celticman's blog

Apple’s quarterly returns $18 billion (around £12 billion) in three months from October to December 2014, selling 34 000 iPhones an hour, is pretty impressive especially when factoring in I don’t even have one. Nor do I have an iPad, AppleMac or neither will I purchase the much hyped Apple watch. So what took Apple to the top of the tree without me? Quite simply they make beautiful toys, but that is not enough. They market them as the must-have...

I stood up and cheered when we got drawn with Rangers in the League Cup. We’ve not played them for three years. We want to rub their noses in it. We’ve missed it (but only if we win). Chris Sutton is getting some stick for saying what many Rangers’ fans believe: Celtic could win playing with their men blindfolded. That’s true. We’ve got the best young players in Scotland. And in Liam Henderson we have the most exciting talent since Ian Durrant (...

This book is outdated. It was published before the crash and unravelling of high finance in 2008, but the bounce back of the increasingly wealthy has been so spectacular and complete it’s as if that event never happened. A more major shortcoming is Frank’s believe in the benefits of trickle-down economics. It’s worth repeating wealth flows at an increasing speed upwards and if the rising tide has lifted fewer boats during the Obama years, as one...

I’ve never heard of William Kowalski and I’m pretty sure he’ll never have heard of me. I followed this link http://williamkowalski.com/wp-content/themes/shoelace/ebooks/Writing_For... He gives advice for first-time novelists. You should follow it too. If something can make you laugh then its half way to being genius. Here it’s when his mentor, Jack Kunickzak, explained to a young Kowalski that while his shipmates went shipside to watch the...

The BBC commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, 70 years ago, the site of almost one million murdered, but also a symbol of the six million other Jews killed and hundreds of thousands others killed in a genocidal purge of the pure Aryan-Nazi race that took place in a ring of hundreds of other camps. As a Catholic the service itself was one I was familiar with. The solemn intonation, readings from extracts of Primo Levi, If This is a Man ...

It’s difficult to summarise a book that spans over 300 years, rich with knowledge and learning, which runs to over 600 pages. But it’s really quite simple. He who own the land owns the people. The Highland Clearances are an example of this. But Devine notes the Scots were always a nation on the move. Only Ireland and Norway have exported more of its people. But neither of these nations have done as well as the expatriate Scot abroad. Start...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1vhr I don’t watch many silent movies. I’m not as old as some people make out. The only time I watched silent movies when they were on the telly on a Saturday morning and there was nothing else on. And that’s going back a few years. I guess you could say I came to appreciate the genius of Harold Llloyd and Laurel and Hardy. Ok, Laurel and Hardy weren’t silent but they were geniuses. This is the kind of era in...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02dlcf3 Lots of folk may be asking why I’m watching Insane Fight Club when I live in Dalmuir and am living it. Well, quite simple. I went out to watch the Celtic game in the Horsie and we couldn’t watch the second half because the internet was buggered and it was a crap game. That’s the kinda insanity I’m forced to put up with and if I put insane before most of my actions it makes them looking slightly...

Being Scottish we take a perverse pride in the weather. It’s too cold. It’s too wet. It’s too sunny. And that’s just in a morning. Made in Scotland. It’ll never last is the common refrain. That’s just about right. We do however take a particular delight in snow. Kids love it, for ten minutes. Adults love to moan about the state of the roads. Everybody’s happy because they are unhappy. This week it’s meant to stay below zero. Ho. Ho. Ho. We say...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04yn2yq/the-superrich-and-us-episode-2 This is the second episode of Peretti’s investigation into the relationship between the super-rich and us – the other 99% of the population. He begins with a sobering statistic, but only if you’re drunk, eighty-five people own the equivalent of half the world’s population. I quite like that statistic. But it’s unfathomable by its sheer immensity. Sure you can divide...