Queensferry Crossing

I was very sorry to read about a construction worker losing his life today in an accident on the new Forth bridge. My sympathy goes to his family. Another employee has minor injuries and I hope he makes a good recovery.

It's normal to hear people talk as if all jobs are risk-free and we can always expect them to be. If you work in an office, as Jeremy Vine has said on BBC radio, you should expect to be safe. Not everyone has that assurance and pillocks like Jeremy don't seem to get this basic fact: most people don't in fact work in an office. They don't have toilets laid on for them, or a canteen where they can get subsidised food or have a locker for their stuff - or have a Health & Safety officer onsite.

Many workplaces are not safe. Some just can't be.

Construction workers, factory workers 'on the line', farmers, truckers, train drivers, fishermen, postal workers, mechanics, police and other emergency services - all of them and many more run risks every single working day.

Scotland has a terrible record in workplace accidents. Employees here are often put in a position where they have to work faster, finish later so they drive home tired and often in the dark - and they work longer hours than in almost any other country in the EU.

A few years ago, I read an article in New Statesman by Melissa Benn (yes, daughter of Tony and sister of Hilary) in which she mentioned the small army of workers needed to look after her children, clean her house, and deliver her shopping and ironing. All this so that Melissa could be freed up to be what she wants to be: an intellectual, someone who spends a lot of time thinking and producing good ideas and writing them down for the rest of us to enjoy. It never seemed to occur to her that the people who did all this work for her deserved her consideration. And some of them might even be good thinkers and good writers but will never get the chance to show us what they can do.

I think we are at the bottom line here of what's wrong in the UK: people who need things don't appreciate people who make things and deliver services and basically keep life going. It seems everything should have a price and that price should be rock bottom.

There's a debate going on in one wee corner of Facebook right now about whether we think £45K is a big wage and whether people earning that amount should pay more tax than those on  £25K. Honestly? I'm a Green, so yeah. But then I also think we need to scrap the minimum hourly rate in favour of the living wage, set a limit on the profit utilities companies are allowed to make, make people who got a free education and a student grant pay some of it back - and consider whether people who got tax relief for their kids and family allowance and tax credits should also pay some of this back when the kids start to do well.

We could start with a bit of understanding: we don't live in a 'service economy.' We live an economy where services are shored up by the rest of the workforce. And they deserve the reward for doing that: decent wages and some guarantee of safety at work.

Beyond Borders...

...and beyond belief.

There's a new spin-off show from Criminal Minds on TV. It's called 'Beyond Borders' and it starts off with this statement read by Gary Sinise* (Mr Woodentop himself):

"Every year, 65 million Americans leave the safety of our shores..."

Poor benighted sods, these people go off to volunteer on farms in lawless places like Thailand. It seems they want to do their bit for the planet, not just fritter their time away as tourists. But never fear: Gary heads up a team that sets out to rescue fellow Americans in peril all over the world. The team have their own plane which carries their own vehicles (no doubt already equipped with local registrations or maybe diplomatic plates - we're not told) and they disembark in places like Thailand as fast as you can say 'No border control here!' The team come fully tooled up with loadsa guns, solve all problems and rescue all Americans who need them. They do, however, include in their team one person who speaks the local language and keeps the team briefed on local etiquette, like 'Women, don't offer to shake hands with men in Thailand.' Shoot them, yes. Greet them, no.

I'll admit I laughed when I heard Gary introduce the programme and realised that according to Hollywood, the USA is a haven of safety and security and the rest of the world is dangerous and threatening. Who says Murricans don't do irony? Well, I do for one. A couple of days after I saw this, I heard on the news that some crazy person in Ohio had murdered 8 people from one family and was still on the loose - armed - in the local community. And has anyone noticed in the USA that terrorist attacks have so far come from people born and/or brought up in - yes, the USA?

I wonder how dangerous the rest of the world is for Americans compared to home? Anyone got the stats?

