Happy New Year

And if you can have a happy New Year's Day, you're a better man than I am.

I was wakened up 15 minutes after the bells by fireworks. They didn't last long, luckily, or I'd have had what I still think of as a Mary Woodrow moment. Mary owned the newsagent's in Main Street Bowmore many years ago and lived above the shop. When the local lads used the street outside her shop to practise their handbrake turns of an evening, she would give them half an hour's fun and then she'd be out in the middle of the street, a sight to see in her nightie and dressing gown, shouting abuse. So here I am nearly three hours later, wide awake. And I'm in no rush to go back to bed because when I wake up it will still be New Year's Day.

I hate New Year's Day. Have done for years. It reminds me of what Scotland was like when the Church of Scotland controlled the Sunday shop opening times. Well, I don't suppose they did but it felt that way. Sunday used to spread in front of us like a desert. It got a wee bit better in the 70s and 80s but I can still remember getting a row from my granny in the 50s for skipping down the street on a Sunday. A lot of folk had the weekend off and, after spending Saturday running the weans to the dancing class or football practice, they couldn't use their Sunday to do boring stuff like food shopping or exciting stuff like having a Morrison's all day breakfast after the shopping. Not for them the thrill of picking up DIY supplies at B&Q. Because everything was shut.

I got a reminder of what it was like 'in the olden days' in Scotland when I went to Carlisle years ago and discovered the only shop open on a Sunday was Woolworth's. It was packed. Wonder what the good people of Cumbria do for entertainment of a Sunday nowadays?

I've been looking at tinternet and it seems 2017 has brought us not one but two New Year's Days. My favourite local pizzeria (Toni's in Fenwick Road since you ask) has posted a one-word message against both 1 and 2 January: OBSERVED. I suspect a lot of other local businesses will be the same.

But the supermarkets, which are not locally-owned and have never respected Scottish traditions are planning to open right through the holiday and that's a bit annoying. What do people have to buy on New Year's Day that they couldn't wait for till the next day so the staff could have at least one day off?

While we're about it: I do get annoyed when I see 'Bank Holiday Bargains' advertised in supermarkets in Scotland and then realise the bargains are in celebration of English bank holidays - ours are at a different time. I write to supermarkets about that, as I do about their failure to sell Scotch beef and lamb and Scottish fish and shellfish. All praise to Lidl and Aldi who do. I also write to them.

So till I get tired again, I'll just sit here and enjoy the Camino del Angel Malbec that someone gave me for Christmas. It's from the Valle Central in Chile - and Chile, I saw today, is going to be the destination for tourists in 2017. Some of us have already been, of course. Are we smug? Darn tootin.

The Herald

I've sent this to the Herald though they may not publish any part of it. 

Until the other week, I was the person on social media encouraging my fellow-independence voters to show respect to unionists, to avoid name-calling and to try to set up some form of dialogue with people we have to win over if Scotland is to gain independence. I’ve just given that up. The Scottish press is the reason, and in this the Herald must take particular responsibility because of its reach.

Your front page only ever seems to have three headlines:

-        Education in Scotland is a mess

-        The police service in Scotland is a mess

-        The NHS in Scotland is a mess.

These headlines attacking public services are recycled day after day. It is disappointing that the Herald shares the same characteristic as the BBC Scotland online news: the ability to pick up on issues that no other news outlet has identified as a problem. Not because these issues are ‘scoops’ but because they are by and large invented or irrelevant to the lives of people in Scotland. It’s worth saying here that most people don’t believe our public services are a mess – and from personal experience. Yes, there are problems, mainly financial, and we can disagree over how to resolve them but they can be resolved. And they are a bit more complicated than ‘SNP bad.’

Your letters pages are frankly poisonous. Few letter writers in favour of independence get space on these pages. I imagine a lot, like me, have given up trying to control the tide of unpleasantness and personal comment that now dominates them thanks to a handful of constant contributors. I admire Ruth Marr for her determination to keep writing. I have identified other writers who have an undeclared political agenda (for example, as former candidates for a particular political party) and I don’t even bother to read their letters.

The heraldcomment.com section seems to have been similarly taken over by unionists, some deluded and rarely challenged, others determined to turn every comment into an anti-SNP, and specifically anti-Sturgeon diatribe.

As for your Agenda column, all too often I know as soon as I see the headline and the name of the writer that the tone will be anti-Scottish. Today’s effort dedicated to mixed-ability teaching, while scattered with statistics, is written by a former university professor who shows little understanding of how schools work. Mixed-ability teaching isn’t new: teachers have been doing it successfully for 30 years or more. If there’s a problem with CfE, it’s not at Higher/National 5 level.

And please note: my objection is not that the Agenda writers are anti-SNP (I’m not SNP. I’m a Scottish Green), but that they keep on giving readers the idea that Scotland is a failing nation, that it can’t stand on its own two feet, that the only way forward is to abandon our current commitment to social democracy and – presumably - follow what is happening in the UK - and that includes leaving the EU.  

So for those of us who want independence, what do we do now? As I see it, we’ve been overtaken by the unionist anti-independence campaign, which has gone on while we pro-independence people were nodding. We must now go on the offensive, without waiting for the SNP government to declare a date for the second independence referendum. All the groups that operated before the 2014 vote need to swing into action. We need to start fund-raising. And we need to start challenging the misleading information appearing in the media.   

The BBC

It doesn't matter if you're a unionist or an independence supporter. I would like you to go to the National newspaper's website and read the interview given by Donalda MacKinnon, the newly-appointed director of the BBC in Scotland:

http://www.thenational.scot/

I met Ms MacKinnon a couple of times when I was working. I should really say I was in the same room as her, because I doubt if many people get past the BBC front: polite, obviously clever, discreet. She is BBC to her fingertips. She's a BBC civil servant, in with the bricks.

I wasn't expecting much from her statement. I didn't think she was going to fall to her knees and confess: the BBC Scotland news is terrible, full of couthy wee stories from round the country, with an over-dependence on outside (and sometimes unverified) sources like the right-wing press and the police, and too many pieces that reflect the editor's interests rather than the public's. The rest of the programming has also gone down the tubes in the last decade, with less commissioning of new work in drama, fewer comedies and documentaries that just don't reflect life in Scotland.

My friends in the SNP will tell you the BBC copies the right wing press by hammering away at public services in Scotland, particularly, education, the NHS and the police. You can judge that for yourself by watching their news and current affairs programmes.

We don't get news in Scotland from anywhere else in the world, so that people like me with an interest in comparing our lives to those of people in - say - the greater Europe - still - as we have done for almost twenty years - watch Eorpa in Gaelic.

Ms MacKinnon's statement reads for all the world like the kind of statement that the Tories under Thatcher and then Major used to issue when they were getting a hammering in the polls: the problem is, they used to say, the public just don't understand what we're trying to tell them. The message is being lost. The Labour party in Scotland took the same line when it lost the confidence of the Scottish public. Yes, Labour really did represent us. It really did have a lot to offer. It just wasn't managing to persuade us.

In the case of the Tories and Labour, the secret for some of us was: we'd heard their messages and we didn't like them. So we rejected them at the ballot box.

We don't have that power over the BBC. Yes, it has a panel of people from all over the UK to reflect the views of licence holders. Scotland has one representative on the BBC Board. It also has one representative on the BBC Trust. How do these people represent our views? I'm not sure. If there's a way to read the minutes of their meetings or to send them message like emails, I can't find it on the BBC website. In my view, the difference between political parties and the BBC isn't just that we can vote to get rid of politicians. It's very difficult to opt out of the BBC 'service.' We pay for the BBC. We have to, on pain of earning a criminal record if we refuse. People who don't have a TV and so don't need a TV licence find themselves constantly pursued as probable lawbreakers. It's a ridiculous situation which doesn't apply to any other public body in the UK.

I admit to having a bad track record with the BBC. I once tried to sign up as a member of the BBC Trust. I knew I wasn't likely to be accepted, but I wanted to know the process. I was directed to fill in the application form for employees. I filled in 11 pages - with some difficulty because it wanted every last detail of my academic background but, sadly, didn't leave room for me to explain that Scottish qualifications are different from English ones. With no sign of how many more pages were still to come, I gave up. I've also written to programme makers a couple of times asking why they took such and such an approach (usually a negative one) and have always got a reply - high-handed, smarmy, but at least a reply.

What I really miss in Ms MacKinnon's statement is any sign of an apology for letting us down. It's been evident for a long time now that the BBC isn't providing the service people want in Scotland. How does BBC Scotland get feedback on its programmes? There's a rumour there's a viewer/listener panel. How are members recruited? How do viewers find out what they're saying?

