A spoil tip (also called a boney pile , culm bank , gob pile , waste tip or bing ) is a pile built of accumulated spoil – waste material removed during mining . Spoil tips are not formed of slag , but in some areas, such as England and Wales , they are referred to as slag heaps . In Scotland the word bing is used. In North American English the term is mine dump or mine waste dump .
145-502: Livingston ( Scots : Leivinstoun , Scottish Gaelic : Baile Dhunlèibhe ) is the largest town in West Lothian , Scotland . Designated in 1962, it is the fourth post-war new town to be built in Scotland. Taking its name from a village of the same name incorporated into the new town , it was originally developed in the then-counties of Midlothian and West Lothian along the banks of
290-640: A heart attack and a by-election was called and won by the Labour Jim Devine . Devine was deselected in 2009 after being caught up in the 2009 expenses scandal . Before Brexit , Livingston was part of the Scotland European Parliament constituency . It was represented by six MEPs ; the nearest ones to Livingston were Alyn Smith ( SNP ) and Struan Stevenson ( Conservative ) who were both based in Edinburgh and David Martin ( Labour ) who
435-625: A hospital radio station called Radio Grapevine which broadcasts to St John's Hospital . Livingston is covered by the BBC Scotland and STV Central regions. West Lothian Civic Centre in Livingston is the administrative centre of West Lothian Council . Within West Lothian, Livingston is covered by four multi-member wards each electing four councillors. They are Livingston North, Livingston South, East Livingston, and East Calder wards. Many of
580-610: A weekend Japanese school , is held at St. Margaret's Academy in Livingston. It first opened in 1982 and moved to Livingston in April 2003. Livingston is part of the NHS Lothian region in NHS Scotland . Livingston previously had a psychiatric hospital with a general hospital in the Dechmont area of the town called Bangour Village Hospital . The hospital opened in 1904, and started closing in
725-905: A 1996 trial before the Census, by the General Register Office for Scotland (GRO), suggested that there were around 1.5 million speakers of Scots, with 30% of Scots responding "Yes" to the question "Can you speak the Scots language?", but only 17% responding "Aye" to the question "Can you speak Scots?". It was also found that older, working-class people were more likely to answer in the affirmative. The University of Aberdeen Scots Leid Quorum performed its own research in 1995, cautiously suggesting that there were 2.7 million speakers, though with clarification as to why these figures required context. The GRO questions, as freely acknowledged by those who set them, were not as detailed and systematic as those of
870-538: A 50,000-square-foot or 4,600-square-metre hub facility). Other large employers include Tesco (whose distribution centre for Scotland and Northern Ireland is located on the northern edge of the town), Schuh (whose head office and customer service centre is on the Deans Industrial Estate in Livingston), Shin-Etsu Europe (who have a manufacturing facility in Livingston that produces semiconductors ), those in
1015-625: A Scots language listing. The Ferret, a UK -based fact-checking service, wrote an exploratory article in December 2022 to address misconceptions about the Scots language to improve public awareness of its endangered status. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles , Caithness , Arran and Campbeltown . In Ulster , the northern province in Ireland , its area
1160-462: A collection of children's nursery rhymes and poems in Scots. The book contains a five-page glossary of contemporary Scots words and their pronunciations. Alexander Gray 's translations into Scots constitute the greater part of his work, and are the main basis for his reputation. In 1983, William Laughton Lorimer 's translation of the New Testament from the original Greek was published. Scots
1305-433: A continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to Scottish Standard English . Many speakers are diglossic and may be able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Because standard English now generally has the role of a Dachsprache ('roofing language'), disputes often arise as to whether
1450-504: A distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to but distinct from Danish . Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the " Doric " or the " Buchan Claik ". The old-fashioned Scotch , an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Ulster. The term Lallans ,
1595-406: A former Burdiehouse limestone quarry and the surname of its owner, Mr Bell. The quarry was in operation by 1782 and continued until the early 20th century, when it was used as a rubbish dump before being tidied and covered. Until the development of the new town, except for localised industry in areas such as Deans, the area was primarily agricultural , with farming focused on the alluvial soils of
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#17328769380751740-692: A fuel source for energy production. One of the highest, at least in Western Europe , is in Loos-en-Gohelle in the former mining area of Pas-de-Calais , France . It comprises a range of five cones, of which two reach 180 metres (590 ft), surpassing the highest peak in Flanders , Mont Cassel . One of the regions of Europe most "littered" with (mountainous) spoil heaps is the Donbas , in Ukraine , especially around
1885-564: A house called Livingston Place. The estate eventually passed from the Murray family to the Cunningham family and it was eventually acquired by the Earl of Rosebery in 1828 and demolished in 1840. The area of the former gardens and house is now a local garden and park, named Peel park. The formal layout and planting in the park reflect the historic gardens, and a new peel mound and moat was recreated to reflect
2030-489: A large number of offices. Private sector offices are also concentrated at the eastern and western edges of the town centre and along the Almondvale Boulevard . Other facilities in the town centre include: hotels, a swimming pool and local authority gym, and restaurants and pubs. Almondvale Football Stadium and West Lothian College are located at the north western edge of the town centre. The Livingston Civic Centre
2175-468: A major hub in Scotland's Silicon Glen with factories constructed in purpose-build business parks at Houston Industrial Estate and Kirkton Campus. Like most other areas, this went into a slow decline from the late 1990s with companies including Burroughs Corporation (now Unisys ), Motorola and NEC closing down their factories. Several multi-national companies still have factories in the town, including Wyman Gordon who manufacture aircraft components on
2320-542: A more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots, especially for the northern and insular dialects of Scots. Bing (mining) The term "spoil" is also used to refer to material removed when digging a foundation, tunnel, or other large excavation. Such material may be ordinary soil and rocks (after separation of coal from waste ), or may be heavily contaminated with chemical waste, determining how it may be disposed of. Clean spoil may be used for land reclamation . Spoil
2465-674: A name for the Lowland vernacular. The Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic . Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century, as the region was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . By the tenth century, Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court , and the common use of Old English remained largely confined to this area until
2610-480: A new life in being thus exploited; for example, the flattened pile of residue from the 11/19 site of Loos-en-Gohelle. Conversely, others are painstakingly preserved on account of their ecological wealth. With the passage of time, they become colonised with a variety of flora and fauna , sometimes foreign to the region. This diversity follows the mining exploitation. In South Wales some spoil tips are protected as Sites of Special Scientific Interest because they provide
2755-482: A new railway station was built for the town on the Shotts Line called Livingston South which was shortly followed by another station Livingston North on the redeveloped Edinburgh to Bathgate Line in 1986. These stations replaced the former Livingston and Newpark stations which had closed before the construction of the town. In 1995 Livingston gained its professional football team, Livingston F.C. The first team
2900-524: A new supercentre at the other end of the shopping centre in place of the old Woolco store (which had also been used as a Gateway hypermarket before Asda acquired the firm in late-1989). This Asda supercentre is the largest Asda store in Scotland. Until 2016, there was also a large B&Q in the south-west of the town centre, as well as a large Morrisons supermarket which remains open. The Homebase store closed in July 2010 and Argos moved to premises across
3045-612: A representative sample of Scotland's adult population) claim to speak Scots to varying degrees. The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots. A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question. The specific wording used was "Which of these can you do? Tick all that apply" with options for "Understand", "Speak", "Read" and "Write" in three columns: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. Of approximately 5.1 million respondents, about 1.2 million (24%) could speak, read and write Scots, 3.2 million (62%) had no skills in Scots and
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#17328769380753190-514: A spoil tip landslip caused the temporary closure of the Scunthorpe to Doncaster railway line in England. Landslides are rare in spoil tips after settling and vegetation growth act to stabilise the spoil. However, when heavy rain falls on spoil tips that are undergoing combustion, infiltrated water changes to steam ; increasing pressure that may lead to a landslide. In Herstal , Belgium, a landslide on
3335-501: A suitable medium of education or culture". Students reverted to Scots outside the classroom, but the reversion was not complete. What occurred, and has been occurring ever since, is a process of language attrition , whereby successive generations have adopted more and more features from Standard English. This process has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English and increased population mobility became available after
3480-433: A unique habitat for 57 species of Lichen , several of which are at risk due to their limited environment being developed and by vegetation development. For example, because the miners threw their apple or pear cores into the wagons, the spoil tips became colonised with fruit trees. One can even observe the proliferation of buckler-leaved sorrel (French sorrel – Rumex scutatus ), the seeds of which have been carried within
3625-422: A vaccine against COVID-19 . The Brucefield Industrial Estate is located west of Bellsquarry and includes companies such as Diet Chef (a food manufacturer), ScoMac (a catering equipment manufacturer), and Snag Tights (a textile manufacturer based in Livingston that exports to 90 countries). Alba Business Park is located in Livingston to the west of Adambrae and includes a technology innovation centre. Companies in
3770-719: A variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz] , is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form . Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots ( Ulstèr-Scotch in revivalist Ulster-Scots) or "Ullans", a recent neologism merging Ulster and Lallans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis , the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English : Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced
3915-551: Is a free local magazine that serves the West Lothian area, including Livingston, with approximately 10,000 copies a month delivered in the Livingston area. Livingston previously had its own Radio Station called River FM that was broadcast from the Almondvale Stadium , from 1 September 2003 until 29 January 2007. Current local radio includes the local BBC station BBC Radio Scotland and local commercial radio including Capital Scotland and 97.3 Forth One . Livingston also has
4060-498: Is based in Livingston. The college has sports facilities, a library, a training restaurant for hospitality students (which was awarded Scottish Restaurant of the Year in 2015 and 2017), and a salon/spa. The college provides educational services to over 8,000 students a year and has 350 staff. The Scottish Institute of Theatre, Dance, Film and Television has its main educational site in Livingston. A local history library which includes items on
4205-536: Is distinct from tailings , which is the processed material that remains after the valuable components have been extracted from ore. The phrase originates from the French word espoilelier , a verb conveying the meaning: to seize by violence, to plunder, to take by force. Spoil tips may be conical in shape, and can appear as conspicuous features of the landscape , or they may be much flatter and eroded, especially if vegetation has established itself. In Loos-en-Gohelle , in
4350-458: Is generally ineffective and injecting water under pressure counter-productive, because it carries oxygen, bringing the risk of explosion. The perceived weak environmental and public health effects of these fires leads generally to waiting for their natural extinction, which can take a number of decades. The problem of landslides in spoil tips was first brought to public attention in October 1966 in
4495-552: Is in Scots, for example. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. Other well-known authors like Robert Louis Stevenson , William Alexander, George MacDonald , J. M. Barrie and other members of the Kailyard school like Ian Maclaren also wrote in Scots or used it in dialogue. In the Victorian era popular Scottish newspapers regularly included articles and commentary in the vernacular, often of unprecedented proportions. In
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4640-521: Is located at the Murieston Shops and is on the Shotts Line and has trains running between Glasgow Central and Edinburgh Waverley via Shotts . It was opened by British Rail on 6 October 1984. Livingston is 7 miles (11 kilometres) west of Edinburgh Airport and 35 + 1 ⁄ 2 miles (57 kilometres) east of Glasgow Airport , both of which have regular flights to British and international destinations. The local newspaper covering Livingston
4785-695: Is lykest to our language..." ( For though several have written of (the subject) in English, which is the language most similar to ours... ). However, with the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion. In his first speech to the English Parliament in March 1603, King James VI and I declared, "Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?" . Following James VI's move to London,
4930-501: Is now part of Deans . Livingston station was built as a settlement to serve the workforce and their families of the nearby Deans Oil Works, owned by the Pumpherston Oil Company. Livingston Station had six streets with homes, as well as a store, a small church and a works institute. The original Livingston railway station was operated by the Edinburgh and Bathgate Railway and opened on 12 November 1849. British Railways closed
5075-494: Is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland by the Scottish government, a regional or minority language of Europe, and a vulnerable language by UNESCO . In a Scottish census from 2022, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak Scots. Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect , scholars and other interested parties often disagree about
5220-505: Is similar to that of West Lothian in general, characterised by former glacial history and composed of till . This includes areas of clay , sand , silt , and gravel , primarily along the Almond river valley environment. Parts of Livingston also have isolated areas of carboniferous sedimentary rocks (primarily in and around the Deans area of the town) which were worked and extracted for shale oil in
5365-590: Is sometimes called: Lowland Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic , the Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands , the Hebrides , and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English . Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English , as the two diverged from the same medieval form of English. Scots
5510-575: Is sometimes used in contemporary fiction, such as the Edinburgh dialect of Scots in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (later made into a motion picture of the same name ). But'n'Ben A-Go-Go by Matthew Fitt is a cyberpunk novel written entirely in what Wir Ain Leed ("Our Own Language") calls "General Scots". Like all cyberpunk work, it contains imaginative neologisms . The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
5655-539: Is that of "El runam del Cogulló" (The Spoil Heap of El Cogulló), also known as "El runam de la democràcia" (The Slag Heap of Democracy) or "Montsalat" (Salty Mountain), in Sallent , which has already grown higher than the small mountain it was named after (El Cogulló, 474 meters above sea level). Richard Llewellyn 's novel How Green Was My Valley (1939) describes the social and environmental effects of coal mining in Wales at
5800-582: Is the West Lothian Courier (published under the Daily Record ). There was previously a Livingston Post newspaper which was stopped in the early 1990s. There was also a newspaper called West Lothian Herald & Post that served Livingston but that ceased to print in July 2011. Dedridge Grapevine was a voluntary community magazine, delivering several thousand copies to houses in and around Dedridge, founded and edited by Kathleen Ross-Hale since 1976. Konect
5945-635: Is the second-largest settlement in the Lothians, after Edinburgh. Livingston is first mentioned in an early 12th-century charter as Villa Levingi (Leving's town). In 1128, David I granted the newly founded Abbey of Holyrood control of the church at Livingston and its income in a charter that was witnessed by Turstani filii Levingi (Thurstan son of Leving). He built a fortified tower (Livingston Peel) which no longer survives. The settlement that grew up around it became known as Levingstoun, Layingston, and eventually fixed at Livingston. The Leving family controlled
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6090-550: Is used to describe the Scots language after 1700. A seminal study of Scots was undertaken by JAH Murray and published as Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland . Murray's results were given further publicity by being included in Alexander John Ellis 's book On Early English Pronunciation, Part V alongside results from Orkney and Shetland, as well as the whole of England. Murray and Ellis differed slightly on
6235-529: Is usually defined through the works of Robert John Gregg to include the counties of Down , Antrim , Londonderry and Donegal (especially in East Donegal and Inishowen ). More recently, the Fintona -born linguist Warren Maguire has argued that some of the criteria that Gregg used as distinctive of Ulster-Scots are common in south-west Tyrone and were found in other sites across Northern Ireland investigated by
6380-455: The 2024 United Kingdom general election when the seat returned to Labour. It was for the 1983 general election that Livingston gained its own constituency at Westminster . The first MP elected for Livingston was Robin Cook who held the seat for six consecutive elections and held many government positions, most notably Foreign Secretary between 1997 and 2001. In 2005 Robin Cook suddenly died of
6525-568: The Aberfan disaster ; for example, it was discussed in a paper by Professor George Knox in 1927, but received little serious consideration by professional engineers and geologists — even to those directly concerned with mining. Also Aberfan disaster was not the first landslide with casualties: for example, in 1955 two successive landslides killed 73 people in Sasebo, Nagasaki in Japan. [ja] In February 2013,
6670-470: The English Dialect Dictionary , edited by Joseph Wright . Wright had great difficulty in recruiting volunteers from Scotland, as many refused to cooperate with a venture that regarded Scots as a dialect of English, and he obtained enough help only through the assistance from a Professor Shearer in Scotland. Wright himself rejected the argument that Scots was a separate language, saying that this
6815-523: The English speaking world when a spoil tip at Aberfan in Glamorgan , Wales , gave way, killing 144 people, 116 of them children. The tip was built over a spring, increasing its instability, and its height exceeded guidelines. Water from heavy rainfall had built up inside the tip, weakening the structure, until it suddenly collapsed onto a school below. The wider issue of stability had been known about prior to
6960-489: The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) includes Uphall Station and Pumpherston . The wider urban settlement, also defined by the GROS, further includes Mid Calder and East Calder . Other neighbouring villages include: Kirknewton , Polbeth and West Calder . The 2001 UK Census reported that the town had a population of 50,826. The 2011 UK Census showed the population of Livingston had increased to 56,269. Livingston
7105-501: The Linguistic Survey of Scotland . Dialects of Scots include Insular Scots , Northern Scots , Central Scots , Southern Scots and Ulster Scots . It has been difficult to determine the number of speakers of Scots via census, because many respondents might interpret the question "Do you speak Scots?" in different ways. Campaigners for Scots pressed for this question to be included in the 2001 UK National Census . The results from
7250-529: The McArthurGlen Designer Outlet Centre). The combined retail spaces of central Livingston form the largest indoor shopping location in Scotland and the 10th largest in the UK. The first phase of the Livingston's shopping centres was completed in 1977 to facilitate the needs of the local residents and workers at The Centre, known as the "Livingston Centre" at that point. The first major refurbishment
7395-706: The Protestant Church of Scotland adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible; subsequently, the Acts of Union 1707 led to Scotland joining England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain , having a single Parliament of Great Britain based in London. After the Union and the shift of political power to England, the use of Scots was discouraged by many in authority and education, as
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#17328769380757540-835: The River Almond . It is situated approximately fifteen miles (25 km) west of Edinburgh and thirty miles (50 km) east of Glasgow , and is close to the towns of Broxburn to the north-east and Bathgate to the north-west. The town was built around a collection of small villages, Livingston Village , Bellsquarry , and Livingston Station (now part of Deans ). The town has a number of residential areas. These include Craigshill , Howden , Ladywell , Knightsridge , Deans , Dedridge , Murieston , Almondvale , Eliburn , Kirkton , and Adambrae . There are several large industrial estates in Livingston, including Houston industrial estate, Brucefield Industrial Estate, Alba Business Park, and Kirkton Campus. The locality of Livingston as defined by
7685-772: The Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin , Norman French , and later Parisian French , due to the Auld Alliance . Additionally, there were Dutch and Middle Low German influences due to trade with and immigration from the Low Countries . Scots also includes loan words in the legal and administrative fields resulting from contact with Middle Irish , and reflected in early medieval legal documents. Contemporary Scottish Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as cèilidh , loch , whisky , glen and clan . Cumbric and Pictish ,
7830-788: The Scottish Children's Reporter Administration , Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service , and the West Lothian Community Health and Care Partnership. Livingston has three major shopping centres, three medium large retail parks, and clusters of small local stores located throughout the different areas. The largest shopping centres are 'The Centre' (formerly named the Almondvale Shopping Centre, comprising more than one million square feet or 90,000 square metres of retail space) and Livingston Designer Outlet (the largest outlet mall in Scotland, formerly called
7975-466: The Scottish Gaelic word for the slopes of a hill. Inner central districts in the town include Almondvale , Livingston Village , Eliburn , Howden , Ladywell , Knightsridge , and Dedridge . Ladywell takes its name from a historic well that was dedicated to Mary and was said to have been used by medieval Scottish Kings as a site for a yearly Royal touching ceremony . The geology of Livingston
8120-403: The Second World War . It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift , sometimes also termed language change , convergence or merger . By the end of the twentieth century, Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland . Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang. A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards
8265-465: The University of Aberdeen , and only included reared speakers (people raised speaking Scots), not those who had learned the language. Part of the difference resulted from the central question posed by surveys: "Do you speak Scots?". In the Aberdeen University study, the question was augmented with the further clause "... or a dialect of Scots such as Border etc.", which resulted in greater recognition from respondents. The GRO concluded that there simply
8410-412: The 1970s, Kirkton Campus on the western edge of the town was developed as Scotland's first technology science park. Developed for private businesses by the LDC, it included 300 acres of landscaped offices and factory sites along the Killandean Burn and River Almond. Former businesses included Ethicon , Boehringer Mannheim , Canon Business Machines and Seagate Micro Electronics. While these factories on
8555-427: The 1990s. It closed completely in 2004 after the remaining services were transferred to St John's Hospital. Scots language Scots is a language variety descended from Early Middle English in the West Germanic language family . Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles of Scotland , and northern Ulster in Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots ), it
8700-425: The 19th and 20th centuries. The oldest rocks are classified as part of the Inverclyde Group (primarily located in the south-east of Livingston between Linhouse Water and Kirknewton). There are also several areas of underlying sandstone in Livingston which were used as local quarries, now since defunct, including Dedridge quarry, refilled and landscaped as a local park (Quarry Froggy Park). Bellsquarry originates from
8845-468: The 20th century. Under the New Towns Act of 1946 , Livingston was designated as a New Town on 16 April 1962 in order to ease overcrowding in Glasgow. Livingston was the fourth new town of five in Scotland; the others were East Kilbride , Glenrothes , Cumbernauld and Irvine . Three villages (Livingston Village and Livingston Station in the old parish of Livingston and Bellsquarry in the parish of Mid Calder) and numerous farmsteads were incorporated into
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#17328769380758990-432: The Alba Business Park include Glenmorangie , the whisky distillers, who have offices and a bottling facility that was opened in 2011. Quintiles IMS , a healthcare data provider, have a large office in the business park. The prosthetic company Össur (Touch Bionics) has a research and development facility in the park. Livingston town centre sits on the southern edge of the Almond Valley and provides shops and services for
9135-468: The Almond river. The area is now primarily an urban area although as a new town, Livingston is characterised by large areas of forested paths, public parks and open spaces. Forested areas in Livingston include Livingston Old Wood (38.97 acres or 15.77 hectares) in Eliburn, the Wilderness in Adambrae (45.91 acres or 18.58 hectares), Bellsquarry Wood (43.86 acres or 17.75 hectares), Kirkton Woods (15.64 acres or 6.33 hectares), Linhouse Glen, and Calder Woods (on
9280-684: The Campus have closed, it is still home to several businesses, including Sky UK who is one of the largest private sector employers in Livingston with a range of offices and their biggest UK contact centre at Kirkton Campus. Other companies at Kirkton Campus include Merck (a pharmaceutical company), Gore W L & Associates (a clothes manufacturer in a triangular plan building built in 1984), Edinburgh Instruments (a molecular spectroscopy instrumentation manufacturer), SCION Instruments (a chromatography and gas detector manufacturer), Techcomp Lab Products (a manufacturer of laboratory instrumentation), JPT Foodtech , and Palletways (a distribution service which owns
9425-435: The Crowns in 1603, the Standard English of England came to have an increasing influence on the spelling of Scots through the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England. After the Acts of Union in 1707 the emerging Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots for most formal writing in Scotland. The eighteenth-century Scots revival saw the introduction of a new literary language descended from
9570-409: The Houston Industrial Estate. Other companies on the Houston Industrial Estate include Mitsubishi Electric (who have an electric air conditioning factory which produces almost 150,000 air conditioning and heat pump units every year), Paterson Arran (a food manufacturer whose bakery, the Royal Burgh Bakery is located in Livingston), and DS Smith (who have a box production plant on the estate). From
9715-399: The Kingdom of Great Britain, there is ample evidence that Scots was widely held to be an independent sister language forming a pluricentric diasystem with English. German linguist Heinz Kloss considered Modern Scots a Halbsprache ('half language') in terms of an abstand and ausbau languages framework, although today in Scotland most people's speech is somewhere on
9860-456: The LDC was the Almondvale Stadium . Housing development continues under West Lothian Council, through private developers such as Barratt Developments and Bellway , and under the management of housing associations such as the Almond Housing Association and the West Lothian Housing Partnership. In September 2021, the town submitted a bid for city status in the United Kingdom as part of the Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours Competition. Although
10005-437: The Livingston new town. Published in July 1962, the first edition of the Livingston plan designated new areas for housing for up to 100,000 people, as well as areas for new industry and offices, marked by new roads, pathways, and recreational spaces, under an 84-square-mile (220-square-kilometre) survey led by Professors Donald Robertson and Sir Robert Matthew . Many of the initial houses were factory-built. A subsequent edition to
10150-405: The Petite Bacnure spoil tip in April 1999 closed off a street for many years. Several techniques of re-utilising the spoil tips exist, usually including either geotechnics or recycling . Most commonly, old spoil tips are partially revegetated to provide valuable green spaces since they are inappropriate for building purposes. At Nœux-les-Mines , an artificial ski slope has been constructed on
10295-409: The Philosopher's Stane , a Scots translation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , was published by Matthew Fitt . The vowel system of Modern Scots: Vowel length is usually conditioned by the Scottish vowel length rule . The orthography of Early Scots had become more or less standardised by the middle to late sixteenth century. After the Union of
