Naming a hospital

You would think it would be an easy thing to do. Especially since you have 10 years to plan it. You build a new hospital in Govan at what used to be the Southern General Hospital, bringing several hospitals together in one state of the art site. Then you pick a name.

Unfortunately, the combined site puts hospital workers to mega inconvenience travel-wise and some of them end up talking about having to walk through the Clyde Tunnel because there's nowhere for them to park at the new site. Local people who don't drive but have a runway for a car donate the space to nursing staff on Gumtree.

Patients and visitors are confused because it looks like anybody on the southside outside G52 and G53 will end up either taking a taxi to the hospital or taking 3 buses or going into the city centre by train and then getting the subway back out to Govan with a taxi or bus journey to follow. For gawdssake, you can't even get there directly from Pollok. And how long are these journeys going to take? Did anyone try to suss that out on behalf of the NHS beforehand?

There's major upheaval to traffic in the area as roads are dug up and new roundabouts are put in to accommodate a clearway,' despite the fact we already have a clearway from the city centre to Govan. It's called the Squinty Bridge. The local bus station is put out of commission, apparently for 18 months from June 2015 on, despite the fact the NHS could have started the work earlier - and despite the inconvenience to local travellers.

Local residents are outraged to find they're going to have to pay for permits to park their cars. Local businesses will also have to pay to park works vans. This is a very fragile community. Did anybody do any research before this all got going?

And finally, in a carefully handled ceremony, the new site is called the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. Did you know that was on the cards? I didn't - and I know the area well and follow the news pretty carefully. Was there consultation on the name?

Govan is an ancient settlement. You only have to look at the stones preserved in Govan Old Parish Church to see that. The village has thrown up some remarkable people. If we'd been asked for a name for the hospital, we could have suggested:

The Dr John Aitken Hospital: this doctor was a tremendously important figure, a Victorian doctor who championed the good health of Govan people, especially workers in local industry. He died young and was felt to be so important a water fountain was erected in his memory at Govan Cross.

Or we could have had the Mary Barbour Hospital. Mrs Barbour was a councillor, a socialist who led the rent strikes during World War 1 when slum landlords tried to take advantage of the absence of the men at the front to hike the rents up and then tried to evict the families who couldn't pay. Mrs Barbour and her women won that battle and she went on to champion the cause of working class people, till her death at the age of 83 - in the Southern General Hospital. 

This is never going to be the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. If we can't have it named after one of the champions of working people in the Govan area, we'll just keep right on calling it the Southern General. But there was an opportunity here for the NHS to do the right thing. And sadly, management yet again have f*cked it up. 

Oil and all that

How much oil is there still in the North Sea? When will it run out? I don’t know. You probably don’t know. Possibly nobody knows. But UK newspapers were full of articles a couple of weeks back arguing that there is less oil than previously thought and it will not only bring in less cash than we believed but it will run out sooner.

Interestingly, the other thing that happened that week that got loads and loads of media attention was the arrival of 56 SNP members of parliament at Westminster. If you only read the Daily Mail, you’d be forgiven for seeing these 56 as a demented horde of Glasgow street urchins, racing round the sacred halls yelling and brandishing weapons rather than the fairly dull gang of QCs, doctors, councilors, middle managers and TV journalists they actually are. The media have really struggled to find anyone among the 56 worth getting worked up about. There’s been mention of Chris Law. He has a ponytail! And there’s Mhairi Black. She’s young!

So are the oil and the arrival of the new MPs events connected?

Well, they are in the media. And I smell a rat. A media rat. Feed the media rat any kind of claptrap and tosh and, if there’s a decent front page headline to be had, they’ll print it or give it air time on the radio and the telly. Somebody fed the media rat a whole load of nonsense about North Sea oil, most of it inaccurate and very little of it verifiable. And none of it dealing with the real issues around energy.

And those issues are – in my opinion:

Oil exploration is going on all the time. The oil companies are currently exploring the area north and west of Shetland. As the technology continues to improve, the oil companies will go into ever deeper water. The oil we already know is in the Atlantic will be at our disposal.

But I’m a member of the Green Party and we say we’re at a point when we should stop exploring for new oil and start moving over to alternative energy sources. There’s evidence now that fracking is costly and not just in money terms: there’s a risk of polluting the water table, even of causing earthquakes. And like the oil, shale gas will eventually run out.

But that’s not what we’re being told in this story. The media go banging on about North Sea oil bringing in less money, not for financial reasons but for political reasons. According to the media, the SNP depend on oil money to create the picture of a wealthy independent Scotland. The SNP says it has never said this. But since 34 out of 35 newspapers are anti-independence and – I would venture to say – both BBC and ITV follows the unionist line, it’s unlikely you’re going to get much publicity for any alternative view.

So here’s my prediction for the next few months: this story is just one example of media anti-independence bias. The next time the SNP or the Scottish Government announces good news, expect a very negative story to hit the media. And all we can do up here is keep plugging away on the outlets available to us: keep reading Bella Caledonia, Wings Over Scotland, the remaining Yes sites on Facebook – and, of course, The National and The Sunday Herald. And if you’re a member of the SNP and the Greens, keep reading the party websites.

Power to the people!

What's the difference between this:

and this?

Well, the first one has been around for a long time. It marches across beautiful landscapes right across Scotland. In fact, there's even one on a roundabout smack dab in the middle of a Kilmarnock housing scheme. I've never worked out if the pylon or the people were there first but it looks odd just sitting there. We've had to live with these monstrosities for so long, nobody sees pylons any more. If we notice them at all, we probably think: power lines. And we need power lines, right? 

The wind turbine is a different matter. Wind turbines are new. Opinion is divided with some people getting very worked up about how awful they look. Not to mention how they sound. Myself, I don't mind them. I've been to Whitelees and I think it's okay: it's got a bike track, offers educational opportunities to local schools, gives tours on a wee bus, has a tearoom - and the turbines look pretty cool. The wind turbine is pretty good advert for alternative energy, which we will have to embrace whether we want to or not. Donald Trump says wind turbines are why our taxes are so high. I don't get that one, but Donald probably has shares in the fracking industry anyway so who cares what he thinks? 

Whenever something new hits Scotland, I sigh because I know what comes next: the Scottish Parliament ten years ago was a shocking monstrosity, an appalling waste of money, etc. Now we love it. A terrific landmark. Beautiful building. Iconic. Tourists love it. The Edinburgh trams? Same thing. Give it a few years and they will be loved too. The new Firth of Forth crossing, the Falkirk Wheel..the Kelpies seem to be about the only thing everybody loves.