There are probably a lot of other questions. Why is the BBC budget so small when people in Scotland pay in so much? Is there a balance sheet showing how the money is spend? Can we see it? Who controls the news input? Glasgow or London? I hope it's London, because that would explain why the news and the late night BBC2 current affairs programmes are so bad.

And no, I'm not advocating getting rid of the BBC. I am in favour of making it accountable and being seen to be accountable to the people who pay for it.

The Red Army Choir

http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/tragedy-hit-red-army-choir-a-fabled-symbol-of-ussr-and-russia-1641675

I know - they weren't called the Red Army Choir any more. It seems latterly they were called the Alexandrov Ensemble - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandrov_Ensemble. But it doesn't matter what they were called. When their aircraft plunged today into the Black Sea today, killing 60 of them, the Red Army Choir was wiped out.

I am devastated by this loss, despite the fact that I only saw them perform live once, in Glasgow, and I find it hard to say why.

Okay, I studied Russian at one time and I know the Red Army Choir were seen as the front men for the USSR during the Cold War. But I grew up in a Socialist/Communist family which forgave Stalin a lot in the light of his defence of Europe against the Nazis. In my family, we admired the Red Army Choir and watched them on TV, and we respected people like Paul Robeson, a wonderful  singer, who was denied recognition because of his political (Commie) views.

The Red Army Choir to me represented the ordinary people of the USSR. I'm quite sure they weren't that ordinary but they sang and danced and were recruited from all over the USSR. The crash in the Black Sea is just awful.

Jam tomorrow...

Be warned: this is going to be a rant.

It looks to me as if that eejit Hunt still has a job at Westminster. You know the one: Jeremy. He's on my list of waddocks, along with the other Jeremys: Vine, Paxman, Clarkson, Kyle, Corbyn.

I'd forgotten about Hunt for a wee while, He obviously had his head down while Teresa was taking over but, heaven help us, he's back. Before, he was picking fights with NHS doctors over their working hours, unveiling a plan to fine doctors who moved abroad after being trained in the UK, and - laughably - proposing a ban on sexting for the under-18s (yeah, like that'll work with teenagers, Jezza). There was more and all in the same vein.

Now, he's telling us we'll have to save up not just for our pensions but for our 'personal care' in later life.

Just remind me: if you're earning between 14 and 18 thousand quid a year - as a lot of people are - even if you work from the age of say 18 to 68, how exactly do you put money aside for your old age? You have first to pay either a lifetime of rent or (if you're lucky) a mortgage, council tax, home insurance, car loan, car insurance, gas and electric, phone rental, TV licence (pretty important that one, since not paying can land you with a criminal record - and then you can kiss your credit rating goodbye). And, heaven help you if you decide to marry and have children - dear little things. You could be shelling out for them for 25 years. And let's not talk about the cost of childcare. You can, of course, go to the bank of mum and dad but you may find they're busy squirreling away money to pay for their own personal care when they reach their dotage and can't help you.

This edict on personal care came in the same week that people who want to be police officers were told they would have to get a degree first. I didn't really understand this. (It doesn't apply to Scotland, thank gawd). But it seems if you want to be a copper in England and Wales, you'll have to have a degree first. So that'll be £27,000+, thank you very much. I'm not sure if the degree has to be in policing or forensics or law or whatever, but it's been made clear that having a degree will be no guarantee that you'll get a job. Well done, Westminster: you don't have to waste money training your police officers - they'll pay for themselves. Personally, if something bad happens and I need any of the emergency services, I don't care if they have a degree or not. I just want them there and doing something to help. And I really hate the idea that people who would be good in the emergency services are going to be shut out of the job in future because they can't saddle themselves with massive debts before they even start the job.

Is it just me or does anyone else think every bit of news that comes out of Westminster seems to be about separating me from my hard-earned money? Not just me. All of us. We are already very highly taxed in the UK through income tax, vat, council tax (a totally unfair way of taxing people), inheritance tax, road tax and so on. Where does our tax money go? Maybe instead of telling us how important the UK is, how it sits alongside the USA as a world power, how we need big projects (Brinkley, Trident, etc) for our national prestige, maybe we could get someone to caw our collective neck in and start asking what we can afford. And if we can't afford to look after our own people, maybe our view of ourselves is wrong and needs to be - as they say- 'revisited.'

Nice? Wee?

There's a nice wee video on the BBC Scotland news website today. Not too long. Shows children and young people in the Glasgow Gaelic school staging a nice wee pantomime and singing nice wee songs in Gaelic, and all with a nice twee commentary by the usual patronising reporter.

(By the way, this isn't a moan about how Gaelic is treated in the media, although I could say - as I have often said before and no doubt will again - that Gaelic speakers would probably appreciate it if they could be treated not as special, different and slightly quaint but just as normal people. Some nice, a few not so nice. Some clever, a few pretty dense. Just people like the rest of us in Scotland except that they happen to speak Gaelic).

This is a moan about how adults in the media talk to young people, the under-18s. I hear these apparently educated people being awkward, chortling away at all the wrong moments, asking closed questions (instead of the ones that start 'Tell me about...') and I wonder: Do they have kids themselves, these folk? Is that how they talk to them? That might explain why so many young people in Scotland go through their dealings with the adult world rolling their eyes.

The awkwardness adults show in dealing with young people means that they all too often don't get seen and heard on TV or radio. Yes, they're there in audiences. But actually being seen and heard on, for example, political or educational or arts programmes actually giving their opinions? Not so much. They're on social media, of course, articulate, self-opinionated, cheeky, just like the adults there. But we don't hear about that on Mainstream Media.

The absence of young people and their views on TV and media allows adults to carry on with our distorted view of what young people are like: they're either innocent little moppets simpering away or they're overgrown hooligans destroying our towns and cities.

C4 has been running a series of news reports all through 2016 about how disabled people feel they are treated in the UK. It's been a great series. Government ministers and charities have been brought face to face with what the lives of severely disabled people are like: unable to work because they can't get their wheelchair on a bus. Dismissed as unemployable because they're autistic, although every fibre of their being (and mine) says: they could be employed if they were trained. Most of all, in need of support from a government in Westminster that seems hellbent on making their lives unbearable.

I feel very strongly that the under 18s need the same sort of TV exposure. The Scottish experience of the independence referendum in 2014 showed us a whole group of young people keen to be involved in their communities. Remember Mhairi Black was 19 in 2014, 20 when she became an MP.

Giving young people a voice on TV and radio strikes me as now being pretty urgent. More and more young people have opted out of MSM. TV and radio are now the domain of the elderly and the old. No wonder they're so dull.

Ironically, the one sector of the media where young people do have a voice is Gaelic broadcasting.

Choo-choo

I had to google Chris Grayling to figure out who he is. He's the Tory minister 'in charge' of transport in this brave new world of 2016. He was on the telly tonight looking shifty-eyed and clueless and, faced with a rail dispute that has festered for years now, the only solution he could come up with was to threaten railway workers with the loss of even more rights if they don't stop striking. I suppose it's easier to do that than to try to sort out the rail problem.

It's hard for me to be sympathetic with the passengers of Southern Rail (if that's what the company is called) because the people who are now complaining that they may have to give up their jobs because they can't get a train to take them to their workplace are probably the people who voted Tory in the general election last year, knowing that the privatisation of every little thing the UK still owns is high on the Tory agenda.

A long time ago - and here again I say: some of us are old enough to remember all this and still around to remind the rest of you - we told you it was madness to privatise the means of transport that so many people depend on to get to work and to make our cities run efficiently. Did anybody listen? Don't answer that. It's rhetorical. No other European country has gone down the road of privatising the trains and there's a good reason for that. Most countries have invested widely - and wisely - in their transport infrastructure. So if you go to places like Lille (France) and Brussels (Belgium), you'll find joined-up transport systems that include the TGV - high speed trains - driverless trams, city buses and a good train service and all offering so many discounts you start to wonder why their transport systems don't just pay the travellers to use them.

According to one news reporter, the problems on Southern Rail affect us all. I don't think so.

In Scotland, we have our own travel problems. Abellio has been handed a poisoned chalice. The company came in from the outside - actually from the Netherlands which still has a nationalised railway system - and it is now trying to juggle updating ancient trains and general under-investment in the system. Myself, I would suggest that Abellio get rid of their current spokesman and hire a Scot to explain what's going wrong because the man they have now just doesn't have the language skills required.

