Get real, please!

Yet again messages are appearing on my FB and Twitter feeds, telling me that 'scroungers' shouldn't be allowed to take money off the 'state'.

The state is me and you and millions of other people who pay their taxes. Most of the so-called scroungers were also working till recently - paying their taxes - and would like to be working now.

Has anybody missed the following news?

 

This is fact, not opinion! And not bigotry!

Place your bets!

The closest I've come to the press is that I worked with a woman whose ex-husband - note: ex-husband - was being hounded by the Daily Record. One morning she was wakened very early by someone ringing her front doorbell. When she opened the door, a photographer took her picture. The Daily Record printed it on the front page next day. What did she have to do with her ex-husband's story? Nothing at all. The editor obviously thought a photo of an ex-wife in her dressing gown was in 'the public interest' - I think that means it would sell papers. It also humiliated her professionally and in her community. Of course, she could have complained to the Press Compaints Commission. And it would have done - what exactly?

About as much as the PCC did for the McCanns and the family of Milly Dowler. I'm not too worried about the likes of Hugh Grant and company - they have enough money to protect themselves, although I suspect their best defence would be to keep their private lives totally private and not carry it out in the public arena. But to poor and totally innocent people caught up in horrible troubles, the PCC has proved no defence at all.

So if the PCC is useless, shouldn't we shore it up with more powers? Leveson says yes. So do the Lib Dems, Labour and the victims of press invasion - and probably quite a lot of the public. On the other hand, the Tories and the press say no: we can't have politicians interfering in press matters, although nobody has yet shown how Leveson's proposals would do that.

Anyone want to bet the press win against Leveson? Yep, I think they will too - and the circus will continue to roll on.

Put some clothes on, Glasgow!

Went to the Fort today. It's an open-air mall. Lots of nice shops but no protection from the elements. What a cold place! 5C at lunchtime, but the wee street of shops is like a wind funnel and it was perishin!

And all around us were Glaswegians without jackets: guys wearing short sleeved t-shirts, lassies in shorts and see through tops. At least one of them I saw was turning purple in the cold. And it's not just in the east end you see this phenomenon. I've seen lassies in the centre of town plodding through snow in high-heeled sandals and guys at George Square in their vests in the pouring rain swinging their car keys - like 'I just parked my Porsche roon the coarner so ah don't need a jaicket.'

Is this why Glaswegians have low life expectancy? Does hypothermia get them rather than illness?

Meanwhile out here in leafy East Ren my neighbours are sewn into hats, gloves and scarves from September till May - and live to be 93.

How to make money

I've often wished I'd been born with the gene for money-making.

Today I was talking to my library buddy Charles, telling him about my adventures in George Square on Saturday evening trying to get into a pub with friends for a 'quiet' drink. We tried 3 pubs before we found one that didn't have a queue outside. This was at 8pm. My friends have been away from Glasgow for 20 years and were quite surprised by what they saw. All the pubs seemed to be occupied in force by 20-somethings. How, I wondered, could these young people afford a night on the bevy in the middle of the month? And, believe me, they were on the bevy - big style. And I'm guessing this wasn't the only Saturday night in the month they were out there. Surely they don't use credit cards to buy a round of drinks? I asked.

I then got a lesson from Charles on how 'payday loans' - that's Wonga to me - work. The young person phones up, asks for a loan of £100 and, if they meet the requirements - basically, who is your employer and what is your employee number and bank account number? - the cash is in their ATM within 20 minutes. On payday, they pay back £118.

What a jolly wheeze. The loan company only needs to employ some people in a call centre to get the information and issue the money. They don't need to do security checks. If the young person doesn't pay up, they have the information they need to get the money back off them by seizing their wages. Destroying their credit rating in the process. Of course, the interest rate is extortionate. Of course, once people have started on this kind of easy borrowing, they'll continue, gradually become poorer and poorer and thus be forced to borrow more money and more often.

The payday loans people are in good company: other businesses sell poor people cheap furniture at extortionate a.p.r. rates. Still more offer 'cheque cashing' services for those without a bank account or just needing money fast - again at very high rates. Then there are the companies that buy gold at very low rates - again often from people too poor to argue about the price they are offered.

This all seems to be acceptable to government - and to the rest of us who are just idly standing by and watching the poor being exploited.

