I’m not long back from today’s Independence March and Rally, which I attended as an independence-leaning fence-sitter. I was with and we by chance met up with another mutual friend from Fife. I was most interested in the fellow-travellers on this band-wagon. Of these, I make out two kinds:

1. Firstly, people from other independence movements. I first noticed folk in Lederhosen carrying red and white flags – did they want independence from Austria? Er, no. It turns out that they wish South Tyrol to cease being part of Italy. What should happen next is unclear. Options include
   • South Tyrol being a completely independent country
   • South Tyrol uniting with ‘Austrian Tyrol‘ as part of Austria
   • South Tyrol uniting with ‘Austrian Tyrol’ as a bigger independent country. I think this would be problematic, partly because it would make Vorarlberg an exclave of Austria and partly because it would leave East Tyrol either in Austria or as an exclave of ‘Independent Tyrol’ – unless Austria released a suitable part of Salzburg Land to join up the bits. (According to wikipedia, Vorarlberg speaks allemanic German, while the rest of Austria speaks austro-bavarian German, and had considered joining Switzerland, so dissolving the western end of Austria might have some support.)

   No wonder they’ve not yet decided!

2. Political movements and fellow travellers: Labour for Independence, Scottish Socialists, Women for Independence, various groups who oppose nuclear weapons and membership of Nato.

The whole event was MCed by Hardeep Sign Kholi and Elaine C Smith. The speakers included Dennis Canavan – quite fiery, almost to the point of being scary – and Nicola Sturgeon, who was less scary, even if she did remind me slightly of Angela Merkel. Alex Salmond spoke last but by then and I had moved away from the stage and so couldn’t really make out what he was saying.

Most speeches seemed to me to be designed to stiffen the sinews – a call to go out and convert at least one other person to Yes. (The nearest I can honestly do is state why I lean towards Yes but freely admit that the solution I want is not currently on offer.) Because I didn’t want my sinews stiffened and I tend to react against fiery speeches, these were somewhat offputting.

However, the speeches were not as offputting as the music. Middle-of-the-road ballads do nothing for me, nor do twee ‘celtic’ things. There was some bagpipe rock, covering Teenage Kicks and One way or another, which was more appealing. I guess these are just part of the way of doing politics – they don’t add to or detract from the arguments, even if they do detract from enjoyment.

The worthwhile parts, for me, were seeing the strength of feeling, meeting new people, meeting up with and our mutual friend, enjoying walking through parts of Edinburgh and learning new stuff. And perhaps the most impressive thing for me was meeting a bloke riding a battered old racer on a turbo trainer at the top of Calton Hill. He plans to cycle from Rome to Glasgow (1700 miles) in 25 days to raise money for the Yes campaign. That’s just under 70 miles a day – it’s bloody ambitious!

To be fair, I suppose I now have to attend a ‘No’ event, even if it’s just to see how crap their music is.

Here’s some photos and propaganda. The latter is for information only – I do not necessarily agree with the organisations from which they come:

Arran banner!	Flanders folk	The mouse that might roar.
No to No!	Catalan fellow-travellers	Sardinian fellow-travellers
Big screen at the foot of Calton Hill	St Andrews House – gothic meets stalinist brutalism. However, the door staff are friendly.	Just a few of the 20,000. Note the Sicilian fellow-traveller
This Englishman says Yes	Venetian fellow-traveller?	Venetian fellow-travellers?

So how do I now feel?

• Independence is not my ideal. (That is a federal Great Britain, with decision-making moved to appropriate regional forms of government. The GB national government should only be able to make decisions on those matters which affect the whole of the contiguous land-mass and any other areas [such as Shetland, Orkney and the Western Isles] that choose to get involved. I don’t see any need for Northern Ireland being part of the UK because it’s part of another land-mass – but that’s up to them. Oh, and I want areas to be administrative units only, not ‘we’re the XYZ people, we’re special’ – because that is offensive rubbish.)
• If Scotland chooses independence, the only thing this guarantees is that more decisions will be taken in Holyrood.
• It does not guarantee that sensible decisions will be taken or that everything will be wonderful. Scotland would need to not elect bampots. Being Scottish does not automatically make a person better, just as being English doesn’t automatically make a person an effete arsehole.
• It does not guarantee permanently open borders. However, I don’t believe either country would be stupid enough to close its borders. Both sides have things the others want, so trade and porous borders are welcome. pointed out that England might want to close its northern border to prevent immigrants and refugees from other countries getting in, if it goes down a UKIP-ish/isolationist route.
• If Scotland retains the pound, it can’t be completely autonomous and may suffer from things rUK does to protect itself.
• It does not guarantee freedom from being affected by world events – but it does offer Scotland a chance to protect itself, especially if it gains control of its own currency. (Having said that, my heart prefers a world currency. But having said that, the European currency is a bit of a mess just now.)
• It does not guarantee freedom from stupidities such as the fugly, over-expensive and unnecessary Scottish Parliament building and the mess that Edinburgh’s tram project has become. (I like trams but not the expensive and incomplete way they have been implemented.)
• It does not guarantee that bus information will be free of contradiction and misinformation. (‘s bus zoomed past him on George Street, despite notices that it should have stopped there.)
• But what it does offer is a whole host of positive things from the fellow-travellers – removal of nuclear weapons, removal of the ‘bedroom tax’, renationalisation of the post office, positive choices about welfare and social matters, left-ish/green-ish politics promising to care for the poor and disadvantaged. Of course I understand that these are only what’s on offer today, that promises are frequently broken and that they are not guaranteed to carry on forever. However, I do believe that Ms Sturgeon and her fellow-speakers meant what they said, and that they have the cohones to make a few of them come true. I look forward to holding them to their promises!

There’s an interesting query – if I lean towards independence for Scotland, why am I so against the UK independence party? It’s not because of idiots such as Godfrey Bloom, although he does nothing for UKIP’s reputation. It’s not because the UK is 100% geographically part of Europe. If global warming continues, it’s going to be further and further from mainland Europe. It’s because UKIP seems to reject the idea of Europe working together via the EU and related bodies. The ideal of Europe, if I recall correctly, was best presented by Dennis Healey. Having seen at first hand what European wars could do, he preferred any mechanism that could help prevent them. So do I.

There’s a lot wrong with how Europe currently works, but in general EU-Europe hasn’t seen major wars since 1945. (I know that’s not actual proof and and I do recall the horror of the Yugoslavian melt-down.) While retaining control of its own currency might well be protecting the UK from the worst of the Euro-currency disaster, standing aloof from the common bonds of humanity that Europe represents is offensive and stupid of itself, and feels like the tip of the wedge of warmongering, racism and Nationlism spelt with a ‘z’ instead of a ‘t’.

The Scottish Independence movement doesn’t feel like that to me. For a start, Scotland is much smaller than rUK and so will lose any hot war, so no sane Scottish leader will do it. The Independence movement doesn’t seem to want to stand aloof from rUK, but to wish for autonomy to look after itself while being good neighbours across the Cheviots.

Both of the above are my perceptions and are not necessarily true, of course!

In summary, the fellow-travellers have attracted me more towards Yes but I will never be a died-in-the wool Independence supporter.

I’d quite like to read Damian McBride’s book. However he appears to be a loathsome creature to whom I wouldn’t wish to give a single penny. How might I buy the book and hence the printers, publishers and so on, without any of my money reaching Mr M?

I have mentioned that my dad now has an iPad mini. I held off getting it connected to the cellular interweb until dad had got to grips with the mini and the relatively seamless internet connection via domestic wifi. (Also, I’d done no research into data deals, partly because I’m lazy and partly because we didn’t know how much dad was likely to use the device away from home.)

However, he’s about to restart teaching a University of the Third Age German class. In these, it’s useful to follow links in Deutsche Welle as the classes progress. That needs internet access, and the classroom may not have wifi.

