Best wishes to Neil

Thinking of a one-time classmate and member of my extended family for these 40 past years and hoping all goes well for him during his stay in the Beatson.

Here is the news - well, some of it

The running order for the BBC's 'national and international news' at 6pm on Thursday 25 July was as follows:
Item 1 - Spanish train disaster - international story - this is the only way an international story can head up UK news, unless it involves the US president
Item 2 - the UK economy - of importance to the whole of the UK, so why is it second? Possibly because the Westminster parliament has gone on holiday and it would be hard to track down politicians willing to talk on camera
Item 3 - Danny Nightingale gun case - local interest only
Item 4 - nurses struck off for misconduct in failing NHS trust hospital - England
Item 5 - Church of England takes on Wonga - England
Item 6 - the Olympics legacy - focussed on London and south-east England
Item 7 - the pope in Brazil - international story of interest to UK Roman Catholics
Item 8 - the effect of the moon on human sleep - the usual trivial final item - small amount of scientific data

Meanwhile, Reporting Scotland leads with the sentencing of the murderers of the Starkey family: father, 8 year old daughter and 21 year old son, organised by a drug dealer and carried out by his henchman. This took place in a small seaside town in the west of Scotland, previously regarded as a douce wee place on the edge of a large rural local authority. The two murderers have long sentences in front of them - the longest sentences handed out for many years.

There are many issues here and few of them are raised in the Reporting Scotland item:

· drug dealing is a serious problem in Scotland, not just in the cities and not just in city housing schemes.

· organised crime is a problem here

· these two murderers had long records. The drug dealer was known to have commissioned hitmen to commit arson as a way of dealing with rivals and potential rivals. It would be good to know what the police knew about this man and if/how they were monitoring his activities.

· it would also be interesting to know if he benefited from crime and, if so, what steps are being taken to recover his assets.

Most of all, I'd love to know what it would take to remove the Danny Nightingale case, the misconduct of nurses and the Church of England v Wonga case from the BBC's 'national and international' news and replace them with an item as important as the Starkey case. Or do we just accept that nothing that happens in Scotland (not even the independence debate?) can make it onto the 'national and international' news. And no, I'm not picking on the BBC, only using them as an example. Believe me, ITV and C4 news are worse, much worse.

Art for art's sake

My art education was sadly neglected. In secondary school, I was into drama and had a great drama teacher. I went on to study drama at university and then had nearly 20 years working in drama with secondary age students. Music lessons were awful and seemed to consist mainly of us teenagers refusing to sing the songs of Robert Burns. I'm delighted to say music in schools has improved tremendously since my day but back then I got my music education at home. Art lessons consisted of drawing and since I couldn't draw, I was happy to give it up at school and take Latin instead.

I don't remember an art teacher ever talking us through a picture. I now love going to exhibitions with my friend Lorna who is an artist and draws (sorry!) my attention to things I'm not educated enough to notice on my own. That said, I've been to many an art gallery and museum and recognise all the 'big' pictures people rave about, even if I'm not sure what makes them great. I've even bought a few pictures, despite the fact I don't really know what I'm doing.

I've tended to buy pictures based on how they make me react. One of my pictures is of a street in southern France. It's sunny in the picture and it looks so hot the cobblestones look like they're about to melt. Another is of a coracle sailing to Iona - almost an abstract but it makes me think of the beautiful west coast of Scotland where I lived on and off for 15 years of my working life.

The Impressionists by and large leave me cold. I don't get what they're trying to do. And some of the paintings are just a puzzle:

Would Monet have painted better if he'd gone to Specsavers and could see things in focus?

And in Manet's picnic painting, why is the woman the only person with her kit off?

But today at the Burrell, I had a wee epiphany - and here's what caused it:

It's by Manet and it's called Roses in a Champagne Glass. This is not a very good reproduction. In the original, the glass has a slightly blue tinge. It's toaty. But it's a lovely painting: you could almost reach in and lift the yellow rose out of the glass. But you wouldn't because the arrangement is just perfect. I looked at it for ages. Seeing this picture led me to google his other flower pictures when I got home. And then his portraits. In fact, the picnic picture up above isn't a good representation of his portraits of women: as far as I can see, although Manet's women quite often look straight at him he's not trying to get inside their heads, but to show their character. They are cool, these women, not trying to please the painter. I like that. So that's my art education started then. I'm off to google some more!