But this is all irrelevant. We know what needs to be done to sort out our trains. Not to mention getting bus services better planned and coordinated. And getting tram systems in Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow and Aberdeen. And expanding the subway in Glasgow. And building a rail link between Glasgow city centre and Glasgow's two airports. And making sure there are planes linking outlying communities not easily serviced by trains. And building more bridges (one across Loch Fyne would be ace) and better causeways between islands communities.

But it won't happen. The only agency interested in doing these things is the Scottish government in Holyrood. And it can't because it's starved of money and can't borrow. When it can manage to build - like the third Forth bridge - it does so efficiently.

But I gather we don't need to worry. We'll be benefitting from - and paying for - the extension of Heathrow and the HS2 rail link for many years to come. Doesn't that give you a warm glow?

Posh shoppers

My local food store is Whole Foods Market. Yes, I know it's ridiculous that I shop there. It's all organic, vegan, save the whale, etc. Here am I, a pensioner, savings worth b*gger all thanks to Tory austerity, constantly threatened with the end of the so-called 'triple-lock' that protects my pension - and remember people like me have a limited shelf life: I could in fact be deid next week - but I like to get my Ramsay's bacon (no, not that Ramsay), avocados, Ayrshire free range eggs, and the odd pizzette (not sure about that word - it seems suspect, spelling-wise but the tomato-parmesan version is quite tasty).

So today I decided to visit the organic Valhalla. I was last there on Wednesday afternoon, after volunteering at Elder Park Library and had to leave after half an hour because the noise of chairs scraping across the floor, the brain-dead music and the constant grizzling of middle-class weans began to get to me and my CFS.

Today, a toddler had been given a mini-trolley by daddy, I'm guessing as a way to stop her noticing how boring food shopping really is. As I made my way to the egg section, she dropped her trolley right in front of me and launched herself into a tantrum. I don't mind kids having tantrums. (Gawd knows, I've seen plenty adults do the same). Just don't expect people like me to deal with them. That's what parents are for, right? I stepped round her but caught the eye of a member of staff. We smiled - and moved on.

The sound of the tantrum followed us. I've  no idea where daddy was - possibly in the toilet. I checked the ready meals, the chiller cabinet, didn't fancy the cheeses, couldn't find the Yorkshire cooked ham (WFM - please note) and headed for the cafe to get an Americano to go and check out the goodies I'd bought. We could still hear the tantrum going on behind us. The member of staff I'd seen earlier said:

- Have you calmed down yet?

- Bl**dy weans! I said.

Her colleague looked depressed:

- And it's only going to get worse, he said.

Do do do do do you remember?

This is a post from the Facebook page of Neil Findlay MSP today: 

<<Parents please consider this -

The SNP have been in power for 10 years. In that time Scotland has fallen in worldwide rankings from 10th to 19th in Science, 9th to 24th in Maths and 11th to 23 for reading. At the same time Councils have lost 80,000 jobs and have suffered massive budget cuts from the Scottish Government. 

This means fewer classroom assistants, less resources in schools and fewer staff to support education. This is a scandal and more will come with the Scottish budget next week.

I would urge parents to put pressure on your MSPs to argue and if necessary vote against a budget that cuts essential public services like education further.
Let me be absolutely clear I will not be supporting a budget that cuts education, health, social care and council budgets. These are the services that civilise our society, give our children a future and help us when we are sick or old. We should be using the powers of the Scottish Parliament to end the cuts.>>

Neil is a Labour MSP. 

Last week, my hairdresser offered me her copy of the S*n. I turned it down, saying: You shouldn't be buying that paper, Stacey. You're putting more money into the hands of Rupert Murdoch. Remember what that paper did to the families of Hillsborough. She had no idea what I was talking about. Didn't know who Murdoch was or what happened at Hillsborough. So I told her. 

I've started saying to people: eventually all us boring old farts will be dead and there will be nobody left to remind you young people (even if you're fed up listening to us) what actually happened in our recent social history. That means people will start to accept the era of Margaret Thatcher as a good thing, will not question the blackening of the names of unions like the miners' (including but not exclusively Orgreave), the awful treatment of the Hillsborough victims who were blamed by police and politicians - and many other injustices experienced by the working class in the last 50 years. 

Where Scottish education is concerned, let's go back a wee bit. I was first a secondary teacher, then a curriculum development officer in one local authority and then a Quality Improvement Officer in another. My arrival in my last job coincided with the big push for the implementation of 5-14. That was in 1996. Her Majesty's Inspectors made it very clear they wanted 5-14 in place as soon as possible - implementation was too slow but all would be well once it was in place. 5-14 covered all aspects of the primary curriculum but only Maths, Reading and Writing in the secondary curriculum. Wanna guess what was tested when tests were introduced, against the wishes of teachers (and their unions) who did not want to allow tests to dominate the work of the classroom? And that's just what happened. Kids were either 'working towards' a level or 'ready for a test' in Maths, Reading and Writing. Primary staff could neglect the rest of the curriculum just to get this testing done. Local authority staff pored over test results. People were paid good money to specialise in analysing school by school and class by class what was going wrong (never what was being done well). People in schools - especially head teachers - were held accountable for 'poor' test results. 

So who allowed this to happen? After devolution, the Labour Party was in control of the Scottish Parliament from 1998 to 2006. The Labour Party was in control of most local authorities. 

The PISA international tests were introduced in 2000. From the very beginning, the Scottish results began to slide. If you want a reason for the decline, you can look at quite a few things: 

- the rise of far east societies (China, Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea) as economic powerhouses with a narrow focus on what I would call vocational subjects (Maths and Science)

- the dead hand of 5-14 which stifled a lot of imaginative teachers and creative young people

- the end of 'ring-fencing' of education budgets in local authorities (demanded by the - Labour - authorities themselves) which starved schools of cash

- constant budget cuts imposed by the Tories in Westminster (which controls the Scottish budget) since 2008 - they call it 'austerity' and it will go down as a disaster which the LibDems colluded in, so that the Scottish block grant is now down by about 15% on where it was in 2008 - and if the Labour Party was still in power, it would be passing on the cuts just as the SNP are now 

There isn't a miracle on offer here, folks. Neil isn't saying: here's what the SNP are doing wrong and here's what they should be doing instead. Here's what Labour will do. That's Labour's tragedy in Scotland right there. 

Here, I want to state my credentials: Govan born, father a shipyard worker, mother a factory worker, educated at a comprehensive school and then at two Glasgow universities, third person in the extended family to go on to higher education, member of the EIS till they sold us out, member of the Labour Party (ditto), Green Party member. I wasn't planning to write this tonight. I've been out volunteering today and I'm knackered. But I'm annoyed that Neil thinks he can skate over what actually happened back in the day. 

I have no faith in the SNP. They are quite good at PR but short on principles. But I have even less confidence in Scottish Labour, and Neil's piece is why. 

Why are we so useless?

For centuries, Scotland has been exporting clever people all over the world. They run other folk's countries: Scots are to be found in many other countries' police forces, in politics, in business and industry, in the civil service, in diplomatic jobs, in medicine...

Since we can do all this in other people's countries, how come we're so absolutely useless at running Scotland?

I mean, look at our health service: falling to bits. Not enough doctors or nurses. Waiting lists that seem to grow every quarter. Long waits at A&E and even getting an appointment at your doctor's surgery can take weeks. Queues of ambulances line up outside hospitals because sick people can't be admitted to let the ambulance crews away to attend to other sick people.

Then there's our education service, slipping down the world rankings with every set of PISA findings. Undoubtedly due to dodgy teachers. Only 8 have been sacked for incompetence in recent years, which must mean that there are plenty of incompetents still in the job, mustn't it? And there's a national shortage of teachers developing before our very eyes, despite the short working days, long holidays and handsome salaries.

And what about the oil business? We've been gifted massive oilfields off the east coast and we haven't managed to put any money away for a rainy day and now we face redundancies and high unemployment in what was a very well-off part of the country.

It's all the fault of these politicians in Edinburgh, of course. Liars and con artists every one of them, too busy lining their own pockets to think what's good for Scotland.

And we can't stand on our own two feet. We constantly have our hands out looking for subsidies from the real parliament in Westminster.

No, it's no use. I need to take my tongue out of my cheek.

I've lifted all the comments above from newspapers and the BBC website, apart from the first paragraph. (You'll never find us getting that kind of recognition from the media).

Every day, I play a game: I try to guess what the Herald's front page headline will be before I take it out of the letterbox. I've discovered it won't feature any subject that appears in the rest of the media. And it will be bad news. Same with the BBC Scotland news website: before I switch on the computer, I try to guess how many murders, rapes and road accidents will feature. They get this 'news' from Police Scotland briefings and show a side of Scotland that makes me wonder if someone in the ONS is lying when they report year on year that crime in Scotland is down and violent crime down dramatically now that you can hardly walk 10 yards without being captured on CCTV. I also check the front pages of the other so-called Scottish newspapers. Big shouty print headlines bringing us relentless bad news.