I suspect Scotland never used to be like this, afraid of innovation, terrified of change. We used to be proud of big adventurous builds, public statues, daring developments. Not now. 

And moany. Dear gawd, are we moany!When did the Scots turn into a nation of whingers? Nothing pleases us. We host the Commonwealth Games. Bring it in on budget and make it a real success. What do we say? Well done all these volunteers - brilliant! The enthusiasm of the crowds who cheered the athletes on? Do we celebrate that? Not us! A year later, we're moaning there aren't so many people in the east end of Glasgow using the 'legacy' sports facilities. 

I may not live to see Scotland get independence, but I'd sure as hell love us to get off our knees and get back a wee bit of the ambitious thinking that made us famous throughout the world.

The 10-minute job

I'm mid-flitting now. The upstairs bedrooms are packed up. Today was meant to be an easy day, just packing up the bathroom. It was going to be a '10-minute job'. Three hours later, I've just sat down.

Step one: empty the plastic caddy which is going to charity (because I have a nice new bathroom with loadsa storage):

I set up a packing box and got 4 plastic bags and started separating the stuff in the caddy into 4 lots: stuff in use, spare supplies, medicines, stuff to go in the bin. It didn't take long to discover something clear had spilled in the bottom drawer of the caddy. Not really smelly but very, very sticky. It took a while to clean the stuff in the drawer. There were some nice toiletries from Clinique and Occitan that I didn't want to just chuck out. I don't think I've worked out where the goo came from. There's a chance I'll find out yet...

Took the drawer downstairs and washed it out in the kitchen sink. It was so gooey, I ended up using a lot of washing up liquid. Went back upstairs, finished packing the box, labelled it and decided to take the caddy downstairs. A wheel came off halfway down. It took me a while to sort that.

Wiped down the caddy and decided to make a space in the kitchen/diner to store all the stuff that's going to charity. I suddenly realised I was missing a bookcase and a rug. They're still in storage. Checked my diary: they don't come out of storage till the flitting but the charity is booked to uplift the stuff before the flitting. Spent a jolly half hour on the phone trying to rearrange the uplift. I've realised that I have far too many ornaments. Asked on the phone if the charity is in the market for ornaments for its shop. No. They'll take everyday dishes, mugs and glasses for starter homes though. My sister and I can separate them out tomorrow when we pack up the kitchen/diner.

Spent another half hour phoning a couple of charity shops asking if they want some quite nice ornaments, mostly picked up from the Barras and antique shops. They might even be able to sell them on Ebay. One charity wants to come and see them, so I can't pack them yet. I think I might have complicated things here.

Never mind - onward and upward! 11 days till the flitting. Then all I have to do is clean this place up so I get my deposit back and then unpack my stuff in the new flat.

Wine time! Happy Friday, everybody!

Good Gawd in Govan (again)!

I may have mentioned this before. I'm originally from Govan and I volunteer there now. Alex and I deliver books from Elder Park Library to disabled and often housebound people, all of them pensioners. We love it. They appreciate getting a very personal, hands-on service facilitated very ably by Karyl in the Library but Alex and I always say we get more out of talking to these people than they get out of our service.

It's not lost on Alex and me that we are pensioners too, humphing bags of books up and down stairs. We have our own challenges in health terms. For example, my joints are knackered but I'm lucky to be working with Alex who does a lot of the heavy lifting while I do the driving.

It's the people I most love in Govan. It's the way they are treated I most dislike. At the moment, Govan is not in great shape. There have been many upheavals in the last 50 years: loss of industry; loss of community with people being decanted to out-lying housing schemes like Pollok and Castlemilk; a major house building programme that seems to be endless but not joined up; the influx of a very small number of asylum seekers and migrant workers from eastern Europe whose presence discombobulates a lot of the older people (and there are a lot of older people in Govan). And now, just to finish us all off, the new Southern General Hospital has opened. Sorry, I know it has a new name but it's always going to be the Southern - or Suffrin - to us.

Let's talk traffic. The whole of Ibrox has already been re-organised to accommodate football traffic around the Glasgow Rangers Stadium. No right turns between Edmiston Drive and the motorway access at Helen Street to accommodate access to and from the M8 motorway on match days, despite the fact that 13 days out of 14 there is no stadium traffic. Now we are getting a clearway from the city centre over the Squinty Bridge to the new hospital along Govan Road. Roads are being re-aligned, new roundabouts put in, etc. I'm told people in Linthouse have a new game: find the bus stop. They can now walk from Linthouse to Golspie Street before finding one.

The hospital is also getting a 'transport hub,' which involves closing Govan bus station for over 18 months and re-siting it for that period to a point that is just about inaccessible to pedestrians. There are carparks at Govan Cross, but we notice recently they are all full. Could that be the staff of the Southern parking and taking a 10 minute bus trip along the road to their work at the new hospital? Quite likely, because the morons who designed the hospital failed to provide proper parking for staff.

There's also been an outbreak of yellow lines all over Govan. All doublers. And in my opinion quite unnecessary. For instance, Alex and I deliver talking books to a lady who is just about blind right at Govan Cross. Her block of retirement flats has no visitor parking and there's no parking for deliveries anywhere near this or other buildings, one of which is the PI, the Pearce Institute, home to many social agencies including Govan Law Centre. But round the back is a wee lane backing onto a bit of derelict land beside the Clyde. We've parked here for years. It probably takes us 20 minutes once a month to make this delivery. We've noticed in the past a lot of people use this area for similar short-term stays. You can imagine our outrage when we turned into the lane last week and found this:

              

Like the rest of the vehicles here, Alex and I ignored the double yellows and did our delivery anyway and we will continue to do so. We're not obstructing the clearway along Govan Road. I reckon I could put up a good case if I get caught parking illegally, the most important of which are: we were here before the fancy-shmancy new hospital and the service we provide is just as important. 

Of course, the hospital could buy the derelict land leading down to the Clyde and turn it into a car park. But, as one resident put it to us today: that would be too easy. 

Mone, Mone, Mone

Considering she has nothing to do with me and I have no connection with her, I seem to know an awful lot about Michelle the Mone.

