ianmb

[ianmb @ianmb]

Five minute lunchtime wander from my desk to get this view today! #edinburgh

[ianmb @ianmb]

@AndyBurke_ @TEnglishSport Twice in the first half England were attacking the Scots line after a penalty when the England subs came out. There were almost interfering with play by coming up to the try line. Coincidence or more likely a deliberate tactic to put Scotland off. Should this be stopped?

[ianmb @ianmb]

That moment when Scotland beat England to win the Calcutta Cup as Flower of Scotland echoes around Murrayfield. #asone #6nations #rugby

[ianmb @ianmb]

@Scotlandteam Could easily be Townsend's last team selection. Don't get the 5/3 split and keeping the same back three as last week.

[ianmb @ianmb]

@TEnglishSport The decision to reappoint Everitt is going to cost Edinburgh a lot of revenue in cancelled season tickets and less game day ticket sales. Should have appointed Greg Laidlaw.

[ianmb @ianmb]

@EdinburghRugby @jimhamilton4 Thanks, was a good night, well worth attending. Greig Laidlaw making a good case to be the next coach. The pies an added bonus!

[Mercurius @Mercurius_Scot]

Happy New Year everyone.............

[Mercurius @Mercurius_Scot]

Merry Christmas everyone.

Here's to a truthful 2025..............

[Mercurius @Mercurius_Scot]

It's deadwood time. Time to evict. Time for a Scottish election.

[ianmb @ianmb]

Rush hour, busy streets and pavements, this is how a delivery is made to @StarbucksUK by @GrahamsDairy. So much for safe cycling infrastructure @DrScottArthurMP @Edinburgh_CC @cllrcammyday @CllrChasBooth #edinburgh

[Andy Schooler @SchoolerSport]

🥹 So, it all ends for Andy Murray next week.

🧵 Time for a thread, me thinks, starting with the point I'll probably remember most from his remarkable career - the Davis Cup clincher from 2015...

[ianmb @ianmb]

@PeterFinchGolf @RoyalTroonGC @TheOpen Light rain and a gentle breeze, looks decent to me.

[The Majority #ScrapHolyrood @themajorityscot]

Apparently, because we're Scottish we're supposed to not want England to win when playing other teams. Who made this rule? Because TV commentators annoy you? Turn it off then. Because 'the English' might 'go on' about a win? When you do exactly the same about your wins? 'It's a football rivalry!' But if this is the regressive behaviour football promotes, we'll continue to steer clear of it and choose the many sports where this 'banter' is somehow not an issue. These 'reasons' are based on stereotypes, false premises, and are selectively applied simply to justify casual Anglophobia.

Rather than being made to feel guilty about supporting their English friends, neighbours, family – parents, children, wives – and, in many, if not most, cases, their own ancestral heritage, a minority of football fans have amplified their Anglophobic banter to the point where the majority feels they cannot speak out against it. We were in a bar the other day and literally everyone was talking about TV commentators as though it was some kind of national pain. Yet we doubt they could give us more than a few examples. But try to speak out against it? No chance. That's groupthink and mental coercion.

The other day, we watched a video of two footballers. Despite being 'friends' and on the same local team, the English one said he'd support his friend whoever they were playing. The Scottish one wanted his English friend to lose when he played against other national teams. What kind of friendship is that? 'You're my friend but because I'm Scottish I think that you must lose'? It's sick.

It was not until that same Anglophobia was writ large on The National's front page that many people realised that maybe, just maybe, inciting other countries to 'revenge' based on stereotyping our neighbours is not acceptable. Some nationalists even tried to distance themselves from it; a bit rich when they promoted and profited from it for so long. They own it.

We often say that nationalism is just a symptom and that Scotland has to address the psychology that drives it. How did we become a country that allowed and justified this way of thinking, to the point where a newspaper felt it could safely put it on their front page? Are Scots really so much better, so much more enlightened, than The English, when we indulge in this kind of behaviour? Or do we really just have a massive inferiority complex that expresses itself in divisive behaviour and lazy justifications? That National cover was a mirror that showed us how spiritually ugly we are. That so many rejected it is at least a start. But the underlying groupthink remains.

French President Charles de Gaulle said 'patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first.' Wanting England to lose is tiresome and outdated nationalism and has no place in building a better Scotland.

All Scots have the right to reject crass groupthink and support our English friends, neighbours, collegaues, family and ancestors if they want to. IT'S NOT A CRIME. It doesn't make you any less Scottish. It's time to bin this nationalistic groupthink and tell the people promoting it to stop trying to guilt the rest of us into their Anglophobia. We'll support anyone we like and a group of narrow-minded bigots have no right to, and will not, make us feel bad about it.

[ianmb @ianmb]

Looks like England watched the wrong Scottish performance against Spain. https://t.co/cUOQzcaoqJ

[ianmb @ianmb]

@HumzaYousaf @robert1lefty Embarrassing from a former First Minister, you were never fit to lead Scotland.

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

.@wesstreeting, the UK's new Health Secretary, has indicated that he plans to make the temporary ban on puberty blockers permanent. This has made the usual suspects very angry. Streeting, they say, will have 'blood on his hands.' He will 'kill trans kids.' 1/10

[Mercurius @Mercurius_Scot]

Karma catches up with narcissistic political chameleon @nicolasturgeon
pronouns:- me/me, & now they/them

[ScotNatWatch @ScotNatWatch]

It’s finally here. If you’re pro-union, please, please:

🗳️ Don’t stay at home

🗳️ Don’t vote Reform in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (it’s a vote for the SNP)

🗳️ Vote for the best placed candidate to beat the SNP in your constituency

🙏 If we all do this, we can get close to #NatZero. Let’s get #SNPOUT

[The Royal Family @RoyalFamily]

Today, we remember the sacrifices made by all those involved in the D-Day landings.

On this day 80 years ago, more than 5,000 ships and landing craft delivered 150,000 troops to five beaches in Normandy. 4,440 Allied soldiers lost their lives on D-Day - the first day of Operation Overlord, which ultimately brought about the liberation of German-occupied Western Europe.

#DDay80

[BBC Sport @BBCSport]

A warrior, a legend and an inspiration.

Rob Burrow will be so, so missed.

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

An incredible letter written by a non-Jewish Scottish professor to his students who voted to boycott Israel

It's a response from Dr. Denis MacEoin to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli, in which they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime.

Denis is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and was a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here's his letter to the students.

TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel .

That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that
permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is
this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why
aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank.

On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.

In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid.

Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the
Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that
protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side.

Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and
that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin