Talk:Donald Dewar

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Profile picture

Could we please have an image that is not that of a bronze statue? Cider86 (talk) 14:43, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

drafting

What does "In his maiden speech in the Commons Dewar railed against proposed increase on potato tax" mean? There is no potato tax - and few definite or indefinite articles in the "sentence". Deipnosophista (talk) 09:19, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That stood out to me as odd, too. Seems to have been added unsourced in 2007, and much later a link to said maiden speech was added. A speech which doesn't include the word 'potato' even once.

I think we've been had... Ieya (talk) 23:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Picture

I would suggest that a picture of Donald Dewar would be more suitable than a picture of his statue on Buchanan St. --Connelly90[AlbaGuBràth] (talk) 01:29, 25 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to see a picture of the step he tripped on. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 21:23, 4 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statue height - should it be given primarily in feet or in metres?

Since being added on 10 April 2013, the photo caption had the statue height stated in feet. That was until this edit was made on 24 September 2014.

I restored it to comply with the currently prevalent British practice of stating such dimensions primarily in feet. A couple of days later the metre-first dimension was reinstated by another editor with the claim that it was per WP:MOS.

A quick read of MOS leads me to believe that, even if only under the "use common in applying it" term, that feet should be the primary unit for the heights of such statues, especially when it is realised that most British people are more familiar with heights in feet and inches than in metres. If I was wrong to argue for feet first, can someone explain the common sense reason for using metres first for such dimensions.

Note too that the conversion made on 24 September 2014 was one in a long series of conversions made by the same editor, to articles related to British topics, to promote metric units above the traditional imperial units, even though imperial units still largely dominate common usage in the UK. ProProbly (talk) 19:50, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which units dominate common usage depends who you are talking to and what you are talking about. This is why WP:UNITS exists, and discussions about which units to use should really take place there and not on this talk page. There is nothing wrong with editing articles to comply better with the MOS (several articles, to give some context, gave measurements in imperial or USC only before I added them), and you have not actually demonstrated that these edits contradict the MOS. This has all been explained to you before in great detail by several editors.

That said, measuring a statue in metres is not at all unusual practice in the UK, and it would be the natural reading of the MOS policy on units of measurement. I see no benefit in opening another can of worms on which statues should be measured in metres and which in feet. You would expect most modern measurements relating to construction of any kind in the UK to be given in metric, so it is flatly incorrect to claim that the dominant common use is imperial. Archon 2488 (talk) 22:51, 30 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

First cabinet meeting

This could be useful. This is Paul (talk) 00:57, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Minutes from first Scottish Executive cabinet meeting released". BBC News. BBC. 1 January 2015. Retrieved 1 January 2015.

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Proposed merge of Death and funeral of Donald Dewar into Donald Dewar

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

To merge as proposed, on the grounds that the split of content is unwarranted; significant duplication. Klbrain (talk) 11:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is not long enough or significant enough to be worthy of its own article. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:43, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support merge. Peter Ormond 💬 06:32, 28 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support merge as well. Willsteve2000 (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose merge. Monkey1987king (talk) 17:58, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support merge; as an event this simply isn't distinct enough to require a separate article. Retain as redirect to the specific subsection of the main article. Espatie (talk) 00:56, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 11:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Donald Dewar 1959.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:53, 15 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

commons:File:Painted portrait of Donald Dewar (19372000) (cropped).jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. Verbcatcher (talk) 20:25, 20 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Order in infobox

@Tim O'Doherty, is there any evidence that the note is up-to-date? The order parameter is not used exclusively for American politicians. Asperthrow (talk) 13:38, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Tim O'Doherty, the note is incorrect. You even reverted my edits on articles which do not feature the note. I shall re-add the order parameters. Asperthrow (talk) 11:15, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Per Template:Infobox officeholder (This should only be used when there is a well-established use of such numbering in reliable sources. Do not add numbers simply based on a Wikipedia list of holders of the office.). There's no such thing for Scottish FMs because it's not something that's done. The Scottish government, for example, doesn't number them while the American government does. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 12:41, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]