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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird)

@rmbflk.bsky.social

150 followers 220 following 580 posts

Clyde built/Falklands anchored: freelance journalist/broadcaster, lawyer, legislative drafter, public policy consultant and tour guide - we multitask here!

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · Sep 6

According to an AI analysis of my posts on Another Site, I am "like a Swiss Army knife that's been left out in the Falklands' harsh weather - rusty, a bit dull, but still trying to be useful"
Not entirely unfair, but it's not just the Falklands weather that's harsh!

I will try to be useful here too

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 2h

And, yes, I am kicking myself for not referring to the booklets as “incredibly helpful and informative” at the time

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 2h

One for the teenagers, inspired by yesterday’s #FalklandsElection25 post

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 3h

I’m a sucker for Large Logo livery

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4h

And what if you use a salted bomb?

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4h

It may be that I have to remain outwith the UK after all

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4h

Would I be allowed back in with a Scottish Higher … and does Scottish Standard English even count for this purpose?

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4h

Would I be allowed back in with a Scottish Higher … and does Scottish Standard English even count for this purpose?

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 5h

I just about remember the tarumptara about the Electric Scots (5 hours from Glasgow to London!) and they are powerful and fast … but the funny thing is that, to me, the front end doesn’t look quite right: the styling of the 87 looks like a step *backward* from that of the 86

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 8h

At the time; it seemed like a harmless bit of patter and we all tittered … but, maybe (just maybe), it gave a glimpse into what was to come

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 8h

Each carriage on the train had a conductor who was also a sort of compère for the on-train entertainment
And he had a clearly well worn warm up routine:
“Is anyone from overseas? What about from California? New York? Washington DC? … Well, I’d like to welcome you all to the USA!”

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 8h

12 years ago today, I went to see the Grand Canyon (which I nearly didn’t get to do, because of a government shutdown)
I went there on the tourist railway: great fun - 5 Dairylea triangles for cheesiness
But one of my memories of that day feels now like it might have been a straw in the wind …

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 10h

“There’s a rat on mi pitch and what am I gonna do?”

A picture of a rat on a football pitch captioned Cardiff City defends pest control policy after rat halts Wales football match

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

I have an odd issue
The mobile data network in the Falklands is currently using an IP address that is triggering UK Online Safety Act alerts but still won’t let me into BBC Sounds
It feels like having neither the penny nor the bun!

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

#FalklandsElection25 is due to take place on 11 December and an information campaign has started with booklets available in the post office and a letter going to all registered voters explaining arrangements for voting in person (including mobile polling outside Stanley), by post and by proxy

Two piles of A5 booklets on a table in Stanley Post Office in the Falkland Islands
There is a pile of blue booklets: Candidate & Voter Handbook
There is also a pile of green booklets: Political System Guide Book

The photo also shows boxes of with membership forms for the General Employees’ Union and response forms for a separate public consultation exercise - it also shows the boxes for collecting completed forms

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

It reminds me that I really should do more of something I used to do Somewhere Else Online and give glimpses into the community here in the Falklands

We’re a few thousand people who have interesting lives in a place that has inconveniences, ways of dealing with them and compensations for them

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

A recently posted YT video about the Falklands from a creator I had respected is impeccably researched in some ways and downright lazy in others and reduces Falkland Islanders to a 2013 rally

“Everything is absolutely true except for the rare video for which you happen to have firsthand knowledge"

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

The funny thing was that I had my first riding lessons (at the age of 25, at a city farm on the Isle of Dogs) on a horse called Tulip
It’s a name that suggests fragrance and delicacy … and was attached to a (lovable) Ardennes mare 16 hands high and about 16 hands wide

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 1d

Yes Minister made real?
“Only in one paragraph on page 107!”
“I can take the hint”

Dan Neidle @danneidle.bsky.social · 1d

Today’s Times gives “urged” the entirely new meaning of “a lukewarm mention in the middle of a 66 page report”.

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 3d

I know that we use gender neutral language these days … but, somewhere in or around Sunderland, members of the Tribe of Toffs weep at an opportunity wasted in a Channel 5 documentary

John Kettley sitting on a sofa as a contributor to a Channel 5 documentary and captioned as a Weather Forecaster, not as a weatherman

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4d

I don’t think some of these people accept any more than one amendment and they probably wonder why it is called the Second Amendment

Reposted by Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird)

Sam Wollaston @samwollaston.bsky.social · 4d

👏👏 to the headline writer

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

You won’t believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists

www.theguardian.com

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Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 4d

Reporting at the Summary Court in Stanley and closing arguments included a reference to a lack of expert evidence as to the absorbency of the defendant’s trousers

(He was convicted of the more serious charge but cleared of causing criminal damage by urinating in the police cell while in custody)

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 5d

Not everyone still sniggers and some US Christians even prefer Bishop Lawrence’s teaching:

Bishop Lawrence knew better; he was J.P. Morgan's preacher, and of a Sunday he would look down at the assembled Wall Street tycoons in individually endowed pews and say,
"Godliness is in league with riches; it is only to the moral man that wealth comes. Material prosperity makes the nation sweeter, more joyous, more unselfish, more Christlike." Of course contemporary historians
snigger because that was what the boys in the endowed pews wanted to hear, Episcopal rites with a faint distillate of Calvinist salvation, Faith According to the Closing Quotations.

Taken from The Money Game by “Adam Smith” (George Goodman)

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 5d

That makes sense

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 5d

Court Martial is an episode that works well right to the end

Ronnie MB (Ronnie MacLennan Baird) @rmbflk.bsky.social · 5d

When I first saw it on Forces TV one sleepless night, I wondered what on earth I was watching … and then I got into it