1720 – The South Sea Bubble This was, in its time the largest financial Ponzi Scheme ever created and it involved almost all of Englands’ Peers of the realm, politicians and their toadies who were hell-bent on gathering money to themselves at the expense of the public. In 1720, in […]
General Wade Walpole and the Whigs The Whigs fared badly at the 1724/5 election and lost many supporters but Cock-a-hoop with their malt tax victory Walpoles new government put the boot in and forced more commodity taxes on Scotland. An increased Scottish presence at Westminster counted for nothing since with a […]
The Rise of the Whigs and Sir Robert Walpole With German “Geordie”, preferring to remain in Germany the newly created United Kingdom was governed by proxy. The shift of power transferred from the monarch to a council of ministers comprised of Conservatives and Whigs. The Whigs proved to be the […]
Opening narrative In part one I outlined events from the introduction of the two crowns through to the period up to the imposition on Scots, by the English, of the 1707 Treaty of Union. In the early part of the century, the English first tried to woo Scotland into entering an arrangement which would lead […]
Opening Narrative 2017 – Catalonia and Spain Catalonia is a semi-autonomous region in North-East Spain with a distinct history dating back almost 1,000 years. The wealthy region has about 7.5 million people, with their own language, parliament, flag and anthem. It also has its own police force and controls some […]
The Scottish Borders Council The appalling record of the Tory Councillors in control of the Borders Council from 2007-2012 (see part 3) convinced the electorate of the urgent need to remove the Tory party from office. After the 2012 election, the Scottish National Party formed a coalition with the support […]
The Scottish Borders: A region without railway stations By 1849, the North British Railway Company had opened a stretch of its Waverley Line from Edinburgh to Hawick and later extended it to Carlisle. Rail routes quickly expanded crisscrossing the region like veins in the human body. By the end of the 19th […]
A Ballantyne up a tree!!! The Ballantyne Family Neil and Michelle should be proud of their achievements, raising four very physically fit, handsome young men and two beautiful young ladies and twinning this with developing a new business totally foreign to anything they had done before. All of their children […]
The Ballantynes of Selkirk Michelle Lorraine Ballantyne (nee Cross), b1960 in Surrey, England. Her father, Michael Ronald Cross, b1938, owns property in Twickenham, value around £1.5m, where he lives with his wife Dr. Francis Maria Cross She married Captain Neil Ballantyne, b1960, in 1983. Neil served with the […]
Daily Telegraph 19 Oct 2019 Letters to the editor SIR – We represent businesses, large and small, across the United Kingdom. We have one simple message for the Prime Minister on Brexit: no more delay. This rank uncertainty is crippling British business and it cannot continue. Britain must leave […]
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