And very little attempt to analyse what's happening in Scotland - or anywhere else for that matter - and why it's happening.

For example, we do have a crisis in the NHS and it's due to underfunding. Yes, there's a crisis in education: also due to underfunding. The crisis in the oil industry is due to central government's failure to make provision for lean times. But meanwhile the UK goes on spending. The UK has a 2 trillion pound deficit - and it's still growing. It's the Micawber approach to life: something will turn up.

And I haven't even mentioned Brexit.

Scientists say...oh, do they?

I've been catching up on the news.

First of all, did you know that people who trim back their pubic hair have more of a chance of picking up a sexually transmitted disease? No, I didn't know that either. Do I believe it? Not for one cotton-pickin moment. But apparently it's a scientific fact. Scientists have done research on it.

Monday is a slow news days, so you can usually find stories like this on tinternet or in the newspapers.

About ten years ago I came across a news item headlined 'The Golden Lie.' Apparently, in a desperate attempt to stop women drinking alcohol during pregnancy, a group of doctors came up with the idea that even one drink - one glass of Prosecco - would cause your child to be born with serious birth defects. Heaven help us, I've met pregnant brides who refused to have a glass of champagne at their own wedding for fear of damaging their unborn baby. There's a wee difference between the vast majority of  women and those who are likely to produce children with foetal alcohol syndrome. But it seems women are too stupid to understand the difference.

Now it looks like there's a problem with Caesarian births: more and more women are asking for 'surgical' births in Western countries. It's up to 25% in some places. Personally, I've never squeezed a bowling ball through my pelvis and I don't fancy trying it, so I tend to sympathise with women who opt for a painless delivery. But that, it seems, leads to a narrowing of the birth canal in these women and their daughters. It's about evolution. This may have been studied over about - oof - 5 years. It's not that 'natural' childbirth is likely to disappear...I'm not sure what I planned to write next, except that, according to scientists, Caesarians are bad. Very bad.

And yet again, I have to say to 'scientists': get your noses out of women's vaginas. Give us some facts or get the hell out of Dodge.

Shine a Light!

My 8 quid table lamp from B&Q gave up the ghost a few weeks back, so I decided to treat myself to a decent one that would maybe last more than 6 months. I went online to a company I've used a lot before. I'm not going to name them because they've always been reliable and what came next is down to some centralised 'customer fulfilment centre' rather than the company or its products. I ordered a dimmer lamp and 3 light bulbs - the bulbs recommended on the page as being suitable for the lamp.

A few days later, a very large box arrived. It contained not one but two lamps - the wrong lamps - and 3 light bulbs - the wrong bulbs.

They have a 'chatline' so I went online and had a chat with Anita who sounded just like Peter Kay doing his Geraldine voice.

I explained to Anita what the problem was. She checked my order. I had indeed ordered one lamp, code number 2020BC. I'd been sent two lamps, code number 2020. The bulbs were for the 2020BC lamp. That's why they didn't fit the lamps I'd received. Bad news: 2020BC is sold out. I said that was okay: the 2020 lamp is near enough what I wanted and it's about the same price. So I would keep one of the lamps and they could have the other one back along with the wrong bulbs, if they would just send me the right bulbs.

Days passed...then a courier arrived from DPD. He took back the extra lamp and the wrong bulbs. And handed me a very large box. He went off and I went to open my parcel. You're ahead of me now, aren't you?

Two lamps instead of one. Wrong lamps. Wrong bulbs.

I got on to the chatline but it wasn't Anita so I had to explain it all from the beginning, which is what I most hate about these 'customer fulfilment centres.' This lady was very nice and very sorry. She has promised me DPD will pick up the wrong lamps tomorrow and bring me right light bulbs.

I'm not hopeful.

Meanwhile, Amazon, Tesco, Mamas & Papas, Debenham's, Early learning, JD Sports and River Island have all delivered a whole collection of Christmas gifts I ordered at the weekend. Nothing was out of stock. Everything arrived on time or even early. My only complaint is that the thieving bandits at JD Sports charge 3.99 to deliver a gift voucher.

So I'm on standby tomorrow. Up at the crack of dawn to await the arrival of the cheery wee courier from DPD. We're getting to know each other quite well. He's not leaving here tomorrow till I know I've got the right light bulbs...

The Library

Some days, volunteering feels like a full time job...

Today A and I were due at Cardonald library to do a book drop to four customers. It's an easy gig: three of these customers don't let us over the door, so I choose their books but mostly stay in the car while A goes to the door. There's a quick exchange of books and we move on.

Fair enough: if I saw us, I probably wouldn't let us over the door either. But today A didn't turn up at the library.

That's unusual. A has been volunteering for about 8 years - maybe more. He never lets the customers down. I rang his home and mobile numbers twice. No answer. So where was he? The library staff got quite agitated, so I went off to knock on his door. And there he was, hale and hearty. He'd just forgotten today's gig. He was reading and none of us had thought to phone and remind him. Us bad.

A did the drop and I took us off to Morrison's so he could have a Wee Scottish breakfast and I could have scrambled egg on toast. Two meals  + coffees £7.80 - maybe £7.90. Excellent value. No wonder the greasy spoon cafes are dying out.

Seriously though, the home delivery service in Glasgow Libraries depends on volunteers but it seems there's no back-up. We've recruited Charlie to help us when we're stuck. But what's the future for the
days when we're not available or we get to be too old to volunteer?

Football

When I was growing up in working class Glasgow 50 years ago, one of the ways people hoped to do well was through sport. Usually the sport in question was for boys and the route to success was football or boxing. Mainly football.

Most of us knew a young guy who had been 'spotted' by a professional football team. The boy round the corner from us in Pollok was picked up by Glasgow Rangers and did a few years in their youth team. He didn't make the grade as a senior but the club arranged for him to do an apprenticeship as an accountant and he had a successful professional life from then on. The message we all got was: whether you make the grade as a player or not, you'll be looked after by football.

Now it appears that wasn't the case. Sexual abuse was obviously rife in football clubs. Nothing to do with Glasgow Rangers, any of this. But clearly a problem in many clubs.

There was a time that my father and grandfather talked about when professional footballers were treated with contempt. When Scottish team members travelled, they went third class while the 'gentlemen' of the SFA went first class. But by the 60s and 70s, football was in the hands of working class managers, coaches and physios. They are the people who either carried out the abuse or turned a blind eye to what was going on. It's the ultimate betrayal, in my opinion.

I can't bear the thought - and I'm sure there's much more to come out - that the sexual abuse of young boys is football's dirty little secret.

Why do paedophiles do it? Because they can. And because they have - until now - got away with it. By telling the kids they have attacked that they are in some way guilty of something. By threatening the kids and their families. By telling the boys that they controlled their career in football, which was true.

I take my hat off to the footballers who have - so far - made their abuse public. It can't be easy. it doesn't look easy on the TV screen. But they are doing the right thing and saving other young men years of exploitation and degradation. I wish them well, and I hope the other young men now hiding awful secrets of abuse can take courage from these men and denounce their attackers. The only hope is this:

Let in the light.

So who do YOU think you are?

I love TV programmes that help people trace their ancestry. I actually prefer the US version of Who Do You Think You Are? because the backgrounds of the celebrities taking part are much more varied than they are here in the boring old UK. Everyone in the USA wants to be able to trace their ancestry back to the Native Americans. I think it's about belonging. It's not possible, of course. There aren't enough Native Americans to go round. Europe - Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Germany, western Russia, the Czech republic, Poland, etc - all sent enough people to the USA to start a new nation but they're nowhere near as exciting as the poor exploited 'Indians'.

In the UK, it seems 'celebrities' trying to trace their ancestors want to be noble. Never mind that your great-grandad was a poor soul, barely educated, unskilled and riddled with syphilis, who spent a lot of his life in the workhouse. If your 12 times great-grandad was an aristocrat - or, as a friend of mine used to say: slept with an aristocrat - you can hold your head up.