10440-480: The Scots language was also featured. It was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. The Scottish Government set its first Scots Language Policy in 2015, in which it pledged to support its preservation and encourage respect, recognition and use of Scots. The Scottish Parliament website also offers some information on
10585-467: The Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals in a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", also finding "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)". Before the Treaty of Union 1707 , when Scotland and England joined to form
10730-573: The Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English. Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent – if somewhat fluid – orthographic conventions , and in its former use as the language of the original Parliament of Scotland . Because Scotland retained distinct political, legal, and religious systems after
10875-622: The Standard English cognate . This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular, but also on the King James Bible , and was heavily influenced by the norms and conventions of Augustan English poetry . Consequently, this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries. This modern literary dialect, "Scots of
11020-497: The Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English. During the 2010s, increased interest was expressed in the language. The status of the language was raised in Scottish schools, with Scots being included in the new national school curriculum . Previously in Scotland's schools there had been little education taking place through the medium of Scots, although it may have been covered superficially in English lessons, which could entail reading some Scots literature and observing
11165-680: The activities of those such as Thomas Sheridan , who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English elocution . Charging a guinea at a time (about £200 in today's money ), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a freeman of the City of Edinburgh . Following this, some of the city's intellectuals formed the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland. These eighteenth-century activities would lead to
11310-669: The area seven additional MSPs. Livingston has its own constituency in the House of Commons ; Livingston . It is currently represented by the Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) Gregor Poynton . Livingston for the majority of its existence has returned Labour MPs since the town was founded in 1962. However, in the election of 2015 , the constituency voted in Hannah Bardell of the SNP as their member for Parliament. She remained as MP until
11455-619: The area until dying out in 1512. From 1512 until 1671 the tower house was occupied by the Murrays of Elibank . In 1670, the Edinburgh botanic garden was founded by Dr. Robert Sibbald and Dr. Andrew Balfour using the plant collection from the Elibank private gardens of Sir Patrick Murray, 2nd Lord Elibank , following his death in September 1671. In the late 17th century, the Peel was demolished and replaced by
11600-410: The areas of Howden, Ladywell, and Knightsridge began in the late 1960s and this was followed in the 1970s by the creation of Dedrige and further development of Deans. Some of the first prominent buildings in the new town built in these decades included Riverside Primary School (the first primary school built in the new town in April 1966), Livingston Fire Station (1967 by the architects Bamber & Hall),
11745-521: The book" or Standard Scots, once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author". This literary language used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster, embodied by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray , David Herbison , James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlaw among others, is well described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots . Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in
11890-609: The border between English and Scots dialects. Scots was studied alongside English and Scots Gaelic in the Linguistic Survey of Scotland at the University of Edinburgh , which began in 1949 and began to publish results in the 1970s. Also beginning in the 1970s, the Atlas Linguarum Europae studied the Scots language used at 15 sites in Scotland, each with its own dialect. From the mid-sixteenth century, written Scots
12035-401: The boundary with East Calder ). The area where Livingston now sits was historically dominated by oil shale mining , which is evident from the bings which still exist on much of the surrounding landscape. The designation of Livingston as a new town in the 1960s attracted new light industries to the area, with high technology and pharmaceutical companies moving into the town. Livingston formed
12180-431: The case of Spoil Tip No. 7 of the coal-mining region of Mariemont-Bascoup near Chapelle-lez-Herlaimont ( province of Hainaut ). It produces some 3,000 litres of wine each year from a vineyard on its slopes. Some spoil tips are used for various sporting activities. The slopes of the spoil tips of 11/19 at Loos-en-Gohelle , or again, at Nœux-les-Mines , are used for winter sports , for example ski and luge . A piste
12325-587: The city of Donetsk , which alone boasts about 130 of them. In Ukrainian , they are called terykony ( терикони ; singular терикон , terykon , 'soil cone') because of their shape. In Heringen , Hesse , Germany , is the popularly called " Monte Kali ", made of spoil from potash mining and rising some 200 meters above the surrounding terrain. "La Muntanya de Sal" (The Salt Mountain), another potash mine spoil heap, lies in Cardona , Catalonia , at about 120 meters in height. A larger and higher pile
12470-560: The complementary decline of French made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century, Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster , some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled as colonists in Ulster in Ireland. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one. The name Modern Scots
12615-420: The courage to withstand, that great mound has borne down upon these walls, this roof. And for those months the great bully has been beaten, for in my father’s day men built well for they were craftsmen. Stout beams, honest blocks, good work, and love for the job, all that is in this house. But the slag heap moves, pressing on, down and down, over and all round this house which was my father’s and my mother’s and now
12760-413: The cracks in the pine timber used in the mines. Furthermore, on account of its dark colour, the south face of the spoil tip is significantly warmer than its surroundings, which contributes to the diverse ecology of the area. In this way, the spoil tip of Pinchonvalles, at Avion , hosts 522 different varieties of higher plants. Some sixty species of birds nest there. Some are used to cultivate vines, as in
12905-403: The creation of Scottish Standard English . Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working-class Scots. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of Scots as a literary language was revived by several prominent Scotsmen such as Robert Burns . Such writers established a new cross-dialect literary norm. Scots terms were included in
13050-484: The development with the construction of McArthur Glen Designer Outlet Centre (reamed as the Livingston Designer Outlet in 2007). This opened in October 2000, with other work continuing into 2002. The Livingston Designer Outlet, contains a VUE multiplex cinema , a food court with many chain fast-food outlets, bars, restaurants, and cafés, as well as around 70 outlet shops. In the early 2000s, Asda constructed
13195-434: The earlier i-mutated version Scyttisc . Before the end of the fifteenth century, English speech in Scotland was known as "English" (written Ynglis or Inglis at the time), whereas "Scottish" ( Scottis ) referred to Gaelic . By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the English language used in Scotland had arguably become a distinct language, albeit one lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from all
