A Facebook surprise

I think maybe I don't understand Facebook. Today I got a notification of a message from someone on 'Messenger.' I don't use Messenger. To be honest, FB is complicated enough for me without adding  Messenger. But this message could have been important or from some one I knew so I thought I'd check it. 

I clicked on Messenger (top left hand side of my page). The message I was trying to check out wasn't there but, as I scrolled down, I found dozens of messages from way back in 2015 and 2016 from total strangers and all of them insulting. All referred to my appearance or my age or my political views and a few pretty menacing messages warned me that I'd better give up posting on FB - or at least stop posting this kind of 'stuff.' All of them were anonymous: 'from a Facebook member,' nothing more. 

So here's what I have to ask: I can't remember what I posted that could have provoked this rage - and it is pretty rabid - but can I do anything about it? I don't mind the usual back and fro of FB discussion, but this is different: there's an air of menace here. It seems to have to do with my nationality, my sex and my politics, and although I'm happy to admit I'm in favour of independence, nowhere have I ever stated I am SNP. 

Is this how things are these days? People can be anonymous on FB so they can send offensive messages to total strangers and there will be no come-back?

What bothers me is that in among all this shite from trolls were two messages from people I really wanted to get in touch with, because really we need to keep human discourse going.

'Nationalism' but not as we know it

This is a twitter classic, isn't it? It has all the hallmarks of British nationalism: the writer thinks 'English' and 'British' mean the same thing. Gets a derogatory comment about 'immigrants' in in the first sentence. Is contemptuous of any poor soul who is not English/British. Thinks everyone outside the golden circle of English-Britishness is a poor soul.

Can we examine a wee bit what being English means?

In Scotland, we say anyone who has committed to living and working here, pays their taxes and contributes to our society is Scottish. Nothing to do with where you were born or what colour you are. Most of us don't really know much about our ancestry but we - I think - accept that we're probably a mix of several nationalities. In my own family, there's a bit of Gaelic Scottish along with southern Scottish, some Polish, a bit of Irish, a bit of Chilean. I think that's a typical definition of 'Scottish.'

Nationality is not our main concern in life. We are interested in what we can do to earn money, keep the family in one piece, get a home to live in, save for a wee holiday. We happily pay for the NHS (and would maybe pay more), we pay our council tax, we mostly don't try to evade the taxes we owe. All in all, we are good citizens.

It seems to a small section of English people that's not enough. So let's ask the question: who are these people of 'pure English or British heritage'?

It depends what you mean by English. Since Great Britain (the island, not the island state) was among the last places to lose the ice after the last Ice Age (When was that? 13 centuries BC? Forgive me, I'm doing this from memory), everyone who lives on this island is an incomer. So do you have to trace your ancestry back to that time to be 'pure English'? I'm not sure how you would do that. Or maybe you can count your ancestry from the arrival of the Celts (2 centuries BC?) or the Romans (55BC), some of whom forgot the way home? Or the Jutes, Angles or Saxons late 4thC AD onwards)? Or from the Normans - 1066 onwards? Is it okay to claim you're English if your ancestors were Huguenots - like Nigel Farage? Or German - again like Farage, not to mention the current royal family.

I'm happy to say all this talk of passports, nationality and loyalty by the 'English Brexiteer' is just so much tosh. What people like him really hate are brown or black faces; people who look different  from him: Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, Africans, West Indians. People whose values and principles are held over from a previous life. This is pretty rich when people in many parts of England seem to be happy to ditch 'English' habits and traditions in favour of the worst of American traditions: trick or treat, the Easter bunny, shopping at the mall, running up vast credit card debts, not to mention tax-dodging and corrupt politicians, buy-to-let, etc.

I want you to understand I don't hate English people. I don't hate anyone - it just takes so much effort. But I am really horrified that decent English working people (with a lot in common with me) having been let down by generations of politicians since Thatcher's time (takes time to spit) have now been suckered into thinking the likes of Nigel Farage, Theresa May and the 'English Brexiteer' are their best hope.

Watching from the sidelines with all my hopes pinned on independence for Scotland in the next three years, all I can say to decent English people is: follow the money. Nigel Farage is complaining he's skint on a pension of £73,000 from the European Parliament, after doing nothing - nothing - for 18 years. Damien Green (I used to be a teacher and I promise you you should never trust anyone called Damien) gets sacked and picks up a redundancy 'settlement' of £17,000. Who stands to gain from leaving the EU? Not people like us, that's for sure.

Good guys and bad guys

How do you feel about nurses? You know, the backbone of the NHS. They are unfailingly polite, kind and helpful to patients. These days they've all spent 4 years getting a degree and doing on-the-ward training, so they're well-qualified. A lot of them are women with children who have to spend some of their wages on childcare to accommodate their work, and come off hellish 12 hour shifts to resume their lives looking after their families. In Scotland at least, they don't have to spend money on parking, but they often still have the nightmare of finding somewhere to park because modern hospitals don't seem ever to provide enough parking spaces in their grounds. Not for staff anyway. They're not that well-paid but at least this coming year they're getting a pay rise.

How about GPs? Yep, good people, all of them. We need more. Consultants in hospitals, do we approve of them? Oh yes, they're highly skilled and very hard-working. The same goes for people like radiographers, physiotherapists, the pharmacists who provide your drugs when you're being discharged from hospital and all the other support workers. They're great, right? Ward cleaners, are they okay? And porters? I'm not sure most of us even see them, but hospitals can't run without them. The GPs and consultants are pretty well paid but the rest? Not so well.

How about the admin staff that arrange our appointments at surgeries and hospital clinics. Well, yes, they're okay, although we really only approve of actual clinicians because know that the medics and the nurses do but we're maybe not too sure what the admin people do. Just shuffling bits of paper. And as for managers - well, we hate them. Too many of them. All pulling down enormous salaries. Doing nothing. That's not true, of course. We just don't know what they do.

Then there's local councils. Over-staffed. Sit around all day drinking coffee. So some of them have degrees in business management and accountancy or personnel management, but they've no real idea of how a business runs, have they? Yes, they collect council tax, but what else?

Apart from the ones who work in education teaching our kids and working as teachers and classroom assistants to support kids with learning difficulties. Not to mention educational psychologists who do their best with diminishing resources to support families and young people with learning or mental health issues.