I like the ads for quizzes on Facebook that ask who you were in a previous life, more specifically; Which queen were you in a previous life? It's nonsense, of course - 'clickbait.' Those of us old enough can remember relatives who in 'a previous life' weren't queens or ladies but skivvies who got up at 4am to clean out the fireplaces and light the fires for the real ladies in posh houses. I remember my father telling me he was taken on to deliver butcher meat to posh houses in Pollokshields in the mornings before he went to school. This would be in the 1930s. He got a row on his first day because he made the mistake of going to the front door and was directed by a servant round the back. One of the things that most annoyed me when I volunteered at the Museum of Rural Life in East Kilbride was to find that the saddest room in Kittochside farmhouse, the maid's room - a tiny space with no character - wasn't even mentioned in the tour.

As for Danny Dyer, who was the subject of tonight's programme, is he for real? He's almost a caricature Cockney. He's only about 40 but his rhyming slang seems to hark back to the Victorian era. It's so convoluted I couldn't follow it. Turns out he's a descendant of Thomas Cromwell and Edward III. He certainly had the swagger to go with the ancestry. He also had a large family from the 1860s onwards who spent a lot of time in and out of the workhouse, not to mention an ancestor who was charged with concealing the death of a baby. She gave birth in secret aged 17 and, not knowing what to do, didn't tie off the umbilical cord. My sympathy was with her rather than the aristocrats but I'm sure you knew that already.

A terrible mistake

When I went to Islay in 1977 after working in what I considered then (and still think now) a pretty tough 'scheme' school in Glasgow, I brought with me, as I thought, all the skills I'd picked up from a great principal teacher and good colleagues - and, looking back, a bit of arrogance I could have done without.

I set out to keep the Islay kids in order. I was stern ('cross,' - crosda in Gaelic, as the kids said). I didn't smile for weeks, which was how I'd been taught teachers behaved in Glasgow. Apparently, I scared some of the Islay kids to death. They were silent a lot of the time. Not something I was used to.

Gradually I started to relax a wee bit. And so did my pupils. In Glasgow, I'd taught my pupils French songs: nursery rhymes, pop songs - anything that would engage them. I taught them the words first and then the music. I did the same in Islay. It took me about 30 seconds to realise I was dealing with a completely different group of people. I don't remember what song I started with in my first year class. Let's say it was Frere Jacques. A ronde in three parts. Goes down a treat with most age groups. Only needs a wee bit of practice. I sang the verse to them. They sang it back. I explained that we were going to sing it three times in three groups, each group starting at a different point. And off we went. Well, they didn't need me, did they? These kids came from a long tradition of unaccompanied singing - especially in Gaelic - and they knew what a ronde was.

They also understood harmony, and with every song I taught them the French words for after that, they harmonised automatically.

They also sang a lot better than I did.

It was a good lesson. For me. In a way, it opened my eyes to how diverse a group my pupils were. A lot of kids were involved in music. There were Gaelic choirs everywhere. And it wasn't just singing that the kids took part in. Stewart McNally played the pipes. Angus MacGregor played the tuba (sorry if I've got that wrong, Gus - I know it was brass anyway!). Branwen Sykes played the flute. A lot were involved in Scottish dancing. Pipe Major Hood trained his pipers in the portakabin outside my classroom. When I recorded exam tapes to send to the Exam Board in Edinburgh, I had to explain why you could sometimes pick up pipe music in the background.

All this was normal and a world away from a Glasgow scheme. A lot of Islay and Jura kids came from a farming background and from an early age kept their own animals, which they put in to the Show. They drove tractors - very well - from the age of about 10. The ones who lived in the villages had responsibilities like cutting peat from an early age. The 'up country' kids had a long day, leaving home early to be at the road-end to get the bus to school. They never complained, although sometimes the Jura kids didn't make it to school because of the weather.

I'm delighted to say nothing has changed. Many young people in Islay are still involved in music. And many have held on to their love of music for a long time.

I have a specific reason for this post: Angela Paterson, Port Ellen, has been invited to take part in Celtic Connections in January. 

Angela is a self-made artiste, who writes and sings her own music. She has sung and played in many settings over the last few years - including the Hebridean Princess. It has taken years of hard graft to get to where she is and everyone who knows her should be proud.

Here's to her success!

You're joking, Ambassador

Dear Nigel,

We have received your application via Mr Trump for the post of Her Majesty's Ambassador to the United States and we thank you for your expression of interest.

As you no doubt know, we already have one of those in post. He's been doing okay and tends to have the kind of qualifications HM government is looking for.

First of all, he's very experienced. He was recruited to the Foreign and Commonwealth straight from university a long time ago and has represented the UK in embassies all over the world since then.

Secondly, he's not a politician. And he's definitely not a banker. He's a diplomat. That means he's subtle, clever and wise. Three things I'm afraid you are not. He's pretty well paid for the responsibility he has, but he doesn't make money on the side. (You might want to mention to Mr Trump next time you see him that we regard using your own hotel as a headquarters when you're president of the USA as a bit infra dig). We also don't expect our ambassadors to fiddle their expenses or to be found hanging on to a pint of lager at the bar and passing out the Silk Cut to all comers.

Thirdly, like all our ambassadors, our man in the USA is not expected to go around rabble-rousing. In fact, we recruit staff - male and female - who are the very opposite of trouble-makers. We expect them to get on well with our allies and do their best to win over our enemies. We might think twice about appointing a woman to the USA job while Mr Trump is in the post of president. Ahem. And we can't see our man in Washington standing in front of Congress telling our allies' most senior politicians they are useless layabouts who've never done a day's work in their lives. That didn't go down well with the doctors, lawyers and university professors of the EU parliament and we don't think it's what we need for the US either.

We understand you still have a job at the EU. We would like to suggest very respectfully that so long as the voters elect you and the EU pay you, you should maybe turn up in Brussels once in a while, attend the odd committee meeting and represent your country's interests there. You never know, you might get to quite like it.

Tourists

I've started a book by a journalist called Madeleine Bunting. She used to write for the Guardian but has given that up to concentrate on her writing. The book is called Love of Country and it's about the Hebrides.

Ms Bunting is originally from Yorkshire but now lives in London. She's the very opposite of me: southern, middle-class (educated at Cambridge/Harvard or Oxford/Yale. I forget) and brought up British by patriotic parents who used the words 'British' and 'English' interchangeably.

It didn't take me long to work out that Ms Bunting's view of Scotland is coloured by her childhood summer holidays spent in a rented croft near Tain. The holidays lasted two weeks every summer for ten years, and began with the family packing up the van with two weeks of food shopping. She and her 4 brothers and sisters happily ran wild, spending a lot of time hanging out with the only real crofters left in the area. That gave me an idea who I was dealing with here: the stereotype well-off southern tourist who seems to think places like Tain have no shops, and certainly no shops that could do with business from tourists visiting the area. I'm pleased she got this holiday experience but she could have been anywhere for all the effect it had on her. And she and her family put nothing in to the community when they were there.

Then she mentions in her introduction that she plans to rope in family and friends to go with her on her travels round the Hebrides. I wonder what she thought would happen to her if she'd set off on her own. She'd get a very different view of life in the Highlands and Islands for one thing. She might even have met some real locals rather than staying huddled in her comfort group.

So she's a tourist then. An academic, well-educated tourist but not a traveller and certainly not an anthropologist.

What puzzles me most is who this book is written for. It's a bit dense for tourists. It's too weak on detail for historians and anthropologists. And it is highly selective. So places like Arran, Islay, Mull, Gigha and Skye don't get a mention but there is, as usual, a whole chapter devoted to St Kilda.

I've dipped into different chapters of the book and have learned nothing new. I'll return it to the shelf of the library that I got it from. This is not the book that will inform Scottish readers as well as southern tourists about the half of Scotland that isn't in the Central Belt.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

Yesterday a Facebook friend warned us all the full-on advertising season for Christmas has started so we can expect crap like this to appear on our FB walls any time:

And sure enough, there it was today! Here are a few thoughts of my own on the matter of Christian festivals.

I would prefer it if the adverts were kept to the 12 days before Christmas but that's not going to happen. It would be great if Christmas wasn't an orgy of buying but it is. It would be just as great if Christmas had more to do with religion. 

I recognise 3 distinct types of Christians:

- Real Christians go to church, do good things in the community and live by their faith.

- Kinda Christians go to church for weddings, funerals and christenings and sometimes at Christmas. 

- Kid-on Christians tick the box on the form that says Christian but don't ever go to church and get very worked up at the idea of people like Jews and Moslems having their own festivals to celebrate at Christmas time. 

For 'Christians' in the list above you can substitute 'Jews' or 'Moslems.' The area I live in has quite a high Jewish population but I reckon about half of my Jewish neighbours are what I would call 'cultural' Jews (a bit like the Kinda Christians I described above) and not religious Jews. That's their choice. I imagine there are also Kinda Moslems out there too. 

