They do protest too much

I was listening to BBC Radio 4 today as I drove home. Feedback was on and the item that got my attention was one about the BBC and how its news journalists are being treated by El Presidente.

We heard a wee bit of a news conference featuring Trump in which he lambasted a few US news sources for their anti-Trump rhetoric and then lumped the BBC in the same category, calling them 'another beauty.' John Sopel is the BBC's news editor in Washington and he was brought on. Sopel is a career BBC man (34 years and counting). What exactly did anyone think he was going to say about events in Trumpland? He gave a good rendition of a man flabbergasted at such treatment. After all, isn't the BBC the very definition of integrity, honesty and impartiality? Even if Trump didn't think so.

Trump may be weird and hugely inexperienced in government but he's not thick. He has a sensitive (over-developed) ego when it comes to criticism, and it occurred to me: just because Trump is odd doesn't mean he's not right.

There are a few pro-independence people in Scotland who would agree with Trump about the BBC's impartiality: if the BBC and a small number of rabid right wing newspapers hadn't been hellbent on misrepresenting just about everything from Scottish exports to the state of the NHS and education and the security of our pensions, Scotland might now be celebrating its independence.

Maybe some pro-Corbyn people in England might also think if it hadn't been for the BBC and some right wing newspapers' mocking tone when discussing Corbyn and his senior people (mainly McDonnell and Abbott) and their policies we might in fact have a Labour government right now. I try to imagine what the playing field would have looked like if the media had examined the manifestos of the Tories (gimme a blank cheque) and the Labour Party (fully costed). Nope, it does no compute but the BBC and a lot of other news outlets never tried to work it out.

John Sopel's contribution was followed by emails from listeners to Feedback. All English, I noticed. All supportive of the BBC's position. I wondered if any contributions from American or Scottish or English Labour listeners were lying unused on the Feedback editor's desk, opposing views on BBC impartiality left largely unheard.

The myth of BBC impartiality is collapsing around them but the media don't tell us that. The BBC is part of that mythical place: Englandshire, where nothing has changed since about 1930 and where nothing will ever change. Lord Reith is still in charge of the BBC and he sets the standard. Newspapers are owned by rich old men. There are no black people. Women are barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Gay people don't exist or, if they do, they live in closets behind firmly closed doors. Everyone who matters in the country went to the same schools (and not 'bog-standard comprehensives' either) and to the same universities, worked in the city and got rich as a matter of course.

All our problems are caused by immigrants. We can close our borders and manage fine, although we want ex pats (you're only an immigrant if you're coming into the UK) to be full citizens of the places they have opted to live in the other 26 EU countries. And we're rich. The UK may produce little by way of manufacturing (except what comes out of the North Sea in the way of oil and gas, plus items like whisky, specialist foods like beef and lamb - a lot of them Scottish) and much of the UK may depend to a quite foolish extent on the service sector (needs no factories - can bugger off at the drop of a hat to another EU city or demand to be bribed if we want them to stay). But still we're rich. We can opt out of EU laws, although we need to notice there's a whole raft of other laws (Geneva Convention, etc) that we can't ignore. We can refuse to pay what the EU wants us to in order to leave and still demand a trade deal, but has nobody yet noticed the EU only have to say: no, sorry, not going to happen - no deal - you're on your own?

The BBC, I'm sorry to say, is part of the British problem. Despite being top-heavy with so-called 'big beasts' among their news and current affairs staff on grossly inflated salaries, they have not examined in any detail the major issues affecting the UK right now: the legality or otherwise of the agreement with the DUP, the terms of Brexit, the rights of citizens to seek Scottish independence and the dissolution of the union. But they spend a lot of cash, yours and mine, on reporting from the USA. (Interestingly, the only other news organisation to spend a similar amount is Sky).