Just as important, does nobody in Hollywood ever stop and think: We want to sell this series all over the world. How will other countries regard it - and us? Is this really the image of our country we want to sell abroad?

There's one other little point that really annoyed me about episode 1 of this series: it's hot in Thailand. The Americans sweat a lot, although the Thais don't, but nobody ever comments on the humidity. I've recently read a series of books by Colin Cotterill set in Laos and Thailand in which the locals start every conversation with: 'Shit, it's hot.'



*Who is Gary Sinise and why does he have such a hold over the producers of series like CSI? I know one of the major players in NCIS is married to the daughter of the executive producer of the series and I assume that's part of the deal: here's my money, but you have to take my son in law. So who is Gary sleeping with?

Comfort Food

I have Postviral Fatigue Syndrome. I've had it since January. For family and friends who are tired of hearing about it: I'm sorry but I promise you, I'm sick of it too!

Among the many exciting symptoms - blurred eyesight, weird head noises, muscle twitches, disturbed sleep, constant tiredness and lack of energy, poor concentration and memory, etc - there's loss of appetite. I never thought the day would come when I'd look at a nice bit of fish or a glass of wine or steak and chips and think yuk! 

So I've resorted to comfort food, mainly the food we got when we were children or when we were no weel. It has the advantage of taking almost no time to prepare and it's light and easily digested. Here's my list:

-     

1 Soup
I prefer my own soup but that would mean making it and I'm mostly not up to that, so it's Heinz tomato soup or, at a pinch, lentil. I notice Heinz have reduced the amount of salt and sugar in their soups. Not a bad thing, but not the taste I was expecting when I started buying them again.

2 Egg in a cup
Soft boiled egg, wee bit of butter, pinch of salt and all mashed up in a mug. Glorious! I read earlier this year that soft boiled eggs are 'now' safe. I had no idea they were ever unsafe. I've been eating them like that all my days, so no point in worrying about it now!

3 Toast
White bread, lightly toasted (no need to burn the arse out of it!) and spread with a thin covering of butter. Goes nicely with the egg in a cup or on its own. This has been my sister's breakfast of champions all her life while I was choking down the healthy bran flakes. She looks good on it too!

4 Porridge
My early teens involved being wakened up by my father at the weekend with the jolly shout: Wakey, wakey! Here's your porridge! Usually this was at 7am. I quite often ignored him, waking hours later to find a plate of congealed porridge still sitting beside the bed. Now I regard it as a superfood. On days when I have no appetite for anything else, this is breakfast or lunch or supper.

5 Bacon butty
Some things go well on a roll: square sausage, fried egg, etc. But bacon, grilled to a crisp, should be on white bread. No butter. No sauce. I would eat it along with a mug of coffee but right now - coffee - yuk!

You may wonder where the healthy stuff is. I've just had my lunch: M&S pasta and pine nut salad with radishes and cucumber and 4 slices of salami. I do try.

Every so often I daydream about a Chinese takeaway: spring rolls, spicy chicken wings, beef in black bean sauce with peppers. That does me two days. I'm just not up for it right now but one day! I'll know when I'm getting better: I'll start buying digestive biscuits and butter. Always a wee treat when we had been ill.

Prince

Prince was not my generation, although I was aware that a lot of people around me admired him, as they did Michael Jackson, the Clash and a whole lot of artists that came after my eras, the 60s and 70s. I had no idea what a brilliant musician Prince was. Yesterday I heard him playing the guitar and was amazed at his skill and his feeling for the music. There's no doubt he'll be missed as a composer, producer, arranger and singer of popular music. 

That's the good bit. 

The bad bit is the reaction of the media to his death. This is a current headline on the BBC news website - and it's typical of the websites of many newspapers and TV stations:

Prince death: 'No sign' it was suicide, sheriff says.