And the social workers who arrange day care for members of our families with learning disabilities and residential care for the elderly. And the staff who hire folk to supervise crossing patrols, make and serve school breakfasts and lunches in the canteens. And the health & safety bods that everybody hates till something goes wrong. And the maintenance guys who keep the buildings working and the ICT people who keep the technology working. How about the janitors? Ask a teacher who the most important people in a school are. Not the heidie. The office staff and the janitors.

I hope you can see a pattern developing here: for every highly-qualified 'expert' in public services, whether it's medicine and local council departments, we need an army of backroom people to make their work - well, work. But when there's a squeeze on resources, it's the people at the bottom of the wages heap that do worst. First to be paid off. Last to be given a pay rise.

Frankly, we need to rethink the idea of work, start to see work as teamwork and bring the wages of the poorest paid closer to the wages of the best paid. We may be able to do that in Scotland through our own parliament. But we need to take steps now. Do we have any powers in Holyrood to stop Westminster removing the protection of the EU's Working Hours Directive which it seems they are planning? We've seen that Holyrood can use tax breaks for the NHS and local councils to protect the poorest paid. The 2017 budget was a fair start. But can we do more? Can we challenge the Scottish Government to be more daring?

Yet again, let me say I'm not SNP - I'm a Green with my own Green ideas who is looking for more. I was pleasantly surprised by the tax bands put together by the Scottish Government. I'd seen tax-raising for Holyrood as a huge trap put in place by the last UK Labour government and then by the Tories. I was wrong. There was some clever thinking went into these tax bands. Now that the Scottish Government has started to think radically, what else can we do? 

Goodwill

Two stories have stayed with me this week.

A woman on benefits saved up £2,000 to give her 6 kids a good Christmas. I can't tell you much more than that, because I don't read arsehole tabloids. But I do know arsehole tabloids are published in London and written by people who earn a helluva lot more than £2,000. The newspaper in question disapproved of the woman's actions and splashed her photo all over their front page. I don't know and I don't want to know what her circumstances are but I'll bet there's more to the story than the tabloid revealed.

I wish she hadn't appeared on the front page of a newspaper, but I hope she got paid well for allowing the great British public to sneer at her and her kids. If only someone had said to her: Letting this newspaper put your photo on its front page is not meant to help you. It's meant to encourage the great British public to come to the conclusion that people on benefits are scroungers and can salt away their benefits, whereas you and I know people on benefits often get into debt, sometimes to illegal money lenders, at this time of year and struggle to pay the cash back for most of the next year.

The second story was about a homeless guy called James. It's a complicated story but James found a car left with a window rolled down and a bag inside with a lot of cash in it. He guarded it for several hours in the rain and the cold. To thank James for his honesty - and common decency - it was decided to put up an appeal for funding to help him on social media.

I followed the appeal on Facebook:

Manage

Jean Nisbet 735 quid raised for him in an hour!

Like

 · Reply · 14 December at 21:22

Manage

Jean Nisbet 1,950 quid raised in 9 hours! Fantastic!

LikeShow More Reactions

 · Reply · Yesterday at 04:58

Manage

Jean Nisbet 5,230 quid (more than the target set) raised in 17 hours.

LikeShow More Reactions

 · Reply · 

1

 · 16 hrs

Manage

Jean Nisbet The total raised is now well over 11,000 quid. The first 5,000 goes to James and the rest to homelessness charities. I just hope James gets the help he needs to get his life back on track.

Why would so many people be moved by James's actions and be willing to donate to his cause? It's not like the people donating are sending vast sums of money (a lot are sending a fiver or 10 quid, and only a few have sent sums like 100 quid). I'll bet the people donating are not rich. 

But it's topical: homelessness is right there in front of us, much more so than in previous years. It's a  disgrace to the UK. We keep being told how rich the UK is and yet homelessness has risen by 65% in the last 3 years. 

The homelessness issue involves much that is going wrong in the UK right now. First of all, there are no homes for people to go to because houses are not being built to meet our needs. Housing has become part of the Tory dream: a way to make money, rather than a way to let people live a decent life. So land is bought up and either permission to build is refused or builders just let it lie while they wait for land prices to go up. Benefits are now so low that people can't afford to rent. That means young people suffer, but older people are also suffering because a lot of people are trapped in houses where they've lived all their lives because they can't find a smaller place to live. 

To be fair, the Scottish Government is rowing against this tide, but it is hampered by the number of tax areas where it can't intervene to improve its cash flow. And it is also hampered by the 'main' political parties' (main in England and Wales, not in Scotland) obsession with independence. The only political parties that talk about independence here in Scotland are the Tories, Labour and the LibDems. 

There's a lot of negotiation going on between the SNP and the Greens right now, to do with getting the Scottish budget through Holyrood. You won't hear about that on UK TV or read about it in the UK press. And you won't hear about the issue of homelessness, not unless it serves the agenda of the Westminster government. 

The weather where you are...

I switched on the TV very late on Sunday night. It was already snowing in some parts of the British Isles and the news was full of warnings about staying off the road unless you knew how to drive in snow and staying at home unless your journey was urgent.

On Monday I turned on the TV at teatime to find whole news bulletins taken up with the weather. Snow had hit southern England and boy, did we hear about it. Along with the pictures of children out playing on their sleds, there were four hour traffic jams in Oxfordshire and pictures of cars, vans and lorries that had overturned in the snow. Bits of London were described as snowy, although to be fair, it looked as if they had a light dusting or at worst a couple of inches of the white stuff. Schools were closed. In one of those ironies, a Christmas market was cancelled somewhere. 

There are places in the British Isles where having snow in winter is normal and people are ready for it. I'm talking about the rural north-west of Northern Ireland, north-west Scotland, parts of Perthshire, the Cairngorms, bits of Argyll and the Borders, some of Yorkshire, central and north Wales and Lincolnshire. It's got to do with where our islands lie: some areas get the snow straight off the Atlantic and other areas get it from Siberia. But folk know it's coming.

People who live in these areas tend to buy sturdy cars that have good road holding and don't spin like a top when they encounter snow. They tend to have practice at driving in snow and they also take advice, carry provisions and a blanket and a shovel in the car in case they need it - and they don't go out if it's not safe. When I worked in Argyll, I knew the phone number of Arrochar police station off by heart. They always had an update on whether the Rest and be Thankful was shut - or if it was likely to shut in a couple of hours. We also knew how fast snow could blow in. 

