Backing Bella for 2014

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Bella Caledonia has been publishing since Autumn 2007 and now, as we enter the referendum year, it’s time to step-up our focus, our quality and our output. To do this we’re asking for your support, so next week launching a crowd-sourced funding appeal to back an editors post and a new monthly columnist.

Our new writer is George Rosie, one of the most experienced and best regarded investigative journalists of our time, who has previously worked on the renowned Sunday Times team as Scottish Affairs Correspondent and who wrote the acclaimed Diomhair programme for BBC Scotland.

Rosie has been a reporter, a writer, a broadcaster and a playwright. His documentary After Lockerbie won a BAFTA in 1998, and he has contributed to the Guardian, New Statesman, the Scotsman and the Herald, among others. His books include The British in Vietnam: How the Tweny-five year war began and Death’s Enemy: The Pilgrimage of Victor Frankenstein. A play, Carlucco and the Queen of Hearts, won several awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

His column for Bella launches later this month.

We want to raise £40,000 to begin to redress the balance of media bias and to play our part amongst the many great new platforms and voices that are beginning to be heard. This will got towards a full -time editorial post, to back George Rosie’s new column, to develop materials to promote the project (like 1000s of the poster above), and to three further editions of Closer, our print version.

We can’t hope to compete with the resources of the corporate media, and will remain a writers collective working mostly on a voluntary basis, but with your support we can build on what we’ve achieved and create a sustainable format for the year ahead. We think there’s space for critical thinking about the new Scotland that Bella Caledonia has tried to create.

This next twelve months is going to be crucial in breaking with Austerity Unionism and cutting through the distortion of the British media. We hope you’ll back Bella …

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  1. Chris Paton says:

    Delighted to hear George Rosie’s coming on board. I used to work with him at STV many moons ago, and never met a journo with more integrity. Can’t wait to read your contributions George!

  2. Rab says:

    12 months?
    Surely you mean 10 months

  3. bellacaledonia says:

    12. 10 months campaign, then a two month party.

  4. David McCann says:

    Great to hear George is coming aboard. His work on Diomhair is still being shown- the latest at the Scots Independent fringe at the SNP conference in Perth (2nd showing). I’d love to see an updated version in English. He has also been a friend to the Scottish Independence Convention, having given a very interesting talk at one of the meetings.

    1. jdmank says:

      can his first mission be to translate Diomhair into English?
      that would send the series viral in my opinion

      1. bellacaledonia says:

        Great idea

  5. Douglas says:

    Looking forward to hearing from George, and in response to the Bella banner on this page and the Patrick Geddes quote, here is Don Quixote to Sancho:

    “La libertad, Sancho, es uno de los mas preciosos dones que a los hombres dieron los cielos: con ella no puede igualarse los tesoros que encierre la tierra, ni el mar encubre; por la libertad, asi como la honra, se puede y se debe aventurar la vida”

    Or otherwise put:

    “Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts which the heavens ever gave man; neither all the treasures of the earth, nor which the sea covers, can ever equal it; for freedom, as for honour, one can and one should, venture life itself”.

    We don’t need anybody “to venture life itself”, but freedom is indeed a noble thing…

    1. Douglas says:

      By the way, the most beautiful line in world literature, for me, takes place when Sancho Panza goes to govern his island and the Duchess asks Don Quixote, who has been left without his faithful squire, why he is so sad, and he says:

      ” Es verdad que echo de menos a Sancho Panza….”

      “It’s true I miss Sancho Panza…”

      But this is all just havers…still, if Rick said it in “Casablanca” the roof would have come down and everybody would know the line.

  6. Douglas says:

    By the way Bella, my feeling is that the SNP are doing a great job with the numbers and some general strategy, but that a wee bit emotion wouldn’t go amiss in the campaign.

    We need to remind people that they are choosing to identify themselves with being British or Scottish, regardless of where they were born of course.

    I should fess up, I never understood why anybody want to confess to being British, but maybe that’s just me.

    English? Yes.

    British? No.

    That was only the name the big boys gave themselves when they decided to club together to go raiding the planet for other people’s treasure.

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