13340-623: The earlier history. The area around Livingston was historically an important shale oil area, and the world's first oil boom occurred in West Lothian. This was based on oil extracted from shale , and by 1870 over 3 million tons of shale were being mined each year in the area around Livingston. Output declined with the discovery of liquid oil reserves around the world in the early 1900s, but shale mining only finally ceased in 1962. The " bings " that characterise oil shale mining in West Lothian have largely been flattened. Two shale bings nearby are scheduled monuments – Five Sisters and Greendykes. By 1898,
13485-744: The early twentieth century, a renaissance in the use of Scots occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose benchmark poem " A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle " (1926) did much to demonstrate the power of Scots as a modern idiom. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young , John Buchan , Sydney Goodsir Smith , Robert Garioch , Edith Anne Robertson and Robert McLellan . The revival extended to verse and other literature. In 1955, three Ayrshire men – Sandy MacMillan, an English teacher at Ayr Academy ; Thomas Limond, noted town chamberlain of Ayr ; and A. L. "Ross" Taylor, rector of Cumnock Academy – collaborated to write Bairnsangs ("Child Songs"),
13630-513: The earth materials from excavations be removed in such a fashion that they can be replaced after the mining operations cease in a process called mine reclamation , with oversight of mining corporations. This requires adequate reserves of monetary bonds to guarantee a completion of the reclamation process when mining becomes unprofitable or stops. (See for example, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 .) In some spoil tips,
13775-679: The eastern edge of Livingston). Livingston North is located adjacent to the Carmondean Shopping Centre between Eliburn and Deans and is on the North Clyde Line . The station opened on 24 March 1986, concurrent with the re-introduction of passenger services on the Edinburgh to Bathgate Line . On 12 December 2010, with the completion of the Airdrie-Bathgate Rail Link , Livingston North is now served by trains running to Glasgow Queen Street and Airdrie . Livingston South
13920-505: The fifteenth century, much literature based on the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Robert Henryson , William Dunbar , Gavin Douglas and David Lyndsay . The Complaynt of Scotland was an early printed work in Scots. The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil 's Aeneid , completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513. After
14065-472: The former mining area of Pas-de-Calais , France , are a series of five very perfect cones, of which two rise 100 metres (330 ft) from the plain. Most commonly the term is used for the piles of waste earth materials removed during an excavation process. Spoil banks can also refer to refuse heaps formed from removal of excess surface materials. For example, alongside livestock lots, spoil banks are formed of manure and other slurry periodically removed from
14210-510: The history of Livingston is located in nearby Linlithgow . Livingston has three public libraries which are Almondbank Library in Craigshill, Lanthorn Library in Dedridge, and Carmondean Library in Deans. A local history library which includes items on the history of Livingston is located in nearby Linlithgow . The Scotland Japanese School (スコットランド日本語補習授業校 Sukottorando Nihongo Hoshū Jugyō Kō ),
14355-603: The language in Scots. In September 2024, experts of the Council of Europe called on the UK Government to "boost support for regional and minority languages", including the Scots Language. The serious use of the Scots language for news, encyclopaediae, documentaries, etc., remains rare. It is reportedly reserved for niches where it is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night or traditions' representations. Since 2016,
14500-567: The language used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census." Thus, although it was acknowledged that the "inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly raise the profile of Scots", no question about Scots was, in the end, included in the 2001 Census. The Scottish Government's Pupils in Scotland Census 2008 found that 306 pupils spoke Scots as their main home language. A Scottish Government study in 2010 found that 85% of around 1000 respondents (being
14645-465: The linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English . Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum , with Scottish Standard English at the other. Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects; other scholars treat Scots as
14790-571: The local dialect. Much of the material used was often Standard English disguised as Scots, which caused upset among proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike. One example of the educational establishment's approach to Scots is, "Write a poem in Scots. (It is important not to be worried about spelling in this – write as you hear the sounds in your head.)", whereas guidelines for English require teaching pupils to be "writing fluently and legibly with accurate spelling and punctuation". A course in Scots language and culture delivered through
14935-584: The main Livingston village was recorded as having several houses, a mill, a Church of Scotland church, a United Free church, a school, and a coaching inn. The oldest church, Livingston Old Kirk, in its current form, dates from 1732 and is an example of plain Presbetryrian architecture from the Georgian period. It stands on the site of a pre-Reformation church which appears to have stood on the site from c. 1350 – c. 1650 . The nearby coaching inn
15080-487: The medieval Brittonic languages of Northern England and Scotland, are the suspected source of a small number of Scots words, such as lum (derived from Cumbric) meaning "chimney". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs , which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I . In fourteenth-century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and
15225-591: The medium of Standard English and produced by the Open University (OU) in Scotland, the Open University's School of Languages and Applied Linguistics as well as Education Scotland became available online for the first time in December 2019. In the 2011 Scottish census , a question on Scots language ability was featured In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , a question in relation to
15370-491: The most part segregated from roads and uses an extensive network of under/over pass systems to keep pedestrians and cyclists away from motorised traffic. Livingston has excellent connections to the central Scotland road network: the M8 bounds Livingston in the north and the A71 in the south; The A899 dual carriageway spine road passes north south along Livingston's eastern edge and connects
15515-605: The namesake of the Almondvale district, runs through the town centre. Outer Livingston districts include Wester Dechmont, Deans (including the Deans Industrial Estate), Kirkton , and Houston to the north, Craigshill to the east, Bellsquarry (including the Brucefield Industrial Estate) and Murieston to the south, and Adambrae and Kirkton Campus to the east of the town. Craigshill takes its name from
15660-544: The new town plan considered the car to be the principal form of transport, it also envisaged a series of core footpaths to connect communities under the Radburn design . In order to build, manage, and promote Livingston, a quango organisation was formed, the Livingston Development Corporation (LDC). Sir David Lowe , a local large scale farmer and businessman, was appointed chairman. Following designation of