By the way, the Burrell is well due its planned refurbishment. I was annoyed when I heard it was to close for a couple of years but now I can only say bring it on! Apart from the buckets put out to catch leaks from the roof, the floor coverings are pretty worn, the toilets are dark and nasty, the lift creaks and the whole place - frankly - smells from the minute you walk in. The shop needs to be redesigned: there's too much in it and it's too hard to see what's available. And I can't believe the Burrell put on an exhibition of their Impressionist paintings but didn't have postcards on sale of all of the pictures. The cafe needs air-con and a serious re-think. I was at the new Greek museum in Athens just after it opened and its cafe is fabulous - somebody from the Burrell needs to have a look. Tourists will pay for fresh food but scones (one of Scotland's great gifts to the world!) in plastic are a complete turn-off and putting 'freshly made' on a shrink-wrapped sarnie is not going to sell it. Most alarmingly, there wasn't the smell of fresh food, not even coffee, as I went in - what's that about? 

But still, I got a lot from my visit and I hope to get more when the Burrell re-opens - in when? 2016? 

Eh? Whit did ye say?

Sometimes I feel like Sheldon: No, I'm not crazy - my mother had me tested!  In my case, it's: No, I'm not deaf - the audiologist says I have pretty good hearing for my age.

So why am I having to watch TV drama with the subtitles on? Last night it was an old edition of New Tricks that I'd missed first time around. The lead male actors were fine: James Bolam, Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong - all clear as a bell. Amanda Redman - well, it depends who she's opposite: she takes her tone from the other actors. And some of the other actors are terrible. The women have obviously been trained in drama college to lower their voices about an octave for TV so they don't sound shrill. They've also been taught that TV is more intimate than the theatre so they now speak so softly it's just about impossible to make them out. And then there are the mutterers. Even Dominick Cumberbatch (not sure of the spelling here) does it in Sherlock. There was a time, maybe up to the 80s, when classically trained actors tended to declaim on TV. You know the style: everybody sounded a bit loud and over-enunciated, like the cast of Downton Abbey shouting to each across a large drawingroom (or drawringroom, as they quaintly call it). Not at all like real life. Now, everybody has gone to the opposite extreme. The ends of sentences just disappear. In fact, whole sentences disappear.

Which reminds me: there's an American series called Elementary. I tried watching that. The entire cast were all muttering away. I couldn't make out a word and there were no subtitles. It might be quite good. Who can tell?

So it's a relief to read that the director general of the BBC has declared war on muttering actors:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-23328037

Now can he do anything about two of my friends? One I've stopped talking to on the phone because she speaks so softly I can't hear her at all. The other starts a sentence face to face but then looks down or looks away and drops her voice, as if she's letting me in on a Cold War secret. It's embarrassing to keep saying: Could you speak up? I can't hear you.

If the DG is short of things to do, he could try doing something about Judith the weather wumman on BBC Scotland who sounds as if she's chewing a wasp.

Things

Things I can live without:

1 politicians - of all parties - just too much in our faces - thank gawd they've gone on holiday now.
2 apps - don't understand them and don't reckon I need them, having survived this long without understanding what they're about.
3 reality TV of any kind: talent shows, confessionals - anything with J Kyle or Louis Wotsisname - I don't want them dead, just off my screen so they don't influence people any more.
4 the Daily Mail - I refuse to believe anyone is reading this crap and believing it - only naming the Mail because I refuse to mention that other appalling tabloid.
5 BBC Scotland News - a national disgrace.
6 gadgets - I have counted the gadgets other people seem to need: android phone, laptop, desktop, tablet, iPad, iPad mini, MP3 - why do you need all that? That's all - just why?
7 mobile phones or rather people who can't go two minutes without consulting their mobile phones - I now judge my friends by whether they switch their phones off when they and I arrange to meet up - it's just RUDE not to.
8 Facebook scams - it won't help a sick child in any way if you 'like' their picture on FB, so don't do it and FFS don't pass it on.
9 pedestrians in Govan - you're welcome to step out in front of me if you really trust me not to run you down but person v 4-ton car - the odds are not in your favour.
10 thongs - really, do you need a string riding the crack in your erse? Especially when it's hot?