I know she has a very posh town house in the Park area of Glasgow, which she is now selling for gazillions of pounds. She also built a laughable mansion in Thorntonhall which extended right to the boundaries of the plot with little space for a garden, so you could see the monstrosity whatever angle you approached from. She had a pretty disastrous marriage break-up, which could be followed all over the press. I won't dwell on that because it must have really upset her kids.

What I'm getting at is that Michelle seems to get loads of publicity for everything she does, the latest being to piss some of us off here in Scotland by claiming that she's leaving because of SNP's trolls. It's not true, of course, just another set of lies for the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to bash the Scots with. You can see the facts for yourself here: http://wingsoverscotland.com/quick-fact-check/

(It's a bit like the seatgate scandal in the house of commons during which nasty SNP MPs bullied a poor wee, old man. That never happened either according to all the people involved, including Dennis Skinner, the aforementioned poor wee old man, if you believe the Daily Mail).

But people in the rest of the UK don't hear anything but the version of these stories told by the right wing press, so why shouldn't they believe the worst of the Scots?

What we don't hear from the press is that Michelle is not that hot as an entrepreneur. She's been close to losing her Ultimo 'empire' a few times and, on one famous occasion, was rescued financially by Sir Tom Hunter, multi-millionaire entrepreneur and not a man known for flinging his cash about. He's probably (if he's wise) still got a grip on her company.

I wish her good luck in London or wherever she settles. I hope never to hear from her again. Till, in the fulness of time, she decides to come 'home', as her kind often do.

As for her name, the loudest and most disruptive child I ever taught was called Blair. Says it all, really.

Testing...testing

I'm too conflicted to deal with Carmichaelgate, so in the time-honoured fashion, I'm just going to dodge the issue altogether in favour of something else. 

I read a couple of weeks ago that women working in Hollywood have been protesting about the number of films and TV shows that appear to glorify the rape, torture and murder of women. I watch a few American shows in the style the French call 'policiers': Gotham, CSI, Criminal Minds, NCIS. I've started watching them with new eyes since I read this. And I have to report there are a few nasty things going around but not that many.

The least awful is NCIS, which is really a comedy vehicle for Michael Weatherly, Mark Harmon and the producer's son-in-law Sean Murray (who proves there's an acting job for everybody but only if they're well-connected). But no violence against women: this has a navy setting so most of the victims are men.

CSI is now just daft, so daft I've starting switching off: the CSIs seem to be doing the work of the cops in this series and even I know that's just never going to happen. Ted Danson can't be so short of cash he needs to lend his name to this, surely? There are a lot of serial killers but the focus is on the investigation stage. There are snaps of bodies on tables in the morgue but always with their bits delicately covered by a towel. 

Criminal Minds does the before/after bit, showing people being stalked by crazies and then the investigation stage. With its resident speed-reading genius and the mouthy computer brainiac, it has pretensions to being clever but it's not. It's also not scary, although there's far too much emphasis on 'home invasion' and 'family annihilation' so the body count can be pretty high. Maybe this appeals to the target audience? 

The daddy of them all is Gotham. A woman popping her own eye out. Another strung up by ropes from the ceiling and having her mouth stuffed with a ball gag. Shootings, stabbings, drownings, kidnappings - all routine and quite often featuring women. The Gotham cops are utterly corrupt and as likely to be murderers as the gangsters. As far as I can see, there are no good guys. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I'm watching this at all. Pretty nasty.

In movies, women have come up with what's called the 'Bechdel Test.' If you want to know if a movie is misogynistic, apply this test: 

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man.

On that basis, all of the series above fail the test. I suspect most TV does...

Coming back to Carmichaelgate, I am thrilled to read at least one report that mentions a possible conspiracy theory because Lorne Campbell of the BBC and Alistair Carmichael went to the same school, Islay High School. We all know about the Lewis Mafia, but maybe it's time for the good folk of Leodhas  to move over and make way for the Islay Mafia...

Wimmin who hate wimmin

Stop me if you've heard me say this before: women are their own worst enemy - more exactly, women are the worst enemy of other women.

Today's paper has an article about Mhairi Black MP written by a woman.

The article - as all the other articles have - focussed on her age (or lack of it), on the fact that she took a selfie eating chips in London and when she was 15 she and her pals used to go out under-age drinking and post messages about it on social media. Her age isn't an issue - time will take care of that. Eating chips? Who cares? And if you can claim you did nothing stupid in your teens, you're either Mother Theresa or you're lying. The image the press seem to want to project of Mhairi Black is that she's what we in Glasgow used to call a keeley - uneducated, a bit dim and, heaven help us all, common.

But the most important things about Mhairi Black are, in my opinion: she's a woman; she's working class and has a different take on life from her predecessor in the Paisley seat; she's clever and has got elected even though she hasn't completed her university course, although she plans to; she's committed to politics (even if I personally don't agree with her politics); and she is a fantastic and passionate speaker. In speaking, she is focussed and direct and uses language that the rest of us can understand. She doesn't know about sound bites but she doesn't waste words. (Gordon Brown could take a few lessons from her in that respect).

So why do I single out the writer of today's article for being anti-women? Because the approach the writer took is lazy. She went for the obvious and added nothing to our knowledge of what Mhairi Black hopes to achieve in Westminster.

It's also about fairness. Kirsten Oswald (now my MP) has been singled out by a newspaper that should know better (the only one that supports independence) because her husband has joined the Labour party. If you have a male MP, do you really expect to know - or care - which political party his partner belongs to?

The odds on any woman in politics getting support from the UK press are pretty poor. There's talk of Yvette Cooper being 'tainted' because she's married to Ed Balls. And the rightwing press which hates John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has leapt on Sally Bercow's adultery as a stick to hit him with.

And, yes, if you're asking, I do expect women working on newspapers to set a higher tone than men. Or at the very least to be able to spot the difference between writing comment and writing fluff - and fight for their right to comment on women's politics, not on the trivia around them.

The truth? Whose truth?

I'm reading Dennis Skinner's reminiscences in Sailing Close To The Wind. He's the Labour MP for Bolsover who is famous for his comments on the Tories in the House of Commons, having once said:

"Half the Tory members opposite are crooks."

When told to withdraw this remark by the Speaker: "OK, half the Tory members aren't crooks."

