Yet another new blog

Today's news headline from Sky: Drinking and sm oking damages heart by age 17 Semi-literate, I know, but you get the idea.  I used to work with a man who managed to put people neatly into categories. One category was: "This man never saw a bandwagon he didn't want to join." That was reserved for the boss, an eejit without an idea in his head but with a nose for sniffing out the fashion of the moment and making sure his minions chased after it.  The other one I loved was: "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse." This was normally directed at people who were unable or unwilling to take the slightest risk in work or in life.  It was this saying that came to mind when I saw the headline above. And for all the wrong reasons. If I'd read on, I'd have seen that it says if you give up smoking and drinking early on your body recovers pretty fast. Well, I knew that anyway. But I have a feeling quite a lot of 17 year-olds don't ...

I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the Wee Ginger Dug's column in The National on Thursday: a positive article about Gaelic. How astonishing! About how it's not a dead language, but an active part of Scottish culture and a big part of our heritage, with Gaelic Medium (immersion) teaching going from 15 pupils in 1985 to over 4,000 in 2018. Imagine a Scottish journalist putting it in writing in a Scottish newspaper that Gaelic Medium education is a success, instead of coming to the conclusion that Gaelic is some sort of conspiracy to turn us all into Gaelic-speaking EssEnPee clones. The Dug even pointed out that the success of Gaelic should not be - but is - constantly referred to in the same breath as the decline in foreign language learning in Scottish schools. Gaelic is a native language. French, German, Spanish, etc are foreign languages. The two types of education are not in competition. Gaelic even comes from a different part of the Scottish budget from fore...

I get The National newspaper every day and occasionally have a quick look at their Facebook page. I may have to stop because it's bad for my mental health. Yesterday I found myself shouting at the cat: What is wrong with these people? One day, Missy will answer me back and then it really will be time for sedation and a darkened room. There are 38 newspapers published in Scotland, dailies and Sundays. 36 of these are openly hostile to the idea of Scottish independence. That leaves a Sunday - the Sunday Herald - which was just about getting by until it printed a totally misleading photograph from an All Under One Banner march which seemed to suggest there had been 'clashes' between marchers and Unionist supporters. There weren't, but here you realise the power of a single photo. Naturally, people who had been on the AUOB march were angry and the Sunday Herald's circulation took a nosedive. Now it's to be amalgamated with the (Unionist) Herald, so that'll...

I can't begin to even imagine what was going through the mind of the civil servant who sent this message to a 6 year old boy. Let me repeat: this letter was sent to a child of 6. Do you know anything about this wee boy? I don't. But it doesn't matter. He's been 'rejected' by the Home Office and has to leave the UK. Only I'm not sure where he can go or who with. Does he go to his parent's/parents' homeland? Will there be someone to look after him? How will he live? Where will he live? Will he be safe? Will he get an education? Only a total bastard could consider issuing a message like this to a wee child. Immigration/emigration - soon to be a big deal, although we all seem to have forgotten about that because we're so used to open borders across the EU - is the business of the 'Home Office'. And what an absolute arse the Home Office is making of this business. The person who was in charge when this 'tightening' of HO rule...

I was going to have a go at the Tories for their blatant Islamophobia and at Labour for allowing regular claims of anti-semitism in the press to go unchallenged. Then I thought: No, let's just consider how the UK has ended up with not one but two sets of utterly duff politicians fighting it out to become the government at Westminster. The Tories seem to rely on being the automatic party of government. They got this from Thatcher. But Thatcher's lot - sneaky and mendacious as they were - at least went about the business of government with some degree of efficiency and with a few ideas to their names. Lousy ideas but still. Now the Tories appear to have no ideas, except what they pick up from Donald Trump. And certainly no principles. They are just on the make. They've turned Westminster into a place for millionaires to 'footer aboot,' as we say in Scotland, saying whatever comes into their heads as long as it's anti-Labour and somehow not quite managing to pl...

The two 'developed' countries in the world where life expectancy is not improving but has  stalled or - in some cases - is going backwards, are the UK and the USA.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-45096074 Let's try to work out why this would be. Could it have to do with steps taken after the economic crash of 2008? Austerity measures maybe? In the UK, it might have to do with cuts to the social security budget. This is now renamed 'welfare' - like people hadn't paid into the social security budget all their working lives so they would be protected in the event of a sudden bout of illness or even long term bad health.  It's as if the wages we all paid in to the tax system mean nothing any more.  Or is it to do with the sudden precariousness of working life in the UK? Suddenly, we find ourselves in the era of the gig economy, zero hours contracts (which, it seems, some Tory MPs approve of - not that they will ever have to face such a situati...