Things I'd prefer to keep:

1 books - the kindle is ok but the book is a joy.
2 telly - I love TV, especially now I have the technology to record the stuff I want to watch (The Returned, Starlings, Shaun the Sheep, Countdown) and miss out all the rest of the crap.
3 volunteering - some of the best moments of my life since I retired have been spent with colleagues and our clients.
4 Facebook - love it.
5 proper coffee - my day is made whenever I down a Whole Foods espresso.
6 Lovefilm - eight quid a month well spent.
7 our garden - yes, I am a bossy cow and yes, I more or less bullied my neighbours into upgrading our garden but now it's done it's looking wonderful and we have made some great friends thanks to it.
8 friends and family - do I need to explain?
9 homemade soup - again, do I need to say more.
10 my bidet - it's only in a heatwave you discover the cooling joy of the bidet - and it's not my feet I'm cooling.

Feel free to add to both my lists!

Govan Ferry - update

At the end of May, I posted this:

<<Govan Ferry axed two years after relaunch...Glasgow City spent £300,000 building a pontoon so that a ferry could take people from the Govan side of the Clyde to the new Riverside Museum, all as part of the Govan regeneration project. This restored the old ferry link between the banks of the Clyde that ran for 200 years till the mid-60s. It didn't bring any jobs (the ferry guys seemed to be Polish or Russian) but it got tourists into Govan, on the subway and by bus, and it brought a bit of life to the town centre. The new ferry was run by a private company, Clyde Marine...The stories of this company's incompetence are legion. Their website was never up to date. There were never any signs on either side of the river telling you if and when the ferry was running. You could go to Govan and discover the ferry was 'aff' or go the long way round to Riverside, only to discover just by looking that the ferry was actually on...

I wrote to Nicola Sturgeon (Govan MSP) and I hope she kept my letter. If ever an area could ill afford to waste £300,000, it's Govan. This is an area of multiple deprivation, with more social and economic problems than you could shake a stick at. On this occasion, I don't blame the council at all. Just give me half an hour in a room with the boss man of Clyde Marine, one Hamish Munro, who claims: 'The year after the Riverside Museum opened, passenger numbers collapsed.' He blames the recession and the weather. Hamish, your company allowed passenger numbers to collapse by running a totally amateurish operation. And I suspect what you want to do now is screw some more money out of someone to keep the service running. Personally, I'd send you off with a swift kick up the jaxie. Then I'd put in some Govan boys to run the operation...>>

And, guess what? The ferry is back on - only for a month from 12 July to 11 August.  It's free and available on demand - and it is financed by the Govan Workspace (that is, the council tax payers of Glasgow). Of course, Clyde Marine had the council over a barrel: a lot of money has been invested in mounting a new exhibition of the Govan Stones, an amazing collection of early medieval burial stones, in Govan Old Parish Church:

http://www.thegovanstones.org.uk/

And the way the council had hoped to get people in to see it was to offer them the chance to visit Riverside Museum and then hop across the Clyde on the Govan Ferry - the exhibition is just 100 yards on the left from the ferry pontoon.

Information about the ferry is here:
http://content.yudu.com/Library/A2aipj/GovanPressJuly122013/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Ffree.yudu.com%2Fitem%2Fdetails%2F1052331%2FGovan-Press-July-12--2013

I hope the exhibition is a huge success and that many visitors find their way across the Clyde to visit it. But I would like to think by 11 August,  Clyde Marine has come up with a professional business plan and doesn't just put its hand out for another freebie from the council tax payers.

Is Michael taking the Michael?

My worst nightmare would be if Michael Gove - a Dundee boy - decided to come home to Scotland. But he won't. He's having too much fun at Westminster. Since the coalition was set up and he became education minister, he has gone through the English education system like an attack of the runs, reforming this, abolishing that, setting up new exams, shutting down schools, etc. Hectoring teachers and head teachers. Yes, mostly that. Raising standards, Michael Gove calls it. Easy to trot that out when you see it all from the theoretical point of view, which he does: there's no evidence I can see that he has actually talked to teachers, parents, kids or head teachers.

