Who is the fairest of them all?
There's a princess. She has a stepmother. Her stepmother has a magic mirror that always tells the truth. Her stepmother is jealous of the princess, and seeks to get rid of her. You know this story, don't you? It's Snow White. It's a fairy story. We tell it to children.
But fairy stories are almost always dark stories, almost always intensely sexual stories, and if you strip away the saccharine sweetness with which the Victorians enrobed them, you find the darkest places of human psychology.
Saving the union? Maybe naw
This post is in response to Will Hutton's piece in today's Observer.
My first response to Will Hutton's piece today is to sigh wearily. He doesn't understand what he's writing about, and he doesn't want to understand. He — clearly — isn't interested As far as he's concerned, Scotland must stay in the union so that he can continue to wave his union jack and sing Rule Brittania with the rest of the braying mob at the last night of the proms.
Cattle on the hilltop
This piece is written in response to a video by Gareth Wyn Jones.
I'm not so unlike you, Gareth. I keep kye on this windy hilltop in Scotland. The alchemy of the grasses and the kye turns sunlight and rain into high quality protein. But is it efficient? And is it the best use of the land?
Rape, grouse, and the pathology of power
I got into a foolish Twitter dispute last night, and ended up saying something I fundamentally think to be true. People will say, and with good reason, 'oh, Simon's gone off on one again. He's mad, you know'. And, of course, it's true. I am insane. A really frustrating consequence of that is that sometimes my judgement is seriously wonky. But it also means I can say thing that other people are too sensible to say. Let's explore this idea.
Firstly, to roll back a little, I do not believe that anyone is irredeemable. 'Evil' is not a word that should be applied to people. And, I believe, usually, people who do evil things do so because evil has been done to them.
The Ranger's sword hilt
My blog posts are often somewhat geeky, but this one may just be the most bizarrely geeky ever.
Consider the Dungeons and Dragons character class, the Ranger. The class is (in my opinion) essentially based on Aragorn of the Dunedain from the Lord of the Rings. The ranger is an often solitary wanderer of wilderness areas, away from inhabited areas for weeks at a time. Therefore, everything which the Ranger carries must be strictly necessary; they will have to make compromises to keep their entire pack light enough to manage. The ranger is skilled at observation and tracking, but also at concealment and at moving quietly. Consequently, when faced with potential opponents they cannot beat, the ranger will probably remain in concealment and avoid conflict. The potential opponents in the wilderness are likely, in any case, also to be travelling light; the chances of meeting a heavily armoured opponent are slim.