What will knock the BBC out of its comfortable, lazy ways of thinking and running the organisation? A review of its charter? The threat of breaking it up? A cut in its funding? A detailed analysis of how it treats its staff, explaining why the leading actor in the Archers gets 16,000 a year while the Evans guy walks off with 2.2 million? I don't know, but I do know when Scotland does become independent, we will have a very different approach to the media. Responsibility will be the in word.

Let's share...or maybe not...

I know how old I am by the landmarks that my former students reach.

Last week, one had me - no, not chortling but guffawing at her description of what I call the 'jobby test'. You know the one: once you reach the age of 50 in Scotland, you're sent a wee bit of cardboard and some sticks and you're asked to put in each window of the wee bit of cardboard a specimen of your - well - jobbies. You send them to a lab which tests them and, all being well, boab's your uncle: nae bowel cancer.

It's a great idea, this test. It could have saved the lives of a few of my friends - and did in fact save the life of two of them. But the reality is kinda gross.

It's also scary for me that some of my former students are so OLD.

I write that with a fair amount of feeling, since on Monday I have an audiology test at the RAH (tinnitus caused by impacted wax in my left ear) and I then come home to preparations for a colonoscopy at Gartnavel the next  morning. I could have called off the colonoscopy but, having waited so long for an appointment and made such a fuss at having to wait 5 months, I think I'd better just get on with it. I will, of course, swallow the 4 sachets of revolting emetic. Avoid solid food. And look forward to being told (as I was last time I went through this): You have a lovely appendix!

I'm alarmed, though, to be told to bring a dressing gown and slippers, not to mention having to sign a consent form for a 'procedure.' I'm not staying in. Oh, no! My driver on Tuesday is the least patient man in the world, and he'll have me out of there as soon as I can walk.

I take it as a good sign that waiting lists in Scotland are getting longer for tests like these. I have one friend who was so repulsed by the idea of the jobby test that he binned the bits of cardboard, only to be told 8 months later that what he thought appendicitis was in fact bowel cancer. Lucky for him the NHS in Scotland didn't give up but pursued him till he delivered a sample.

But, oh, I'm dreaming of Port Ellen, which is where I'll be on the following Monday...

It's history, man

I'm on uncertain ground writing this, but there are plenty of people out there who can keep me right if I get the facts wrong:

I left primary school in 1960. Here is what I knew about Scottish history at that point: Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off; Robert the Bruce learned from the spider; James the Sixth became James the First when the crowns were united; David Livingstone 'discovered' Africa; Robert Burns wrote poems and collected songs. That was it. I swear to you I knew more about the history of Govan, where I lived.

By the time I left secondary school, I didn't know much more about Scottish history. I realised Scotland had a different education system from England (or was it England and Wales or England and Wales and Northern Ireland?) because I sat A levels in sixth year and was told these were English exams. I don't think I even knew Scotland had a different legal system, although I'd heard of the 'not proven' verdict, dismissed in my family as: we know you did it but we can't prove it. But we're watching you, ya wee B@st@rd.

By the age of 18, however, I could tell you all about the causes of the French Revolutions of 1789 and 1848; the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; the Great Reform Act of 1832; Queen Victoria and the British Empire. I can also give you a pretty good list of the kings and queens of England and I know all about heroes like Nelson and Wellington.

When I went to France for the first time, in 1968, I realised pretty quickly that the French knew every step of their own history. The republic was an important part of their identity. People knew the dates and the people involved all through the existence of the state they had created. They were proud to be French but they had opinions on how their country had come to be as it was - and they didn't always like their past. They had different heroes and heroines from the Brits and were proud of them.

Me? Well, I quickly realised I knew nowt. Educated French people tried to talk to me about the great scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment, mentioning David Hume and Adam Smith in the same sentence as Voltaire, one of my heroes. They talked about the role of the Scots in the American Wars of Independence, which the French supported, about John Paul Jones and about Scots who helped draft and signed the Declaration of Independence. I was, frankly, embarrassed.

It was only later that I began to look back into French history and realised that the French had created a unified state by driving many cultures in to the ground: Breton, Occitan, Alsacien, etc - and that's before we even look at the actions of the French in their 'colonies.' That's what my critical friends objected to.