He doesn't look like this now. He's 83 and still in the House of Commons after 41 years. He's Old Labour. The party whips must have despaired of him often. Some of his reminiscences are interesting: he was a miner and describes that hard life of his family and his tight-knit Derbyshire community very well. He also describes the Miners' Strike of 1984 and its aftermath, which devastated many communities that are still struggling to recover. It's all a long time ago for most of us. The UK has changed so much it's hard to believe that Dennis Skinner and his fellow trade unionists ever wielded so much power - or even that the Labour party at one time considered itself a socialist party. Dennis Skinner thinks the Labour party should go back to what it was then. His view of matters before Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party can be summed up in two words: cosy and rosy. He ignores the excesses of some trade unionists and some left wing politicians. 

On the House of Commons, Dennis is less interesting. He refused a job as a minister. He loves the House and its procedures. For most of us, he describes a political world we know nothing about: using Erskine May (the rule book) to play about with the system, making his sometimes witty and always cutting asides from a spot just below the camera on the bottom right hand side of the picture. 

He's been an MP too long. No one should be in the same job for that length of time, no matter how good they are.

Today I also found this on Facebook - again. It reappears every few months sometimes with a small change of words. The inclusion of the word 'immigration' this time makes me wonder if Ukip or Britain First had a hand in it this time:

I'm not sure what period in history this is about. Maybe 60, maybe 80 years ago? Maybe it never existed at all. One thing I'm sure of: being able to batter people either in a police station or a school or at home didn't make for a happier, safer society. I don't think the young people of the UK are 'selfish disrespectful little assholes.' We have our share of assholes, sure, but look at the outpouring of sympathy in the West of Scotland on the murder of Karen Buckley; the fact that the UK raised 19 million quid in three days for Nepal after the earthquake; how that poor wee unknown baby was laid to rest in Lothian; the vast amounts of food raised for food banks by many groups in our communities: churches, football fans, political activists, businesses. 

We still have some of the old violence in our society in the way we tolerate wife-beating and child abuse (both physical and sexual), but these are being tackled. And we still blame people who are victims of rape for bringing it on themselves. We have to work on this. But do I want us to go back to a time when contraception was refused to single women, abortion was illegal, hanging was legal, homosexuality was illegal and homosexuals refused any kind of equality?

Maybe the answer is to avoid the extremes of both the Dennis Skinners and the hang 'em/flog 'em brigade. Neither group represents most of us. We need to work on building a kinder society. And yes, contrary to what Margaret Thatcher thought, there is such a thing as society. It's called us. And we don't need to be battered into doing the right thing.  

Good gawd in Govan

I had to contact the Royal Bank today. Never a good idea. I wanted to pay for the bathroom and kitchen that B&Q are about to install in my soon-to-be new flat. If I don't pay for them this week, I'll be bounced out of the queue for fitting, meaning I'll have to be in the flat when the fitters install them. Anything but that. The pressure was on.

I offered my debit card, the manager phoned and we were, of course, referred to the RBS fraud squad to verify my identity. All in favour of that. I was asked 3 security questions and failed the first one: I can never remember if I spell my mother's maiden name with an Mc or a Mac. It didn't matter that I got the next two (much harder) questions right. I had to go on to extra security questions:

Could I describe a recent credit to my account? Yes, I recently transferred in a sum of money. Could I say how much? Yes. Could I give the exact date of the transfer? No.

On to the next question:

Could I remember a direct debit paid from my account? How about East Renfrewshire council tax? Fine. Could I tell the person at the other end of the phone exactly how much this was for and what date it was paid? Er, no. I have direct debits precisely so I don't have to remember these details.

I suggested we could maybe try something else. I seem to remember setting up 5 optional security questions such as the name of my first school, my sister's name, etc. No, that wouldn't do. I was rejected out of hand.

Dear gawd, prevented from spending my own money.

We phoned rbs banking. What to do? The nice young man asked me a whole lot of security questions which I managed fine and then suggested giving it 10 minutes and trying again. He even stayed on the line while we tried. Success. My order is on its way.

Tonight I decided to reset my debit card password, so as to avoid problems in the future. RBS online has a 'chat' section where you can try the  - utterly useless 'frequently asked questions' - or wait to chat with some poor sod in Bangalore. We 'chatted.' That is, we wrote notes. It took me a few tries to persuade Krishna I did not want to reset my pin. At that point, Krishna vanished to be replaced by Tryanbank. (Is that really a name?) because the system had gone down. Poor Krishna is probably in the sick room holding his head right now. And I never used CAPITAL LETTERS once. After only 15 minutes, I managed to change the password.

However, here are my new bathroom and kitchen. Lovely, eh?

Time to move

Last week, I had a visit from a representative of the agents who 'look after' this house for the owner. I didn't in fact know he was coming down from Aberdeen to inspect the premises, because despite getting a letter and an email from me the organisation has not noted my new email address.

Just as well I was here.

The representative and I talked a bit about the house: the rotten window frames that let in wind and dust; the electrics which were fine 30 years ago but really need to be replaced so you can use the washing machine and the dishwasher at the same time without blowing all the fuses; the worn-out carpets that I try to avoid using my Dyson on in case it sooks the carpets off the floor; the awful mint green bathroom that is well past its sell-by date. You get the picture.

Today I got a letter from the agents. Are they dealing with any of these issues, you may ask? Decide for yourself:

Never mind. Six weeks from now, I'll be away! 

Here Come De Judge...

A judge down south managed to shoe-horn poor Karen Buckley into a case he was trying this week. He was hearing the case of a woman who assaulted a total stranger. The victim happened also to be a woman. The attacker claimed she couldn't remember what had happened due to the amount of drink she'd taken. The judge then expressed concern that women make themselves 'vulnerable' if they get so drunk they can't remember what happened to them. A Glasgow sheriff would say something like: 'Can't remember battering this total stranger for absolutely no reason? Try 60 days in choky. That might help your memory.'

The fact is this case has nothing at all in common with Karen Buckley's case: Karen was not drunk and she wasn't the aggressor in an assault. She was the victim of a horrible murder, for which a man has been arrested and will go on trial later this year.

You'd think someone somewhere in the world of the law would have told judges by now: do not comment on social matters you know nothing about. The public already think you live in cloud cuckooland. Don't open your mouth and prove they're right.

But there are other issues.

First, this judge made the assumption that women should be treated differently from men. Not in my book. And incidentally, people like this judge need stop referring to women as 'girls'. At 21, you're an adult, not a girl. And if you've behaved violently, you should be treated as an adult.