So I had a look at escapable, pay-as-you-go plans. 3 came top but O2 was a close second for his needs. Their customer service has been very good, in my experience. (I’m very sad that their home broadband is being assimilated by the Murdoch-borg.)

Just now, my dad has taken the mini to an O2 shop, picked up their 1GB/month deal, got the store to fit the SIM and left with it working. How do I know? I’ve just had a FaceTime conversation with him when he was on Worcester’s High Street! (I’d intended to make contact with him at home on his mac, to check out whether the mini had upgraded itself to iOS 7 but he answered the FaceTime call on the mini.)

Next step – decent headphones for the mini. Can anyone recommend bluetooth phones that use bone conduction rather than in-ear wotsits?

Meanwhile, contact while out and about is go!

I’m back in Servants’ Quarters, my bahookie slightly tingling, after doing the ‘challenge’ (47-mile) version of Pedal for Scotland. Here’s the cyclemeter data and map.

I had hoped to do the route in less than 3 hours 30 minutes (roughly 13·4 mph average speed), ideally less than 3 hours 15 minutes (roughly 14·5 mph) – I’d even fantacised about achieving less than 3 hours (faster than 15·7 mph). But this was not to be – I only did 11 miles in the first hour and my overall average speed was only 12·9 mph. Perhaps I should have kept a better eye on my speed but my gloves no longer work with the iPhone screen, and I’m also wary of running down the phone by powering up its display too much

I’m not sure why but I didn’t have any real push in my legs during the first hour. However, things got better after Airdrie (realising that I’d escaped the big city) and better still after the turn-off to Caldercruix, when I came to life a bit more. I am pleased that the distance felt almost trivial and that I didn’t need to stop except for traffic lights. However, I’m slightly disheartened that I was left choking on a 10-year-old roadent’s dust at Linlithgow. He was seriously impressive – I look forward to a Scottish road champion in the next few years. Ah well, at least I wasn’t overtaken by any Brompta this year.

So overall, I’m content with my performance, but next year I’m going to do the sportive (110 mile) version. I will be slow – I’m not a fast cyclist and I’ll be on a touring bike but finishing that will be an achievement I can be proud of.

(backdated to actual date and time)

I didn’t start recording until far too late on the way out. On the way back, I stopped to retrieve for a glove I’d dropped on the way to Cramond, so that time is poor.

A ⅓ scale, working model of an original Mac…based on a Raspberry Pi board running a 68K Mac emulator.

This was the first movie I took with my new bike camera – my cycle to Lifescycle on Wednesday evening.

I recommend downloading it to your local device: it’s 1·83 GB of AVI format – and will take about 14 minutes to download, because the upload speed from my web server is limited to domestic DSL upload speed (under 1Mb/s)

Still tired after the travel from hell:

I’ve just received a bike camera, which I attached to Lev Davidovich Bikestein’s top tube. There are some issues with the movies:

• the wind noise is very loud.
• For both journeys, the camera hung after 18:27, then started a new file dead on 20:00.

The movies are in .avi format. It’s probably best to right-click (PC) or control-click (mac) to download the movies to your own device.

*The fast bit down Cramond Road starts around 17:15.

In general, I’m not afraid of flying. I usually enjoy turbulence, and I almost always want to feel more acceleration during take-off. I enjoy watching the flaps working during landing and I award very notional points for landing smoothness and reduced time from landing to disembarking. Here endeth the enjoyable parts.

Last weekend (Friday 23rd – Sunday 25th), I was due to visit my parents – mostly to hand over my dad’s new iPad mini and coach him in using it. My flight was at 10:40, so I could arrive in Worcester in the early afternoon. This didn’t happen because I left the iPad in my cabin baggage, rather than putting it in the tray. My bag was taken out of the conveyor and fully searched, and then run over with a detector swab. It indicated that the iPad may have been in contact with materials potentially related to explosives. (I don’t trust this swabbing technique – a fresh swab cloth was not used for each bag that was checked, and the swab was allowed to sit on the counter.) The police then wanted a quiet word with me. All this delayed me so much that I missed my flight and ended up taking a much later one, so that I arrived in Worcester 6 hours late and down by £140. I didn’t sleep that night and so was in no good state to coach my dad the next day, and wasn’t in the best of conditions for meeting my brother’s partner’s son and his girlfriend for the first time on Saturday evening.