From now on, what I'm going to write is my opinion about Scotland. I'm not a member of the SNP but I have strong views on identity and belonging, and if you think you might disagree, it would be better for your blood pressure if you don't read on. 

So...how come I - with 2 degrees and a teaching diploma - know so little about Scottish history? Well, I think it's not an accident. I could try taking you back to the Scottish Wars of Independence, but I can't do that with any conviction because of sheer ignorance on my part. So let's go back to the Union of the Parliaments in 1707.

This was followed by the Jacobite Revolution of 1715 and the big one in 1745. There's a tendency to miss the connection but these 'rebellions' showed the Scots had not given up on the possibility of independence after 1707. And if, as a result, things were bad in Scotland in 1707 and 1715, they went  to hell in a handcart after 1745.

1745 was followed by a long period of repression. Some of us will tell you the repression was intended to reduce Scotland to a county to the north of Northumbria. Some of us argue that the repression never ended.

Here's one suggestion of how it was done:

First you divide the country. There's the Lowlands, Scots-speaking and about to be swept up in an industrial revolution that will make and break many communities. The Lowland Scots have already started moving off the land (their own clearances) and they will move to the urban areas of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. Some of them will be involved in the slave trade, in dealing with cotton and tobacco (which we will never talk about). Some folk will get very rich in the second half of the 18th century. The richest will have their children educated in schools that emphasise their Britishness, not their Scottishness. The aristocracy will go even further and send their children south to be educated. There they will no longer see themselves as lairds but as landowners. The aspiring classes will abandon the Scots language and then despise people who speak it. The age of Robert Burns (in my opinion) is a one-off: after Burns, poetry and song will be in English. Before we know it, the way to get on is to speak English. This in a country where till about 1750 the languages of the courts and the law were Latin, French and Scots. 

Then there's the Highlands. You start by calling the population 'the Irishers,' on the grounds that they speak Gaelic. You make them different from the rest of the population. You tell everyone their ancestors were not native Scots. Lies, of course. But they are different from the Lowlanders and they scared the crap out of the Lowland middle-classes in 1745 by how close they got to their doors. You use education to neutralise the danger from the Irishers: schools are set up where speaking Gaelic is punished. Highland dress is banned - as above. The people who had previously thought of themselves as clan chiefs with a responsibility to look after their own go away to be educated and come back unable to speak Gaelic or Scots, but every inch the English aristocrat and with the same ambitions: to make money out of their Highland territory so they can enjoy the lifestyle of their southern counterparts. The Highland Clearances then follow. 

And that - finally, I hear you say! - brings me to the matter of museum displays - or one in particular.

I have two beefs with the Arran Heritage Museum. Firstly, it misses an opportunity to promote Arran Gaelic. The people of Arran spoke Southern Gaelic. It had many links with the Gaelic still spoken in places like Gigha, Islay, Jura, Mull and Colonsay. It could so easily have been promoted in the displays at the museum. You know what I'm not saying here: are there any local people on the board who could give the rest a steer when it comes to authenticity?

The exhibit also glosses over the Clearances. Yes, there were 'clearances' or 'improvements' according to the Arran Heritage Museum, right across Scotland. These had to do with changes in agriculture that were happening across Europe. I know about this. I used to volunteer at the museum of Rural Life in East Kilbride and, in the absence of any direction from museum staff as to what I was meant to tell visitors, I read up. The agricultural revolution of the late 18th century encouraged landowners to mechanise, to plant different crops, to rotate - to be more scientific in their approach, in fact. It didn't necessarily mean kicking people off their crofts and smallholdings across Arran, forcing them to emigrate. That, I think, was a decision taken by the local landowners and needs to be investigated.

The good people of the Arran Heritage Museum should revise the cards they have attached to their exhibit. 

Do I take the same approach to - for example - the investigation of Glasgow's role in the slave trade? You betcha! 