Now he's moved in on the kids. They are to be graded at the age of 11 and told where they stand in a national league table. Soon a kid will know from tests where exactly they stand in an all-England ranking. And we all know tests are never wrong.

If you're a kid with a learning difficulty - say Asperger's or dyslexia - you'll probably be in the 'bottom' 20% in this ranking. I suppose it might be helpful to you and your parent(s) to know that, although I suspect they may already have worked out your learning difficulty is affecting your academic progress and they and your school have been trying hard since you were wee to give you the kind of support that will help make up for any deficit. Of course, if you're part of the poorest 20% described by that moron Katie Hopkins as the kids that come in late, disrupt classes, don't do homework and have parents that don't come to parents' evenings - well, I'm not sure what happens to you. You probably get expelled to hang around the streets and get recruited into gangs.

If you're a kid in the top 20% academically, on the other hand, there's every chance you don't have a learning difficulty and a good chance you're getting the kind of support you need from school and home. In other words, you'll probably do ok. As was always the case. You'll go to university as you always did and get a job at the end, although the way academic qualifications are being downgraded, you might not have the rosy future you were expecting. Ask today's graduates if you don't believe me.

The problem lies with the middle group: the huge group of middle of the range kids - 60% of the school population who are not academic high-flyers but don't have obvious learning 'challenges'. What's to become of them? I maintain we have always failed these kids. In the past, they were fodder for the mines, factories and building sites. Not many of these workplaces around now to punt these kids into, are there? Do the schools just contain them till they're 16, then unleash them on the world of non-existent work unqualified to do anything very much? No detail available on their fate from Michael Gove. No plan to encourage artisan training or modern apprenticeships or even basic vocational training.

It's not clear to me how different this is from the 11+ of old. And it may well be the next step will be to put kids into secondary schools according to their place in the national rankings. Back to the good old days (for some) of grammar schools and secondary moderns.

There's nothing up with testing kids. Believe me, they are used to being tested these days, but a test without a plan for what comes next in a kid's learning is a fraud. And I see no evidence of forward planning beyond the test here.

And one final question: if this is how easy it is to raise standards, why didn't we think of it before?

Get a grip, Lidl!

I was in the queue at the check-out in Lidl, with all my shopping on the belt, before I realised what was happening up ahead: a man was daring to bring stuff back. Decision time: load everything back into my trolley and join the queue at the only other open check-out (there's never any more than two check-outs open in Lidl) or wait it out? I chose wrong, of course, but as I waited I got to listen in on the conversation between the customer and the assistant and then with the manager.

I like Lidl for certain things: their Polish salami is brilliant, as are most of their cooked meats; the living lettuce is cheap and tasty; and their wine - if you poke around the shelves - is very good: they do a very nice Chablis at £5.25. Avoid their instant coffee though, unless you're looking for a slow and lingering death. I also avoid their baked goods counter but that's because the stuff is so delicious.

But this is a horrible company to deal with if you want to do more than sling a few things in a trolley and go on your way, as the man who dared to bring things back was about to find out. He and his wife had bought a few items last week: 2 doormats, 2 clip-on trays for inside a cupboard door and a large electric fan. He was bringing them all back, he said under close questioning, because his wife wasn't happy with the quality of any of them. He had the till receipt and his credit card slip. Ten minutes later, he was still there, being glared at by the manager ('And why exactly are you bringing all this back?'). It all had to be examined in case any of it was damaged - the fan wasn't even out of the box - and still the manager stood there examining the receipts.

Of course, I cracked: 'Excuse me,' said I, 'could we get on?' The two women behind me made that kind of 'yeah' noise people make when they want to agree but not too loudly. The manager avoided my eye but got the assistant to open the till so he could refund the man - wait for it - £32. Then just to finish it all off, the manager didn't moved the stuff off the check-out out of the way. No, he walked off, having instructed the assistant to put it all under the counter in the next (closed) check-out. More delay, with profuse apologies from the assistant. By the time he was serving me, I was so aware of how curtly the manager had spoken to him I was falling over myself to be his BFF.

