't add a link when I did my last links update. However, a recent post clarifies the reason for his silence, which is tragic. Very much a partisan political blog, but as with an earlier link to BellgroveBelle (a Glasgow local government recently-elected councillor for the same political party) I think it is useful to 'keep an eye on' what our new politcal masters are getting up to throughout the country (*).

Aberdeen Blogs - this is an aggregator for blogs in the Aberdeen area and the link has been added to the 'Aggregators' blogroll at the top of the left column, just above my regular 'Blogs you may like' blogroll. I noticed this in Granite City's blogroll and thought it would make a useful addition here, too, for those who may be interested in blogs from this corner of Scotland, specially as A Big Stick and a Small Carrot seems to have gone quiet of late, although I haven't come across any blog through the new aggregator so far which comes close to matching Garry's style and quality of writing in his heyday; however, one must work with what's available, I suppose.

(*) Later today I shall try and post a few photos I took this morning of what I can only describe as a 'rally' of schoolchildren (in aid of a children's hospice charity) singing and dancing on the cricket pitch in front of my apartment, presided over of course by our new Nairn Provost, SNP councillor Liz McDonald. I didn't get a close-up picture of her, but through my binoculars I saw she was wearing a black outfit today, which set off her chain of office nicely. However, the way the loudspeakers were set up led to a pronounced echo when she was making her short speech - it reminded me very much of the 'Angkor needs you' speech to the Cambodian proletariat in the paddy fields in one of the pretty harrowing segments of the film The Killing Fields; not, I hasten to add, that I intend to equate in any way the message being put across there with what our good Lady Provost was saying this morning, no indeedie no; a most unfortunate connotation, which I am sure was in no way intended by Laurie Fraser (the electrician and Independent councillor who always does this kind of thing in Nairn).