And second, we need to reject the idea that only women are vulnerable when they're drunk. Is the judge saying that women - and only women - can expect to be assaulted physically or sexually if they drink too much? Anyone with male gay friends knows that's not the case. And is physical and sexual assault just something that happens? Do we just have to go on sending people out into the world telling them to deal with it?

Well, it will go on happening as long as we go on blaming the victims.

I'm going to take this to what I admit is a silly extreme. Let's imagine the preparations men and women need to make for a night out:

- Guys: shower, hair product, deodorant (please), decent clothes, loads of cash from the ATM for taxis to and from pub and club and for drink.

- Women: same as for the guys but maybe factoring in extra cash for the taxi to the nearest A&E after you've been assaulted, loss of wages during the time you have to take off work for ID parades, giving statements, making court appearances as a witness, not to mention loss of dignity when being examined by medics and police officers and trying to explain this to your family.

I want everyone to operate to the same rules: when you're out go with your mates stick together. That's it. You're not in charge of your friends' drinking habits. Nor are you in a position to patrol their sex lives.

The people we need to change are the small number of men who feel entitled to demand sex and who turn violent when it's refused. We can educate them out of these attitudes but not while the judges go on suggesting the problem is the victims.

It's either that or women and gay men go to work, do a wee bit of shopping (but only in daylight) and stay home the rest of the time. And strictly no drink. Why should you or I or anyone of whatever sex have to adopt that lifestyle?

The food bank continued

We had a quiet day at the food bank a couple of weeks back. It was the Easter weekend and the Pearce Institute, the CAS office and Money Matters were all closed. Our only clients seemed to be people who couldn't get in to these local agencies for red slips to get them 3 days supply of food so had to come to us for a 1 day emergency supply. We used the session to reload the shelves and fill the boxes but also for some team bonding with lots of good craic, some mickey-taking and great stories that allowed us all to get to know each other better.

That stood us in good stead today because everything seemed to happen at once. The kids went back to school today, having eaten their parents out of house and home, and we had people arriving well before the doors opened.

In addition, the local supermarkets had a big stock-take and needed to offload stuff that was close to its sell-by date. Celtic Park had filled its car park with food donations in memory of Brother Walfrid - bless you all, Celtic fans - and we got our share delivered, boxes and boxes of stuff. An Asian supermarket decided to donate rice - two hundred 25lb bags - plus many packets and jars of sauces. A friend of the food bank sent in two trays of biscuits and two of crisps, luxuries the food bank can't often afford. The food bank staff had also been to the supermarket and we had trays of sugar and tins of meat and veg to put away.

It was pretty hectic for a while. We had families of five, couples, singles and a lot of emergency applicants. No sooner had we served one client than the people upstairs were calling down another order. At one point, we had to tell them the boxes were empty (we keep 11 boxes filled and ready to hand out, 6 for singles and the others for families) and they would need to get clients to have a seat and a cuppa tea till we were ready. The advantage of that is that the upstairs people get a chance to talk to the clients and gauge how they are doing.

We're a good team the six of us. We sometimes argue: 'We are NOT putting tins of condensed milk in instead of UHT. Have you tasted condensed milk? Imagine that on your cornflakes! Go to the shop and get milk!' We sometimes forget each other's names in the heat of the moment: Henry got two apologies today for that. But by and large, we get the orders done and delivered to the right people, partly because Lorna acts as our gatekeeper: 'You'll have to wait' is her war cry. When it was all over, I found one bag of food that we had forgotten to pass on. It was part of an emergency order. We felt bad about that but emergency cases get two other bags of food to tide them over so, all being well, they should manage till they can get a red slip. That, we think, was the only problem.

Now we've run out of toilet paper. Where does the best deal on cheap toilet paper, folks?

People, please!

                

This is my lovely Italian suite. It's about 20 years old, and in excellent condition because it was hardly used. I tried selling it on Gum Tree. No takers. McTear's offered me 30 quid for it. They would probably sell it on at auction for £300. I offered it for nowt on Facebook. Zilch. So then I decided to offer it for free on Gum Tree (Glasgow area).

I got 119 replies in 36 hours. 

About a third of those were from dealers. One cheeky chappie wanted me to deliver it to a place in Essex. Dream on, pal. Another third roughly wanted to come and see it, despite the fact it was going for nothing and I'd made it clear in the ad it was in storage and would have to be accepted sight unseen. Another third wanted to come and pick it up the next day. Same problem. A few folk offered me money but didn't say how much. 

I narrowed the 119 down to 4, and sent polite wee 'sorry' messages to the rest. I put the 4 in rank order. Anyone in need? A young woman graduate setting up home for the first time was my first choice. Been there. Second choice: a 70 year old woman. My age group. Well, why not? Then a guy who clearly knew about furniture and had a big house. Then a woman who wrote a nice message and was trying to furnish a flat on jobseekers' allowance.

Number one fessed up she didn't actually have a flat so couldn't agree to accept the suite on the date I specified. The second has had a stroke and is in hospital. I'm on to number three now. Keith. We'll see what happens. I could be trawling through my waste basket for a few weeks yet. 

Why don't I just give it to charity? They only take furniture with fire labels on it. My suite is in storage (I think I've said that before) and I have no idea if it has fire labels or not.  

John Lorne Campbell

I lived and worked in Argyll for about 15 years off and on and I remember hearing the name John Lorne Campbell from time to time in various contexts. Now finally I've got round to reading his biography by Ray Perman (2010) and it's an inspiration.

Campbell (1906-1996) came from the Argyll landed gentry but he wasn't one of them. He didn't do the huntin/fishin/shootin stuff. He didn't serve as an officer in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders. He didn't marry 'one of his own.' At Oxford, he studied, not classics as his family wanted him to but agriculture. He bought the island of Canna, encouraged people to come and live and farm there, in an attempt to reverse the Clearances, and in his old age he gave it to the National Trust for Scotland.

The list of Campbell's publications in Wikipedia is long and their range amazing:

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

He was very interested in politics. And the issues he raised in the 1930s are the very matters now preoccupying us in Scotland: Who owns the land? How do we protect our environment? What should our democracy be like if it's to support the people?

He and his wife Margaret Fay Shaw - she was an American of Scottish ancestry - learned Gaelic and collected and recorded Gaelic folklore and songs. They were very clear that the Gaelic language was dying in their time, not of neglect but of the open hostility of the British state, and did everything they could to preserve and promote the language and culture.