Boots

I grew up in a solidly working class community in the 1960s. We were pretty radical in our own way: there were many Communists and Socialists among us, we voted and we often voted Labour, we went to union meetings and night classes and attended lectures by the WEA. We haunted the library. Family life was pretty tranquil. There was no divorce and what separation there was was spoken about in hushed tones. There were things we rarely talked about: violence within families was one; sex was another.

There was evidence all around us that people were having sex. The schools were full of the children of the wartime generation and there weren't enough teachers to teach us all. (The best teacher I had in primary was a woman called Mrs McNab, who had retired years before but came back to help deal with the shortage of teachers. She was so frail, we took it in turns to meet her at the top of the road and carry her bags for her every day). If there was a sexual revolution going on in the 60s, it reached Scotland a lot later than it did Carnaby Street. Contraception was not spoken about above a whisper or in jokes among adults, but from an early age girls knew that pregnancy meant the end of childhood as many young couples then 'had to get married' if the girl got pregnant.

I remember teenage girls in my school and later at university getting agitated because they were 'late.' I remember a few leaving school, their education at an end. A few of my fellow students disappeared, to return months later to take up their education again with no explanation of where they'd been.

And if anyone thinks it got to be easy to get hold of the contraceptive pill, let me tell you that right up to the late 70s, unmarried women were told by their GPs to 'go away and come back with your mother and we'll talk about it.' Just the thing you want to be talking to your mammy about in a highly repressed society. Luckily the family planning clinics didn't take that view.

It is, frankly, a relief that times have changed. Divorce is common and not regarded as a scandal. Living together is the norm. People no longer 'have to get married' and girls and women don't leave their place of education because they're pregnant. Contraception is available from many outlets. In Scotland we used to have a huge problem of teenage girls having babies. I can't find any figures for this online, but it seems to have become less of a problem recently.

Which brings me to Boots. Boots kept the price of Levonelle, the 'morning-after' pill, very high, when retailers (and that's all Boots are - not doctors or pharmacists - just retailers selling us stuff) dropped their prices by half recently. The reasoning of the company was that they didn't want to be accused of "incentivising inappropriate use, and provoking complaints, by significantly reducing the price of this product". So what use, I wonder, would be inappropriate? And who would complain?

We know fine well giving women the right to determine the use of their own bodies has always upset some people. It looks better if we can disguise it as a way to protect 'under-age' girls, although there is absolutely no evidence that girls are using Levonelle. So who is using Levonelle inappropriately? Daft lassies who have had one-night stands? But they're not daft if they're turning up looking for Levonelle next day. Quite responsible, in fact.

That was yesterday's statement, and today Boots rolled back from that position: their spokeswoman (smart move that, putting a woman upfront) seemed to suggest that it might not be safe for women to take Levonelle too often. What's the evidence for that? And it was also suggested that women who need emergency contraception should be tested for STDs. Really? Even in stable relationships? Aren't Boots making a judgement there - again with no evidence? Very paternalistic.

Is this all meant to put women off even asking for Levonelle?

Underneath all this flim-flam there's a serious point to make. I can't say this too often: it's nobody's business how a woman uses her body. So it matters not one bit if there are people who think women should not be having sex outside marriage or one-night stands or even sex at all.

It's time we moved on. We still have a problem with violence inside marriage. The sexual abuse of children. Sex trafficking. All of them a lot more damaging than letting a woman choose to take Levonelle.


PS I haven't mentioned homosexuality here, but I would like to remind people if women hadn't forged the way with feminism from the 80s onwards, there would probably be no equal marriage.

A cold call

I get a lot of cold calls to my mobile. So many that these days I don't answer the phone and don't call back unless I can be sure who is calling. Usually it's an 0161 or 0191 number. I don't know anybody with these dialling codes so I delete the calls. Today I got one that started 0141 and wondered if this was someone I knew. Not wanting to appear rude, I called back. And anyhow, I was sitting in the car waiting for somebody and it passed the time.

