Graham has rightly raised the question of 'freedom and individuality': this might not be the forum to comment-but all too often there is a contradiction innate in such an expression.

For they are rights which must be defended, and sometimes it is necessary to fight to enable such freedoms to persist. Be that fight of arms, words, even demonstrated and maintained by wearing the kilt. The joke being that on occasion to defend those freedoms, it is necessary to accept some limitation of them.

So always there is a struggle by some means or other to defend freedom: it might be with The Continental Line of 1777, the liberation of Kuwait a few years ago-or the suffragettes of Britain struggling to obtain female emancipation, maybe the Royal Navy in the first half of the 19thC trying to prevent the slave trade to the Americas. Possibly Houston's army of 1836 at San Jacinto. Sadly all too often that freedom is bought and paid for in blood.

But always by whatever means, freedom must be paid for.

James