The return flight was little better. My 17:15 flight was cancelled. After a long time queuing, I was offered a choice between an 18:30 flight to Glasgow, with a free coach transfer to Edinburgh or a 20:30 flight to Edinburgh. I chose the Glasgow flight because that would have get me home sooner. But it didn’t. Firstly my bag was searched again. Them, when I’d escaped security, I saw that my Glasgow flight was delayed until 19:15. We eventually boarded around 19:30, then sat on the tarmac for another hour. I overheard that there had been an issue with the cargo hold. (The toilet seat was broken too.)

When we arrived at Glasgow, there was no-one staffing the airline’s desk, and there were about 20 people needing transferred to Edinburgh. I badly needed the toilet, so I asked a fellow victim to ensure they didn’t run off without me. But when I returned from the toilet, all the Edinburgh-bound people had gone. Fortunately, staff at the next desk told me where to go and I got to the coach just as it was preparing to leave. I got home well after 11pm, instead of around 7pm.

So in this instance, flying took far longer than travelling by train and turned out to be much more expensive. Adding this to the travails of taking bikes on aeroplanes makes me believe that flying has no advantages for travel to the Midlands. Even when it works, I have to travel much further to get to Edinburgh Airport (Haymarket station is 15 minutes’ walk away), spend an hour being searched and waiting, sit in a cramped seat, get charged extra for taking for more than a small bag, run the risk of someone else taking my bag from the carousel, then travel by train to Birmingham New Street, wait another hour, then finally travel another hour to Worcester. From now on, to visit Worcester I’ll go by train: 4 hours in relatively comfortable seating direct to New Street, and then another train to Worcester – or a pleasant 30-mile cycle.

Well I was in a much better mood before this evening’s spin – I’d got some stuff done for a change*. So I was ready to take on whatever Andy threw at us. And he threw true!

The first half was very similar to recent sessions but there was just a wee snippet of AD/DC (possibly Have a drink on me) to bounce it all up. It just few by – lots of jumps to Love will tear us apart***, runs and sprints to Personal Jesus, lots of time out of the saddle bouncing away. The bike worked well – easy to fine-tune and I think I got the resistance just about right.

A couple of minutes to recover and the second half started. I can’t remember most of the songs but the finale involved a climb and some sprints to ‘take this baby home!’ We came out dripping and pounds lighter. I know I was not all there – I was floating around Edinburgh’s roofs, taking in the sights and sounds. Elly, bless her, was wibbling in the basket-chair even though she wasn’t a basket-case. (She’d had a rotten day – I blame the government.) Even when I got home, I was spacy-drained and had difficulty co-ordinating a banana**** and my mouth.

Ah well, washing and dishes are done*****, tomorrow is planned, the high is tapering and my shoulder is still held together by sealing-wax and string. No more spinning until Tuesday or Wednesday (I’m going to visit my parents) unless I go here. It’ll give me something else to wibble about, if nothing else.

——————————————
*I’d ordered my mum’s birthday present, arranged for our printer to be repaired, chased up some stuff for my dad, done some over-due shopping, blogged about my regular cycle, had a massage and got my shoulder taped into control, made contact with our neighbour’s lawyer because the neighbour isn’t responding to emails or letters, arranged for a big photo to be framed, set up my macs to be visible from Napier’s 27″ iMacs in the Incubator** – and I’d done some possibly worthwhile work on my dissertation.

**Why aren’t these running Mountain Lion, I wonder? The software that supposedly reverts them to a pristine state doesn’t work properly, but that works in my favour, hurrah.

***Can you say Let’s dance to Joy Division?

****a fruit, not what you were thinking, you foul-minded person.

*****huge thanks to Elly for cooking!