Charles pointed out to me something I hadn't noticed: that the voice-over for Wonga is spoken by Nicholas Parsons. I wish to point out also that the puppet characters are all old people. The young are not associated onscreen with this form of borrowing. Since old people are a bit of a joke on the telly, the whole business is meant to be seen as a bit of fun.

Second thoughts: if having the money-making gene means doing this, I won't worry about getting rich.  

The Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo is famous in the UK as an answer you can give to almost any geography question on the TV quiz Pointless: it is in Africa, it is landlocked, it is a former Belgian colony, the people speak French as their second language, it lies on the border between Christianity and Islam, it has somehow got itself caught up in a territorial land grab with Rwanda.

Other than roughly where it is, I suspect us Europeans are a bit vague about the DRC, despite the horrors carried out there by King Leopold of the Belgians, who regarded it as his personal fiefdom and is said to have salted away $1 billion in gold and diamonds his thugs (troops) forced the local people to dig out.

I have no more idea than anyone else what's going on in the DRC right now. I heard tonight that one of its main cities, Goma, has just 'fallen', though I'm not sure who to. It looks as if almost a million people are at the mercy of the invaders.

But no - wait! The people of Goma should be at the mercy of no one. UN troops have been in the DRC for a decade, apparently deployed there to protect the local population. Where have they been while the fighting has been going on? What have they done to protect the populace?

This is one of many forgotten wars. Protest if you can. The people of Africa - especially people who have been slaves of colonists - deserve better.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/23/congo.international

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo

Meet the Elderly?

One of the madder ideas from  the Tory Party recently was that us 60 year olds should volunteer to take care of 90 year olds. Setting aside minor details like whether some 60 year olds are fit - or safe - to look after the very elderly, there's a bigger question:

What makes us think the very elderly - the over-75s - and there are more and more of them - only want to have contact with other very elderly people? Do they have to be herded into some kind of corral? Are they not allowed contact with other generations? Does their physical frailty somehow reduce them to being a problem?

I had a salutary experience today.

I've joined a group called 'Meet the Elderly.' I'll be driving a 90 year old woman on a Sunday afternoon either to a museum for tea and a guided tour or to a volunteer's house for tea and a blether. This woman has slight mobility problems and trouble with her eyesight, but she is as sharp as a tack with a great memory, has a great sense of humour and is finding it very hard to accept that she is seen as useless to society. She worked all her days and looked after her parents in their old age but has had to give up the family bungalow she lived in for 77 years. Chillingly, she refers to her very comfortable retirement flat as 'solitary confinement'. She has no friends left alive. Her only relative is a second cousin. She sees no stimulating company from one week to the next.

My idea of hell in old age is to be left sitting in a room lined with armchairs. Nobody talking. A TV babbling away in the corner. Nothing to look forward to but dying. If that's the future for the very elderly, pass out the 'Do Not Resuscitate' labels now.

But I'll bet this woman is going to be interesitng company and has some great stories to tell from her social and working life in Glasgow in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

I know this from delivering library books to the very elderly in Govan. Archie was a gunner on merchant ships in the North Atlantic convoys in World War Two. May is the widow of a victim of the Ibrox Disaster and moved to Ibrox to be close to where he died. Lena brought up a large family alone and is still dealing with a middle-aged son who has addiction problems. It's an education to listen to these people.

They all had a contribution to make in their younger days - and they sure as hell deserve our attention now in their old age.

Democracy at work?

Thank you, Krishnan Guru Murthy, for pointing out on C4 News tonight the big problem in UK politics right now: after yesterday's Corby bi-election and elections for police commissioners (in England or in England and Wales? Not sure), he interviewed representatives of the Labour Party and the Coalition, let them harangue each other for a while and then reminded them all they were doing was shouting at each other, not engaging the voters.

I'm delighted Labour managed to get a majority at the Corby bi-election of seven and a half thousand on such a poor turnout.

But I have to ask: what is the point of the Coalition's flagship policy to have elected police commissioners? I can see why the people that got elected like the idea: more jobs for the boys - well, it looks like it's boys, doesn;t it? But I can also see why the public didn't bother turning out to vote. Why have commissioners at all? Why have the election in November? Why hold an election without explaining through a TV, radio and internet campaign what it's for? If I was really cynical, I'd say this - low turn-out due to voter apathy - is how you get the people you want into these positions. And what kind of mandate do these commissioners now have on a 7% turnout?