The person who answered said: Good morning, you're through to (buzz) from (buzz) and (buzz). I asked him to repeat that and he did. I was none the wiser but it was clearly some kind of cold call from a company. I asked him again what company he represented. He told me. Still none the wiser, I asked what the company did. He said something about 'trust.' I repeated my question: but what does your company actually do? Turns out they re-finance debt.

Debt? said I. I've been retired nearly 10 years and the first thing I did was to make sure I had no debt. First time ever in my life. Feel free to hate me, because you sound like a millennial and that means you're in the group of poor sods the Tories are trying to reduce to poverty with austerity, low wages, high rents, no hope of buying a house, minimum wage, short-term contracts and now they're taking the UK out of the Common Market so you can kiss your rights goodbye. Need I go on?

He was silent for a few seconds and then said: I hope you manage to stay debt-free.

O, I will, said I. And I hope you manage to remember the generation before yours didn't get ripped off the way you are - there is a better way to live - as long as you never vote Tory. Ever.

Thank you, he said.

At that point, the person I was waiting for turned up and we ended our conversation.

These blood-sucking public sector workers

Right enough, I always felt when I was a public sector worker that as a teacher I was overpaid. Like police officers, doctors, nurses and paramedics, fire staff, council staff. Of course, there were bits of the job we loved but the hours and the pay were not the reason we signed up.

I mean, I got paid for being a principal teacher in a secondary school. Spent my days trying to make sure the department was working smoothly, managing staff and resources - and taking my own personal work (preparation, marking) home to do Monday to Thursday evenings between 6 and 9. I had Friday night off to unwind and Saturday to do the essentials like the shopping and cleaning, and then wound myself up for the new week by working on Sunday from 12-6 and sometimes later. I did the school shows and the school trips abroad in my own time.

When I went to work in a local authority job, I worked on improvement with school managers, wrote and ran training sessions for school staff, arranged study visits to and from European partners, interviewed people for jobs, supervised staff, got working parties together to provide teaching material for pre-5 to Higher and arranged cooperation with colleagues in other councils to save council tax payers' money. The pattern I'd started in school just carried on. Except email was now available and the council IT department had arranged that people could get me any time, and my Sunday routine sometimes had me working from 11am till 11pm, depending on what was happening.

I remember our boss telling us on one occasion that he didn't think he was getting 'value for money' from us, although he was unable to tell us what it was he wanted us to do to prove we were doing a good job. A travel agent who had been unable to get hold of me for 3 days was annoyed to be told I was 'out in schools' and didn't like being interrupted when I was doing pre-inspection checks, and then went on to tell me how easy life was for people like me because we weren't 'in the front line.' (Tell that to colleagues who dealt daily with impossible parents - not to mention HMI). I'd just put thousands of pounds of business his way but he seemed to think working in the public sector was a skoosh. If only.

Now it's Phillip Hammond who thinks public sector workers are overpaid. Let's just make sure we all understand what's going on: The Tories resent the fact that public sector workers sometimes (not always) have permanent contracts, agreed terms and conditions and sometimes the backing of a trades union which will defend their rights. They also have pensions which they pay into all their working lives.

In other words, they're not part of the 'gig' economy in which workers have no status and few rights. The 'gig' economy suits the Tories just fine. When we are out of the EU, our rights as workers will be further eroded. The UK will join some of the poorest countries in the developed world as a place where we have no protection. Already, we see education is now out of the reach of many young people in England (and to an extent in Wales). Workers with a grievance, including women sacked or forced out of a job because they get pregnant, now have to find huge amounts of cash to take their case to an industrial tribunal. Many people have workplace pensions that won't give them any kind of decent life in retirement. People are now expected to work longer - the state pension age will shortly go up to 70. And pensioners face the prospect of having their financial situation - not all that great if you look at other countries' provision for the elderly - damaged further when the 'triple lock' is abandoned. The Tories are also rumoured to be trialling 'cash for GP appointments.' They are running down the NHS, starving it of cash, so that they can then tell us it doesn't work (though it did till the Tories took it over) and privatise it.