On page 20 of the biography, Ray Perman writes:

"(Gaelic) had once been spoken by all social classes in the Highlands and Islands, but after the failed Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 it became associated with political dissent and the Catholic religion...There was an official campaign to discourage and even suppress the language, backed by repressive legislation which...discriminated against Gaelic...There was also a campaign to supplant Gaelic in education...although...among themselves and at home (children) continued to speak Gaelic. Catholic priests still preached in the old language and, despite the prevailing orthodoxy, many ministers in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland continued to preach in both languages."

In 1765, 100% of the population of Argyll spoke Gaelic. By 1879 less than one in ten was a monoglot Gaelic speaker. By 1921 there were just 20,000 Gaelic speakers in Argyll - less than a third of the number forty years before - and only 500 of them spoke Gaelic alone.

So the next time somebody tells me 'But Gaelic is dying, isn't it?' I plan to ask if they know who killed it. But I want to point out the debt we owe to John Lorne and Margaret Fay Campbell. Without them, we would have little record of Argyll Gaelic and the community would be a poorer place.

I'm insulted

First of all, I am pro-independence but I am a Green. I've never voted SNP and will always be suspicious of their intentions until they tell me how they see their role after independence. But...

Let's set this out properly: on Thursday evening, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP, appeared on TV in a 'debate' with six other party leaders. She put on a good show - either because she's clever and a very good manipulator of the media or because she's a wonderful politician. How you see her depends very much on how you view the SNP and where in the UK you are watching. The 'debate' ended at 22.00. Immediately, people furth of Scotland sent in tweets wishing they could have her as a UK politician/asking how they can join the SNP/commenting on how well she and the other two women on the panel spoke.

The next day - THE NEXT DAY - the Telegraph, a London-based, Tory-supporting newspaper, published a memo claiming Nicola Sturgeon secretly supports the Tories (cue the old Scottish fear that the SNP are really Tartan Tories) and thinks Ed Milliband (to whom she has previously extended the hand of friendship) is not capable of being prime minister. Nicola Sturgeon and the French ambassador deny she ever said this.

Frankly, I'm insulted. The UK press is a living example of the old quote from the works of Humbert Wolfe:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist. But, seeing what the 
    man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.


Really, do the members of the UK press think the voters are so stupid we'll fall for this? And then I think back to the aftermath of Thursday's 'debate' when members of the public were so pleased with the performance of Nigel Farage, were so disparaging of the efforts of Leanne Woods and Natalie Bennett and declared the evening had no overall 'winner' (what is this - a third year debating group?) but was a tie between Cameron and Milliband. I noticed Clegg got no mention at all, his reward for keeping the Tories in power for 5 years.

Maybe it's true: we get the government we deserve. I only hope that Thursday evening showed there could be more to politics than middle-aged white men shouting at each other.

The flight

I put this on my Facebook page because I was quite shocked at the crash of flight 9525. Who wouldn't be shocked at the loss of so many people at the hands of one man? 

If you're a teacher who has organised trips and exchanges abroad, you probably shuddered and thought 'what if these were my kids - my colleagues?' The news that there were two babies on the flight was horrible too. You may even, like me, have wondered what happened to the co-pilot that he decided to take this action? And can you imagine his parents arriving at the scene of what they thought was a dreadful accident only to be taken aside, away from the other families, and told that their son is a mass murderer? 

Pilots, as far as I know, don't get trained for nothing. They finance the training themselves. It costs a huge amount of money and it takes years to build up the flying experience needed to enable a pilot to get a job with a company as prestigious as Lufthansa. 

Overall, it is a terrible event. So why were the UK media so anxious to ignore all the other people on the flight and just focus on the British victims? I don't know how many there were - three maybe? And, of course, we feel for them and their families. That goes without saying. But are we so crass as human beings that - as the media, including the BBC online news pages, seem to think - we can't sympathise with the victims unless we know there are British people involved? 

I don't have a high opinion of the British press at the best of times. This general election has destroyed any remaining respect for the newspapers that I might have had. We've had photoshopped sexist pictures of Nicola Sturgeon, Ed Milliband and that bloody bacon sandwich and others. Photos of anyone who is not a Tory seem to be chosen to make them look like fools. And I suspect the Daily Express will live to regret the number of adoring photos of Nigel Farage it has printed this year. 

They say you get the press you deserve but I'm more inclined to believe you get the press half a dozen billionaire press magnates want to give you. And their world view sees us, their British readers, as petty-minded and insular, so we get very little by way of European or international news in the papers and what we do get has to have something to do with the UK directly or apparently we're not interested. 

But we're all a lot more international than the UK press seems to think these days. We travel a lot. Often by plane. We've all been on economy flights which we knew were staffed to the minimum to keep prices down. And we've all been comforted by the idea that pilots are good people doing a good job and take great care of us because they don't want to die either in a metal tube hurtling through the air. And here we have one pilot prepared to kill 149 other people as well as himself, and for no reason that anyone can see at the moment...

I was glad to see the German police keeping the media (and those spectators who always seem to arrive when any disaster happens equipped with their camera phones) away from the home of the pilot's parents. They are victims too. 

We, the electors, salute you!

I've been watching the run-up to the UK general election with a certain sense of distance, thinking: same old circus, same old monkeys. But there are weeks of this claptrap to go yet so I'm trying to drag some entertainment from the proceedings.

The highlights so far:

David Coburn MEP (salary £96,000pa + expenses) is Scotland's only UKIP representative and seems to think he's auditioning for Jeremy Clarkson's job on Top Gear. Scotland didn't find his racist comment comparing Humza Yusaf MSP to Abu Hamza as funny as he did. I didn't vote UKIP in the EU elections. If you did, hang your head in shame. 

Then there's Grant (Second job? What second job?) Shapps. 

Grant is chairman of the Tory party and a chanty-wrastler. He used a second name to keep doing a wee internet job after he was elected, having assured House of Commons officials he wasn't. He didn't so much apologise as squirm a bit and try to give the impression all MPs do this. Maybe just Tory MPs. Grant is a Rt Honourable. I'll leave you to finish the phrase. 

But my discovery of the election run-up is Anna Soubry, another Tory MP and junior minister. 

See the open mouth (it usually is) and the pointing finger (ditto). Anna is over-endowed with self-confidence. In the mould of Margaret Thatcher, she talks a lot but never listens. When people try to get a word in - Alex Salmond and Andrew Marr tried today on TV - she talks louder and keeps right on going. She has never to my knowledge said anything worth hearing but she does fill the air with Tory party noise on request.