I conclude this is another bit of the omnishambles the Coalition is so good at. The loss of voter confidence and the rise in cynicism among voters will be immense. The amount of money wasted on the exercise defies belief.

As for John Prescott, time to - as we say in Glasgow - GTF!

Morning, all!

I'm having one of my sleepless nights, so here I go.

We have a wee row of shops just down the road: a hairdresser, a lawyer, and a general shop that does papers, milk, snacks at lunchtime, booze, fags and things you run out of but need when all the other shops are shut. They have an ATM. The owner also gets up at 5am to organise the delivery of papers.

The lawyer is about to give up his lease, after 6 wasted months trying to attract customers. How the hairdresser's hangs on nobody knows, but there are a lot of independent stylists renting a 'chair' in the shop and that may make it easier since they will bring in their own customers. But the manager/owner of the general shop is looking very depressed and talking about shutting down because she can't 'compete with the supermarkets'. Christmas will not help, she says, because people are not spending - or when they do, they're spending in Tesco's, not the local shop.

I wish I had a solution to this problem because I like having a local shop where I buy my papers, order magazines, get stamps, cards, milk and rolls, They are open till 9pm - later than the local Morrison's. If - when - I reach the stage I can't go out to pick up my papers, they will deliver.

Maybe this is going to be like having a local butcher or fishmonger. We won't miss it till it's gone. I hope not.

What a difference a week makes!

Last week the USA was all about the aftermath of Tropical Storm Sandy and the presidential election. I thought this week they would be talking about how to deal with the federal budget, whether Obama could work out a way to work with Congress, what the Republicans would do next. Even how the recovery from Sandy is going and what can be done to help.

But no, this week the issue dominating the web and the media is that General David Petraeus, head of the CIA, had an affair with his biographer.

And the media want to know: Was it his wife's fault for getting old and letting her hair go grey? Was it his biographer's fault for being so attracted by his fame and position?

Do I care? Do you? Do the US public? Probably not. We've been here before - often. If there's a plus side to this business, it's that sales of newspapers have rocketed in the US.

It's interesting that recent studies of the brain of young men indicate that they may not reach maturity until the age of 30. General Petraeus may even prove that period extends in some cases to the age of 60.

Or maybe we should just remember that old saying: there's no fool like an old fool.

And move on.

Boy, does the BBC need help!

A few years back when I first retired, I saw a message on the BBC website seeking volunteers for its Scottish viewers' panel. The intention was, they said, to widen the range of members and make it more representative of Scottish viewers. I've often been very critical of the poor quality of news-gathering on BBC Scotland TV especially, so I decided it was time to do my bit as a volunteer.

I followed the link on the website for the application form. It seemed the BBC didn't have a special section on its site for volunteers but expected me to complete a form for a job application. The first few pages asked for personal details. Fine. The next pages asked for academic qualifications and at page 14 I was still trying to fit my Scottish school and university qualifications into a form obviously designed in London with English, Welsh and N Irish candidates in mind. O levels? Don't have them. A levels? Sorry. The section asking when I'd been at university didn't let me put in my 3 qualifications and only covered 3 years rather than the 6 years of university education I'd had in Scotland.

However, I kept on going. My university subjects weren't all recognised - no ticky boxes for Drama, Moral Philosophy or Russian. My teaching qualification wasn't recognised. Nor was my work experience (in a wages office and the dispatch office of a bakery and later editing scripts and writing handbooks for C4 education programmes).

By the time I'd reached page 14 I still hadn't been asked anything about my life experience or what I could offer the panel if appointed. Call me naive but I'd have said these were the only really important bits of information anyone needs. If you really wanted to bring in a wider range of members to the volunteer panel, you'd want to know if they'd brought up a family or been carers, where they'd worked, how they spent their free time - maybe even what kind of telly they liked!

At that point, I gave up. Well, I'd no way of knowing how many more pages there were on the form (no, Geoff, it wasn't a Pdf!) and time is precious when you get to my age!

But it gave me an insight - maybe a false one - into how the BBC operates: someone had been employed to devise that form and no doubt somebody was employed to plough through the replies and separate the job seekers from the volunteers. A wee group would be convened to consider the volunteer applications and discard applicants found wanting. Then there would be interviews. Letters and emails would fly back and forth and eventually the mountain would rumble and spit out a mouse - or maybe 3 volunteers for the viewers' panel. All highly bureaucratic, centralised and costly.