So what do we do? I can't say this often enough or vehemently enough: stop voting Tory! Stop being conned by the Tories' attempt to blame the poor, foreigners and public sector workers for everything that's wrong in the UK. Ignore their claims that the only way forward is austerity. That just plays into their desire to have a workforce desperate for work and living on the minimum wage, with no rights and no hope of improvement. Don't let the Tories continue this 'dumbing down' of society in which working people get no respect from anyone, are kept short of housing so as to force rents up (do any of the private renters vote Tory, I wonder?), and where homelessness is now an epidemic among young people in some parts of the UK. And only those who start with money can make money.

Have a good look at the Tory cabinet. Do these people represent us? Have they any understanding at all of what's it's like - for instance - to lose everything - absolutely everything - in the Grenfell Tower fire or to be living fearfully in a tower block with the same cladding or to be shuttled around from hotel to B&B - and end up on the streets?

Most of all, are these politicians competent to do the jobs they've been given? Take a look at them and get back to me.

The n word

Let's just check. The n word came to the UK from the USA, as many things do. The word has such awful racist connotations that it can't even be said or written in the USA.

But how many people have actually heard the n word used as an insult here in the UK? I haven't.

In my youth, I heard the n word regularly, in a series of expressions, none of which had racist overtones at the time: nigger brown was a colour, Ten Little Niggers was a book by Agatha Christie before the title was diplomatically changed, and then there was the nigger in the woodpile, the expression this MP is said to have used as a racist insult:

I've listened to what she said and I don't think she used the expression as a racist insult. I think her manner of speaking is many things: old-fashioned, not very fluent, but racist? No.

So what we have here is false indignation by the press and TV who, having tried very hard to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn because of all his politically-incorrect activities - and failed - have now turned their attention to Theresa May's very rocky government and are now using any weapon to further
destabilise it.

Don't get me wrong. I regard the Tories as the enemy of everything that matters to me and I don't want them in power for a minute longer than necessary. But I want them out of government by legitimate means. Not deposed by the UK media. The media, unelected, subject to corruption (as we know from the phone-tapping scandal among other things), and controlled by a small number of billionaires with little commitment to life in the UK. Let's not be fooled here.

'Government' Money?

I don't care if the Conservative Party puts up a statue to Margaret Thatcher. I was sickened by the influence she had as PM but she's been gone a long time now. Under her government, life in the UK became much worse. Her government was cruel and narrow-minded and if you want to know where the 'nanny state' originated, you need look no further: the Tories started interfering in life our bedrooms and classrooms 30 years ago and successive governments haven't stopped since. Any attempt to portray Theresa May as a worthy successor to Thatcher has been well and truly blown out of the water since the general election.

I doubt if I would cross the road to see either of these people but I do care very much who pays for the planned statue. I get annoyed when I hear people talking about funding things with 'government' money. The government has no money. The people with the money are us - you and me. We pay for government and just about every service we have through income tax, vat, stamp duty, airport duty, duty on petrol and alcohol, etc. Given the state of the UK right now, a statue of a former Tory PM is not top of my list of essential spending. How about yours?

The billion pound bribe paid to the DUP is a different matter. I keep wondering if removing that kind of cash out of the national budget to keep a political party in power is even legal. It's certainly not ethical. Did anyone ask if we thought it was okay? Has anyone in government explained where the money is to come from? Whose budget is to be robbed? Health? Education? Social security? Or has Theresa May in fact got a magic money tree in the Treasury that she can shake from time to time? Is Philip Hammond burrowing away with his Letraset printing the money?

Are the Tories accountable for how that money is spent in Northern Ireland? Arlene Foster has a very poor record in that regard. How much did the DUP lose over 'Cash for Ash'? £400 million? It was £490 million, to be exact.