So who are doing well in the election? 

I nominate Ruth Davidson, MSP.

Another Tory, but frighteningly I find myself agreeing with a lot of what she says. It's a pity the Tories are still toxic in Scotland because Ruth is young, clever and thoughtful. She has grown into the job she's doing and would make a good contribution to national life.

And then there's Ed.

Yes, I think Ed Milliband is having a good election, in spite of the sneering of the rightwing press. And in spite of the awful photos, apparently chosen to make him look like a fool. When did it become obligatory for party leaders in the UK to look good on camera? That's an American thing, isn't it? We surely expect our leaders to have a bit more to them than that. He had a good go at Osborne in the Budget speech - not an easy gig. The problem is that Ed is saddled with some right numpties left over from Blair and Brown's days: Ed Balls for one. That manic unblinking stare to camera is quite unnerving. Too late to do anything about that now. Or about the meltdown in Labour seats in Scotland, although I suspect they won't lose as many seats as the SNP are hoping. 

Although I won't be voting for them.

You say potato

We had coffee in an Italian restaurant today. It's a great place. Family owned. Very relaxed. Good service. Great coffee. Lovely meals. Does takeaways. It's always busy. It also has a good deli section, so as we were leaving I had a look at the shelves in case I could get tagliatelle (I pronounce it ta'liatelle) which I forgot to get when I was shopping yesterday. There was every kind of pasta but no tagliatelle.

I said to the lassie behind the counter:
- Do you have ta'liatelle?
- Do you mean Italian sausage? It's there. (She pointed to it in the glass case).
- Em, no. Ta'liatelle. You know, pasta.
- O, you mean taGliatelle, she said.
- Yeah, ta'liatelle, said I.

She looked at me kind of puzzled and then looked at the shelves behind her.

- TaGliatelle. TaGliatelle. What does it look like again? she asked.
- Thicker than spaghetti or linguine. It usually comes in wee circles, said I, pathetically drawing wee circles on my hand.

She reached up to a high shelf and took down a box, which she showed to a colleague. They had a wee confab and then she came over to me.

- He says they huvny got taGliatelle. She held up the box. Will that do?

I'd have taken grass cuttings by then just to get out of there. It was of course exactly what I was looking for.

Back home, I googled the pronunciation of tagliatelle. Naturally, I was right.

Questions. How come I managed to find the only non Italian working in that restaurant? And how come nobody in the Italian family who own the place and work there had told her how to pronounce taGliatelle?

Bye bye, Question Time

Time for a wee rant. I thought I'd watch Question Time tonight because it seemed to have good Scottish representation with Nicola Sturgeon and Duncan Bannatyne. Unfortunately, it also had the usual Westminster time servers: Caroline Flint, Norman Lamb and Lord Heseltine. So these are my conclusions:

Heseltine doesn't know who Ant & Dec are. Maybe it's an age thing. He's old - but then I'm old and I know who they are. Heseltine also thinks Scotland produces nothing and gets given all its money by England. I have a lovely picture of this: the whole population of Scotland at a luxury hotel sitting by the pool under a sun umbrella quaffing margaritas and telling the waiter: charge it up to the English tax payer. If only. I thought after the referendum we were partners within the UK? Not on this showing.

Caroline Flint knows which Coalition policies she doesn't like but is hard pushed to name a Labour policy apart from the mansion tax.

Norman Lamb is a nice guy from the Lib Dems but he has no policies to offer either, so he just tries to defend the LibDem role in the Coalition. I suspect that boat has sailed, Norman.

Duncan Bannatyne has no idea how the Jobseekers' scheme works. He recommends that a woman in the audience stop applying for jobs online (although the Job Centre and the companies hiring say she must) and wants her pounding the streets asking for a job. Good one, Duncan. Maybe that's what you did 40 years ago but we've moved on since then. We have these amazing things called computers. And we have the internet. But no doubt you have people who do all that for you. Memo to the rest of the politicos on the panel: never mind humiliating the disabled and the unemployed, as one sensible member of the audience said. How about supporting them? I wish the very best to the young people in the audience who hardly got a word in edgeways. They're the people who matter and scant support they're getting if this lot are anything to go by.

Poor Nicola Sturgeon must have felt she was sitting in a parallel universe. I know I did. The audience favoured keeping Trident and updating it to the tune of £100bn. Indeed, some even welcomed the idea of Trident being moved to the north of England. (Let it go, I say!) Not one member of the audience said: Haud oan, the UK is a tiny wee country - and a pretty poor country too - so could we forget our delusions of being a world power and concentrate on looking after our own people?

I don't think I'll bother watching again.

About the food bank...

Week 3 of the foodbank and I've concluded weeks 1 and 2 were the lull before the storm.

First week I was down in the dunny, putting tins and jars of food into cupboards. Then filling boxes labelled 'Single Person', 'Couple', 'Family of four', etc, ready for us to bag up when clients came in to get them. We 'fed' about 40 people.

Week two I was on the door, meeting clients as they arrived, showing them into the hall where they can have tea, coffee and biscuits while their bags of food are being made up. A couple of people turned up without the 'red slip' that's given out by gps or the Money Matters office in Govan or by the jobcentre. The red slip gets people 3 days of food. Strictly speaking, people shouldn't get anything without a red slip but I'm told no one ever gets sent away empty-handed. I think the number of people getting food was about the same as the first week.

The food quite often comes from donations, some from local organisations like churches and schools. Last week someone said a donation had come in from the Bartenders' Association for Scotland who'd had a Xmas do. Supermarkets also give big donations. Morrison's give vouchers too so the food bank staff can buy what they need. At new year, Tesco gave a huge amount of food. Individual people also come to the door and hand in bags of food. Some things do run short and then the Trussell Trust gives the foodbank managers cash to go and buy what they need.

 If you're thinking of giving a donation, forget the beans, sugar, cornflakes and tins of soup. The food bank has plenty of these. Give tins of meat and fish (protein is good!), toilet rolls, sweeties for the kids, biscuits, coffee (no decaf), pasta shapes. Toiletries are very welcome: packs of razors, shaving foam, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorants, etc. I imagine when people are off job-hunting they want to look their best. 