It seems to me some of the UK is now peopled by folk who think weather can be ignored. Or rather, they think nothing should happen to them when 'bad' weather hits. Maybe we need to remind these people that road gritting and ploughing, along with road accidents, cost the economy more than taking a day off your work or keeping your kids off school for a day or two.

And maybe southern England could give the rest of us a break from complaining about 'bad' weather. There's no such thing as 'bad' weather, in my opinion. Just weather. Live with it. 

Volunteerism

I'm a volunteer. I deliver library books to the homebound for Glasgow Libraries. I've been doing this for about 8 years and only took it on once I'd checked this service had not existed before, so I knew volunteers weren't taking people's jobs. I also used to volunteer at a foodbank but it's hard physical work and I'm no longer fit for it. Again, no one loses their job when people volunteer at a foodbank. I used to volunteer doing tours of the farmhouse at the Museum of Rural Life in East Kilbride. Once again, this service would not have been available if it hadn't been for volunteers.

At a 'do' held by Glasgow Life last week, the figure of 102,000 came up. This I think was the number of days put in by volunteers, although I'm not sure over what period. The Glasgow Life staff present were very proud of this figure. I spoke to a few other volunteers who were proud to take part in activities, like helping out at day centres for the elderly and people with learning difficulties. I was also pleased to see some young people had come along to the event to find out what it was about and were being welcomed and encouraged to find out more - and join in.

Then this week I read that the company organising the Edinburgh New Year celebrations are looking for volunteers. These people will not be doing what volunteers with Glasgow Life do, because the Edinburgh celebration is a business. It's not a public service: it's not run for the benefit of local residents. It's not a 'not-for-profit' organisation. It's run for the owners and shareholders of the business and it's meant to make money.

The 'volunteering' mostly seems to involve stewarding and crowd control. These are important jobs that should be paid, in my opinion. I also wonder if there's any training for the volunteers - and if they will be paid for that. Or are they going to do this volunteering for the sole rewards of getting to put it on their cv after standing around watching, not the activities, but the crowd?

Of course, people will 'volunteer' for the New Year event in Edinburgh. I'm told volunteering is now an international phenomenon, with people flying in from all over the world to offer their services at the event.

The cost of celebrating New Year in Edinburgh has been spiralling out of control in recent years: admission to the street party now costs from £59 to £106. I find myself wondering how many Edinburgh folk will be able or willing to pay this kind of cash to get to the centre of their own city. Has the Hogmanay celebration now become like the Edinburgh International Festival: something for
other people, not even for most Scots never mind Edinburgh folk, a money-maker but not for the people who live here?

It's the very definition of greed: we've reached the point where everything that can be made to make a profit is squeezed till it squeaks. A lot of the events I've described involve the arts in one way or another, and yet, ironically, the area of life most despised by money-makers is anything artistic - unless it can be made to pay.

I think we're in danger of tipping over into the state I associate with capitalists, who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

The Elephant in the Room

I watch the news on TV every day. I like a mixture of news, so I dip into Channel 4 News, Euronews, rt and Sky.

I watch the Sky press review because I like to know what the opposition are saying. Sometimes, the journalists doing a wee turn are pretty good: Kevin Maguire is good on a Monday night and on Tuesday night it was great to hear Ian Dunt (no, I don't know who he is either) laying into Melanie Philipps. Tonight was astonishing: two journalists and a presenter showed the front page of every paper published in the UK and talked about Brexit: Brexit and Northern Ireland; Brexit and Eire; Brexit and Michel Barnier; Brexit and how much it was going to cost the UK to leave the EU.

But they managed to ignore the fact that every single front page flashing in front of them had a series of photos showing a man in court in the Hague taking poison in the dock. He had been found guilty of war crimes in the Balkans. I'd heard about the poisoning on Euronews earlier and I watched in horror - and so did the judge - as this man killed himself live on TV.



But the Sky people, all of them journalists, remember, managed to ignore the incident. I can only conclude the Sky editorial staff and management are so obsessed with Brexit, nothing else counts. I'm afraid my reaction to this man's actions was: Fine, that'll cost us less. But the programme I was watching was a review of the newspapers. How do Sky manage to ignore a story like that?

Earlier on, I was emailing on the computer and the TV was on behind me. It was BBC Scotland News. All I can say in my defence is I'd had Pointless on before that. But I should know better. There's no quicker way to raise my blood pressure than to watch this steaming heap of cack. 

Every single story in the 10 minutes I listened to (before I lost my cool and turned the telly off) involved the Scottish Government and every story was bad news:

- The new bridge across the Forth has hit snagging problems.
- Police Scotland is in trouble.
- There are rumours that Roma parents in Govanhill are selling their children for sex.

On the new bridge, lanes are closed. Cars will not be able to cross at motorway speeds. But they will be able to cross. I once bought a new house and snagging took 5 months. What's the problem?

Police Scotland: Willie Rennie was on his feet in Holyrood demanding action. But am I not right in thinking that the Lib Dems and Labour and the Tories included a single police force in their Scottish manifesto, as did the SNP? Don't they want it to work?

As for the Roma story in Govanhill, this has been circulating for about 5 years. Every time it appears on social media, people like me and others with experience of child protection urge people with evidence of child abuse to go to the police. So are people making allegations really concerned about the kids or looking to embarrass the Scottish Government?

What do these stories have in common? They are non-stories. Some are so weak they don't even make it on to the BBC news website.

And what do all the Sky Brexit stories and the Scottish Government non-stories have in common?

They are trivial beyond belief.

It's not only the Harry Meets Meghan story that's a diversion from what's really going on. So is this stuff. 

Channel 4 meanwhile was dealing with the man who killed himself in the dock in the Hague; home-schooling and whether it should be registered; Brexit with Vince Cable (a bit of intelligent relief from David Davis); and Trump's response to fake Britain First videos.

I know where I'll be switching on to tomorrow night and it won't be BBC Scotland or Sky.

Statesmen?

I was never a fan of the Labour government headed up by Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, but I had great respect for Robin Cook. I met him once in Inverness airport. We were all heading back to Glasgow on the same plane. He chatted to my colleagues and me a bit, asked what we'd been doing in Inverness (working) and apologised that he was a 'bit tired' because he'd been doing the same. He at least acknowledged us. It was a terrible blow when he resigned over the invasion of Iraq. He was right to do so but he was also the best hope we had of introducing something like an ethical foreign policy. 

