Roy’s West End View.

Roy Beers writing about his take on various topics.

West End journalist Roy Beers’ recent career has involved working as a Glasgow-based senior news-features journalist writing for the wide array of UK publications fronted in Scotland by The Scotsman, Edinburgh Evening News and key regional titles The Falkirk Herald and Fife Free Press.

He has also written for numerous UK and regional licensed trade, dining and drinking publications and business magazines, and enjoys keeping tabs on events and developments of all kinds in the West End.

Roy’s West End View: The day when military terror came to a small Scots town

The Tranent Massacre by Andrew Hillhouse,

What happens when small people get caught up in big events My generation was never taught at school about the tragic events of the Lowland Scottish weavers’ doomed insurrection of 1820, and even the “Peterloo” massacre in Manchester in 1817 – despite Mike Leigh’s excellent film on the subject – is only vaguely recalled today. […]

Read the full article: Roy’s West End View: The day when military terror came to a small Scots town

Monday, September 5, 2022 | Filed under: Roy's West End View

Roy’s West End View: History is bunk …and it ends just outside London

mary rose ship

This is going to sound like a rant from an embittered nationalist who, like those wee terrier dogs that can’t resist a nip at any likely passing ankle, take offence at practically anything and sometimes nothing at all. But truth will out.  There I was, happily watching a BBC item about how a ship carrying […]

Read the full article: Roy’s West End View: History is bunk …and it ends just outside London

Tuesday, June 21, 2022 | Filed under: Pat's Home Page Blog, Roy's West End View, Writing

Roy Beers: Is there any sense in oor ain wee Scottish census?

scotland's census

Are you Trans?  What’s your religion, and do you by any chance speak, understand or write Gaelic …or auld Scots? To those whose immediate gut response to these and many other questions might be “mind your own business” the Scottish Government, whose national census was originally due for completion on May 1, has the definitive […]

Read the full article: Roy Beers: Is there any sense in oor ain wee Scottish census?

Saturday, April 30, 2022 | Filed under: Roy's West End View

Roy’s West End View: It’s time to end Lord Elgin’s wretched Game of Marbles

parthenon

Everyone has heard, if only vaguely, of the Elgin Marbles, and any mention of the subject typically resurrects ancient quips about “Greeks lost their marbles” or “what are the marbles doing in Elgin anyway” …etc. However after a Homeric historic wrangle that has bubbled away since the end of the Napoleonic Wars it could be […]

Read the full article: Roy’s West End View: It’s time to end Lord Elgin’s wretched Game of Marbles

Saturday, January 29, 2022 | Filed under: Pat's Home Page Blog, Roy's West End View

Roy’s West End View: Battered Boris savaged by top Scots true blues

Boris_Johnson_

(Image attribution: Think London, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons) There’s a memorable scene at the start of the epic movie Waterloo, starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon, where – with allied armies converging on Paris – the Emperor’s marshals gather to insist that he should resign. “I will NOT! I will NOT! I will […]

Read the full article: Roy’s West End View: Battered Boris savaged by top Scots true blues

Thursday, January 13, 2022 | Filed under: Pat's Home Page Blog, Roy's West End View

Is this ‘Black Bitch’ name ban really justified?

black bitch statue sm

Hundreds of people are reportedly seething this week at a move to erase the name “Black Bitch” from a popular Scottish bar. A UK pubs firm has decided the name of a historic bar should be “cleaned up” to avoid inadvertently giving offence, and many locals are far from happy. As detailed in a welter […]

Read the full article: Is this ‘Black Bitch’ name ban really justified?

Sunday, December 12, 2021 | Filed under: Pat's Home Page Blog, Roy's West End View

black bitch statue sm

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