Most parents put a lot of thought into baby names, whether they choose to name a child after a family member, mentor, influential friend, or even their favourite celebrity. And, rightly so, it is a decision that deserves much consideration. Some choose a name based on how well it flows together with the middle and last name, while others choose them based on popularity. Some parents consider the meanings or etymology of names instead. Ideally, you can combine a couple of these deciding factors to find a name that will suit your baby.

In the last years, more and more people are branching out and seeking ethnic names that are prevalent in foreign countries. Parents want their children to grow up with a sense of unique individuality, and a strong and distinctive name is a great start. Such children grow up aware that they are singular and unique among others – beginning with their name.

Whether there are Hindu roots in your family lineage or you are simply drawn to unconventional and creative names, you can consider the name Kaushik. The origin of this name is referenced in an ancient Hindu text. In Hindu mythology, a saint named Vishvamitra was also referred to as Rishi Kaushik.

Vishvamitra (Rishi Kaushik), both saint and king, was the son of Gaadhi. He ruled the earth for thousands of years. The name was also a family name of a royal clan, while the Brahmins used the name to distinguish themselves as the descendants of the seven main sages. Kaushik was also the name given to the son of Kushika, an Indian Kshatriya legend.

Its roots in Indian legend and ancestry prove that Kaushik is a name associated with royalty, strength, leadership, and wisdom. For this reason, it is a common first name in places like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The name represents prosperity and strength for your little one and will instill a sense of respect for culture.

Additionally, giving your child an ethnic name – even if you are not of that ethnicity – is a fantastic way to expand his world. When he is older, you can explain to him the significance of the name Kaushik, as well as Rishi Kaushik’s role in Indian mythology. If you do have Indian roots, you will be introducing your child to his culture and helping him to maintain a part of his legacy.

If you simply chose the name for its cultural significance, you will be able to educate your child about a different culture. This can encourage him to explore other cultures of the world as well, causing him to be well rounded and teaching him to embrace diversity. Should you choose the name Kaushik for your baby, be sure to use a simpler middle name to balance it out. Kaushik Ali or Kaushik Tailor, for example, flows well together. When your little Kaushik Tailor grows up, he can be a strong man who accepts and respects other people and cultures – characteristics that began when you chose a name with a unique background.

The 111-foot excursion passenger steamship, which the Historic Boat Company Ltd (HBC) commissioned from Ferguson Ship Builders (FSL) in March 2003, continues to lie in ‘dry dock’, unfinished on the loch shore.

Spirit of the Tay “virtually” afloat – but only as an image of the camera artist…

James Duncan Millar, Chair of Kenmore and District Community Counci, wrote recently to HBC saying: “We wish you to know that the community is strongly behind the concept of the steamer and we wonder whether there is any pressure that we can bring to bear to assist either in ‘naming and shaming’ those who are not performing and processing your sea worthiness application or whether there is any other way we can help you.”

Doubts have been expressed by the vessel’s owners and by the licensing body Maritime Coastguard Authority (MCA), as to the safety of its unit link-ups. It was fabricated in sections at FSL’s Port Glasgow yard and transported to Dalerb on Loch Tay between 2003 and 2004 for welding and eventual outfitting.

But the MCA’s request that FSL carry out further radiographic testing of the welded joints in June, resulted in the x-rays only being produced for examination in late November. Meetings to address these concerns, which have been arranged over the past 6 months between the ship’s owners, the MCA in Aberdeen and FSL have all been cancelled awaiting this evidence. Meanwhile FSL has been in the national news seeking Scottish Executive funding support to underpin its commercial position while bidding for contracts against shipyards in other EC countries.

The company had originally promised that the fabrication of the Spirit’s five units would be completed by June 2003. Also that the final ‘slipping’ and handover of the vessel would happen by October of that year.

In fact, delivery of the ship’s mid sections, its bow and aft section was not made until two months later. By then the Historic Boat Company was having grave misgivings regarding the quality and standard of workmanship, and it refused delivery of the vessel’s stern section. Subsequent remedial work, which should have taken five weeks, eventually took three months and yet still requires attention.