Imagine working for these people. Bad enough you're on minimum wage, and on crap shifts, with long queues of grumpy customers at the check-outs, and your manager treats you like the dirt under his nails. But why do they treat customers this way? I'm sure the man who dared to return stuff today will never cross the door again. I felt like that myself, slightly dirtied by having been there. I have the same feeling in Superdrug and Primark. And there's a bit of me thinks: this is where poor people shop - you can treat them any way you like.

Let's pay MPs more

I'm in favour of paying MPs a decent salary. I think the current pay level of £66,000 is far too low compared to the pay rates of other professionals like doctors or lawyers. It certainly doesn't represent the level of responsibility MPs have. And if MPs are not professionals, in your opinion, could that be because of the way we pay them? Riddle me that! I don't compare their salaries with those of bankers, because the latter are a shower of thieving bastards who live in some fantasy world unrelated to ours. You may think that also applies to some MPs but I couldn't possibly comment. No, I want MPs to live in our world, so I want to attach a few conditions to them getting a really big pay rise:

1 They have to have worked. I don't mean been a research wonk or a speech-writer who has gone from school to university to the offices of a political party. A real job, where they have to get up at 6.30am, fight their way through the traffic and spend every day from Monday to Friday - and sometimes weekends too - in a place of work run by someone else who gives orders they may not like but have to follow.

2 They have to have just one job while they are in parliament. Never mind this 'how will they keep in touch with their professional life?' as QCs or hedge fund managers. If they are MPs, that's the job they do.

3 They get the same holiday entitlement, pensions rights and severance pay as any other professional employed by the state. They pay for their own food and drink in parliament at the prices the rest of us have to pay in the outside world. They also get the same travel expenses as we do.

4 They are entitled to one home - in their constituency. If they need a place to live in London as well as in their constituency, they can be lodged free of charge in a Premier Inn type place near Westminster.

5 Their interns and office staff have to be recruited from outside parliament and paid a reasonable salary. No employing relatives or letting interns depend on the bank of mum and dad for survival. Recruitment should be independent and as fair as possible. Quotas could even be used to ensure a balance of male-female, race and religious representation among staff - even if that looks like a step too far for the selection of MPs.

6 After they give up or lose their parliamentary seat, MPs are barred from taking any kind of directorship in any business for five years. If they are receiving a pension from parliament, they should have it suspended if they start a new job and only paid again when they retire for real. No one should become rich from being an MP.

And while I'm at it, I think we should finance political parties too. No more union backing for Labour or big donations to the Tories from people who expect special treatment such as peerages. And while I'm about it, I would totally reform the house of lords and make it into a real senate with people who truly represent us, not themselves or political parties.

Can anyone do this?

According to John Inverdale, commentator for the BBC, paid for (and no doubt overpaid) by the licence-payers (that is, you and me), Wimbledon women's tennis champion Marion Bartoli is not possessed of model girl looks. Funny that. I thought she was a tennis player, not a model. A good one too. Having heard her describe her approach to life, I think she's more interested in tennis than in modelling.

Yesterday, I read an article that tried to explain what Inverdale meant to say. Digression: if you're an overpaid BBC commentator, you shouldn't really need somebody explaining what you meant to say. Anyway, it seems her dad took one look at her when she was wee and starting out in tennis and decided she was no Sharapova so she'd better be good. She's now 28 and at the peak of her powers.

Take a wee minute to digest that.

Then we have Andy Murray. He's dour apparently. And some people watching him on TV don't like him because of that. In fact, according to the Herald today, in Central Scotland where he comes from he would be described as not dour but 'dangerously flamboyant, talkative and over-emotional.' He's a great tennis player and fits no stereotype that I can see. But some people want him to have a sunnier disposition, smile more and be less intense, despite the fact that concentration and being intense are what got him to where he is: Olympic champion, US grand slam champion, Wimbledon champion - and all at the age of 26 and half.

I think it's time the rest of us stopped confusing truly talented people with reality show entertainers. They may entertain us, but the dedication and hard work talented people put in are light years ahead of what any entertainers may do. Especially the ones on TV talent shows who seem to start out from the premise that anyone can do this.