But the most important thing is: does this process get you the best people? In volunteering terms, I would say no.

I'm a good volunteer to have around. I do the job carefully, follow the rules (mostly) and understand about stuff like health and safety. But I gave up at page 14 of the form. How about people who are interested in the media but have no academic qualifications? Would they even get to page 14 before deciding the BBC's wish to bring in a wider range of people to its viewers' panel was a joke - and this off-putting form was proof of that?

The great thing about volunteering is: you don't have to do it. This is something that her maj's government doesn't seem to realise (By the way, I just loved their suggestion that 60 year olds volunteer to look after 80 year olds!) and we do exercise quality control, believe me. I gave up on one volunteering slot because I didn't like how volunteers were treated. I said so and nothing happened, so I walked. Two colleagues have just chucked the library home delivery service in Glasgow because they have been messed about over their travel expenses (12.6p per mile - yes, you read that right!) for 5 months.

Looking at the BBC from the outside, I'd say it shares characteristics with organisations like BT, RBS and Scottish Power. It's too big. Still too centrally organised, despite efforts to get it dispersed to the 'regions'. Too remote from its customers - except we the viewers are also the owners!

In news terms, it has fallen way behind C4 News and Sky News. STV's late evening news programme has Reporting Scotland knocked into a cocked hat. If Newsnight is toast, that's fine by me. It was, after all, the London news people who said there would only be a 'Scottish 6' news over 'their dead bodies'. Folks, that can be arranged, especially if you play right into the hands of the Tory Party, as happened last week.

Hello, Republicans!

I think this is my favourite photo from the US presidential election. Do I feel sorry for these fine, upstanding supporters of the Republican Party? Not for one cotton-pickin minute!

These are just a few of the people who tried time and again to undermine Barack Obama in his first term. They claimed he wasn't American-born and therefore not entitled to be president. Donald Trump demanded Obama's birth certificate be made public and still refused to accept it was real when it was published. And still the attacks went on: Obama was a socialist, a dictator, a Nazi, a Muslim, a communist, a Kenyan! They were so determined to oppose the introduction of Obama's healthcare plan that they told the US public our NHS allowed doctors to let elderly people die. They built up a war chest of billions of dollars to fight his re-election - sums of money beyond the reach of almost all US citizens.

But guess what? The Republicans lost. Again. Obama is back for 4 more years. Maybe there's a lesson to be learned by the Republican Party. They have been so unable to come up with credible candidates for office that they offered US citizens Mitt Romney, a man for whom the word flip-flopping was invented.

And this was his vice president:

 

 

The Republican Party has steadily driven US politics further and further to the right so much so that the expression 'lunatic fringe' now seems to describe the mainstream members of the party. Can the party recover? Only if it takes steps to appeal to women, blacks, Latinos, young people, the poor.

 

Why am I so interested in US politics? Because here in the UK we have a government partly formed from people who seem to imagine everything Amurrican is good and worth imitating. I hope a shift closer to the centre by the Republican Party will help the Conservatives to re-think their approach to - for example - healthcare, education, social security. Because I live in a part of the UK that is largely out of step with the present government.

 

Test's for Teacher's

The Scottish government plans to introduce literacy and numeracy tests for people planning to become teachers.

So let's see if I've got this right: if I wanted to be a teacher now, I'd arrive at teacher training with my 5 Highers and 2 Advanced Highers, a 4 year honours degree, a compulsory year living and working in France and a postgraduate diploma in Russian behind me - and I would then have to do a test in maths and English language to prove I was fit to teach.

What exactly are these to be tests of? Do I know my times tables? Can I punctuate a sentence? Do I have a good enough command of grammar to be able to communicate with kids? Can I spell?

I can only see these patronising and pretty insulting tests as a vote of no confidence in school education in Scotland. What we're really saying is that intelligent, apparently well-educated and well-qualified people leave our schools without the basic skills needed to go on to higher education. And that universities, having discovered their students are incompetent in maths and language, don't take steps to correct the situation before they let them graduate. 

If there is a problem with our education system, we need to go back and study what's happening in our schools ab initio. That will mean, of course, agreeing what we think are the basic competencies all learners need and how to achieve them. We might also have to agree that understanding maths and mastering spelling have nothing at all to do with the ability to learn - or to teach.

