A Scotsman in Buckingham: April 2015

Wednesday 29 April 2015

Wednesday Thought 14 - Respect

Welcome Gentle Reader to today's second dose of worldly wisdom.

My grade 7 class have started their Respect unit so lets look at respect.

Click Here for the music

If we are not free, no one will respect us.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

Tecumseh

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Voltaire

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Bruce Lee

Respect is one of life's greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don't have that?

Marilyn Monroe

#brucelee #marilynmonroe #Voltaire #Goethe #Tecumseh #APJAbdulKalam #respect

Wednesday Thought 13- Luck and Bad Luck

Hey Gentle Readers, I cant believe that last week I forgot to do my usual Wednesday thought post. This means you will get 2 posts of thoughtful quotes today.

As this is number 13, I thought I would share peoples view on luck (Bad and Good)

Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.

Orson Welles

Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky.

Lee Trevino

Why do I always choose the shopping cart with the squeaky wheel? Is it my bad luck, or are all the carts dysfunctional?

Rachel Nichols

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Ernest Hemmingway

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

Benjamin Franklin

#benjaminfranklin #ernesthemmingway #franklindroosevelt #orsonwelles #leetrevino #rachelnichols

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Riga's Holocaust

On Monday I took my Grade 7 (12-13 years old) pupils on a visit to the Riga Ghetto Museum and the Biķernieku memorial.

The pupils, guided by Ms Olga Rinkus, heard the story of the Jews and other undesirable people who were imprisoned within the Riga Ghetto by the Nazi’s during World War 2. The class saw artefacts from the time and visited a house that has been faithfully reconstructed so that looks as it would have done in the 1940’s.

The pupils also saw a special exhibition remembering the Czech Jews who were transported to Riga for extermination. The image of the glowing cubes, hanging from the ceiling, each side with another face of a murdered human being was very moving and the children began to see the horror of the holocaust.

This was also evident when the pupils started looking at the long white walls marked with the names of all the people who lived and died in the ghetto. The scale of the brutality and inhumanity was also in their minds when they visited the Biķernieku memorial. The memorial which is built over the mass graves of around 30,000 people shot by the Nazi’s, proved quite chilling to the pupils. The beautiful weather made the visit all the more poignant by the surroundings.

One of the pupils said to me, “This place is incredible, it’s so quiet.”

The pupils placed stones on the altar and the grave markers as a sign of respect to those people that had died for their faith, and I would like to think that this visit will stay in their memories for a long time.

The inscription on the altar is from the Book of Job 16:18 and it says

“Earth, don't cover my blood. Let my cry have no place to rest.”

Hopefully the Grade 7 class have seen that all people, who hold onto their faith and dignity under extreme circumstances, deserve our respect.

#rigaghettomuseum #bikerniekumemorial #holocaust

Monday 27 April 2015

Top Cities to live in the World.

Hello Gentle Readers, I was doing some research for a Grade 7 Social Studies class today and came across these fun facts. The List below represents the Top 10 most livable cities in the world based on figures worked out by Mercer a company that surveys this kind of thing.

The survey is based on 39 separate variables including Political stability, wealth, crime statistics, education and many more. What do you think? Do you live in any of these cities?

1	Vienna	Austria
2	Zurich	Switzerland
3	Auckland	New Zealand
4	Munich	Germany
5	Vancouver	Canada
6	Dusseldorf	Germany
7	Frankfurt	Germany
8	Geneva	Switzerland
9	Copenhagen	Denmark
10	Sydney	Australia

Just for balance here are the 10 worst places to live using the same criteria.

221	Nouakchott	Mauritania
222	Conakry	Guinea
223	Kinshasa	Congo, Democratic Republic of
224	Brazzaville	Congo, Republic of
225	Sana'a	Yemen
226	N'Djamena	Chad
227	Khartoum	Sudan
228	Port au Prince	Haiti
229	Bangui	Central African Republic
230	Baghdad	Iraq

Just to be thorough the cities I have lived in came:

London 40th
Aberdeen 57th
Glasgow 55th
Riga 89th

#Vienna #Geneva #Zurich #Auckland #Munich #Vancouver #Dusseldorf #Frankfurt #Sydney #Copenhagen #London #Aberdeen #Glasgow #Riga #Baghdad #Bangui
#Port-au-Prince #Khartoum #N'Djamena #Sana'a #Brazzaville #Kinshasa #Conakry #Nouakchott

Saturday 25 April 2015

Boy Racers

I hate boy racers gentle reader.

If you dont know what they are they are silly early 20's males who drive too fast in built up areas of cities and towns playing drum and bass music too loudly.

Theres a perfect example on Gertrudes Iela in Riga just now.

Driving a ten year old plus BMW and doing u turns. Every now and then he parks to talk to his mates and he keeps the music playing at a deafening volume.

The occupants of the car are all drinking and one of them is pissing in the street. Fecking disgusting.

Today in History 25th April

As today is my Dad's birthday, I am going to present a special delve into the archives for you.

1599: Oliver Cromwell, English politician and future Lord Protector of England is born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.