15805-556: The new town's first public house (the Tower in Craigshill built in 1968), Craigshill school (the first secondary school built in the new town in 1969), and the 'Centre' (Livingstons shopping centre) built in 1977. Craigshill was said to exemplify the spartan, geometric approach to new town planning, with buildings composed of the Danish style Jesperson blocks and high-density, low-rise concrete homes with Scandinavian style mono-pitch roofs. By 1971,
15950-506: The new town, the first large building begun was the Corporation's own offices in 1963. Residential construction began in 1962 with the first homes to be built as part of the new town being constructed in Deans (to house corporation employees and construction workers). The first major development of the new town took place in Craigshill, with the first people moving into the newly built housing areas in April 1966 at Broom Walk. The construction of
16095-420: The newspaper The National has regularly published articles in the language. The 2010s also saw an increasing number of English books translated in Scots and becoming widely available, particularly those in popular children's fiction series such as The Gruffalo , Harry Potter , Diary of a Wimpy Kid , and several by Roald Dahl and David Walliams . In 2021, the music streaming service Spotify created
16240-401: The old court Scots, but with an orthography that had abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings and adopted many standard English spellings. Despite the updated spelling, however, the rhymes make it clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended. These writings also introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe , generally occurring where a consonant exists in
16385-453: The other English variants and dialects spoken in Britain. From 1495, the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse , meaning "Irish", was used as a name for Gaelic. For example, towards the end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and, in the early sixteenth century, Gavin Douglas was using Scottis as
16530-497: The past (e.g. Corby or the former mining areas of Kent ). In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , it was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. Among the earliest Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (fourteenth century), Wyntoun 's Cronykil and Blind Harry 's The Wallace (fifteenth century). From
16675-518: The plan was published in 1966 with Livingston intended as the centre of a new population area of up to 250,000 persons in the Lothians. The new town plan envisaged Livingston as a focal point for economic growth in the Lothian region, incorporating 'overspill' population from Glasgow and Edinburgh. The design incorporated a vision of mixed development, connected by a new series of roads in a grid system by means of grade separated junctions and roundabouts. While
16820-413: The remainder had some degree of skill, such as understanding Scots (0.27 million, 5.2%) or being able to speak it but not read or write it (0.18 million, 3.5%). There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census, with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas (e.g. Carlisle ) or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in
16965-885: The responsibilities of West Lothian Council were previously the responsibility of the Livingston Development Corporation (LDC) until 1997 when the LDC was disbanded. Livingston is in the Almond Valley constituency for the Scottish Parliament , and the Member of the Scottish Parliament is Angela Constance of the Scottish National Party . Livingston is also covered by the Lothian electoral region which gives
17110-470: The retail sector in the shopping centres, supermarkets, and the health care sector such as NHS Scotland . The Witherby Publishing Group , established in 1740, is one of the oldest publishers in the United Kingdom and their offices and warehouse is located in Livingston at Navigation House. Valneva SE is a biotech company that has a manufacturing facility in Livingston which produces vaccines, including
17255-490: The road. The former Homebase and Argos stores were converted into a large Sainsbury's supermarket that opened in December 2010. Also in the town centre are discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl , the latter of which is located beside the Almondvale Stadium. Under the original Livingston plans, neighbourhood shopping centres were to be located at strategic points around the town and the first of these to be built
17400-515: The seventeenth century, anglicisation increased. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period were Robert Sempill , Robert Sempill the younger , Francis Sempill , Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie . In the eighteenth century, writers such as Allan Ramsay , Robert Burns , James Orr , Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott continued to use Scots – Burns's " Auld Lang Syne "
17545-529: The site is resoiled and simple vegetation such as grass is seeded on the slope. The piles also create acid rock drainage , which pollutes streams and rivers. Environmental problems have included surface runoff of silt , and leaching of noxious chemical compounds from spoil banks exposed to weathering . These cause contamination of ground water , and other problems. In the United States, current state and federal coal mining regulations require that
17690-429: The station on 1 November 1948 following the ending of passenger services on the line. In the 1980s, a site was chosen for a new railway station on the line to the east of the original station and Livingston North station opened on 24 March 1986, concurrent with the re-introduction of passenger services. The Livingston Village and Livingston Station settlements were both subsequently incorporated into Livingston new town in
17835-413: The surface of the livestock lot areas. Spoil tips sometimes increased to millions of tons, and, having been abandoned, remain as huge piles today. They trap solar heat, making it difficult (although not impossible) for vegetation to take root; this encourages erosion and creates dangerous, unstable slopes. Existing techniques for regreening spoil tips include the use of geotextiles to control erosion as
17980-416: The surrounding area. It is bounded by a ring road to the east and has been purposely planned, distinguishing it from many other town centres. Howden Park is located immediately north of the town centre and adjoins Howden House , an 18th-century house which contains an arts centre and private housing. The south western edge of the town centre is dominated by retail parks . Livingston's town centre also contains
18125-525: The thirteenth century. The succeeding variety of Northern Early Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland is also known as Early Scots . It began to further diverge from the Middle English of Northumbria due to twelfth- and thirteenth-century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English–speakers from the North and Midlands of England . Later influences on the development of Scots came from
18270-455: The tip. If spoil tips are considered to contain sufficient amounts of residual material, various methods are employed to remove the spoil from the site for subsequent processing. The oldest coal-based spoil tips may still contain enough coal to begin spontaneous slow combustion . This results in a form of vitrification of the shale, which then acquires sufficient mechanical strength to be of use in road construction. Some can therefore have
18415-472: The town was not successful in being raised to city status, 2022 marked its 60th anniversary as a town. Livingston is the eighth-largest settlement and the third-largest town in Scotland. It is also the 171st largest settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies 30 miles (50 kilometres) from Glasgow and 15 miles (25 kilometres) from Edinburgh . The Livingston new town was planned so that the River Almond ,
18560-480: The town's population had risen to 14,000. On 9 November 1979 the Livingston UFO Incident took place, when Robert Taylor, employed by the Livingston Development Corporation, is said to have encountered a UFO on Dechmont Law and the incident was subsequently investigated by Lothian and Borders Police . It is the only UFO incident that was part of a criminal investigation in the United Kingdom . In 1984,
