I was looking for a link after BBC Scotland News ran a story this evening about [a] little bastard[s] who has/have graffitied Skara Brae, the neolithic village in Orkney - they should have their thick, ignorant arses kicked for desecrating my cultural heritage - but found this instead:

In the ‘milestones of history’ that mark the passage of time on the approach to prehistoric Skara Brae in the Orkney islands, at least one moment of human endeavour is missing.

Every year thousands of visitors walk a quarter of a mile and 5,000 years back through time along the signposted path from the tourist centre to the preserved Neolithic village built by farmers between 3,100 and 2,450BC.

Almost every small step for man records a moment of history, from the building of the Pyramids and the birth of Christ to Magna Carta and the Apollo moon landings - and that’s the problem.

Islanders have been surprised to hear that the Russian ambassador has contacted staff at the Historic Scotland site to plead for equal billing for the former Soviet Union’s own space-race triumphs. Alongside the 1969 moon landing, the Russians requested that the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth in 1961, should also be honoured.

Update on the graffiti story from the BBC:

Vandals have daubed graffiti on one of Scotland’s most historic sites in Orkney.

Staff at Skara Brae arrived at work on Tuesday to find graffiti scribbled on the walls of the Neolithic village.

…..

Police are keen to trace a group of visitors who are believed to have been travelling in a silver Hyundai.

Awfully sorry to swear again old chaps and chapesses but fuck it - this is just too fucking funny not to post a big bastard link to.

Laugh? — I nearly came like a Cardinal on reading this.

Welsh pays a visit to Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Khalid, the head of the counterterrorism department, a fine-featured man and a thoughtful chain-smoker. He smokes a brand called “Miami.” There are several telephones on his desk, and every few minutes one of them rings with loud Arab melodies.

Khalid is apparently very effective. He casually tells the story of a visit he received from a killer on the previous evening. It was the third attempt on his life, he says. This time the terrorists had sent a man with nine sticks of dynamite inside his vest, but the would-be assassin was apparently none too bright. He asked around for Khalid, who wasn’t home, but Khalid’s brother and father were and they heard the man outside. When the suicide bomber climbed across the garden wall and ran towards the house, Khalid’s brother shot him. Khalid shows pictures of the corpse, smiles, and says: “We will never allow these illiterates to govern our country.”

From a surprisingly upbeat Spiegel Online story about the surge.