We're not going to have an ethical problem with Boris Johnston. (Sorry there's no photo, by the way. I can't bring myself to put one up). Everything Johnston touches turns to slime. For some reason, he thinks he's entitled to be prime minister. After cocking up the Brexit campaign (remember the bus?), he has conspired with some of the other slimiest people in the UK, Rothermere of the Mail for one and Michael Gove for another, to get himself into a job he can't do and he just keeps on proving to us he can't do it. He obviously doesn't read the briefs that are sent to him by his civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and cocks up every opportunity he gets to do his job effectively, hanging about ineffectually at meetings of foreign ministers as if his private education hadn't taught him to smarm and charm, and when he does speak just saying the wrong thing. And the prime minister is so weak and ineffectual she can't get rid of him. (Not that I think she should be in the job either. It's just the Tories brought this Brexit disaster on us and some of us think they should clear it up). 

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who went back to Iran to visit her family with her little daughter, has now been in jail for 19 months on a trumped up charge. 

We should ask: What would Robin do? Well, not what Johnston has done. Cook would get out there, go to Iran, have meetings, get allies and enemies alike to put on some diplomatic pressure, make concessions if he had to. But, whatever else he did, he wouldn't stand up in Westminster and talk rubbish: 'she was training journalists'; or ask Gove (who seems to have three feet, two to walk on and the other to shove in his mouth) to help him: 'I don't know what she was doing in Iran.' Cook would realise we're talking about a young mother separated from her daughter, and allow his civil servants to get a press campaign going on the basis of that alone. But with Tories, there's always the fear we're dealing with people lacking in emotional literacy whose best position is to do nothing. 

I listened to the rally supporting Nazanin this evening. She spoke from Iran and sounded remarkably cheerful but she needs to be out of jail and home with her family. Can you imagine what it's going to take to fix the bond between Nazanin and her child after all this time? And is Johnston the person to reunite them? I hope so.  

There are online petitions about Nazanin and I would encourage everyone to sign up. The fact the UK Foreign Secretary is a fool doesn't mean the rest of us are. 

Let's talk about Edyukayshun

I want to challenge you to read this article. It's about the education of working-class and poor children in England:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools

You may read this and think: this is awful, but I'm so glad it's not like that in Scotland. But I am the ranting old bag (I got told off for using that title yesterday but I'm also a bolshie ranting old bag so gerrit up ye) and I want to challenge some of our misconceptions about Scottish education.

Professor Reay's credentials are impeccable - and so are mine by the way, so here we go.

I'm sick of hearing about 'the lad o pairts' who walked to university in Scotland in the 18th century from a croft in the Highlands with a bag of oatmeal to sustain him over the year. I've never been too sure what that was about, just that it didny mean me, a wee lassie from Govan (or my parents for that matter). I went on to higher education but my sister and brother didn't and they should have: same background, same education. And the reason? Scottish education is not open to all and never has been.

'Yes, you can.' Naw, ye canny. Or rather, only sometimes you can. It all depends: you may come to nursery education aged 3 from a family that is proud of you and wants you to get on. The golden glow probably lasts till about P5, as we all watch you learn to read and write and do maths, but if you display any learning or behavioural or social difficulties, there's a good chance your parents will be discouraged, as will your teachers. From then on, your hopes of doing well in Scottish education start to drop. It's not that your teachers no longer care. They just don't have the resources to support you. That's not unique to Scotland: I've seen the same thing in Sweden (where all is good and wonderful, except when it's not).

If you have a learning problem and are working class, then your chances of doing well in education in Scotland are further reduced.

And if you come from a family where your first language is not Scots English - and that includes Urdu, Pashto and Roma (but not Gaelic or Chinese where expectations are different) - well, you may start to slip down the results tables straight away, or just not ever make it on to them to begin with.

I'm referring here to the continuing obsession of Scottish education with testing. In this, I blame parents and HMI (inspectors). We have a very well educated population in Scotland. A lot of us are parents. And too many of us are caught up in the idea that you can measure from an early age how well children are learning - and that's enough. People are just not very good at working out what to do when children are not learning very well, so they blame the teachers.

Teachers train to do the job for at least 6 years: 4 years in a university + a year in training college. Then they have a probationary year. That's on the same level as architects, dentists and medics. So why do parents think they can blame schools and teachers when things go wrong? Sometimes it is the fault of the school (kids are picked on or have accidents when they're not supervised) but in terms of a child's education, the only reason we think it's okay to say a teacher's a bampot/junkie/useless (yes, I've heard them all) is that most of us have been to school so we know. Would you argue with a doctor the way I've heard parents argue with a teacher?

Add to this that education is the domain of local authorities, not the Scottish government so there's a constant act going on. The local authorities are happy when it's all going their way, but they have the option to blame central government when they're not getting their own way. And local authorities have come up with some complete heid-the-baw solutions to the education 'problem'. Are they still paying supply staff so little it's hardly worth their while leaving the house - so they don't?

What to do? I worked in education - 4 different jurisdictions in 35 years - in schools and local authorities. But I'm past it now - retired nearly 10 years. I'm told if I eat salad and stop drinking wine, I may make it to my 80s but even then I doubt if anyone is going to offer a solution to education's problems in Scotland...or will they? Pile in, folks. Bella and I await your ideas!

Brexit

Sorry...I know this is the last thing anybody wants to hear about.

The other night I switched on the TV and found myself watching a Sky News programme called The Pledge. I've no idea what it's about or why it's called after furniture polish. I only stayed long enough to realise one of the people on it was Carol Malone. She's a journalist.



She's one of the journalists who are happy to call MPs who vote against Brexit 'traitors' and accuse them of 'betraying' the Tory party.

She's also thick as a brick. Her debating technique involves talking...and talking...and talking. And if anyone else gets a word in, she talks over them. She regularly reduces Stig Abell of the Times Lit Supp to total silence on the News Review, just by talking.

This all started when the Torygraph printed pictures of 'rebel' Tory MPs - 'mutineers' against setting a firm date for leaving the EU.

If you haven't seen the front page, here it is:

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/telegraph-went-far-calling-tory-rebels-mutineers/

One of the MPs featured is Paul Masterton who 'serves' my constituency. I have to admit I was impressed: Paul is not known for so much as taking a breath without checking with Tory HQ.