I'm an atheist. I don't care what you call any of these festivals. I don't celebrate Christmas but I do celebrate the national holiday we all share round about then. And I always have done, despite growing up in a family of socialists and communists. 

As a child, I had great Christmases and they all had to do with presents. We really only got presents on 3 occasions in the year back then: birthdays (real presents), the first Sunday in May (mainly summer clothes) and Christmas (winter clothes and a lot of toys and books). Other than that, there was just August when we got kitted out for the return to school. Hard to get excited about that even back then.

By the way, I reckon one of the big steps forward we've made in the last generation or two has been the sale of cheap clothes, especially for kids. Viva Primark, Asda and Matalan! Great clothes and great colours. Easy to wash. Wee boys' joggers - 4 quid. Wee girls' party dresses - 8 quid. And when they wear out, as they do, these cheapo clothes can go in the recycling and we'll buy something new. 

Christmas to us looked like this:

This was my first Christmas - I was 9 months old! 

So who in the world says 'Happy Holidays' instead of Merry Christmas? Nobody in the UK, that I'm sure of. Is it a US thing or a Canadian thing? Canadians are pretty 'right-on' people so I can't imagine Christians there getting worked up about what to call a national holiday that is shared by all. So I'm guessing it's an American thing, maybe an attempt to include everyone in a seasonal holiday. The only people who could object to that would be a few swivel-eyed Kinda Christians in the US population. 

We see these extremists from time to time on TV and in the newspapers in the UK. Convinced there is about to be a take-over of Europe by Moslems. It's nonsense, of course. Scratch a Moslem and you'll find someone who wants a job, a safe place for them and their family to live, and a decent future for their kids. I sometimes come across anti-semites too, convinced that the world is being run by a Jewish conspiracy led by the Rothschild family. That's one of the oldest conspiracy theories of all time. 

The truth is less exciting: we're more alike than we are different. And, given the state politics is in right now, maybe it's time to start emphasising what we share. 

Clothes

I was sitting outside the changing rooms in Asda Toryglen, waiting for my sister to try on - oh, I don't know - maybe seven tops, out of which she might pick two as being suitable. A young guy came and sat down on the pouffe next to mine. We looked at each other and sighed together. Then his partner came out of the changing rooms and said:

- What about this?

- Aye, that's quite nice, he said.

She flounced back inside. He sighed again and looked at his watch.

- You on a deadline? I asked.

- We're due at a wedding in half an hour, he said.

- Where's that? I asked.

- Larkhall, he said.

- You're not gonny make it, I said. What's the problem?

It turned out his partner had bought a top for this wedding and he hadn't been enthusiastic enough when she showed it off two hours before. Hence the dash to Asda.

- What was up with it? I asked.

- It was yella.

Fair enough. I gave it a bit of thought.

- The next one she comes out with, you have to say 'Wow!'

He thought about this.

- What if it's boggin?

- It's still wow or you'll be here all day.

When I think about clothes shopping I realise my bro in law owes me big time for him being able to sit in his comfy chair on a Saturday afternoon listening to the footie on the radio while I trawl the shops with my sister. Mind you, my shopping skills are now so sharp that at one point in Monsoon a woman who had obviously heard me advising my sister said: Jean, are you there? What do you think of this? I should charge money.

I Confess

It turns out it's all my fault. I mean, this sudden swerve to the right the world has taken. The rise of fascism too. I'm to blame. Well, me and a some other folk. According to some commentators (journalists), my insistence on political correctness, doing away with capital punishment, demanding the legalisation of drugs, allowing free access to contraception and abortion and immigration. All down to liberals (small l) like me.

I'll admit I agree with the first one. Having been called specky, fatty and swotty at various times in my life, I quite like the idea of people not putting other people down by calling them names. I like it when people hold back insults against black people, Jews, Moslems, foreigners of all kinds, women, disabled folk, etc. And when people tell us we're invading their freedom of speech, it's good to remind them that their freedom ends when it infringes the rights of someone else. I don't subscribe to the 'it's political correctness gone mad' approach to life: it's politeness and decent behaviour that keep life ticking over. A friend of mine says she most dislikes the people who blurt out an insult, racist, sexist or otherwise, followed by a defensive: 'Well, it has to be said.' No. It doesn't. Just button it.

As for the rest of the list, I doubt if these things are responsible for the people of southern Europe putting up fences to keep out refugees and immigrants, the UK turning its back on children in a camp that the media called 'the Jungle' (tell me who lives in a jungle - animals mostly, right?), Trump threatening to put up a wall between the US and Mexico and wanting to ban Moslems, Dutch politicians cheerily calling for immigrants from the Middle East to be kicked out of the Netherlands, attacks on Polish people in the streets of the UK, and all the other nasty things that are happening.

Maybe we need to look elsewhere.

Let's start with why we have so many refugees. That would have to do with war. Also to do with poverty caused by the lack of jobs almost everywhere in Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East. Whatever we're doing to support those communities, we're not lifting them out of need.

Added to these people, there's the insecurity felt by large numbers of people all over the developed world.

In the UK, jobs are scarce, so you can find access to work available only through an unpaid internship. You'll be offered short-term contracts or zero hours contracts. You can be invited to be self-employed, in which case you have no employment rights at all. And all the time, there's the spectre of unemployment and a less than generous Social Security system to help you up.

In the US, they have these and other problems. I heard it said on the radio last week that the country is changing from a white, English- speaking community to a Hispanic, Spanish-speaking one. And that leaves millions of white people, not just African-Americans who have traditionally been left behind, looking at at least a lower standard of living and at worst unemployment. I believe the Canadian immigration website collapsed this week under the weight of enquiries from US citizens. That should be interesting.

In France, Spain and Greece, it's young people who are suffering the most, so they too are on the move to other parts of the world.

In the last 20 years, capitalism has been triumphant. So how have we used it? To spread the wealth, create jobs, build houses and decent towns to live in? Of course not. We've allowed capitalism to make small groups of people very, very rich. They went on getting rich during the capitalist recession of 2008. They're still getting rich, even the shareholders of companies that have plundered their employees' pensions.

Is there a cure for the world's ills? I've no idea, but I know from what I hear and read, there's another problem coming our way: last week, I saw a headline in a local newspaper announcing that 'automation' will do away with up to 20% of jobs in the public sector. I'm just guessing but I suppose that will apply to the private sector too.

What then? Is there a plan for dealing with that?

Newspapers

Maybe my nephew is right and printed newspapers are on their last legs. And that's why they are now printing the most absolute, embarrassing nonsense on their front pages.

You've seen the front page of the Daily Mail this week, which accused three high court judges - three middle-aged whiter than white men - of being the enemy of the people. Three guys - women don't
figure here - probably all middle class, from the right kind of public school and having attended one of the ancient universities. (And I don't mean St Andrews or Glasgow). One of the guys is accused of being in favour of  Europe and one is outed as an openly gay ex-fencing champion. I'd have said all of this makes the guys PLT (people like them), a wee play on Margaret Thatcher's phrase PLU. (Mrs T always thought she was one of them, but it didn't take them long to dump her when she no longer pleased them).

The 'openly gay' insult came off the front page pretty fast when someone realised being gay was no longer a crime and, in fact, was pretty well okay with most of us these days.

Newspapers never used to be quite as bad as this in the UK. In the 60s, my father read the Mirror and sometimes the Manchester Guardian. On Sundays in our house, there was a torrent of newspapers: the Sunday Post. the News of the World and Sunday Mail, the Observer and sometimes the Sunday Times. But the daily paper changed when my father got promoted.

He was a shipyard worker all his days. When he heard that Alexander Stephen was going to merge with Yarrows and that they would be taking on naval contracts, he had a rush of enthusiasm. He was known for this. At various times, he got excited about shoe-making, joinery and gardening, to name but a few of his hobbies.

I have to say that's a characteristic of my family even today. I've been there myself, with rug-making and cross-stitch, so when a member of my family gets excited about music, for example, I think: Let's just wait. It may well come to nothing.

So my father went off to the 'Tech', now known as Strathclyde University. The local branch of the Engineering Union sponsored him and he completed several courses in maths, design and naval architecture. (He was a bright guy - should have gone to one of Glasgow's fee-paying schools in the early 30s but his granny couldn't afford the uniform or the bus fares). On the strength of that, he got a promotion. Moving up from 'the tools' to 'the staff' was, I think, quite unusual in the 60s. He wasn't in work clothes any more but in a suit. And he changed his newspaper. He started buying the Daily Express.

I asked why. There were quite a few people (men) in his office, he said. They took their lunch break together in the canteen. They each bought a different paper, read it and then swapped it. They discussed what they read.

