Tag: United Kingdom

Fort Augustus Abbey School – The Real Loch Ness Monsters

Fort Augustus is reeling from news that it may be the unofficial “dirty old man” capital of the UK. Staggering accounts of the most serious child abuse allegedly committed over many years by Catholic clerics based at the school. This is a real and developing Loch Ness monster story that is far more horrifying than Nessie and has cast a terrible shadow.

“A BBC programme broadcast last week uncovered evidence of physical and sexual abuse at Fort Augustus Abbey School.

Police – who began investigating allegations of abuse last March – said they were liaising with law enforcement agencies in the UK and beyond.”

Read more about this appalling story which seems to get worse with each passing day. There is a lot more to come as  the church and police look back at records and files relating to allegations of abuse over the past 50 years. A promise has been given to publish details of these next year.

The BBC also broadcast a programme about this called: “Sins of the Fathers”.

Loch Ness Exhibition Boss Arrested & Charged by Police

The twilight zone has well and truly moved into this year’s silly season Drumnadrochit, Loch Ness with news breaking in the Scottish Daily Record newspaper and also in the Highlands Press & Journal that local Loch Ness exhibition owner Donald Skinner has been arrested and charged by police for allegedly stealing a rival museum’s advertising sign.

Veteran entrepreneur Mr Skinner, 70, reportedly denies the theft, stating that he wrote repeatedly to his neighbouring museum’s owners to complain that their sign was blocking his own requesting that it be moved. He alleges they they failed to respond and so he warned them that he would “take custody of their sign” if they continued to ignore his requests.

Upon being arrested, Mr. Skinner says he told police that he “hadn’t stolen the sign under Scottish law” – worth, he says, about £30  (35 euro) but “had custody of it”.

Police say the matter will be reported to the Procurator Fiscal, the legal office which determines whether and how to proceed with criminal cases in Scotland.

There seems to be some desperation amongst businesses as, according to official data (and the obviously visible dwindling footfall in the village) tourist numbers have plummeted. Earlier this month the Drumnadrochit Chamber of Commerce and Tourist Association circulated a letter from long established and highly respected boat skipper George Edwards who was highlighting his concerns that the museum that is now accusing Mr Skinner of theft was itself being very negative about Nessie our famous Loch Ness Monster in its exhibits (apart from dumping tourists straight into a Nessie gift shop as they exit).

Perhaps Drumnadrochit needs an outbreak of common sense but there are a lot of apparently bitter old monster debunkers around and Highland feuds aplenty) so it’s unlikely that peace will break out any time soon.

In the meantime the silent majority can only look on in despair as a childish war escalates, which the fragile tourist trade here needs like a hole in the head. Perhaps it would be better for younger hearts and minds to push the bitter looking and seemingly failed and washed up old big beasts and pseudo scientists aside and start actually and actively promoting Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster.

What do you want to see? Debunking info and “facts” from non-academically trained folk about plankton and old wooden fence posts or the mystery and magic of the unknown monster who lives in the enormous dark depths of mysterious Loch Ness?

 

Monster Geddon Hits Loch Ness Village

You could be forgiven for expecting to hear a PA speaker bellowing out “Good Morning Vietnam” from the village green as the four horsemen of the apocalypse bring Monster Geddon to the normally quiet Loch Ness side village of Drumnadrochit.

A Great Glen sized schism seems to have opened up between believers and naysayers over the existence of our beloved Nessie and the possible impact old museums and other places have on tourism to the area if they down play her existence.

“It’s like Channel 4’s ‘Homeland’ has come to our village. Normally normal sorts of people seem to be issuing fatwas and proclaiming they have the one and only Loch Ness Monster Truth & Orthodoxy viz-a-viz Nessie”, said Professor Kettle. “I seem to see Osama Bin Laden lookalikes all over the place and with past newspaper reports of Nessie wars involving Molatov Cocktails and other shenanigans one has to wonder what on earth is happening”.

“I know the sun has made a rare appearance and people can go silly season daft but it’s a fact that nobody has ever proved the Loch Ness Monster does not exist – certainly not non scientists and Loch Ness hobbyists”.

Dr Pott has seen a theme to the madness: “There are monstrous big beasts afoot and this looks a bit like some Loch Ness sleeper cells have suddenly received an Alien Pod mind signal spurring them to denounce anyone who says Nessie is:

a) a good thing and the monster should be pedalled and promoted as a cryptozoological prehistoric beast to an adoring public, or,

b) Nessie is just a plankton stuck to a floating gate post and she doesn’t really exist.

Unwary passers-by risk getting their heads shot off by either side if they venture onto the “forbidden lawns” (ref. Arthur Daley’s “manor” in “Minder”).

A spokesperson for the silent majority told us, “I know what I’ve seen and it wasn’t a old plank some joker tossed off Urquhart Castle”.

Loch Ness Monster village: Drumnadrochit’s civil war flames on

The truth really can be stranger than fiction. Open warfare seems to have broken out between villagers over the existence or otherwise of Nessie, The Loch Ness Monster. Oliver Cromwell & Rob Roy had nothing on all this!

The Inverness Courier and other newspapers have been reporting on the hostilities. Maybe it’s time for the Blue Berets of The United Nations Peace Keeping Force to move onto the village green!

Do you visit Loch Ness to look for our monster or do you really really want to travel here to see old museums about mud, mini eels and pseudo scientific research into how your eye might “interpret” a floating gate post?

To us it’s a no brainer, so rock on the incomparable “Nessieland” on the Beauly turn off in Drumnadrochit.