Can you be a Wimbledon champion? No, you can't. Not unless you dedicate 15-20 years of your life to it and think of little else during that time. Can you be the new Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods? Not overnight you can't. Can you be Chris Hoy? Not unless you have talent. Nor can you win the Cardiff Singer of the Year competition, or gain entry to the Julliard School of Music or get a scholarship to MIT to study engineering or be the frontman of the Killers.

If you have the talent and willingness to work, maybe, but sometimes even that is not enough. Good luck anyway. If Andy can do it, maybe you can.

Good luck, Andy

Can't go to bed without sharing this. A friend sent me this link tonight. I'm not even very interested in tennis but I can't believe this racist nonsense is being published - don't read it if you're sensitive:

http://wingsoverscotland.com/british-together/

I'm sure most people don't feel like this but it's pretty nasty. Of course, these creeps only get away with putting this stuff up on the internet because they are anonymous and they know it. Roll on the day when everyone's name and email have to be shown on internet posts.

I might watch a bit of Andy Murray's match - don't know if I can stand the excitement - but another friend has reminded me that if anyone wants to invade Scotland, Sunday afternoon would be a good time to do it!

Dear Weather People...

...I'm not sure who makes up the weather maps: the Met Office, C4, the BBC website, STV, Sky? But there's something I want to know: how come the maps only give one temperature and one wee image of the day's weather for Scotland? And why are these readings for Edinburgh?

We've all got used to the vagueness of weather forecasts on TV and radio. It's part of the game to listen for the words 'in the north' and try and work out which 'north' they're talking about. The 'north' of England? The 'north' of the British Isles? Would that be all of Scotland? The north of Scotland? How far north? Or do they mean what we in Scotland think of as the real 'north': Orkney and Shetland?

We're resigned to the fact the weather map seems to show Scotland as a pretty small part of the British Isles. But only showing Edinburgh as a guide to the weather in Scotland is really a step too far. And here's the science bit. Get ready to be patronised. Edinburgh, you see, is on the east coast, quite close to the North Sea. They get a lot of their weather from the east and north. I live on the west coast, not that far from the Atlantic, and we get our weather mainly from that direction. Wet and windy is what we usually get in the west. When we get weather from the east and north, we start to look out the snow shovels. It's not the first time I've been sitting here in Glasgow in a balmy 8 degrees Celsius and got emails from people in Aberdeenshire telling me they're digging their cars out of the snow - and that's in April. I've also been sitting here in the perishing cold in November and got an email from Shetland telling me they're basking in glorious sunshine with the temperature in double figures.

Today, for example, Edinburgh is wall to wall sunshine, 23C and with a light breeze. Glasgow is 18C, intermittently overcast and blowing a hooly. The minister across the way is having a wee garden party complete with marquee this afternoon and I noticed as I came in that her man was having to hammer the tent poles back into the ground to stop it blowing away. Not a word about that in the forecast.

What I'm saying is weather in Scotland (as in the north of England) is important. less reliable and more varied than in the south of England and thus needing a wee bit more detail put on it. Why are we obsessed with the weather in Scotland? Yes, we are - don't bother trying to deny it. It's not because farmers and fishermen worry about it - though they do - it's because we are all more likely to find our lives disrupted by local conditions. And we need to know what the local conditions are going to be.

So either do it right or don't do it at all.

Phew, that's a relief

<<Coronavirus: new virus not yet a global threat>>: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23179570

Well, that's a relief and I'm sure we're all very happy.

Now is there anything else that might have been considered a global threat but it turns out it isn't? How about the possibility of left-handed people dying younger than right-handed people? That was reported a couple of years back and had me really worried, although I couldn't really see the link between being left-handed and dying early. Or the chances of red wine causing cancer? Or red wine keeping cancer away? Both of these outcomes were reported last year. Or red meat either keeping your brain healthy or sending you to an early grave - though it was good to see the latter outcome was only if you're a man. Again, reported last year.

These reports are all said to be based on the work of 'researchers' or - heaven help us all - 'scientists.' There's hardly a day goes past without some new research being reported that stands everything we've ever known and everything common sense tells us on its head. Mondays are particularly bad: slow news days when just about any old guff is likely to be picked up and published.

