Service with a SNARL at William Wallace Airport - The Scotsman

via thescotsman.scotsman.com

Great Huntigowk from the normally staid Scotsman newspaper. I went to University just behind the Wallace Monument. A nice spot. Not sure that the view would be that good, that often.
Ministers believe the complex, near Stirling, would give arriving visitors an unforgettable first view of Scotland, as planes swooped in over the Wallace Monument and Ochil Hills.
American tourists flying in from the west would also get a bird's-eye view of the site of the Battle of Bannockburn, where the English were defeated in 1314.
The SNP government plans to further maximise the patriotic potential of the development by naming the airport William Wallace International.
Ministers had considered calling it Sean Connery International, but dropped the idea because the film star's expatriate status might encourage more people to holiday abroad, rather than at home.
However, it is understood actor Mel Gibson has agreed to provide announcements for lifts in the terminal, which will include a welcome to "Braveheart country".
A new airport, equidistant from Scotland's two main cities, is seen as a better alternative to the current competition between Edinburgh and Glasgow airports. Officials are planning to push the sale of the two facilities and use the value of the land as seed funding for the construction of Wallace International.

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Up Yer Kilt Hugh Cheape from Mel Gibson and Me

Apparently all those Braveheart images of uncouth semi naked highlanders dashing into battle with their bagpipes and kilts is just romantic imagination. Well blaw me doon.

But contrary to popular belief, the great Highland bagpipe never led the Scottish clans into battle against the English, nor did kilted pipers carry them around the castles of Highland chieftains, playing laments to the fallen.

In fact, says a new history by a leading authority on the much-loved — and loathed — instrument, the Highland bagpipe was invented less than 200 years ago, primarily for urban audiences. And what's more, it was largely created using money from wealthy Scottish emigres living in London.

In a new book, Hugh Cheape, a leading Gaelic historian and expert piper, argues that the origins of the instrument have been confused by decades of mythology and deliberate invention; even, he hints, by deception.

Like most tartan regalia and the modern kilt, the great Highland bagpipe and many of its traditions were manufactured by the Scottish middle classes in the early 1800s in their romantic quest to rediscover their forgotten past.

Leave us alone with our Mel Gibson inspired delusional views of Scottish History Mr Cheape (great name for a Scotsman). Next you will be claiming that they were invented and imported from Pakistan.