So what is Carol's problem with Brexit? She and newspaper people like her have insisted that Brexit is Brexit and must go ahead. Most Remain voters have just given up trying to argue that one. So they too are reduced to silence. Brexit voters, like Carol, have completely forgotten that 48% of the people who voted in the EU referendum were against leaving the EU. They don't want to hear the Remainers' reasons and they certainly don't want to consider whether they're happy with things so far and what they might want to have happen next. As far as British democracy goes, Remain voters are out of the picture.

And we don't seem to be getting much news on the negotiations. Frankly that's unacceptable.

For one thing, it gives rise to all sorts of rumours: there will be unification of Eire and Northern Ireland to sort the border issue; Grimsby will be allowed freeport status; the City (London, of course) will be able to bring in EU workers but nobody else will. And that's just this week.

We hear all the time that print media is doomed: newspapers will soon be no more. Sooner the better, in my opinion, and the anxiety over losing newspapers is such a British thing: nothing must ever change. We must always have 37 (British) 'national' newspapers, churning out crap about the Royal Family, the dangers or benefits of statins, warning about mega-storms approaching or being knee-deep in snow, and telling made-up stories about Big Brother or that shower of chancers in the Australian jungle, depending on the season. And the circulation falls and falls.

We almost always have that great big gap in newspaper coverage: nothing about 'abroad' unless it's the USA or Zimbabwe, nothing about Catalonia, nothing about the UK economy currently tanking, no analysis of what's happening in places like Russia.

It's enough to drive you to internet news - and it does! A lot of us are pretty clued-in these days about online news. We treat it all with a pinch of salt, just as we do with print media.

The mainstream media's response is to become even more right wing (apart from the Guardian and the Mirror) and more outrageous in its stories and presentation. Frankly, if newspapers die in the next few years, hell whack it intae them.

PS Thank you to Bella Caledonia readers for your support for my blog. It took me about 7 years to pluck up the courage to post a blog - and I only recently started to share it to Bella. I enjoy reading your views, even when I don't necessarily agree...but that's the nature of the big discussion we're engaged in - and the big journey Scotland is on. There are more original ideas on Bella than in the whole of mainstream media!

Labour - or should that be labour?

Well, he's off to a good start.



Within a day of being elected leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Richard Leonard has managed to send a tweet that suggests the Scottish government had to be forced into discussions to save bifab jobs, when what really happened was the First Minister flew back from a meeting abroad to take charge of the discussions and came up with a solution. He also tried to make it look as if Labour was somehow involved in the discussions and thus responsible for the outcome - and that's just not the case. Even the GMB has gone online to thank the Scottish government for their support.

However, Richard has now had his knuckles rapped by the real boss, Jeremy Corbyn (and I'll pause while you have a wee snigger at that), for suggesting Kezia Dugdale should be disciplined for zooming off overseas - and on a school night as it were - to appear in a TV reality show for losers that I for one didn't even know was still on.

Welcome to the world of Scottish Labour, Richard. I hope things get better for you from now on. Not because I support Labour in any way - Blair and Brown finished my 30 year membership of the Labour party - but because I have many friends who are sincere and decent supporters of the Labour cause. Some of them are in favour of independence and some are not, but they all believe in the basic principles of the Labour party and must watch the behaviour of Labour in both Holyrood and Westminster with a feeling of despair.

Maybe it's time for the Labour party in Scotland to get back to the day job: working to eliminate poverty, improve education, save the NHS - and offer a decent opposition in both parliaments in the face of Tory complacency and arrogance. Because while Labour have been looking in the other direction (mostly up their own arse) for the past wee while, the Tories have turned into something that most of us could only imagine in a nightmare. Thus, we're out of the EU and all opposition to brexit is dismissed as 'treachery' by the Tory press, which right now seems to be setting the agenda. The UK has handed its children's futures to a bunch of millionaires with no understanding of what it means to be poor or disabled or in need of benefits. Maybe Labour in Scotland could stop sniping at the SNP, especially Nicolas Sturgeon and, oh man how they hate him, Alex Salmond, and start offering ideas for the future of the country.

But I'll no hold ma breath...

rt

That's what the TV channel is called. It's not Russia Today. And whatever Andrew Neil of the BBC may think, it's not the Russian government.




You know the channel I mean: it's the one that's currently broadcasting every Thursday a half hour politics programme fronted by Alex Salmond.



Take away the 3 minutes of ads before it starts, the 4 minute ad break in the middle and the 3 minutes of ads after the programme. That leaves the programme with roughly 20 minutes to feature whatever the producer and director decide to show. They decide. The editorial control is not with rt. All rt have bought are the rights to show the programmes.

This, I have to say, is 20 minutes a week more than someone like Alex Salmond - or Carles Puigdemont for that matter - is allowed on terrestrial TV channels.


Well, have you seen any interviews with (legally-elected) Puigdemont since he was forced into exile with some of his (legally-elected) ministers, threatened with 30 years in jail for sedition, treason, etc, leaving politicians and police chiefs behind in Catalonia actually in jail as I write? No. The Spanish government, the EU - and the UK media - have made sure of that. Salmond called Puigdemont 'Mr President' in the interview on the first show. And he is, although the Spanish, EU and UK media won't give him that title.



Have you ever heard of Helena Kennedy getting airtime to talk about how to balance the representation of men and women in politics? She even got a plug in for the Women's Equality Party. First time I've heard it mentioned on TV.



Or Tory MP Crispin Blunt getting time to talk about how LGBT people are represented (including in Russia)?

And all of these people allowed to express their views without being shouted down, interrupted or talked over. It was a breath of fresh air. Do I need to mention the gender balance? Alex Salmond interviewing Helena Kennedy. Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh delivering the piece about LGBT issues.


So why all the excitement? Honestly, I think it's because in the UK at least we allow ourselves to be led by the nose by the media. Privately owned, responsible to no one, in cahoots with government. It's as if we've all agreed as citizens and voters we're so stupid we can't decide for ourselves what kind of government we want. So when a politician like Salmond steps out of line, it's seen as a real challenge to the state.

And d'you know what? I'm not even SNP and I like this!

Yell, Run and Tell

As teachers, parents and carers we think we do a good job of telling children what to do if they feel they are in danger. Someone in a car stops and tries to get you to get in - yell, run and tell. You are bullied at school - tell a teacher or an adult at home. Someone touches you in a way you don't like - again, tell a grown up.

It's good advice. But somehow us adults don't seem to be following our own advice when it comes to safeguarding ourselves.

