Duncan Harley

‘This morning the American Ambassador in Moscow handed the Russian Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by three o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from the Baltic States, then a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you that no such understanding has been received and that consequently this country is at war with Russia. ’ Far-fetched perhaps but a not untimely reminder of the cost of appeasement. Trumps conciliatory rhetoric ‘Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing’ exposes us all, both in Europe and world-wide, to the reality that the man at the helm is quite out of his depth and indeed possibly quite out of control. He appears to understand dollars and roubles but is maybe slightly lacking in the diplomacy department. An avid watcher of television, he has no doubt watched the old hoary documentaries depicting the so-called Munich agreement between the leaders of Germany and the U...

On the day that Aberdeen International Airport saw a Trump plane land on the tarmac to disgorge some retinue along with a rumoured son called Eric, I finally realised that Air Force One is too large to land anywhere in Scotland. In fact, try as he might, the half-German half-Scottish golf-magnate will thankfully be prevented by his presidential status from stopping off unannounced at Aberdeen for a round of golf. The big bosses at Aberdeen Airport must have foreseen this. Calls for runway expansion at Heathrow have made headlines over the past decade and the, perhaps outdated notion of a UK air-hub, has in consequence made the southern counties once more vulnerable to conquest from overseas. Not so in the Shire however where anything bigger than an Airbus needs flaps down, brakes full-on and reverse thrust to avoid running out of tarmac and smacking right into Dyce caravan site. Of course, Gatwick should have been the landing-field of choice for the presidential minde...

The news that Police Scotland are to divert some 5k officers and around £5m in public money to enhance the northern portion of the visit of the 45 th President of the United States is reverberating around Scotland-shire at the minute. It’s almost as though the presidential threat to ‘take tee with the Queen’ at Balmoral’s private golf course has led the, possibly hubristic, golf-magnate to imagine that the land of his mother will welcome what some unkind folk describe as a bullying entrepreneur to the northern outposts of the Roman empire. The Donald, of course, has choices. He can hide behind the Antonine Wall and play at Turnberry. Or, in a fit of pants, he can head north to the coastal links at Balmeddie. Either way, Scotland’s pseudo-Mexicans plan to give him a Mexican wave or two. Mind you, it’s not all cringeworthy. Golf of course is a great leveller.  The golf course at Cruden Bay is situated twenty-three miles north of Aberdeen, ten miles South of Peterhead and ar...