Barcelona €3.25, Milan €5 peak, Berlin 5%; Prague under £2, Venice €5 tops, Paris €8 4*, less 3*....Edinburgh consults on more than any of them, much more....

Good to see the 200th anniversary of Hogg’s Confessions being celebrated in Scottish Gothic- British Association for Romantic Studies IASSL Association for Scottish Literature eventbrite.co.uk/e/devils-and-j… @Eventbrite

Terrific coverage for Museums in the Metaverse. A step ahead of anything else available is the user testing message & Neil McDonnell Pauline Mackay Maria Economou are great people to work with- Virtual Night at the Museum: A digital tour of Scotland's treasures mol.im/a/13776087 via Daily Mail Online

This was the best experience I’ve had in a museum ever! Plus, the best picture byline I’ve ever had…

Things we've known since the Enlightenment are apparently news New Scientist

Good thread from The Cottage in the Wildwood - another feature of the trials- implied here perhaps- was the status of certain witnesses as virtuous & truthful because of their age or position not what they said. Presuming a certain group always speaks the truth is a short route to injustice.

Looking forward to giving the Buchan 150 lecture for Centre for Scottish & Celtic Studies next March- more soon IASSL

Very pleasant visit to National Trust for Scotland Mackintosh@The Willow with Alanna MacTavish, Global Chief of Programmes UNICEF discussing-what else-the Jacobites and banking and investing for charities. Darren S. Layne

IN Yale University Press London📚 Scotland: the Global History (2022) I asked the question is 'making more things free a rational grounding for the challenging transition to an independent economic policy?' I thought I knew the answer; we all know it now. Moral ascendancy is not economic credibility

Very hard to know the constituency that the UK government is placating by ruling this out.

Great to speak to historian MP about his opposition to plans for a horse track at Bannockburn. "It’s a huge part of Stirling’s image and history. It's an essential heritage site and it’s remarkable that the council has done this." thenational.scot/news/24547868.…

Reading the 2nd ed. of this dynamic & innovative book Richard Susskind. One favourite sentence: ‘Readers may call us radical…but..when the average laptop has more processing power than all of humanity..it may be time for professionals to revisit some of their working practices’

Any political party should reflect on the fact that following pressure groups, especially when they are ‘forging ahead’ is the root of much inadequate policy & an investment in electoral defeat

For information 162000 students from Scotland are enrolled at Scottish HEIs on latest HESA figures & 13000 went to Eng, Wales & NI. Easy to look up.

Splendid event at St Cecilia’s last night sponsored by Arts and Humanities Research Council & SAHA as part of Royal Society of Edinburgh Curious Festival supported by Dunedin Consort with outstanding organization of great catering by Federica Simone- excellent catering & a full house

The best Comms team I have ever worked with, certainly. The envy of many of the well informed in the sector- as they have told me !

There isn’t any way I would encourage colleagues to apply for randomly awarded grants. If you can’t assess quality you shouldn’t be making judgements, and if you can’t make judgements you should be using data.

Looking forward to reading this William Dalrymple - reception so far is magnificent & sea has always been primary for large scale trade- still is. We don’t remember how horribly difficult land transport was & even with roads, how two dozen horses were needed for 800kg payload

‘The envy of the world’ on Friday, ‘broken’ by the weekend. Dear UK govt Comms, what is the line ?

I was pleased as co chair of SAHA to contribute to the UK Parliament Select Committee on Scottish Affairs Promoting Scotland Internationally report in 23. The economy, culture, education & trade networking are only a few areas where substate representation is important.