As both Kenneth Fee and Peter D Wright are away this week, there are no restraining devices, so I can please myself, and take the rap when they get back!

This contribution from Christie H Grahame is symptomatic of what keeps happening to me, although I use Lotus Word Pro, and not Word; fonts keep changing of their own volition, and letters become bold, unasked. It is maybe an age thing, although I am 20 years younger than Christie!

I sit before the P. C. Screen
And wonder what I’ve done,
For there the Work that’s to be seen
Is not the Work begun.
I only took my eyes away
For just a bloody tick
And now it all seems gone astray
To make me bloody sick.
 

Whoever programmed this Machine
Was born with evil mind,
As sometimes Spaces quite unseen
Will leave the Text behind.
And Double Spacing jumps in where
A Single Space should be,
As if some evil Sprite in there
Should wish to bugger me.
 

No matter how I concentrate
And finger Keys with care,
Two Letters seem to infiltrate
To make a one a pair.
So then I use the Delete Key
To make the two a one,
And find it’s Over-riding me
As if in bloody fun.
 

Heading a Paragraph in Red
To carry on in Black,
I find a little way ahead
The Red is coming back.
I had not moused to get Format
Or change the bloody Font,
The P. C. had decided that
I’d have to bloody want.
 

Then all at once to my surprise
The Screen began to clear,
And clarified all other tries
As Words and Text appear.
I quickly moused to bring up File
And just as quickly next,
I moused to Print in Normal Style
The clearly pictured Text.
 

I breathed a sigh of pure relief
Of what I thought as facts,
To make me safe in my belief
That I could now relax.
How wrong I was to even think
The evil Sprite was done,
The Printer had run out of ink
And I had bloody none.

Christie Grahame August 2002

BE LABOUR VOTE LIBERAL

The recent reiteration of the Liberals’ intentions after the 2003 Scottish Parliament elections highlights this total lack of judgment. The Scottish Liberal leader, Jim Wallace, has again stated that the Liberals will not do a deal with the SNP after the elections; his reasoning is that arithmetically this will not be a runner. So, based on opinion polls now, nine months before the election, he blithely hands away his party’s bargaining power, and does not seem to be aware of what he is doing! The Liberal Holy Grail, and indeed the only recognisable Liberal policy is that of proportional representation, and having connived with Labour to stitch up the voting system in the Scottish parliament elections so that it would be very difficult for the SNP to obtain an outright majority, he now compounds the error, and intends Scotland to remain a one-party state. Those who doubt the preceding sentence need only remember that it was publicly admitted at the time by the General Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party that this was the main aim of the voting system; the then General Secretary has now metamorphosed into the First Minister. Yes, indeed, it was Jack McConnell who achieved that result, and who is now in a position of strength, assisted by the naive Mr Wallace.

What a coincidence that at the time of writing (Wed 28 Aug) the quote on my desk diary is "There’s a sucker born every minute" Phineas Barnum.

HONOUR AMONG THIEVES?

Well, it is not quite that, but close; we now know that Peterhead Prison has been reprieved, but no official announcement has been made; Mr Wallace says he is not making any announcement until Parliament has re-convened as he reports to Parliament and they should be told first, but Labour is leaking the story all over the place. And while Mr Wallace is busy telling everyone how honourable he is, he is being castigated by all and sundry for not making his decision public! How very predictable.

As stated in the previous article, the Liberals worship proportional representation, and see themselves as champions who will deliver this for local government; they saw themselves as abolishing student tuition fees, when they merely deferred them until the student finished university, and they also helped defeat the Executive on the payment for the decommissioning of fishing boats, only to change their tune in the vote re-run the following week! Before they pat themselves too lavishly on the back on proportional representation, there is a cautionary tale, when dealing with the Labour Party; in the years preceding the May 1997 General Election, Labour stated, swore, averred and generally overkilled the mantra that under no circumstances would they raise taxes. They were absolutely paranoid about this, because they blame their failure to win the 1992 General Election on taxes; they knew people hated taxes, and whatever fine sounding sentiments the punters might utter, they would vote against taxes in the polling booths. This was the Labour Holy Grail! Come the Referendum for a Scottish Parliament, first there was not going to be one, then there would be one question, then two and then, because Mohammed Sarwar MP put it forward, three questions! They finally settled on two questions, and the second one was whether the Parliament would be able to raise taxes! This was put in to fail, and the Scots flummoxed Labour by voting "YES!"

