Keepers of the Quaich - masons in disguise?

Or maybe just masons?

I was unlucky enough to pick up a copy of their rag 'The Keeper', edited by grey-haired toff Roddy 'horny-handed son of toil' Martine. The mag is basically an industry love-in. Somewhere between Tatler and an upper-class version of 'Hello'. Pages are given to glossy photos of company CEOs, various aristo-types, rugger-bugger private-school graduates and the odd bit of upper-class fluff. There are fragments of the Gaelic tongue here and there but it comes across like some kind of ceremonial secret-language to which only the privileged have access, like Latin is for advocates, and not the still-very-much-alive tongue that is spoken by tens of thousands of Scots.

There's also pics of yachts, castles, a Lib-Dem Viscount (!!!) and various other grey-haired chinless types.

Enough to put you off your dram.

Evidence though that the rich will always ape the 'cool proles'. "Dè?" you say with a puzzled fizzog? Well, take a look at almost any menu in almost any top Scots' restaurant... haggis, shellfish of various types, cranachan, black pudding (usually from a suspiciously swine-free Stornoway), stovies and other items that were once the preserve of those who lived of the land and took what was immediately available to them. Even in the stinking closes of Auld Reekie, the great unwashed would live of claret and oysters - if you believe the evidence found by archaeologists in an 18th century midden.

Should the rich and industry high-heid-yins be allowed their private clubs? Let them do what they will but... i, for one, look forward to the day when distilleries are owned by their communities in much the same way as numerous crofting communities own their own land. Bear in mind that crofting as a concept is more or less the same age as most distilleries are - since their 'legal' conception anyway. Who would have envisaged two or three decades ago that the islanders of Gigha or Eigg and the crofters of Asainte or Bhaltos would own their own communities?

This aint communism or anarchism. It's just progress. Let ordinary Scots enjoy the fruits of their land as much as possible. Uisge-beatha was once made by the poor for the poor - to erase memories of warfare, to forget their days of toil, to celebrate weddings and to drink a 'deoch-shlàinte' to whatever deeds needed toasting. And, even if we're not as poor as we once were, it's still better that many benefit as opposed to just a privileged few.

Lets put the distilleries in the hands of the communities once more and lower these FCKN taxes!!!!