Yet another new blog

I read a shocking article in the National today. [Just as a wee aside, the National in my opinion goes from strength to strength. There have been some excellent items recently and they have some fine writers. Last week's article by George Kerevan on how working class people right across Europe effectively stopped WW1 is outstanding]. Today's article is about disabled people, people who are learning-disabled in particular. The article says it straight up: The 'learning disabled' have much shorter lives than the rest of us: men live 13 years less than men without a disability. But the real shocker for me is that women with a learning disability live 20 years less than the general population.  I would like you to read this paragraph again, if you have the time. 20 years . That's right. It says that women with a learning disability live 20 years less than the rest of us. Since women tend to go to the doctor more than men, I would expect their medical problem...

These are empanadas. They're a great treat in Chile. My niece makes a great cheese empanada here in Glasgow. On our first visit to family in Chile, a friend pointed out: the further away you get from Santiago, the bigger the empanadas are. By the time you reach the countryside, you're going to be tucking into a huge empanada containing some olives, a boiled egg and a chicken drumstick. That's fine, but if you make the mistake of thinking this is lunch and have two, you're in for a shock: these are the hors d'oeuvres. The meal is still to come. I went to Sainsbury's last week and, feeling a bit peckish, decided to have some lunch. I have to say the choice was not exciting but I saw this toastie called 'Pigs Under Blankets' and decided to give it a whirl. It looked something like an empanada when it arrived but it didn't take me long to work out it was a very poor copy: bread with cranberry sauce slathered on it, and with slices of links, bits of ...

Friends of mine who live on islands or out in the country, in old houses with poor or no central heating, are amazed when they come to the mainland and find us southern softies lounging around the house in teeshirts in temperatures they consider positively Mediterranean. They'll be delighted to see this meme from Facebook - obviously posted by a parent - you know, the one who pays the bills! I keep my flat at a steady 22C, except in really cold spells when I turn the heating up to 24C. My cleaner clearly regards me as a cheapskate because she puts her heating up to 29C for the winter. My nephew thinks I'm wildly extravagant since he keeps his heating at 20C in the winter. But you'll notice we all have heating. I'll bet I'm the only one of those three who lived for a long time in houses with no heating. Just coal fires or electric heaters you carried with you from room to room. Maybe you don't remember ice gathering on the insides of the windows of your...

You have to know the UK is in trouble when the only person left making sense about Brexit is a stand-up comedian. Check out Nish Kumar on youtube after his appearance on the BBC's Question Time programme of 18 October 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na5RoTvELws No, I'm not being flippant about Brexit. What I am being is worried. The Conservative Party is in charge of Brexit, and Brexit has revealed once and for all just what the Conservative Party is like.  First of all, most of their leaders have shown themselves to be gutless cowards: Cameron, Osborne and Johnson, having landed the rest of us in the cack, are nowhere to be seen. One of the Tory grandees who led the Brexit campaign has even applied for naturalisation in France. (Man, I would be so happy if the French told Lord Lawson to sling his hook, but they won't because they're much nicer than I am).  The Tory Party leadership now consists of Theresa May and Jacob Rees-Mogg.  I'll pa...

I saw this photo in Facebook and I hope my old friend and colleague Bob McGoran doesn't mind me showing it to you. This is Bob getting ready for 'walking football.' It sounds like good fun - although I don't think the guys play in their slippers, as shown here. Bob has always been a football guy. I am not a sport person. The closest I ever got to sport was hill walking and yoga. But I respect other people's enthusiasm for kicking a ball, hitting a ball with a stick, or chasing a ball. Not to mention getting hurt by a ball while doing all of these things. The nearest I ever got to sport when I was a teacher was taking 'please-takes' with PE classes. I loved them. I always seemed to end up with classes of boys who definitely did not want to see me and would spend the first part of any please-take telling me how to organise the class so that they didn't have to spend the lesson sitting in a classroom. They were, of course, already in their PE kit -...

I've given up delivering for Glasgow libraries (specifically for Elder Park, Ibrox and Cardonald libraries) after 9 years. I've enjoyed my contact with so many customers over the years and I hope my library buddy Alex gets a new companion and keeps the service going. I'll still be a customer of Glasgow Libraries because they are still the best service in the world and their staff are second to none. But here's a question for you to ponder. Our library customers are mainly elderly. Some are disabled. How did they get the reading bug and how have they managed to keep their love of reading alive over many years? Some were people lucky enough to get an education and go on to college and earn a good living, but there are a lot who could never do any of that. These are what I would call the flowers that bloom unseen: clever people who mopped up every bit of learning offered to them but never got the opportunity to progress their learning. Some worked in factories or offic...

I decided we'd reached the bottom of the barrel in political terms when Judge Brett Kavanaugh used what was essentially his job interview with the US Senate to raise his voice, lie and cross-question a senator about her drinking habits when he had just been asked about his own. He got away with it. There are a few senators who may not be sleeping well right now. I hope so. But this wasn't the bottom of the barrel. There was more to come. First, Boris Johnson made a bid for the leadership of the UK Conservatives by raising his voice, lying and questioning the veracity of the UK Prime Minister at the Tory conference. No, I don't support Theresa May but I think there's a level of respect due to the holder of the top job in UK politics. However, Boris's bid for power seems to have fallen on stony ground. And still , we hadn't reached the bottom of the barrel. Theresa May then made a complete idiot of herself at the Tory conference. As if dancing onstage wasn...

I left the internet about three weeks ago. I spent very little time on Facebook and didn't blog at all.  I'll bet nobody even noticed - and no, this is not a request for validation. In fact, it did me a lot of good in terms of stress. I'd really had it with Brexit, the Tory Party, Boris Johnson, Scottish Labour, etc. I was even pissed off with the Scottish Greens. Still am, in fact. Their FB page is hoachin wi crazies. They know perfectly well what the political agenda of the party is and yet they bang on about badgers, veganism, animal cruelty, useless teachers, schools that don't support autistic weans - you name it, there's a Green member raging about it online. But it was a well-meaning supporter of independence (same as I am) who finished me off. He had the idea of setting up a FB page dedicated to demolishing the lies told about independence. So far, so good. I joined and posted a few comments, which people liked. (Well it was a small audience). Then the f...