We are so far from transparency in government in the UK that I wonder how politicians have the nerve to complain about how other organisations like the EU, the United Nations or NATO spend their funding. As for the endless complaints by politicians and the press about how foreign aid from the UK to countries round the world is spent, I'll bet few of them can tell us any of the good projects that foreign aid pays for (clean water, education, providing basic health care such as vaccination). It's as if the whole world is getting rich on the back of the UK government, whereas the reality is that the UK pays 0.7% of its gross domestic product in foreign aid, the very minimum recommended by international summits - and we only reached that target in 2013.

I've been reading today about people despairing at referendums and wanting no more of them. I look at it differently: I've visited places in Europe where there are rarely national votes taken on anything but where a population of 5 million would be seen as unmanageable, so power and budgets are devolved to much smaller communities. There seem to be fewer local politicians with the power that our elected representatives have and they have to give an account of how every pound of their devolved budget is spent.

I'd like to try accountability. But then, I'd like to try a lot of things: turning Westminster into a museum and housing our elected representatives in a modern building somewhere outside Manchester, where there are enough seats in the chamber for everyone and the equivalent of a travelodge beside it for accommodation. I'd like our representatives to pay for their own meals out of their wages and to have a cap put on their other expenses. I'd also like them to endure the same pay freeze as other public sector workers. And our representatives should have one job: if they take our money, they can give us 100% of their attention.

Anyone for tennis?

I thought I'd watch Pointless. Oh no, I can't: the national broadcaster has got Wimbledon on both its main channels for - what? - the next two weeks. Why is that?

Every bloody year it's the same. All winter we get football or rugby. Turn your back on the telly after the 10 o'clock news and there's a good chance they're showing football, with overpaid numpties spouting forth endlessly about teams run by foreign managers and stuffed full of foreign players, so we can't even claim football as the working-class British boys' way to wealth and fame any more. Channel 4 regularly takes off Countdown so we can all watch the racing.

But the summer is the worst: wall to wall tennis, cricket, the Tour de France, formula 1, golf. And if it's a really bad year there will also be more football from the world cup or the endless boredom of the Olympics, relieved only by the excitement of the 100metres if Usain Bolt is competing.

But you like sport, I hear you say. Good for you. I don't. I quite like that Wimbledon gets the weans out in the street with racquets and a ball kidding on they can play for a few weeks, but I am driven demented by grown-ups who imagine watching tennis somehow makes them experts on the game - or that they miraculously get fitter and healthier by vegging out on the settee, drinking beer and eating crisps. At least, people who go and watch the golf at the course get exercise from walking about after the golfers.

Luckily, I have other things to watch on my telly: a backlog of series that I've been saving just for the summer. And I've got a decent supply of books. And an online course on the Great Extinctions in earth's history - week 3 of 5 just completed and I'm on the look-out for another course to do already. And movies coming from Lovefilm or downloadable from the iplayer or Netflix.

And given the state of the summer weather, it looks like I'll need all of these to survive till September.

A light bulb moment

Does anybody else think we're getting ripped off something rotten over light bulbs?

There I was, having (another) fairly peaceful night of insomnia and the light went out. That's the third bulb to go in the same lamp in a couple of months: halogen, E27, warm white, 19W, 219 lumen - whatever that means. From B&Q. They're not cheap, these bulbs. They're supposed to be 'dimmable.' So why don't they last? I'll have to buy more soon because that was my last one, but what do I buy? And where?

I had a quick look at websites and they offer bulbs that are 5W. What does that mean when you switch them on? Can I read by that?

In the past, I had 2 kinds of light bulb: 60W and 100W.

Now every light is different. In the kitchen and bathroom I've got wee globe things, but they're different from the ones in the hall and my bedroom and they in turn are different from the ones in the livingroom. Some are LED and are halogen. Sometimes I have to buy bulbs I used to put into overhead projectors at school, and that need me to get my brother (the family electrics expert) to come and change, holding the dinky wee things covered in a paper hankie.