This week was a shitstorm. There were people waiting at the door well before the foodbank was due to open. The volunteers had all come in early and we thought we were well-prepared: cupboards full, plenty of boxes made up. As soon as a box was emptied into bags and given out to clients, we re-filled it. I lost track of how often we had to re-fill the boxes, especially the boxes for single people. We have a lot of formerly homeless single men housed in the area. They are all well turned out and very polite. And quiet. Boy, are they quiet. It's obvious some need medical help. I wonder if they get it? One woman was there with her car. She's lost her job and is alone with two kids. Her husband isn't paying child support and her benefits haven't come through. As we took bags out to the car for her, I wondered how many other families would recognise this situation. They do say only 2 months wages stand between a family and the foodbank. And if your family can't help you, you'd right up the creek.

Some of the people who volunteer at the foodbank are themselves on benefits. For some reason ,that really upset me today.

Suddenly, D (in charge in the dunny) said it was twenty to two. We close at two. Boxes of donations appeared from an upstairs store and we piled the stuff into the cupboards, made sure the boxes were made up and generally tidied up so we could see, for example, if there would be enough bags for Thursday. The pile of red slips looked huge. I think the foodbank fed about 70 people this week.

I came home to a letter from my local gp practice, inviting me to a stroke review. There's a questionnaire which includes a section asking what exercise I take and if I want to take more. I reckon 2 1/2 hours working at the foodbank and 2 1/2 hours delivering books to the homebound every week is exercise enough for a woman of 66.

When does nationality matter?

This man was attacked in his own home by burglars: 

The burglars were caught and charged. They were in court today and were found guilty. They are going to jail. It was made known afterwards - that's the law - you're innocent till proven guilty - that three of the four were habitual criminals with a string of arrests for similar crimes.

There's nothing unusual about this crime. It has happened often and never made it to the front pages of UK newspapers and news websites. So why did this crime become such a talking point? The convicted burglars are Polish.

Their nationality has certainly caught the attention of newspapers like the Daily Mail and websites such as ITN/ITV news.

Of course, it's a well-known fact that all UK citizens are honest and we never, ever export baddies - for example, British gangsters to the Costa del Crime, drug smugglers to Thailand and Venezuela. So when 'foreigners' come here and commit crimes, the right wing media are outraged. Or could it be they are looking for a scapegoat?

The media seem to have a quite clear hierarchy when it comes to filling their front pages: first on their shame list: people in receipt of benefits, especially the unemployed - scroungers the lot of them - and immigrants. Anyone who is foreign is here to steal our jobs. Asylum seekers get handouts of £65,000 a year and houses and send their benefits back home to support families of 10. It's all lies and, of course, it ramps up the temperature in a country that seems obsessed at the moment, not with the real issues like low pay, zero hour contracts - that is social justice and equality - but with finding someone to blame for the state the UK economy is in. And whatever the Tories want to tell us, it's in some state.

Posh boys...and girls

I started this off by writing about the posh boys and girls. The ones with famous mummies and daddies and the ones born into loadsa money who seem to have taken over the world of theatre, TV and movies in the UK in recent years.

Step forward the likes of Victoria and Giles Coren, children of the (rightly) famous Alan.

Or Samuel West, son of Prunella Scales and Timothy West.

I'm not suggesting these people have used their family to get on but it can't hurt to be known for having famous and successful parents - and they have made it known who their parents are. If they didn't want the connection known, they could have changed their names. That's not exactly unheard of in show business, is it?

Keira Knightley is an extreme case. How do I know her mother is Sharman MacDonald who is a playwright? Because every sodding interview with Keira reminds me of her antecedents. No, I don't know who Sharman MacDonald is either but the London-based media people obviously do and think it matters.

Now I've had to get used to a whole new set of posh boys and girls. Current hot tips for Oscars, Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne start their biogs on IMDb by letting the reader know they went to Eton. 

Rosamund Pike (no, I'd never heard of her either till this week) went to Oxford and in their student days she was a bosom buddy of Chelsea Clinton. Her biog also tells us she got a 2:1 at Oxford - IMDb says this is summa cum laude in US terms and is suitably awed by this. (I also read yesterday that 70% of yooni graduates in the UK get a 2:1 these days. I wonder if IMDb know that.)

I don't in fact care how these people get on in life, although I think it's hard enough for folk trying to make it in show biz without this kind of unfair competition. I also think, sadly, the adulation afforded to these people is just another indication of how class-ridden and snobbish the UK media - and possibly UK society - are.

But I'm distracted by the accents these people have. They all sound the same. I seem to note a definite rise in the number of rp ('received pronunciation') - posh - voices I hear on radio and TV. I listen to Victoria Coren on Only Connect and think: Are you really as pompous and arrogant as that? Last week she was so rude to one of the teams, if she'd been sitting next to me on the settee I'd have punched her in the face. Then there's Kirstie Allsopp, posh and a proud Tory. I've given up watching anything with Kirstie in it. Her upper-class drawl and her self-satisfaction really rattle my cage. 

As for the actors like Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne, I suspect there's a tendency to over-estimate how good these people really are because of their background and that accent. Benedict is good as Sherlock Holmes - but what else does he do? He was in the last Star Trek. Same accent. I couldn't tell you what Eddie Redmayne has been in except The Theory of Everything. Can he act? Same goes for Rosamund Pike, mainly famous for her role in Gone Girl, who always seems to me to be playing a version of Rosamund Pike. 

On the other hand, I have the utmost respect for Michelle Dockery who plays Lady Mary, the arrogant bitch daughter in Downton Abbey. Michelle is an Essex girl who says her Essex accent held her back at auditions for years. She has overcome this disability and has got the upper-class drawl off to a T. That, folks, is called acting. And also maybe taking the piss a wee bit. 

Same goes for Joanne Froggatt who uses a version of her native accent - she's from Yorkshire - in her role as the maid Anna in Downton Abbey.

I'll finish with a wee story about one of my heroes. Star of stage and screen, Albert Finney.

When Albert Finney went to London from Salford for his audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the 1950s, his mum went with him on the train and took sandwiches for them.

Yes, you do so know who Albert Finney is: he's been in the movie of Tom Jones and in Erin Brokovich and Miller's Crossing and in many TV dramas and stage shows.

Albert wasn't poor as a boy - his dad was a bookie - but he has no pretensions to being posh. He had and still has a Salford accent. Onstage he produces any accent the director wants. 

Rumour has it he turned down two awards from HM the queen because he dislikes snobbery and believes we should all just be 'mister'. 

I wish there were more like him in the UK.