I asked if he agreed with the Daily Express's opinions. He and my grandfather had often expressed opinions about Beaverbrook and his like. Let's just say they were not fans. He doubted if any of his colleagues sympathised with Beaverbrook Newspapers. But, he said, you have to know what the enemy is saying.

That's a policy I'm happy to follow. I watch Sky News Review several times a week. Not that I believe much of what I hear but I want to know what the opposition are saying. I have long ago tagged some people are outright liars: Christina Patterson, Andrew Pierce, Carole Malone and Toby Young are just a few.

And I acknowledge that my early training as a newspaper reader by my family has stood me in good stead.

Grandparents

A Facebook post I liked tonight was a meme that has apparently gone viral: a photo of an old lady's hand, liver-spotted, bedecked in rings and sporting a beautiful manicure. A friend commented that her granny who's in a care home gets her hair and nails done every few weeks and she loves it. Another friend wrote cheerily that she has a 'client' who's a granny and loves painting her nails purple.

The first granny is 95 and the second is 71. My first thought was: you young people are going to have to change your ideas about old age.

Grannies are not what they were. The difference between 95 and 71 is a whole generation. Some of the grannies at the 71 end of the spectrum are still working and are likely to be working in the future as the age when women can access their state pension gets pushed further and further back. The youngest granny I've met was 34 and she could easily be a great-granny now, since she's still only about 52. She is very glamorous and vibrant - or, as I see it, a woman in her prime making the most of her looks and opportunities.

And yet the newspaper cartoonists go on producing pictures of grannies in slippers and aprons looking for all the world like Maw Broon.

I don't think Maw Broon has ever got to be a granny. Too busy cooking for all these weans, not to mention Paw Broon and Faither. Not for her the joy of getting up at 7am to take in the grandkids as their parents head off to work, or pushing the buggy from one end of the town to the other in the hope of getting the grandchild to go for a sleep or trying to stop the grandchild from sleeping as the clock heads past 6pm. 

I doubt if there's a granny  - or grandad - in the world who would complain. This is how it is: the adults have to work, the cost of childcare is prohibitive and the grandparents have to step up to help out. It's always been like that. 

It's pretty annoying if you're a volunteer to be constantly thanked for your efforts, when you know you wouldn't do it if you didn't like it and can stop at the cost of a phone call. Being a grandparent is not the same. Yes, you're a volunteer but volunteers in the community know that nothing much will happen if they stop helping out: someone else will step up or the service (usually for the poor and needy or the elderly or the disabled) will disappear and its passing will never be noticed. If grandparents don't or can't step up, the family - and the family income - fall apart. 

But it's worth remembering that most grannies - and grandads - have done a life's work before they take on their new duties are carers: brought up their own kids, held down a job. In other words, they're knackered. 

The least we can do is not patronise them. 

And we might consider giving them their pension ahead of time. 

Poppies

Once, just once, I'd like us all to get through poppy season without people taking offence, falling out and arguing over nothing. Myself, I don't care if Scotland and England footballers wear a poppy on the field or not. The day after Armistice Day (and I wonder how many of the younger generation know what that stands for) it will all be forgotten till it rolls round next year and somebody posts on Facebook or Twitter:

Proud to wear a poppy and don't care who is offended by it. 

Who's offended by it? Nobody I've ever met. Muslims are not offended by the poppy because many Muslims fought in the armed forces in the UK and have seen the devastation caused by war - for over a century now.

I begin to wonder if this excitement over the poppy every year is a giant confidence trick. The government - whatever shade it may be - never supports ex service people. It leaves it to charities like the Haig Fund, the British Legion and Help for Heroes - among others - to do that.

It was ever thus. I remember my grandfather telling us how he was offered a choice in 1919. He was a career soldier and a battalion middleweight boxer who had survived the trenches of northern France and the Dardanelles, and his choice was: honourable discharge into civvy street with a good reference (although there were no jobs) or a 2 year posting to Ireland as a Black and Tan. He went to Ireland but only until my granny could get the money together to buy him out. He came back to a land said to be 'fit for heroes.' But better not go into that here.

In my view, wear a poppy or don't wear a poppy. It doesn't matter. As long as you support the armed forces, particularly the veterans who are routinely discharged and left high and dry by the government that recruited them to fight in hellholes like Iraq and Afghanistan. I'd prefer it if footballers - who have the money - went without a poppy on an armband but donated vast amounts of money to the charities that look after ex-service people.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist.

The definition of madness...

...is to keep on doing the same thing in the hope that just once you'll get a different outcome. That seems to be the approach of the UK medical world to CFS/ME. I've yet to read a credible explanation of the standard treatment of CFS/ME in the UK. I have read some interesting new stuff from the USA, Canada, Japan and Australia about diagnosis and treatment suggesting there may be a pharmaceutical cure in the offing, but we don't talk about that here. In the UK, there is only one approach to this condition. And it comes around time after time.

Professor Esther Crawley is getting a shedload of funding to investigate:

<<intensive online therapy sessions to adjust sleeping habits and activity levels>>

That's a quote from a BBC report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-37822068

Apart from the fact that the BBC report is very badly written, there are a few issues not dealt with:

1 This is not a new treatment. It's called cognitive behaviour therapy and it's been on offer - instead of proper treatment, in my opinion - for a long time. It treats CFS/ME as a mental illness and totally disregards the physical elements of the condition. It will probably suggest 'graded exercise' as a cure for CFS/ME. And maybe some sort of sleep therapy, though I have to say sleep is not really a big problem. Staying awake is. And being active is a whole nother ballgame.

2 What marks this investigation out is that this time it's aimed at children and young people. I'm not sure what proportion of CFS/ME sufferers come into this category. In addition, children and young people have desperate parents and guardians behind them who will do anything to try to get a 'cure' for their kids. They're unlikely to argue or refuse a doctor's diagnosis or a recommendation of CBT. They see their kid's future melting away so yes, they'll cooperate with the professor's team.

3 I haven't seen the funding submission put together by Prof Crawley's team, but I would like to know in what way the project can be assessed as 'research': there will be 734 young people involved. How were they selected for the project? Were they self-referred? Referred by a GP? Or a parent? Or a consultant? How did the team work out the suitability of these young people for the 'research'? What will be the criteria for assessing the success of the treatment? Will success be objectively assessed or will it be done by self-assessment? Will the treatment and the findings of the research be peer-assessed - that is, will researchers from other places get the chance to see what work was done, how it was done and what the results were?

4 I see a reference in the BBC report to 'activists' - that is, people - adult people - who've been round the CFS/ME circuit a few times and may have failed to find a GP or consultant who knew what we were talking about. Apparently, we're likely to be unsympathetic to this research. Is there a plan to involve people like us at any stage? Or can we look forward to another 6 years (the professor's report won't be out till 2022, for heaven's sake) of being spoken to as if we were, well, children.

5 The last lot of research into CFS/ME in the UK has now been widely questioned and in a couple of cases discredited. It too was based on the treatment described above.

So I'm going to file this project under: yet another waste of money. You may think the USA is under the control of 'big pharma' but I think the UK is in thrall to 'big medica.' Meanwhile, I have friends who are into their 20th year of CFS/ME with no hope of improvement.

Hillary Clinton

Have you been following the US presidential election? I've tried not to. But it's a bit like car-crash-TV. I can't look away.

A few months ago, a Facebook friend put up a photo showing Hillary and Bill Clinton walking up the steps of a plane when he was president. Hillary has a reddish stain on the skirt of her suit. She was menopause age when Bill was president: 45 when he was first elected, so 53 when he left office. I'm guessing the photo is of a 'leak' she experienced at that time.

I've been there, as have most women. Almost 20 years ago, snatching a coffee at Stirling University before I spoke at a conference, I was taken aside by a woman I didn't know who told me there was a stain on my skirt. I didn't have another skirt to change into, so I swished the stain round to the side, hoping at least it wouldn't be seen when I walked up to the podium. I don't think the loss of blood affected my performance as a speaker.

I couldn't understand why the photo of Hillary's 'stain' appeared on the internet. Are there still men so freaked out by women menstruating they would refuse to vote for her? Are menopausal women such a threat? Is the grand grouping of middle-aged white men who control so much of life in the USA (and other western countries) that afraid of the middle-aged woman?

