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.