It's hard to know where to start with this. There have been snarky comments lately about the deaths of  several famous people. It's been claimed Ronnie Corbett, Terry Wogan and Victoria Wood kept their final illnesses 'secret.' Not wanting people to know how ill you are is not being secretive. It's being private. Why should the public know someone famous is dying of cancer? It's their personal tragedy and they have better things to worry about - like preparing their families and friends for their imminent death - rather than worrying how the public will react. There seems to be a view that we somehow own famous people. That we buy their lives. We need to get this right: we pay for their skills and enjoy them, but they remain sons and daughters, partners and parents. And the public have no share in that. 

Then there's the suicide question. It's no one's business how Prince died. Surely there is no scandal or stigma attached to taking your own life - for whatever reason - nowadays? Does it make anyone feel any different about him knowing that Robin Williams took his own life? It makes me sad that he felt he couldn't go on - or maybe felt he had no future and no one to turn to for help - but in the end it was his choice to make and we need to respect that. 

All this started with Diana. Was she Princess Diana or Diana Princess of Wales? I don't know any more. She's just referred to as Diana. Denied a personality or a place in real life. Just an icon. The Daily Express seems to have an article about her every other day, even now, almost 20 years after her death. In my opinion, it's a measure of how sick Diana was that she left her sons in the UK and swanned off with her boyfriend all over Europe, with an entourage of reporters after her. That's when we got the idea that we, the public, had the right to know everything about famous people. 

There's an expression we use when we tell people off about this kind of obsessive following of celebrities: Get a life.

Baby Boxes

The Scottish government is planning to give out baby boxes to the families of newborns. The boxes will replace the baby starter packs that hospital maternity units used to give but which seem largely to have disappeared.

These boxes were first used in Finland 82 years ago as part of a major focus on reducing mortality among very young children. It's not the content that matters (probably smaller sample sizes of commercial baby products) so much as the box itself: it gives families a safe, small sleeping place for new babies. In the olden days, of course, new babies slept in a large drawer when they first came home. Same idea. And it is offered, as I've said, as part of a major focus on child welfare. Pregnancy checks, midwife support, baby clinics - all these will continue.

So you might think this baby box ideasounds generous, not terribly expensive and worth a try.

But the idea of baby boxes has caused some amazing reactions: it has been dismissed as a 'stunt' by opposition politicians and by the press and social media. A professor says 80% of new babies don't need this support. I personally am 97.75% sure the professor's figure is bogus - he just came up with it too fast for it to be based on research - or fact, as I like to call it. But it doesn't matter if the figure is 80% or 90% or 40% or 60%. Unless the professor has a way to identify the 20% of babies who will benefit, it will cost a helluva lot more to distribute than the £6m a year currently estimated.

Anyway, the prof has missed the essential point. If baby boxes are a universal benefit, they will reach all new mothers, not just the ones who can afford to buy a box (£35 online, by the way). It's also an extra, so it won't replace current antenatal or postnatal care in any way. I know we're out of the way of getting extras these days from government. We seem to be better at taking things off people. In the grand scheme of the Scottish budget, the £6m cost is chickenfeed. It costs more than that to send out MPs to Westminster. And that is fact - check it with the expenses pages of the UK parliament.

Just, in passing and on this very theme of taking things off people: my nephew tells me Glasgow University no longer has student course advisers. They have a generic advisory team. In his experience, that means the person you're talking to about your course knows nothing about it and can't answer your questions, but they promise they'll find out and get back to you. And then they don't. Funnily enough, that has been my experience with the NHS's generic teams: discussing your depression with an occupational therapist may not have the best outcome for you, although it will let the generic team tick a wee box on a form.

Anyhow, I digress. I am not an SNP supporter (and I am getting pissed off with SNP supporters telling me how to vote next month). One of the big claims about the SNP is that they don't have policies. Well, here's a policy they do have: making sure all children have a good start in life. So far they have proposed the 'named person' scheme, given free school lunches to all P1 and P2 pupils and now baby boxes. All worth exploring, in my opinion, and all totally rubbished by other political parties (though not the Greens) and by the media. The 'named person' is derided as a 'state guardian' and a snoopers' charter, mostly by people who haven't bothered to read the documentation. You would think free school meals for very young children would be a good idea but no, according to some experts 'most' parents don't need a free meal for their kids. They can afford to pay.