The latest, but certainly not the last, revelation in a long list of sexual assaults tells of a woman playwright who was invited to a 'do' at 10 Downing Street where the prime minister was present and found herself in the position of having her breast groped by a total stranger, who just happened to be 'a government official.' She left. She didn't tell anyone. She didn't make a fuss (no yelling) and she didn't tell anyone who could have done anything about it.

I suspect there are many reasons for her silence. First, there's shock: plenty of people will consider it an honour to be invited to 10 Downing Street and being groped is not something you expect to find on the agenda. Then there's embarrassment: just exactly how are you expected to react to this? Is this your fault? Have you somehow sent out wrong signals to this creep? Then there's confusion: if you want to complain, just who do you complain to? Taking it to the police may seem excessive.

We need to understand that the people who are - finally - complaining about sexual misconduct in the workplace, whether it's in a film studio or parliament or an ordinary everyday workplace, are simply completely out of their depth in this situation because they lack protocols and procedures that would protect them.

The victims are not all female and they are not all young. And, whatever certain men may think, they're not all man-haters or 'feminazis.' What they always are is junior to the small group of predatory men who want to exploit them. That's why they are chosen as victims.

It seems to me to be laughable that so many adults are so concerned about paedophilia but can manage to dismiss sexual misconduct as 'banter' or 'horseplay' or just the ordinary everyday give and take of the workplace. Equally disappointing is that the only organisation I can find that has advice on how to deal with sexual harassment is the TUC: 

https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/SexualHarassmentreport2016.pdf

I say disappointing, because so many workplaces now have no trade union representation so advice is hard to come by. And even the TUC admits sexual harassment is hard to prove if someone manages to get it to an industrial tribunal.

So maybe we need to use the approach we recommend to children: yell, run and tell.

What if...?

I'm fantasising now...

Priti Patel has gone. Unfortunately she's still an MP, though how anyone can justify that I don't know.

What if Boris Johnson is sent off to Iran to sort the mess he has made there, with a charity worker now facing having her sentence by an Iranian court doubled because of his big mouth? A trip to Iran calls for diplomacy, a bit of grovelling and building bridges so you can do business with people you may not like but have to work with. He'll fluff it. We know that before he even gets on the plane. He might recite a wee colonialist poem at the Iranians or remind them of the debt they owe to the British Empah.

Then the head of the NHS in England, emboldened as he was today by the knowledge that the public are behind him and the NHS in demanding more capacity and more money to meet the needs of patients, continues to insist that the organisation must get the £350million a week extra funding promised by the Brexiteers - people like Johnson. The UK budget can't find that kind of cash, especially since it looks as if the UK will also have to pay £60 billion+ to leave the EU.

Will that be enough - finally - for Theresa May to get rid of Johnson?

And then the sex scandal simmering away in Westminster claims a few more heads - not bit players, not poor souls like the Welsh Assembly member driven to suicide yesterday, but big Tory people: ministers. There will finally be resignations. Maybe at last Theresa May will resign. Who will the Tories get to replace her? Probably some stooge will step up, just as incompetent as she is, and the Tory government will stagger on a wee while longer. But the Tory government and maybe even the Tory party are finished.

Jeremy Corbyn will play it very cool, just as he is doing now: who the hell needs to get tangled up in that nest of snakes? Or maybe Labour and Lib Dems, the SNP and the Greens, faced with another general election which the voters definitely don't want, will finally get together in all parliaments, not just Westminster, and devise a strategy to save us from the madness inflicted on us by the Tories.

It's no more unlikely - or unacceptable - than the current coalition of the Tories and the DUP.

The Lib Dems will demand that their principles be adhered to: they will seek to 'balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community ... in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.' They will present their demands to find a form of inclusion in the EU which still allows UK voters to feel in control of their future, to freeze student fees, to increase support for childcare, and to improve the representation of women and minorities in day to day government.

The SNP and the Greens will go along with these demands, although the SNP and the Scottish Greens will seek to hold another referendum for independence and insist that their own views such as the abandonment of Trident, the abolition of the house of lords and the curtailment of HS2 be considered, since the UK clearly can't afford any of it.

Well, I said it was a fantasy. But frankly, it's no worse than the chaos we're experiencing now.

The Poppy

This is my father, Bill Nisbet, who served in the Royal Navy during World War 2.

He only ever told us funny stories about his war service. He served in Gibraltar, North Africa, Freetown in West Africa and Port London in South Africa. He got in tow with some Americans in Sierra Leone and told a long (and fairly boring - when you were hearing it for the umpteenth time) story about stealing a jeep and driving it into the harbour in Freetown. But he said nothing about hauling the bodies of dead sailors out of the Atlantic Ocean. And that was one of the things he and his shipmates had to do. 

He was a fitter in Alexander Stephen's shipyard in Govan and I could never really understand why he was allowed to sign up for war service: I always thought his job would be one of the 'reserved' occupations in wartime. 

Before him, his uncles served in World War 1, including one poor soul who joined the Navy at 17 but never made it out of Portsmouth before he died of pneumonia. 

That's not to mention my mother's family: her father was a career soldier who served in Gallipoli, then in India and finally in Ireland. Her mother was a nurse in France. That's where she met my grandfather. 

Now I find myself feeling bullied over these poppies. I don't give a rat's arse about wearing a poppy. The poppy used to be advertised as being in support of the 'Earl Haig Fund', Earl Haig being one of the absolutely useless commanders of the British Army during World War 1. There was a time when I refused to wear a red poppy because his name was attached to it - with the approval of my father and grandfather, let me say - and bought a white one, the peace poppy, but then I gave up on that too. 

But every year the same nonsense comes up: you have to buy a poppy. You have to support the British Legion (do they do anything in Scotland? If they do, I've never seen it). You have to support the 'veterans' (a US term). 

Frankly, if we in the UK supported 'veterans,' they wouldn't be homeless and sleeping rough. They wouldn't be suffering from Post traumatic Stress Disorder and getting no treatment. And we wouldn't think a big parade at the Cenotaph, not to mention a Remembrance ceremony on TV, would be enough to support them. 

I think what most annoys me about the poppy business is that the people who are so determined to make people like me buy a poppy have come nowhere near war themselves. They have no relatives who have suffered in a war. They don't have to deal day to day with people injured in wars - especially the illegal, unjust and pointless wars in the Middle East. And worst of all, they seem to be the worst kind of British Nationalists: people who think anything the UK does has to be good because, well, the British Empire said so. 