Let me tell you this: I didn't retire to do this kind of sh*t*! If you have an answer to this problem, post it on Facebook - please!

The D word

The D word I mean is disability.

No, don't go! Have a wee listen to this podcast from the BBC. It's called Ouch and it's about disabled people. I hope they change the name soon, but the podcast is good. It's about Jared O'Mara, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, who has cerebral palsy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/disability-40462699/the-only-mp-who-wears-a-t-shirt-in-parliament

If you heard an announcement on the news recently that MPs no longer have to wear ties and wondered why, it's Jared: he raised the issue with John Bercow and got full cooperation. He can't do up shirt buttons - or put on a tie, I imagine - so the dress rules of the House of Commons have been changed.

He's still left with other problems: the door he should use to get into Portcullis House needs two hands to open it, so he's having to come in the back door. There are going to be other problems but he has the support of the Speaker and of David Blunkett, also a Sheffield MP, who has been there before him.

Jared, of course, is trying to lead a normal life, so he hasn't got a big sign over his head that reads: Cerebral Palsy! Disabled! In the podcast, he mentions two things I find interesting:

Disability law expects employers to be 'anticipatory,' that is, to work out what will be needed for disabled people to play a full role in working life. And yet, the House of Commons, which passed the law in England, had nothing in place for a disabled MP: no one on the admin staff nominated as the point of contact for him on arrival; no procedures in place to make his induction easier; and no information in place to help staff in the House to work with him.

That brings me on to: education. It looks as if the mental health programmes put in place on TV and in the press over the last couple of years have got people used to the idea that many of us will experience a mental health problem in our lives and that men especially need to be more forthcoming about their mental health issues.

Do we have the same sensitisation programmes in place to deal with disability? Blindness and Down's are easy to recognise but do we know how to recognise autism, cerebral palsy, deafness? And if we recognise all of these, do we have a basic understanding of what to do and how to help? Notice I'm not suggesting schools should do this: the mental health campaign only took off when we stopped telling schools they had to do it and we - the grown-ups - started doing it ourselves.

As a volunteer, I've seen so many disabled people in nice accommodation with security systems in place, but stuck at the top of a block of flats with no lift, so effectively trapped indoors. Or even in blocks of flats with a lift, trapped by the weight of the fire doors which they can't open. The whole of the UK is alive with visiting 'carers': they're out there every day from early morning to bedtime; they rush around from client to client, underpaid and overworked; and some of what they do, I'm convinced, could be better done by the disabled clients themselves if they had the right kind of accommodation, inhouse cleaners, food preparers, and transport.

I heard a report on C4 news last night about housing: either we frontload the cost of housing by subsidising council house building (a one-off) or we endload it by giving private landlords a whopping subsidy (a continuing drain on the economy). The UK at present does the second version and it's costing us a mint. Property owners are doing fine though.

Support for disabled people is much the same: we can invest in suitable housing and make all buildings, pavements and facilities disability-friendly (a one-off), or we can spend money on carers because at present disabled people can't go out on their own or manage their homes or cook (a constant spend).

It used to be called joined-up thinking in the public services. But I gather there's no money in that: entrepreneurs these days like to hoover up the results of chaos in the public services.

Meanwhile I'm away to get a stick to use on those days when my energy is rock-bottom and my walking is kind of shaky. I know I'm not mobile enough to cope with crowds any more, as I found out at Glasgow University last week. I know how to behave in crowds but I can't cope with people who suddenly change direction and walk in front of me or elbow me as if I'm not there (thanks for that, people). I can't manoeuvre the way I need to in a crowd and I get kinda panicky when people jostle me. I'm grateful to my lovely family, without whom I would not have been able to manage the steps inside the university or at the Lorne Hotel or The Sisters restaurant.

But my concerns are as nothing compared to most disabled people's. I just wish I could see an end to the persecution (strong word - but I've thought it over and it's right) and exclusion of the disabled.