There is a wider philosophical point to the SNP government's measures to promote the well-being of young children: anyone who has worked in education will tell you that the most important years are those before the child is 10. That's when the foundations for a good education are laid. Mastery of reading, writing and maths is won or lost in these years. Socialisation takes place in those years - or not at all. It's also the time when parents are most enthusiastic and hopeful about their children's life chances and most likely to be supportive of their education and most willing to be involved.

Maybe £6m a year in baby boxes is an investment worth making.

Do I care?

I started a new blog because Blogger stopped working and, hey, Blogger is back! Maybe the threat to run off to Wordpress was enough to shake Blogger into action! 

I filled in a survey yesterday. I do these regularly because (1) I am self-opinionated and (2) companies pay me to do it. This one was about the TV stations I watch. I don’t in fact watch live TV very much. I pre-record everything so I can whip past the adverts, most of which are moronic. I regard TV adverts in the same light as nuisance phone calls. And anyway have you ever bought something after seeing it advertised on the telly? I haven’t. Pre-recording makes it tricky when I have to guess which stations I’m watching most or having to identify adverts. However, I persevered.

Right at the end of today’s survey, there was a wee sneaky page asking if I did or didn’t know the identity of the ‘celebrity couple’ who have been involved in a threesome and are trying to take out a super-injunction down south to stop the tabloids telling people about it. These people apparently want to protect their children. One way I can suggest they could do that would be to avoid getting involved in dubious sexual shenanigans that will hit the front page of the tabloids. But what I really wanted was a third box to tick in the survey page:

- I know the identity of the people involved

- I don’t know the identity of the people involved

- I don’t give a rat’s arse about the people involved.

I wish the great British public would learn how to defuse the power of the tabloid press.

1 Don’t read the tabloids. That approach has worked very well in Scotland, where the circulation of the Daily Record has dropped by almost half in recent years, ever since readers worked out in the independence referendum that this newspaper prints lies.

2 If you must read newspapers, regard what’s written in them with the same cynical eye as your horoscope. And remember they are mainly owned by billionaires who regard their readers as thick and will tell us anything to make a pound.

3 Don’t pass on tabloid poison via social media like Facebook. Someone tried to persuade me last weekend that postal votes were crooked. The source of the information given was the Daily Mail. Yes, that Daily Mail, the one whose owner was a Fascist in the 1930s.

Oh, in case you haven't noticed, you can be equally suspicious of TV news: Sky, RT, BBC and ITV – they all have a political agenda that goes way beyond telling us what’s happening. (See much sign on TV news of the 100,000 people who matched on Downing Street at the weekend demanding Cameron’s resignation?) Only C4 has a decent news service and – guess what? – the Tory government wants to privatise it.

Money, money, money...

It's a rich man's world.

Of course, there are different ways to get money.

You can steal it. The nearest I ever got to an embezzler was when I heard that the office manager in the place where I had my student job had been fiddling the books. He went to jail. The other people in the office were not particularly shocked at his actions but they were amazed that he'd stolen so little (the equivalent of about £30,000 these days) and didn't seem to realise he'd get caught so hadn't made a getaway plan. I see the sense in what they were saying: if you're going to steal money and ruin your and your family's lives, make it worth your while - we're talking a couple of million  here - and make sure you have your passport in your pocket and a bag packed under your desk for when you hear the auditors are on their way.

You can inherit money. That, of course, is what Dodgy Dave and his equally dodgy mate at No11 have done. No qualifications needed for this. Just the birth certificate. Neither of them is exactly a financial superstar. I suspect Dave's dad had a bit more nous about him than his son has: Cameron père was a stockbroker and actually knew about money while Dave was in PR. Spin, as we call it. I'll say no more. George's dad was a wallpaper designer. At least that's a proper job with skills, whereas George's total contribution to the UK economy seems to be that he taught English to Japanese students.

