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.