Despite further verbal and written approaches by the owners seeking rectification of the shipbuilders’ workmanship at Loch Tay, FSL said that the hull construction was complete and that it was fit to be launched for outfitting.

It then removed its workforce and all their equipment from the temporary site in June 2004.

HBC says that its project is subject to the approval and licensing of MCA. Stringent fabrication testing, overseen by MCA, has resulted in some 100 X-rays, ultra soundings and various other tests being carried out.

These have confirmed the company’s growing worries regarding the integrity of the welding of the various sections, particularly the steam ship’s stern.
At the moment the empty shell sits forlornly on blocks on the temporary lochside site set up by FSL. This was recently flooded and there is a fear locally that, should further flooding occur, some of the supporting blocks may become dislodged.

Statement

Upon going to press, the HBC issued the following statement to Comment:

“We are a small, embryonic company, which has not benefited from direct or indirect funding of any kind. Consequently, as a result of this absurd David and Goliath situation, Fergusons have felt confident in their ability either to stonewall all approaches or to use every possible tactic to avoid their obligation to rectify these structural defects.

“The ‘Spirit of the Tay’ is now some 16 months behind schedule and, to date, FSL has continually obfuscated and refused to agree a rectification programme. In a further ‘own goal’ by FSL, as a result of this indefensible delay, our worst fears and concerns in other areas have now been realised, and a serious issue with the paintwork has now manifested itself.

“Questions need to be asked as to whether it is credible that our ‘steamer’ is the only vessel built by FSL in recent years to have suffered this fate.”

The statement continues:

“As responsible operators, the safety of the vessel, its passengers and its crew is our primary concern. Anyone who knowingly or wilfully endangers the public is open to criminal prosecution, a fact that seems to have escaped FSL.

“We wait in vain for someone with a grain of integrity within FSL to do the honourable thing and rectify these structural defects to the satisfaction of us their customers and, ultimately, the MCA.

“Alan Dunnet, Fergusons’ Chief Executive has orchestrated a campaign in the national press, supported by various MSPs/MPs, to secure Government contracts in preference to Polish yards in particular, on the basis of FSL’s superior quality and the promise of on-time, on-budget delivery!

“The supreme irony of this is that, regardless of price, had we not been patriotic enough to believe that the ‘Clyde Built’ tradition was alive and well in Port Glasgow, the ‘Spirit of the Tay’ would almost certainly have already been in service today – and that would be courtesy of a Polish yard.

“It was recently announced with much fanfare that the steamship ‘The Walter Scott’ owned by Scottish Water was to receive up to £2.5 million in grants to be totally rebuilt to a higher specification, together with what amounts to an operating subsidy of some £500,000 over 3 years. To date, the ‘Spirit of the Tay’ a major tourism project has received precisely ZERO funding of any kind.

“In an election year, Ministers and MSPs enthusiastically support the huge amounts of public money granted to ‘The Walter Scott’ on the premise that it is the only single screw steamer in Scotland, and they openly boast of their support for Ferguson Shipbuilders in particular.

“All we ask is that careful consideration is given to the implications of such misleading sound bites and that, in the interest of fair competition, candidates for Parliament demonstrate to their constituents that there is truly a level playing field.

“With this in mind, we would like to thank the army of ‘friends’ and supporters who have emailed, phoned and written to us with words of encouragement and support, many pointing out that tourism is the lifeblood of Highland Perthshire and that the ‘Spirit’ will be a tourist magnet.”

The Scheme’s Attraction

HBC’s partners plan to recreate the 1880s venture by the Earl of Breadalbane when a steamer, The Lady of the Lake, plied the loch and a section of railway to Killin was built to bring visitors to the area.
At the turn of the 19th century, visitors were able to travel from Glasgow to Killin by rail, cruise and lunch upon the loch and then travel to Aberfeldy Station by charabanc to catch a train back to Glasgow. The earl’s enterprise paid off, for soon two more vessels – and eventually a larger vessel – were added.

The 21st-century version will cost £750,000. It will accommodate trips for up to 250 passengers from Kenmore at the eastern end of Loch Tay during which a meal would be served in a Victorian-themed restaurant below deck.

