It dates back to1885 and started out as a fund to help military families at home while the Second Expeditionary Force set sail for Egypt. Major James Gildea wrote a letter appealing for money and a fund was set up to provide allowances.

WHETHER through shrewd planning, good fortune or a bit of both, Edinburgh managed to complete the bulk of their business for next season before rugby came grinding to a halt. When precisely play resumes is, of course, unknown and out of their control, but they are at least confident that they will be in good shape to hit the ground running.

DAVE Rennie believes that Leinster deserve to be awarded the PRO14 title, and is convinced that such a solution would be better for player welfare and the integrity of the competition than dragging this season on into late summer or autumn.

SCOTLAND’S workers could stay put in rural communities in the post-lockdown world - boosting countryside economies and cutting commuter traffic, a Holyrood cabinet secretary has suggested.

It is a tiny spit of land that lies in the Firth of Clyde two miles off the coast of Troon where colonies of seabirds have made their homes for centuries.

For many people, lockdown has meant looking for joy in the natural world around us.

Celtic Connections

Celtic Connections

Celtic Connections

The Celtic Connections roots and traditional music festival recorded 100,000 visits this January.

WHEN Malian quartet Songhoy Blues performed at last year's Celtic Connections, audiences were treated to a form of music appealingly dubbed “desert blues”. A user-friendly term, it sounds like it could have been dreamed up by a marketing agency and applied equally well to a perfume, a brand of jeans or a chain of upmarket Tex-Mex restaurants.

FOR decades, both Celtic and Rangers have dominated the national conversation when it comes to football in Scotland. The vast majority of issues seem to revolve around the two Glasgow clubs and, predictably, the issue of how to conclude the Premiership campaign has been boiled down to whether or not Celtic should be crowned champions if – as is looking increasingly likely – the 2019/20 campaign is unable to be played to a finish.

Rangers make Glasgow? Well, they certainly make it interesting.

THE most important lesson in life is to always travel in hope rather than expectation. That way the almost inevitable disappointment that follows isn’t quite as crushing. A cheery thought for these troubled times.

The great North-South divide in rugby was never more in evidence than when the votes were counted for the chairmanship of World Rugby last week. Sir Bill Beaumont stayed in the job, beating Agustin Pichot by 28 votes to 23, but wow, what an outcome in terms of who actually supported the former England and British Lions captain.

WOULD you still celebrate a cup final win for your team if you knew for absolute certain the game had been rigged?

SO, is it a smoking gun after all? Or is it just a damp water pistol?

I TOOK a bottle of Cot home the other day to share with a friend and his reaction got me thinking about the subject matter for this week's column, so here’s to wines and blends you may not have come across.

IT’S almost time for the last supper. Though not quite. Another 24 hours will have to pass before the concluding morsel is munched, the final nibble on the edge of no more. After that, a little part of Scotland’s living history will die.

Zinfandel Gastro Bar

Temaki

The 2019 iPad mini with Wi-Fi and 256GB of storage normally sells for $549, but is available on Amazon right now for just $519. That's the lowest it's ever been on the site.

The latest iPad Pro featuring 1TB of storage and cellular connectivity is on sale at Amazon for just $1,299.99. Models with less storage and just Wi-Fi are also marked down.

For a limited time, the 7-inch Fire 7 Kids Edition is $40 off while the 8- and 10-inch models are both $50 off. These tablets make a great gift for 3-to-12-year olds.

Dell's Latitude 7220 Rugged Extreme Tablet lives up to its name by laughing at drops, splashes, and temperatures that would blow the average slate to smithereens. It's ideal for first responders and factory floors.

Strife of Brian

Flat out

Rocket man

WELL that didn’t take long. Scotland’s latest experiment in direct democracy was all but killed off this week, barely two months after Nicola Sturgeon announced it.

Obi-Moran Kenobi

Uniformly bad

In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.

Shortly before the second general election of 1974, the late John P Mackintosh attempted to explain the rise of the Scottish National Party to a predominantly left-wing (and English) audience in an essay for the New Statesman.

A few days after a majority of Britons backed Brexit in June 2016, this newspaper reported that Nicola Sturgeon had been in talks with London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo.

“Scotland”, declared a young Alex Salmond in May 1975, “knows from bitter experience what treatment is in store for a powerless region of a common market.”

Today in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister will explain her decision to authorise airstrikes against Syria alongside France and the United States.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an “in conversation” event with the American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild at Harvard University.

Belle Robertson has played just one round of golf this year. She’ll double that tally with another today.

What do professional golfers do in this coronavirus-induced hiatus?

In this country, where the dank, grim days of winter are as short as a resigned sigh, the onset of some decent, dry spring weather doesn’t half raise the morale. Well, it would if the coronavirus wasn’t lurking all over the parish.

IF you’re under 40, or as I like to call it these days, "pre-arthritis", you probably won’t remember the dark days of malbec when you had a 50-50 chance of opening something that would be as rough as sandpaper.

Chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Karen Betts explains why she thinks the Scottish 'water of life' is so special.

CHRISTMAS is coming, the goose is getting fat and there's no wine as flexible with the varied foods of the season than rioja, so let’s take a seasonal look at our favourite Spaniard.

IF you’re anything like me, these weird alcohol-free January fads are to be avoided so let's raise a glass to a guilt-free month and kick it off with a look at something clean and refreshing to wash the season of excess away.

IT only seems like yesterday that we were in the season to be jolly and, all of a sudden, romance is in the air. Before we know it, we’ll all be rolling eggs down a hill but, in the meantime, I guess we should take a look at rose, the wines of love.

WEEK two of the lockdown and I don't know about you, but I’m feeling a bit playful, so how about instead of a boring old wine column, we take a look at a drink that can be fun for all the family?

While lockdown has seen some people turn to DIY, it doesn't all have to be on the home or garden.

SNP MP Steven Bonnar has apologised after a heated altercation with a neighbour.

YOU could call it state-sponsored sanctimony. In times of crisis or national emergency we’re all urged to pull in the same direction and put partisan politics behind us. How dare you talk about inequality and the plight of the disadvantaged at a time like this? Those who tend to be loudest in rebuking these social pariahs are often those who stand to benefit most from any suspension of scrutiny.

The Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PennTAP) at Penn State is looking for undergraduate entrepreneurs from any Penn State campus to compete in the 2020 Inc.U Competition. Six finalist teams will earn a spot on “The Investment,” a production of WPSU-TV, giving them a chance to pitch their company for a share of $30,000 in funding. The 2020 Inc.U Competition submission deadline is Feb. 7.