18705-428: The turn of the 20th century. The local mine's spoil tip, which he calls a slag heap, is the central figure of devastation. Eventually the pile overtakes the entire valley and crushes Huw Morgan's house: The slagheap is moving again. I can hear it whispering to itself, and as it whispers, the walls of this brave little house are girding themselves to withstand the assault. For months, more than I ever thought it would have
18850-807: The twentieth-century biographer of James Boswell (1740–1795), described James's view of the use of Scots by his father Alexander Boswell (1706–1782) in the eighteenth century while serving as a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland : He scorned modern literature, spoke broad Scots from the bench, and even in writing took no pains to avoid the Scotticisms which most of his colleagues were coming to regard as vulgar. However, others did scorn Scots, such as Scottish Enlightenment intellectuals David Hume and Adam Smith , who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings. Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through
18995-751: The two; The A89 runs east west on the north side of the M8. Livingston has a central bus terminal with seven stances located on Almondvale Avenue between the two shopping centres in the town centre. This provides regular services to surrounding towns and villages. Lothian Country Buses are the main bus operator in Livingston. Other operators include Citylink , SD Travel, Stuarts of Carluke, and Stagecoach . Livingston has buses to Edinburgh , Edinburgh Airport , Edinburgh Royal Infirmary , Glasgow , Coatbridge , Airdrie , Lanark , Dunfermline , and most West Lothian towns and villages. Livingston has three railway stations; Livingston North , Livingston South and Uphall (on
19140-540: The varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right. The UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Notwithstanding the UK government's and the Scottish Executive's obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,
19285-534: The waste resulting from industries such as coal or oil shale production can contain a relatively high proportion of hydrocarbons or coal dust. Spontaneous subterranean combustion may result, which can be followed by surface fires. In some coal mining districts, such fires were considered normal and no attempt was made to extinguish them. Such fires can follow slow combustion of residual hydrocarbons. Their extinction can require complete encasement, which can prove impossible for technical and financial reasons. Sprinkling
19430-515: Was The Mall at Craigshill, which claimed to be one of the first covered shopping centres in Scotland. This was followed by the Carmondean Centre in Deans and groupings of shops in Ladywell and Murieston. Livingston has an excellent 'core path network' which is shared use, and available to pedestrians and cyclists. It connects all of the main areas of the town with shopping and work areas. It is for
19575-477: Was a "quite modern mistake". During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary norms waned, and as of 2006 , there is no institutionalised standard literary form. By the 1940s, the Scottish Education Department 's language policy was that Scots had no value: "it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as
19720-578: Was based in Roslin . Livingston used to be part of the Lothians European Parliament constituency . Livingston has 18 nursery schools , 17 primary schools , and five special schools. There are four secondary schools in the town which are Inveralmond Community High School , The James Young High School , St. Margaret's RC Academy and Deans Community High School . West Lothian College offers higher and further education and its central campus
19865-409: Was built in 1760 and the poet Robert Burns is said to have been a guest. The nearby Livingston Mill was also built around the same date, in 1770 although there is evidence that suggests there may have been a mill on the site since the 14th or 15th century. Around one mile (1.5 kilometres) north of Livingston village, there was a railway station with a smaller settlement called Livingston Station which
20010-527: Was built on the flank of the heap. In Belgium , a long distance footpath along the spoil tips (GR-412, Sentier des terrils ) was opened in 2005. It leads from Bernissart in western Hainaut to Blegny in the province of Liège . In the United States , coal mining companies have not been allowed to leave behind abandoned piles since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 1977. The Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center uses coal gob as
20155-483: Was completed in 1988 by Land Securities . The centre was extended by 230,000 sq ft (21,000 m) in 1996/1997, creating phase 2 of the development, bringing the size of the centre to over 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m). It has since been renamed "The Almondvale Centre". The Centre was completed in its current structure on 16 October 2008. The total development has around 155 shops and eating establishments. In early 1999, construction started on phase 3 of
20300-602: Was completed in June 2009 and officially opened by then- First Minister Alex Salmond on 25 November 2009. The Civic Centre is located just north of The Centre on the bank of the River Almond. It was home to the divisional headquarters of Lothian and Borders Police until the creation of Police Scotland in 2013, as well as the sheriff and justice of the peace , West Lothian Council , the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service ,
20445-508: Was essentially formed from the relocation of Meadowbank Thistle F.C. from Edinburgh. While in 1980, the LDC owned 90% of the town's housing, by 1996 this had reduced to some 40% through sales and increasing private home ownership. The Livingston Development Corporation guided Livingston until its mandate expired on 22 March 1997 and the town was transferred to the West Lothian Council . The last major construction operation carried out by
20590-652: Was increasingly influenced by the developing Standard English of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England. When William Flower , an English herald , spoke with Mary of Guise and her councillors in 1560, they first used the "Scottyshe toung" . As he found this hard to understand, they switched into her native French. King James VI , who in 1603 became James I of England , observed in his work Some Reulis and Cautelis to Be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie that "For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk
20735-415: Was not enough linguistic self-awareness amongst the Scottish populace, with people still thinking of themselves as speaking badly pronounced, grammatically inferior English rather than Scots, for an accurate census to be taken. The GRO research concluded that "[a] more precise estimate of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about
20880-432: Was the notion of "Scottishness" itself. Many leading Scots of the period, such as David Hume , defined themselves as Northern British rather than Scottish. They attempted to rid themselves of their Scots in a bid to establish standard English as the official language of the newly formed union. Nevertheless, Scots was still spoken across a wide range of domains until the end of the eighteenth century. Frederick Pottle ,
21025-491: Was translated into Scots by Rab Wilson and published in 2004. Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s, Liz Lochhead produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière . J. K. Annand translated poetry and fiction from German and Medieval Latin into Scots. The strip cartoons Oor Wullie and The Broons in the Sunday Post use some Scots. In 2018, Harry Potter and
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