I’m from Vancouver Canada but my mother is from Glasgow and I’ve always been around Scottish culture

I’m from Vancouver, Canada, but my mother is from Glasgow and I’ve always been around Scottish culture. By the age of 10 I’d learnt the Scottish fiddle and Highland dance. No one is musical in my family, so I don’t know where I got it from.
I did my undergraduate degree in folklore in Newfoundland and then, while helping out at a Scottish folk festival in Washington DC, I met Ian Russell who told me about the programme at Aberdeen. He’s now my supervisor at the Elphinstone Institute, the only research centre specialising in the vernacular culture of the North-east and North of Scotland.I started the MLitt last September. Ethnologists analyse the forces that shape cultural life, such as customs and oral tradition. We study the history and evolution of ethnology and folklore in relation to genres like oral stories, children’s games, sports, past times and food.There are two courses each semester, as well as research projects and exams.

I did one project on recent folk song compositions, including a Canadian song about leaving Scotland during the clearances of the mid 1800s. This was when crofters were moved off the land and many emigrated to Canada and Australia in search of a better life.My dissertation is on the role of traditional music in cultural policy. There are various guidelines being produced for preserving culture and traditions in Scotland, for example the level of training music tutors need before they can tutor, and how to get traditional music into schools.I’m just getting started on my research and I’ll need to dig through a lot of political jargon. The other people on the course are mainly Scots but there’s a music teacher from Taiwan who wants to compare traditional Gaelic and Taiwan traditions.North-east Scotland is known for its traditional singers and fiddlers, and there are lots of traditional sessions in pubs. I play in a pub once in a while and people are thrilled that I’m from so far away and I know the traditional tunes.The first tune I ever played was a lament because it was an easy one, now I know plenty of jigs and reels.

I like modern music too, especially U2 and Arcade Fire, a Canadian band which is on the CD player a lot where I live and which I’d never heard of until I came to Scotland.In the future I may work for Unesco. I want to bring more music to the world, to help traditional cultures develop and interact within contemporary society.Email: Caitlind1 aol . The total number of people sentenced in court has reached a 15-year high this year because of a surge in numbers of drivers being prosecuted. Motorists are being summoned before magistrates in record numbers to face charges of speeding, dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, not having insurance or road tax and seatbelt offences.
More than 1.5 million were jailed or fined by the courts in 2004, a rise of 4 per cent over the previous year and the highest total since the late 1980s.But because of increasing numbers of speed cameras and extra vigilance by police, 707,918 drivers were sentenced in 2004, a rise of 7 per cent on the previous year.That was in addition to the estimated 10 million offences dealt with by on-the-spot fines and another one million who are acquitted in court or whose prosecutions are dropped.Paul Watters, Head of Roads Policy at AA Motoring Trust, said: “I am surprised but pleased because many of these will be hardened offenders who may have been there before.”The only reason they go to court is if they have done something wrong. The motorist who does keep to the law – who pays road tax and parks legally should not be subsidising those who don’t.The RAC said the figures reflected a recent increase in fixed penalty notices.Paul Hodgson, a spokesman, said: “[One] reason is the massive increase we’ve seen in fixed penalty notices. We have lots more speed cameras, but huge numbers of motorists can’t seem to realise they can get fined for this [and] if they ignore the fine, they could end up in court.”We did a survey earlier this year in which we asked motorists if they speed Fifty-five per cent told us they do That was up on last year when we asked I think that equals more motorists getting caught. The huge increase in speed cameras hasn’t changed motorists’ behaviour when it comes to speeding.”"Certainly the Department for Transport has been cracking down on road tax evasion and recent national radio campaigns say this was the case.”A Home Office spokeswoman denied that motorists were being singled out as soft targets by the courts.She said: “There are more cars on the roads and there are more drivers.