A further plan of the company – to lay a section of steam railway which would take passengers to a pier at nearby Killin – would certainly attract steam enthusiasts to Highland Perthshire.

The first four of these are partial and are about religious observation which is considered an optional interest today. So only six actually concern social practice. Furthermore if our politicians are truly representative of the people then the one against adultery also seems to have fallen by the wayside, and modern economies depend for their success upon individual covetousness, so we’re down to four Commandments. No killing, no stealing, no false witnessing and honour your father and your mother. Add Christ’s exhortation to love thy neighbour as thyself and everything worth worrying about is pretty well covered.

Society is more complex than it was during the days of Moses so it might be going too far to abolish all laws save these five, but legislators should not feel it an achievement to enact a new law but rather feel a sense of shame, firstly because something is not going right if it requires a law to regulate it and secondly because it adds to the complication and expense of our lives. The perfect politician should be a mouse-like creature who lurks unseen in the national undergrowth, slaving to make the progress of our lives easier by flattening the social speed bumps that interfere with our journey. Unfortunately they often prefer to create bumps and bellow proudly from the rooftops about it.

This particular distress comes from hearing that the sale of swords is to be banned. It may be that louche elements in the central belt use the product of squashed beer cans from the Philippines to slit each other’s gizzards, but a blanket ban will do more than discourage these folk. I know several people who have laboured for years to learn the ancient art of sword-smithing and now make beautiful reproductions of broadswords etc which sell for many hundreds of pounds to Americans in search of their heritage and similar collectors. If an exception is not made for such cases I shall study hard to discover some significant difference in the policy of the political parties that will persuade me that my vote would be better placed in one box than another. Perhaps it is time to vote Tory. Of all the parties the Tories are the most mouse-like. Particularly in Scotland it is quite hard to discover whether they still exist at all.

I spent a bit of time transcribing a document the other day. It was a copy, written in 1845, of a document copied in 1820. The 1820 copy was a copy of another copy written in 1753. This copied an older document that was very difficult to read, so the copier said, of one that was written about 1715. This was not a copy at all but an original. Its author, as a boy, had talked to an old man who, as a boy, had read a Book that had been burnt in a fire in Meggernie Castle in about 1650.

So the thing I worked on was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy cobbled together from information provided by an old man who had read an original copy more than half a century earlier. Since the Book was the product of some fifteen generations of oral history and written in ‘Old Gallick or Celtick character’, I didn’t suppose that a copy here or there would make much difference to my copy.

Some of it is rollicking stuff and not, so far as I know, recorded elsewhere. The following paragraphs, for instance, tell the tale of the 80-year old chief of the Clan Donnachaidh going to the Court of King David II in 1355. It’s quite nice to imagine the route that his last journey must have taken and it also shows that banning swords is not the answer to unprovoked violence. There’s a good name for the baddie, too.

‘Duncan, desirous to have the whole or some part of his large possessions secured to him and his posterity by written rights from the Crown, repaired to Court which was then at Scone or at Perth. He had his enemies but it seems they could not prevail against his favour with the King. His business was finished of an evening, and next morning he was to pay his court and receive Charters from the King’s own hand.

‘Besides other occasional attendants he always had twelve chosen servants about his person but one of them was a traitor, Blair by name, who was bribed to destroy his master. This he actually accomplished for when Duncan was getting himself dressed in the morning for his appearance at Court, Blair with his fist struck a knife into the crown of his head, and then attempted to escape, but his master drove a chair at him which broke his back and Kenneth McGilivie, another of the servants, dispatched the traitor with a spear.

All this was hushed up for the time. Duncan immediately caused his head to be bound up with bandages and caps and went to Court. The King, observing his countenance as well as the tying up of his head, asked of him what was the matter and he answered that indeed the Gentlemen of the Court had made him sit up and drink more than was fit for a man of his age.

‘He received his papers and departed but had not gone far from court when his People were obliged to put him in a litter; his papers were laid under him, he ordered his men to carry him to Dull and not to slacken their speed whether he was dead or alive and, if he should die by the way, his body was not to be touched till his son Robert should arrive. Robert found the charters and buried his father at Dull where his grave is shown to this day as a rarity for its length.’