Or you can earn the money. Alan Duncan did that. He worked for Royal Dutch Shell and then became an MP. Seems a fairly straightforward and traditional career path: Oxford, oil executive...Tory MP...(failed) minister. For some reason Siralan seems to think that makes him - and his friends Dave and George - high achievers, while the rest of us are poor benighted craturs, jealous of our betters.

The trouble with Tories of the Siralan kind is that they really believe making money is all that matters and that having loadsa money somehow makes you superior to others. It might surprise them to know that what most people want is to have a decent life. If they can do something to earn a living that they enjoy and that brings in enough money to live on, that's fine. Other people are not so lucky: they are stuck in jobs they don't like. And then there are the people who can't find a job and those too disabled to get employment who would love to be in the workplace.

Looking at the Daves, Georges and Siralans of the UK, I wonder if we could somehow award them a few months of getting up at the crack of dawn, to go to a job that is badly paid and doesn't use their abilities or their skills, where the people they work for couldn't give a rat's arse about them - and where they now face the prospect of working until they're 70 before they can get a state pension.

And tell me this, why do the people who manage to make a lot of money in the UK almost always join the Tory party and turn into greedy bastards who would sell their granny for a pound?

The Beast of Bolsover

I'm not a big fan of Dennis Skinner. He's been in Westminster as a Labour MP for a very long time now and, apart from landing the occasional punch - The people on the Tory front benches are all crooks. Withdraw! All right, half the people on the Tory front benches are not crooks - he hasn't made much of a mark.

Today though, he definitely landed a blow with his Dodgy Dave comment.

Of course, he was ably assisted by the Speaker, John Bercow, the Ernie Wise to Skinner's Eric Morecambe.

I imagine Bercow is loathed by the Tories (who think he's a turncoat) and not much liked by the Labour people (because sometimes he sides with the Tories), but once in a while he is good value. His comment on Dennis Skinner's remark today was worth its weight in gold, in my opinion: Yes, we know what the Honourable Member said: the word that starts with D and ends in Y.

I can't imagine how he kept a straight face.

I don't know about the rest of you but while all this was going on I was watching the SNP benches, in particular Chris Law. I'm a Green but I don't have a Green bench to watch - yet. The SNP are mostly new to this knockabout stuff, but while the rest gaped, Chris was watching quite calmly: it's a learning experience for people like him and the SNP have proved to be quick learners.

Look how fast they have learned to use Westminster systems and procedures to suit themselves. Even people who are deeply suspicious of the SNP know who Tommy Shepherd, Mhairi Black, Angus Robertson and Philippa Whitford are.

And HM government may not like it but they'll be getting this kind of stuff right back at them pretty soon.

I can't wait.

HIGNFY

A new series of Have I Got News For You started last night and I decided I'd maybe come to the end of my patience with this programme when the first anti-German joke kicked in.

I've enjoyed a long friendship with HIGNFY over the years but tonight's programme (well, I watched it tonight) came over as tired. Paul Merton is obviously going through one of his depressive phases and had nothing to say. The UKIP woman, invited on - as they all are - for Merton and Ian Hyslop to have a go at, got an easy ride. Stephen Mangan as host seemed to have a poor script to work with. Only Henning Wenn seemed to have any life about him, but the cliched we-won-world-war-two script he had to work to was pretty lame.

I've travelled widely in Europe for almost 50 years and have talked to people who have lived through events of various kinds: French, Dutch, Greek and Belgian people whose villages have been occupied by the Nazis, Catalans terrorised by Franco's troops, East Germans overwhelmed by Russians, Bosnians caught up in civil war. All of them remembered the events from their past, although none of them hated the nations that had made them suffer and all of them were happy to be living in an EU where such human catastrophes would never happen again.