I write as one with an O Grade arithmetic (33% in O Grade Maths - refused entry to the Higher Maths class - not that I wanted in) who often gets handed the bill in restaurants because I can work out in my head how to add a 10% tip and then divide by 13 or however many are at the table. I have a friend who worked successfully as a Home Economist for 40 years (and is still in demand as a supply teacher) who was only diagnosed as severely dyslexic at the age of 50. No test known to mankind will make me a better mathematician or my friend a better speller.

But that doesn't seem to be what these tests for teachers are about: failure to pass the tests won't mean people like us will be kept out - or kicked out - of teaching. It'll just be brought to our attention that we are deficient in these areas and we'll 'get support' during training.

So what is this all about? IMHO, as we say on Facebook, there's a wee panic going on: Scotland has slipped badly in the international rankings - see the OECD reports - and this is our way of sooking up to the morons in government and business who want to turn the clock back to a time when education was perfect. Whenever that was.

For years, her majesty's inspectors ranted on about the need for 'rigour' in our education system. So what happened? Pressure, that's what. Education became a race: if you're a pupil in a school where the headteacher is under pressure to deliver good results, you'll find there's damn all time for your education: it's all about a rush to get you through 'levels' - onwards and upwards. Your education will be superficial. There will be gey little time to pursue areas you find interesting before you are pushed on to the next test. You will not specialise in secondary school - you'll do 5 Highers, because the school needs you to contribute to the statistics that appeal to the local authority and the inspectorate.

Does this begin to sound like a circle - or a cycle? Or a spiral - a downward one?

Scotland's got a terrible record in social engineering. Maybe we need to stop worrying about OECD tests and look to what our near neighbours are doing. I mean the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians. They live on our latitude, they share a lot of our history, they often face the same social problems as us. Can we learn from them, instead of jumping on any passing - preferably English or US - educational bandwagon?

Curriculum for Exc......?

It now looks like it's going to be something that happens every generation: there will be a huge rumbling noise and Scottish education will chuck everything it's been doing up in the air. Then we'll look for something to replace it all, pick on things that are the exact opposite to what we were doing, spend years studying the new system and bedding it in and, as soon as it's in working shape, we'll chuck that out too.

Last time, we introduced 5-14 and Standard Grades. Every child had to be tested in Maths and Language in primary and the first two years of secondary and then go on to study 7 or 8 S Grades. Suddenly, no subject could be done for fun - like PE or Art - but had to have an academic element, usually involving sitting a test or writing an essay, thus taking the enjoyment out of school for a lot of kids.

The aim was inclusion, obviously. Did it work? Afraid not. But I would say a lot of that had to do with school inspectors and the cult of the statistic. No sooner had schools got hold of a way to 'measure' kids' progress (levels A to F in 5-14 and Credit/General/Foundation in S Grade) than the whole of education got caught up in trying to decide what to do with the information it was gathering.

The broad answer was to hit headteachers over the head with it: only 10% of children passing writing in P1 in your school? Time you did something about that! Never mind that writing always lags behind reading and maths. Pass your concerns on to your teachers and make them test early and often. Is the conversion rate from S Grade to Higher weak in this secondary? Get the pressure on the teachers. They have to teach to the exam, cutting out most of what made your subject enjoyable. You may get everybody up a grade by pushing and pushing but do you get happy kids? Ask the teachers - and the parents. Don't bother asking the kids - nobody ever asks them, poor sods.

Or as my former boss used to say: You don't fatten a pig by measuring it.

Now we've got a new initiative: Curriculum for Excellence, although I like what teachers call it much better: Curriculum for Excrement. There are so many things wrong with this it's hard to know where to start. Here are a few ideas from Carole Ford, ex heidie of Kilmarnock Academy:

http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/opinion/comment/carole-ford-scottish-students-will-fail-in-a-flawed-system-1-2610840

And here are few remarks from a relative of mine who is a teacher:

<<Some kids will NEVER be tested externally in this system. Those not deemed 'ready' to sit N5 or above will never have to do an external exam and the unit tests can be done over an indiscriminate length of time - there are no time limits on the new NARs (like NABs now). One of our N4 unit tests is to design a leaflet - with no specific time allowed. I could make my kids do it in 2 periods and another school in 20. Therefore, there are no set agreed standards. This will also serve to create a huge division in educational attainment - some kids will be confined to obscurity and fewer life chances with only N3s and N4s to their name with all the stigma that comes with being 'too thick to sit an exam' and others will be fast-tracked to N5, Higher and beyond.