As I've commented elsewhere on tinternet today, I thought it would be hard to get an African-American president elected, but I never imagined for one minute it would be this hard to elect a woman. A clever, politically-experienced woman. One who has stood up to every kind of insult thrown at her by people who seem to think she's not a person in her own right but a cypher of her husband. Every possible weapon has been wielded against her: her loyalty to her straying husband and her loyalty to the president who gave her her orders when she was secretary of state. Her health has been cited as a reason for her not to stand. But the biggest problem with Hillary Clinton appears to be that for the media she isn't warm and cuddly. Not like Michelle Obama, although I wonder how warm and cuddly Michelle would be after ten minutes of legal negotiations.

Now, disgracefully, the FBI has stepped in to destroy Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. There can be no justification for the intervention. It's designed purely to dissuade people from voting for Hillary Clinton and if the man in charge has any decency at all, he'll resign.

Does misogyny run that deep? Friends assure me I have no idea how much some men hate women. I admit I've worked in places where there's - I almost wrote tolerance of women there and that gives away a lot about my attitude and that of others. But I have worked mostly in places where there was equality and fairness on the surface. How depressing would it be to discover that the battle for equality has only just started?

Creepy Clown Paranoia

Despite all the denials by police, the creepy clown hoax continues to spread across the USA.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/us/creepy-clown-hoaxes-arrests.html?_r=0

It's obviously a hoax, but you have to ask why and why now - and why is it spreading?

Myself I put it down to a few things:

- Hallowe'en is coming. That's the most obvious thing. People expect to be scared at Hallowe-en.

- Some Americans are feeling pretty paranoid right now: fear of Muslims, of bombs, of the enemy within. Are today's creepy clowns the equivalent of the 1950s Reds Under the Beds?

- Political uncertainty: the presidential elections are just a mess. A lot of people are afraid for the future.

- Collective hysteria. Never underestimate the power of an urban myth.


And don't think it can't happen here in the UK. It already has! Just substitute: Brexit for the US elections.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/clownageddon-comes-uk-newcastle-schoolchildren-targetted-by-creepy-clown-attacks-1584809

I'm not sure what anyone can do about this, although I have thought maybe a person of standing and known for his or her common sense could appear regularly on TV and radio and shout at us:

JUST CALM THE F*** DOWN!

I would nominate Benedict Cumberbatch myself, Easy on the eye. And he needs the work.

It's the law

I switched on Radio 4 in time to hear someone talking about CCJs. Now I'm as smart as the next person at working out what the acronyms of modern life are all about and, since this programme was about the law, I jaloused that we might be talking about courts. But to get the full acronym, I had to google it. A CCJ is a County Court Judgement. It seems you can have a CCJ taken out against you without your knowledge and it can screw up your credit rating right royally for the rest of your life. It seems to be an England thing...or maybe an England/Wales thing or even an England/Wales/Northern Ireland thing. Hard to tell..

We don't have CCJs in Scotland, where there's a whole different legal system, much closer to the French system, so that Scottish lawyers can go and work in France. And they do. Have done for centuries. Same goes for Scottish doctors and dentists. On the other hand, people trained in law in England find it difficult to practise in Scotland or anywhere else in the EU because the legal systems are so different.

I think maybe it's a Scottish thing to pretend the same thing applies to education: we restrict people coming to teach in Scotland on the grounds that it's ok to know how to teach reading, writing and maths but can you do it the way the local culture needs you to do it? Why should we? Don't we need new thinking?

About 25 years ago, I came across a French teacher working as a foreign language assistant in Kintyre. She had trained in a way that was what you might call 'traditional' in France but was alien to us in Scotland: left school at 18 with the Baccalaureat and served a 5-year apprenticeship as a primary teacher, learning on the job alongside a qualified and experienced teacher. It's not what I would want for a teacher myself: in my opinion, it's better to have some time out to study the philosophy/theory of learning before being flung back into the classroom. But this woman was obviously well trained and brought worth-while skills to her school. It took 5 months but she finally got GTCS 'recognition.'

A lot of this has to do with the fact that the UK is (right now) a member of the EU: according to EU law, you can't prevent someone exercising their metier if they are qualified and experienced. If they have the paper showing their qualification, they're in. It wasn't so easy for my Chilean niece. Her degree in English (backed up by long-term work experience in the USA and the UK), a masters degree in English and education and her years in the classroom - well, none of it meant a damned thing to the GTCS. She still had to prove on paper - certificates, diplomas, letters of recommendation, etc - that she was 'fit to teach.'

I think there's arrogance at work here: an innate belief that the way we do it is best. A short visit to schools in several Scandinavian countries would persuade you of the folly of that idea. We can learn from what goes on in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. I know fitness to teach - qualifications in other words - was a hard-fought battle in Scotland but that battle took place 60 years ago and maybe we should have moved on since then.

Research shows...

I like research. I like getting information in a kind of rational way: not through wee stories but through asking questions to determine hard facts, producing data and publishing the results. But I'm annoyed at how the research into how we live is now being reported.

Last week, research in the UK was looking at men, in particular the suicide rate among men. The rate among men aged 30 and under is apparently very worrying. When I was working, I heard several times about people walking their dogs in leafy Kilmarnock parks of a morning finding the bodies of young men hanging from trees. The things I never knew were: is the suicide rate among young men worse than it was? And what causes it to be so high?

This week, it's the rate of depression and anxiety among young women that's causing concern. It seems 25% of young women in the UK (or was it England or England and Wales?) between 18 and 24 (or maybe 19 and 25?) suffer from anxiety and/or depression. That's quite a high proportion but is it more or less than in previous years? And, of course, what causes these conditions?

Research will tell us but only if we ask the right questions and can interpret the data correctly.

The only way you can find any reliable facts is by going back to the original research documents, assuming you know how to read the conclusions. Most of us don't have the time or the 'nous' to do that so we rely on press reports on research. According to these, young men commit suicide because men have lost their 'traditional role' in society. Young women suffer from anxiety and depression because they are sold the social media idea of perfection: if you don't look like a Kardashian, you're nothing.  

I don't know if any of these conclusions are valid. My family history tells me the role of working men in our society has been constantly changing for a long time: my relatives in Fife left the mines in the 1880s to go and work in the St Rollox railway works in Glasgow. (I used to get really pissed off with people like Norman Tebbit, with his 'get on your bike' philosophy - what the hell had my family been doing for 150 years, if not that?) The women in my family always worked, in 'service' or later in factories, care homes and offices. They adapted, just like the men.

To me, it all looks like a stitch-up: the message from capitalism is if the working people of this country can't find a job, give their lives some meaning, get themselves a place in society, it's because they are lacking something. In other words, it's their own fault. I'm not buying it. People's lives are worth more than this.

I'm still waiting for a political party - apart from the Greens - to reject this neo-liberal idea. But I'm not holding my breath.

What is disability?

A friend of mine told me she only realised her cousin had ADHD when she started working with young people with that now neatly-labelled learning disability in the 1990s. She and her cousin were children of the 1950s. She didn't recognise - and neither did anyone else in the family - the tantrums, the anxiety, the lack of concentration and the difficulties at school that all pointed towards a quite severe learning disability.

In my family, we had a cousin who was a bit odd. He was the late and only child of elderly parents: mother about 40, father nearer 60. He went to school, did okay, got a job with Scotrail and kind of vanished off the radar - or at least, our radar. We only found out that he was still around - and there was a problem - when we were contacted by the police who told us his mother (our mother's sister) was in hospital and asked us to go and visit. This was in the late 80s. My sister and brother went to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow (I was away, as usual). They sat in a corridor waiting to be told what was going on. When our cousin appeared, my brother said: 'Clock the sannies.' Yes, the cousin was wearing a blazer, collar and tie, neatly pressed trousers - and school sandshoes. It was, frankly, the only indication of anything unusual. And it took my brother, not a teacher but used to working with many types of people, to spot what the problem was. 

Asperger's Syndrome. 

The cousin had difficulty in communicating. He didn't like it when strange situations arose (like finding yourself in a hospital because your mother is ill, talking to people you don't really know). He didn't make eye contact with my brother or sister. He was happy at home, where he had an amazing railway set-up with a room to itself. The rest of the house was taken up with black bags full of rubbish that hadn't been discarded. He couldn't really be trusted to look after his mother - or himself - so carers were organised. (His father had died a long time ago). Last we heard, he was living in the same house 20 years later. 

I suppose it's an example of how the traditional family has collapsed, although I see it differently: people are entitled to do their own thing and shouldn't have to resort to the 19th century family model in which we all - apparently - looked after each other. That never worked for my family anyway: we were industrial workers and went where the work was. My 4 times back great-grandmother died in the St Leonard's Workhouse in Leith in her 80s. She'd been married and widowed twice, had 9 children and not one of them was able to look after her in her old age. 

Isn't capitalism great?