It's only the English - never occupied since 1066 - who seem to harbour outright hatred for other nations. According to them, the Germans lost the war but seem to have done better from the peace (which is unfair). The French: surrender monkeys, useless in a fight. The Spanish, Greeks and Italians: cowards all. And the peoples of Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans. In fact, anybody outside the UK - and a lot of us inside the UK who seem to have forgotten that the English are top dog here.

It's a sad world view that your nation has to be the boss and you can only do well if someone else is doing badly.

But till we can change the world, we've got HIGNFY which should be a cutting edge, radical, satirical programme. It used to be, and I have to ask, what went wrong?

Who's the daddy?

I have a radio in every room, sometimes tuned to different stations. (This is mainly because tuning a digital radio requires a PhD in engineering, which I don't have - and even if you get them all tuned to the one station, there's still a 2 or 3 second delay between radios and that is really annoying). Anyhow, last week at some point I heard someone say that 20% of men are bringing up a child who isn't theirs. I was on my way out, so I didn't hear what this was about and by the time I got downstairs to the car the radio had moved on to something else.

I thought about this for about, oh, 30 seconds. Did they mean there are so many 'new' families that a lot of men are bringing up the first husband's children? Or did they mean there's a lot of extra-marital shenanigans going on and women are passing off other men's kids as their husbands' offspring? And how do the people who came up with the 20% figure know this is happening? However, life moves on and I forgot all about this. 

Then today I see a headline on BBC news online: 

Tests reveal Archbishop's real father

The BBC have got this from the Telegraph (London variety, not Greenock). No surprise the BBC reads the Telegraph. although a tad surprising its online editor thinks this is the most important thing happening in the UK today. It seems the Telegraph uncovered this story and that led to the Archbish having a DNA test. I don't know what business this is of the Telegraph or why this private family matter would be splashed all over a newspaper and a BBC website. Especially since both the press and the BBC seem to have accepted David Cameron's argument at the start of last week that his father's financial shenanigans were a private matter. 

No doubt the Telegraph would argue it published this 'in the public interest.' The papers don't seem to understand what they mean by that phrase: just because some of the public find this kind of thing interesting doesn't mean it's in 'the public interest.' 

And, inevitably, I have to ask: is there really nothing else happening in the UK that is more important than the paternity of a churchman? Do we just forget about:

- the death of the steel industry in the rest of the UK

- the EU referendum

- the continuing refugee crisis in Turkey and the Lebanon

- the continuing fiasco that is austerity

- the persecution of the sick and disabled by an elitist government?

Or maybe that's the point? Give the readers bread and circuses and they'll forget the state we're in.

Crumbling infrastructure, soaring levels of inequality - what do these matter when the Archbishop of Canterbury is revealed as being a bastard? Oh, and on the Telegraph's front page there's a photo of Duchess Kate (the benefit scrounger) dressed in clothes described as 'drab.' No doubt that also involved a high level of investigative journalism. 

Weird stuff

There are a lot of photos on social media at the moment of weird staircases and weird floors - like these:

I've come across these before. If you have any kind of vision problem or suffer from photo-triggered migraine, they're a nightmare. I've just made that up, by the way: I don't know if there's such a thing as 'photo-triggered migraine', just that there is for me! A bit like flash photography on the telly. I have to look away when it starts, in case I start a migraine or worse: have a seizure.

The stairs on the left are fine, of course, but the stripey stairs, well, I'm afraid I'd be coming down these backward and on my hands and knees. There's a set of stairs at the back door of Central Station in Glasgow with yellow stripes across them that I can't use. I know they are meant to be helpful but I don't know where to place my feet, so I have to go for the escalator or the lift.

The wavy floor above is terrible. What am I standing on? I'd need a wall to hang on to if I went in here.

What I'm heading for here is a sense of relief that we are at last trying to meet people's needs, so we have bubbles on the pavement leading to a pedestrian crossing which alert people with sight problems to the existence of a crossing, even if they hurt my feet and sometimes put me off-balance. And it's great that the needs of people with autism are now finally being met in playgrounds, theatres and at fairs. It's a terrible thing to see a child freaked out by the noise, the colours and the general mayhem.