Heaven help us if research grants are being handed out for stuff like this. But of course, they're not. What we have there are press handouts from universities or pharmaceutical companies sent to meeja people too lazy or too busy or too much in need of a page-filler to read beyond the first paragraph. Not for them the careful analysis of statistics, the checking of qualifications, the consultation of independent evaluators. No, no, no. Just lift a few words out of the first ten lines and voilà - an eye-catching headline!

The Guardian once reported that young Moslem women had very 'open' views on sex and marriage, 'according to researchers.' There was a shocked reaction from the Moslem community, as you would expect. Questioning elicited that the sample of young Moslem women the researcher had spoken to was 14 and they were all aged under 15. All of them attended the same youth club in the Birmingham area. And from that someone extrapolated the views of all young Moslem women...Scary stuff.

Anyone remember the Y2K virus? I suspect a few 'researchers' made a mint out of that, predicting catastrophe as computer clocks failed to cope with the change from the 20th to the 21st century. And what happened at midnight on 31 December 1999? Eh, nothing.

Exactly.

So many disasters

Do you remember the dates of the following events? Do you remember how many victims each catastrophe (because that's what it was to the families of the people involved) claimed? And do you remember where you were when each event happened? The Piper Alpha Disaster, the Lockerbie Bombing and the Dunblane Massacre.

The Piper Alpha Disaster took place in July 1988 and killed 167 people. The Lockerbie Disaster happened in December 1988 and 270 died, including 11 on the ground. The Dunblane School Massacre was in March 1996 and 16 small children and a teacher died.

Many of us in Scotland remember very well these terrible events.

We're coming up to the 25th anniversary of Piper Alpha and Lockerbie. There's sure to be a lot of renewed interest in Lockerbie since it was an event with international ramifications and huge political significance. James Robertson has written a (thinly disguised) book about it, published this year. The parents of the Dunblane children asked for the media circus to move on and leave them alone, and their wishes have mostly been adhered to. But the Piper Alpha anniversary is slipping past almost unnoticed. Yes, there is a memorial in Aberdeen and there have been news reports this week, but no great commemoration. Why would that be? 

Allow me to be cynical for a wee moment. First of all, Piper Alpha was an accident in the oil business. Oil in the UK was and is sacrosanct. We can't do without it and we can't let anything disrupt its production if we can avoid it. There were calls in 1988 to close down all the North Sea rigs until there had been some sort of enquiry into the risks attached to oil exploration in that environment but these requests came to nothing and the people who work on the rigs continue to fight for trades union representation as one way to safeguard their lives.

In addition, Piper Alpha - to continue my cynicism - was an industrial accident. Nobody pays much attention to them. Just ask the families involved in Stockline: 9 dead in 2004 in Glasgow, who fought tooth and nail to get justice for their people caught up in the explosion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockline_Plastics_factory_explosion

Or the families all over Scotland who lost people in coal mining disasters over and over for a couple of centuries. You can see their names - and the horrific numbers - here: http://scottishmining.co.uk/5.html

The statistics for victims of shipbuilding and engineering accidents and incidents are harder to find on the internet, but most families with relatives working in these areas have had experience of taking a trip to the hospital to see an injured relative.

We're hearing at the moment the terrible story of 19 fire fighters who died in Arizona. They were experts at what they did and they knew the risks. They were, as President Obama said, people who 'walked towards the fire' for the sake of their community. We've lost fire fighters in Scotland too, most recently Ewan Williamson in Edinburgh: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-22085159 - or there's Cheapside in Glasgow in 1968 when 22 people died: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheapside_Street_Whisky_Bond_Fire

But we all hate Health & Safety, don't we? We've bought the idea that it wasn't put in place to safeguard people in their place of work but is a collection of mad rules made up at random by people in offices who want to make employers' lives difficult. There is regular talk (especially among some members of the present government) of simplifying the rules. I'm sure there are people who misinterpret H&S rules in crazy ways (another time I'll tell you about the Care Commission, radiator guards and fridge thermometers) and it's a pretty poor show that H&S has got caught up in the current British obsession with finding someone to blame when something goes wrong and then suing for damages wherever possible.

But I truly believe it's only the implementation of H&S regulations that stops the casualty list in the workplace being even worse than it is. And in the UK it's pretty bad. Not that you can tell from the media. It takes a lot for an industrial accident to hit the papers or TV screens at all.