So please, if you have to put your money anywhere, get the UK government to put it into a fund that would support veterans, like the VA, the support system that the USA set up a long time ago for former service people. It might not be perfect, but it's better than making people buy a poppy. 

Making a Fallon of it

I'm sorry Michael Fallon has resigned. Not because he's in any way an admirable man. For heaven's sake, he's a Tory. But his resignation over what is being called in the British press, in their usual cliched and pathetic way, 'kneegate' will change nothing for the many women (and some men) who face being offended, denigrated and - at worst - abused every working day. Fallon groped a female journalist so much at a Tory Party conference 15 years ago that she threatened to punch him. The hints being delivered online are that Fallon is guilty of other 'crimes' (moral if not legal) but for the moment he's the sacrificial lamb being offered up by the Tory government.

The trouble is that Fallon's resignation seems to confuse sex pests with workplace bullies.

In the workplace, we won't get anywhere until we accept that the UK - and not just press, TV, radio and social websites - is run by men - old white guys, I prefer to call them - and has been for a long time. And for a long time, we've all ignored what's been going on.

Thus there are guys who feel entitled to indulge their liking for 'eye candy' and want only good-looking young women to work in their organisations. And, sadly, there are a few guys who feel they are entitled to sexual favours. These are the men in many walks of life who feel entitled to rape women and young men.

Harassers - almost entirely men - do not see anything wrong with going after women and some men who are younger and less powerful than themselves. They do it in private, in their offices and online. And when challenged - which they rarely are - they have a lot of defence mechanisms: the people who complain don't understand the banter that goes on every day in the workplace, take things too seriously, need to grow up, etc.

What most worries me is that we fail to see how badly a lot of people are treated in the workplace, not just women: for example, disabled people are denied jobs or appointed to jobs way below their capability. Young women are appointed to important posts, but then their employers get mad when, having achieved job security, they get pregnant and take time off. They quite often just sack or sideline them.

Are there people who use the system to make their way in a career? I'm quite sure there are. But they shouldn't have to.

The Catalan Republic

I admit it: I like a map. Books with maps, family trees, lists of characters and all their connections - all magic stuff to me. So I wasn't surprised when I stumbled across a map entitled 'Greater Europe.'

I love the Gothic script here, not to mention the lands of the heathens, heretics and godless. I notice on this map Spain is the same shade as Africa: land of the godless.

Intrigued, I googled the reference and came up with a wiki page where I saw the following description: 

Greater Europe refers to the idea of an extended or developed Europe. This generally implies a Europe which transcends traditional boundaries, including trans-Eurasian countries,^[1] or those in close proximity with a strong European heritage.^[2]

The wiki page has a map too. I won't trouble you with that - you can google it for yourself. Suffice to say, that map has large grey areas which are excluded from Greater Europe. As far as I can see, these grey areas are Muslim. Definitely not classed as places 'with a strong European heritage.'

The western world is riven with fear of the rest of the world. After centuries of oppressing the poor of other continents, it's as if our chickens are coming home to roost in Europe and we're clinging together for dear life before we're overrun by the people we overran before. We don't want to share - not a damn thing. We want to keep what we have, even if we weren't entitled to have it to begin with.

The fear of change has made us fearful of everything. The EU, the US and the UK are deeply frightened places. It's inhibiting our sense of democracy which we, ironically, keep trying to force other countries to adopt.

I think I've read all there is to read about independence for Catalunya. I've watched the government in Madrid behave for weeks as if Franco is still alive and the Falangists still in power, fail to negotiate and make one horrible mistake after another in dealing with the government and people of Catalunya.

I've certainly heard as much as I need to of the fake indignation of the EU and the leaders of Germany, France and the UK faced with the Catalan declaration of a republic. I'm told the USA will not support 'freedom movements' in the EU because you can't compare Catalunya - or Scotland - with what happened in the American Revolution - after all, that was 200 years ago and the situations are different. I'm not sure how.

I would like answers to the following questions.

Just how does a country or a region that feels it is a country get independence? In Spain, it seems there is no mechanism: you signed up to the constitution in 1976 and you're stuck with it forever. In the case of Scotland, we need the permission of the UK even to ask the population the question. That breeds at best festering resentment and at worst civil war.

This strikes me as deeply undemocratic.

If the EU was doing its job properly, there would be a legal statute in place that allowed various levels of autonomy, self-government and independence to emerging states. And member states of the EU would have to sign up to it. Self-government should never be in the gift of the state. It should be a right.

The idea that nothing ever changes or can ever change is a pretty sad position for the EU to adopt, especially when you look at how the map of greater Europe has changed since the EU came into being.

And yet...I keep coming back to it: the EU is the best we have. It was set up by people with high moral principles. Sadly, it's now being let down by people with very small minds.

Children's rights

I live in a large-ish (well, for these days) family with 7 children aged one year to 10 and another on the way. We are all used to the two-year-old tantrums, the screams of frustration (the weans, not the parents), the threats of sanctions (no videos today, etc).

We don't hit our weans. It's not a rule. It's just the way it is.

I don't have children. I do have 35 years of experience of working with children and young people - and, more importantly, with their parents. I started work as a teacher in the 70s when parents would routinely tell me when I tried to persuade them to supervise their kids' homework or make them turn up to sit an exam: Ach, just belt him.

We had the belt in schools then. I rarely used it because I was useless at it. My first instinct was to talk to the kid who acted up but my 'superiors' (the guys that took it hardest when the belt was abolished, by the way) wanted swift and violent action. It was such a relief when the belt was banned.

Now the Scottish Government wants to ban smacking. I'm for that.

I think children have far too few rights in law anyway. Scottish law on children's rights is untenable.  End of. And I know there are readers frothing at the mouth just reading that.

But let me point out a few things.

Children are most at risk in families - physically, mentally and sexually.

A parent can remove a child from education and nobody can do a damned thing about it. It's called 'education at home' and it's a parent's right. That's how kids disappear off the radar all the time in Scotland - 31 this year removed from one school and not enrolled in another. Where are they?

School is not just about learning stuff: it's about learning to get on with other people, to be part of a group (which you are at home and will be at work for the rest of your life). It's about community - civilisation, as we teachers call it. It's a safe place, where children can and do share what's happening to them elsewhere. Later they can decide these things are not for them but parents in my opinion don't have the right to stop children developing as social beings.