And I look forward to further developments of this kind. But if you're buying a new stair carpet or putting in a new floor, stick with plain. Plain is good!

Shops

I phoned the newsagent shop that delivers my papers a few times over the weekend but kept getting this message: "The person you are calling is not available and you cannot leave a message." Pretty odd, since that's what the phone is supposed to be for, isn't it? Getting hold of people or leaving a message when they're not around. I wanted to pay my bill. In the list of things that really matter to people who run a small business, I would think customers phoning up and offering to pay money is up there at the top of the list.

So this afternoon I went in to pay my bill over the counter. The guy who took my money is not the owner. He was a bit taken aback when I mentioned the poor phone service but said they'd had problems recently.

I said I'd noticed the florist next door - who has been in Giffnock for 25 years - has posters up saying she's closing down. I've ordered flowers from her before and they were lovely. So what's happening? It seems the old boy who owned this row of shops has died and left the property to his grand daughter. She appears to be, excuse my French, a greedy cow. She started by telling the tenants there had to be improvements to the building but she wanted them to pay for them. Then she hoiked the rents up. The florist is already working to a tight profit margin and decided she couldn't manage the increased rent. So she's out. It's not likely she'll get another shop in the area - or not one she can afford to pay for.

I've seen many businesses come and go in this area over the years. Miss Noble had a wool shop in Giffnock 25 years ago where you could find just about anything in the crafts line. When she retired, her shop re-opened as a dental surgery and later as a dry cleaner's/mender's. We now have 3 fast food outlets in the same block, where we had none before. That makes a total of 23 restaurants/takeaways in a very limited area of Fenwick Road. Fine if you want a chicken tikka or a pizza. Not so good if you want buttons for the wean's coat.

I don't suppose any of this can be avoided. It's called progress. But I don't like it. Capitalism is meant to be about choice. I don't see any choice here.

Meanwhile, if you want nice flowers, phone Kabloom in Cardonald:
https://www.facebook.com/Kabloom-Florist-1397049067186714/

0141 237 6544

Kezia

Well, we nearly managed it. It seems Kezia Dugdale "came out" as gay last week, although her sexual orientation doesn't seem to have been any great secret to people who know her. Nobody reacted in last week's newspapers or on the radio or on TV and I for one thought: it has finally happened - we've reached the stage where nobody gives a damn. It's the ideal situation: nobody feels they have the right to poke about in anybody else's private life just because they take on a public role and nobody will be put off public service because they're scared they will get splashed all over the papers.

That was till today. Monday's Herald has a column about Kezia Dugdale and other 'gay' politicians. It is, if anything, even more offensive than the shock two-page spreads we used to get, in which people were said to have 'admitted' to being gay, because it's a long letter of self-congratulation, almost to the very end. Haven't we done well in Scotland? We have given up on prejudice. We're so keen on equality these days. It's just amazing what fair-minded people we are here. Of course, we still have adolescents who think the words 'that is so gay' are a terrible insult but then, teenagers - what else can we expect? - they're so immature but they'll catch up with the rest of us and then we'll all be happy and...

No, wait a minute. We're all keeking round the elephant in the room. The elephant is huge and stinks to high heaven and it affects everyone's daily life here in Scotland.

It's called sectarianism.

I have a theory that in the Central Belt of Scotland, we are so taken up by sectarian hatred we can't spare the time to be racist. That's the real reason we don't have a 'Muslim problem' - despite what some of the press were trying to tell us when poor Asad Shah was murdered. And sectarianism continues to thrive even as the number of people here claiming they have a religion drops year after year.

I'll believe Scotland is a tolerant, equal and fair-minded society the day that Catholic and Presbyterian churches and secular groups like the Humanists unite to 'preach' tolerance, fair-mindedness and equality.