It is a disgrace. N3 and N4 will not be worth the paper they are printed on. Or will they be virtual...???>>

And my own view? I'm not involved in education any more but I feel for teachers who have had little by way of guidance as far as I can see. And I pity thse students who - again - will be regarded as 'non-academic' and left to do what we once called 'O Grade colouring in.' Whereas those of us who worked with these kids know just how much they are capable of. But they will stay where they've been for most of the last 200 years: bottom of the heap.

I Luv Lilyhammer

I just watched the episode of Lilyhammer (BBC4) in which Norwegian National Day is being celebrated. It's a very funny episode that I could hardly watch for laughing, and for all the wrong reasons. Let me explain.

I used to work in a local authority in Scotland where one of my responsibilities was securing funding from various sources for education so headteachers, psychologists, teachers and others could study education in other parts of the world. These international links were said to be very important - and they often were very useful - and they extended to the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, most of the EU, and the rest of the UK. 

How important these links were I didn't realise till I was told that the Director of Education and Social Work and the Chair of the Education Committee (note the capital letters - this is how important these people were) wanted to go to Norway for National Day. There was no budget for this and nowhere to apply for money, Norway being outside EU and British Council reach.

When I pointed this out, I was told it wouldn't cost that much since Ryanair flew to Norway. Trouble was, the travel agents we dealt with were rightly reluctant to deal with Ryanair for reasons to do with insurance and guarantees customers would reach their destination - well, you've heard before now what the problems can be with these tinpot airlines. (There is now new EU legislation to deal with problems raised by Ryanair and others - that takes some doing!)

But I was under pressure. In the end, the only way to send these 2 VIPs to Norway (arrange accommodation and meals and pay for the poor sod who was to hire a car and drive them to civilisation) was for me to put the costs on my own personal credit card. And that's what I did. It only took me a few months to get the money back once the Depute Director of Education found out what had gone on.

Was this a good use of council taxpayers' money? What would have happened if I'd refused? Dunno, but now that I've seen Lilyhammer's hommage to National Day, all I can say is: this is what these people wanted to see? Is there some educational value here? Any Scottish kids or teachers getting any benefit? Lines of nubile teenage lassies tossing batons in the air, some off-key singing and a few speeches - that's it?

Here's to transparency in all forms of government.

Nanny Knows Best

Last week I noticed on STV an 'infomercial' about recycling that urged me to avoid food waste by making a list before I go shopping so I don't buy stuff I don't need. It's great what you learn off the telly. I'd never have thought of that. This little gem of a film is no doubt paid for by the Scottish government - that is, you and me. I'd certainly never expect my taxes would be used to make films telling me this kind of crap.

Tonight on the BBC's Scottish news there was an item on how drying your washing indoors can lead to damp. And we know damp can cause asthma and other respiratory ailments. I grew up in Glasgow flats where washing hung permanently from the kitchen pulley and family life went on happily underneath. I now live in a flat with no outside drying area and hang wet washing in the airing cupboard in my kitchen, with the door open so it dries faster. How on earth have generations of Glaswegians survived the danger of wet washing? It beats me, but then looking at my family history I reckon TB, cancer and strokes have been the real villains in my family tree. Forget the washing - wet or dry.

I'll try to avoid cliches when I can but I can see two things going on here.

The Scottish government just loves telling us citizens it's all our fault. We're destroying our environment with landfill and plastic bags. Just as we're destroying ourselves. If it's not the fatty foods, it's the fags. If not the fags, the booze.

Secondly, I recognise the 'nanny state' when I see it in action. It's just so Scottish, this 'Ah tellt ye, Ah tellt ye' attitude adopted by the wee parliament in Embra. I'm not sure where we got it from. Centuries of religion - Cafflik and Proddie - that seems designed to keep us in order and stop us having fun? Or is it from our education which still has a big element of 'Don't think - jist dae it. Cos Ah said so.'

Whatever the cause, I've decided I'm a grown-up and I'll do whatever I want. That means I will wander the aisles of Lidl without a list, let my washing drip and eat my fried egg roll at Tina's caff on a Thursday afternoon. Oh, and cheers!