I have been told when I object to things like school uniform (so much claptrap talked about that) or placing requests by middle-class parents who know nothing about their local school but have heard  the one three schools along is better - I've been told I know nothing about bringing up children, born - as I was - under a gooseberry bush and raised by wolves...

And let's look at this word 'smacking.' What is a smack to you? It might look to you like a light tap on the back of the hand but I once saw a blow that knocked a small child off his feet. I intervened and I'll be honest: I was scared - I am totally afraid of physical violence. It was a granny who did it - in a shop in a village where everyone knew her.

We had a talk - it was either that I told her or I called the police - and it occurred to me pretty soon that this poor put-upon granny childminder was totally out of her depth. Too old to handle a 3 year old but obliged to help her daughter get back to work. Of course, she loved her grandson and was good to him but she needed help. (In that village, she got it).

So let's work on the adults. If you were battered as a child, either at home or at school, surely you want your children and grandchildren to have a better - safer - experience.

It still surprises me that the authoritarian element in Scottish society is still around, while the rest of us have moved on. And by jings, they're out in force over the smacking issue - as they were over equal marriage rights, etc. These are the people who reject equal rights for all, refer to women as feminazis, reject any kind of racial integration, and want control - above all, control - of the rest of us.

We've all moved on a lot since the 70s. And we're not going back.

The Grammar Nazi is IN!

Let's deal with the word: obese. It doesn't mean fat or overweight. Obese is a medical term. There are different levels of obesity, but to be classed as obese, people have to be carrying so much extra weight, their health is at risk. People who are overweight usually don't fall into that category. But it sounds so much more awful than fat or overweight. And heaven knows, being fat, overweight or obese is the worst thing anyone can be these days - much worse than stupid or uneducated or a president called Trump.

Okay? Everybody got that? Though I doubt that the journalists and TV people who started us all off using this word are even capable of seeing the distinction..

Now for: decimate. The modern verb comes from the Latin word for ten. In Roman times, it had a quite clear military meaning:

- kill one in every ten of (a group of people, originally a mutinous Roman legion) as a punishment for the whole group.

A very extreme punishment, you'll agree. Certainly a radical way to 'encourager les autres.' Now it's just slung around, used as if it means the same as destroy, devastate or annihilate. It's misused so much now that we have journalists writing even more nonsense than ever: the battalion was decimated, I read in one newspaper article recently. But a battalion in the UK army is 300-800 soldiers and it turned out the casualties in this case numbered 2.

I always come back to communication: I don't get hysterical if I see typos or words misused unless the meaning is obscured. The whole point of language is to make matters clear.

As I hope this is!

Crime Waves

A few years back, I met a couple of pals in a Scottish city (not Glasgow) for lunch. We'd all come from working class backgrounds ourselves in the 50s and 60s, attended 'scheme' schools and worked in similar schools as teachers. We had all noticed the link between having a job and a decent income, support for communities from police and other public services and the steady fall in crime in Scotland over a generation, but we also agreed on the state of devastation Thatcherism had caused in communities all over Scotland in the 80s and 90s, from which many communities have never recovered, so that crime was a constant fear. And we decided that in the mid-2000s, after the collapse of UK and US capitalism, it was all about to happen again.

I'll be honest: poor people who assault, rob and steal from other poor people are the lowest of the low.

I don't care how badly off you are, you don't attack your own folk. But our 'communities' - what's left of them after Thatcherism and almost a decade of 'austerity' following the bank bail-out, cuts in public services and in social security support - well, not many feel any kind of solidarity, as far as I can see. That's what Thatcherism set out to do: the UK was to become a community of individuals where the motto was 'man, mind thyself' - take care of yourself - because nobody else will do it.

Tonight on the Channel 4 news, people were complaining about crime waves in London: knife- and gun-carrying and -assaults are rife, moped robberies are the latest thing and now people are facing acid attacks in the street. The indignant people protesting against the rise in crime didn't seem to see a connection with government policy. It goes like this:

* cut the level of community policing - in some cases by 20% - by reducing public sector budgets where workers have had next to no pay rises for 9 years and then complain about lack of support from emergency services
* cut social security payments to make it harder for people to get state support, especially young people
* make it near enough impossible to find affordable housing if you're young, and make homelessness a major issue, with young homeless people not only victims of crime but more likely to commit crime to survive
* introduce a bedroom tax (oh yes, it's still there) so that poor people are penalised for living in houses they can't move out of because there are no other houses available, councils having been banned from building the houses we need
* knock the arse out of wages, especially the wages of the unskilled so that you create an 'underclass' of poor people and then blame them when they react badly to being excluded from the world of the 'haves.'
 * sanction anyone who can't work their way through the jungle of social security rules
* find people to blame. How about immigrants?

Sure as fate, on the same news programme tonight, there was a Frenchwoman (married to a UK citizen, lived and worked here for 20 years, paid her taxes, etc) complaining about not feeling secure here any more. A total stranger in the cafe she and the news reporter were meeting in interrupted to suggest British workers were 'insecure' in their jobs because of people like the Frenchwoman, a complete misreading of the situation, widely peddled by people like UKIP and Boris (PM in waiting) Johnson.

There's no point blaming the police for a spike in lawlessness. And no point in the police blaming communities. No point blaming local authorities for not supporting elderly people in need of home care or children and teenagers in need of mental health care. No point lamenting the lack of decent housing when the government refuses to sanction house-building. No point letting the Tories carry on with the myth that Britain is a world power and ignoring 2 trillion quids' worth of debt so they can buy the new Trident and invest in a railway that goes nowhere and that nobody really needs.

Meanwhile on Sky News Review, there was a UKIP guy who runs a website and has no children, describing the Scottish Government's decision to ban smacking as 'preposterous.' You know the argument: I got the occasional slap...never did me any harm...To be honest, I'm not sure if this is a real problem in Scotland but I support the ban because although I grew up in a non-violent household I am myself pretty scared of violence. I'm delighted to say the other presenter agreed with me: setting a tone where violence is the answer can never be right. Where children are concerned I have strong views about defending their rights.

And on every news channel every night, there's another programme about Brexit. I promise you, 10 years from now, we'll be asking: What happened? How did we let these people lead us out of the biggest trading union in the world, negotiate a disastrous settlement (though there's no negotiation as far as I can say, just years of economic failure to come) because the UK elected a Tory government which is too scared to tell the truth: this is a disaster - and they are too incompetent to do anything to repair the damage.