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.