And so to proportional representation, with Scotland’s legions of Labour councillors bitterly opposed to losing their meal tickets, and the Labour Party Executive also saying "No"; so what does the First Minister Machiavelli McConnell do? He says that councillors losing their seats due to proportional representation will not be compensated for loss of office, as the public would not stand for it, as if what the public would stand for has ever been important to the Labour hegemony. By this "principled" statement, he has dramatically hardened Labour opposition to proportional representation, and what can we say about the Liberals and their hopes? -

"Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play.

No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond today."

And what has caused this particular stushie? Well, one elementary Watson is the MSP for Glasgow Cathcart, and on a public platform in Glasgow he was very vocal about his opposition to the plans to revamp the Health Service in Greater Glasgow, which means going down from five accident and emergency units to two. Nothing wrong in that, as he was representing the views of his constituents, but the plans had been approved by the Health Minister, Malcolm Chisholm, and were official policy; as a member of the Scottish Cabinet, Mr/Lord Watson is bound by the code of collective responsibility and was therefore very publicly rubbishing his own party and government’s decision.

The natural choice for a man of principle would be to resign and continue the fight; as it is Mr/Lord Watson has made his public statement against the plan, and when the subject is debated in the Scottish Parliament, he will be voting for the plan. He sees no contradiction in this position, no doubt valuing his ministerial Omega more than his constituents. Lord Watson was ennobled (a king can mak a belted knight) after the 1997 elections, as a consolation prize; his previous seat had disappeared, due to boundary changes, and he first won the selection for Glasgow Govan, but after much acrimony and allegations of vote manipulation, the re-run of the selection process resulted in Mohammed Sarwar becoming the candidate and subsequently the MP. He was then elected as a member of the Scottish Parliament and when he won the ballot to present a Private Members bill in that Parliament, he chose the Protection of Wild Mammals Bill; this banned fox-hunting, which must be have been a serious problem affecting the health of his constituents in Glasgow Cathcart. He has also written two books on Dundee United Football Club, but some of my best friends are Dundee United supporters.

He is not alone in confusing principle and political expediency; Sam Galbraith, one time MP/MSP for Strathkelvin & Bearsden, and a former Minister for Education, has now described opponents of the plans (many of his former colleagues in the medical profession and the Labour Party) as "neanderthals", but we shouldn’t take his statements too seriously. At the time of the exams crisis with the SQA, Mr Galbraith said that this was nothing to do with him, and refused to resign so irresponsibility would appear to be endemic in the Labour Cabinet.

An apt description of Liberal Party policies.

Business Scotsman, Monday 26 Aug 02, page 20, News Digest "Hilton Group, the hotel and gambling business, will this week announce a £350 million sale and leaseback involving part of its hotel estate. See Page 19.

Business Scotsman, Monday, 26 Aug 02, Page 19 headline "Hilton set for £300 million sale and leaseback." Price dropped quick

Or maybe not, as I read it in the Scotsman. Many Happy Returns to Sir Sean, whenever his birthday is, and however old he is.

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em
And little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.

Read all about the cyber-girl, Seonaid, who is now the official voice of the Scottish Executive web-site, and cost £155,000, and thought I would have a look at it as her picture looked very New Labour-cloned. I could not access it through RealPlayer Basic.

My RealPlayer Basic works fine with the input from Peter and Marilyn Wright; I get more sense there as well, and no lies detected yet!

During a visit by the Queen Mother to Tunisia in 1961, she refused to pay allowances to the royal yacht’s bandsmen and other staff; the total amount involved was £78.6s; the College of Piping in Glasgow has now complained that none of the pipers or bandsmen who played at the Queen Mother’s funeral received any honours.

Well, if she wouldn’t pay the piper when she was alive how could it be expected when she was deid?

A new web-site of the Tories, by the Tories against the Tories is causing concern, as it is attacking prospective candidates as they obtain approval.

As might be expected, terms like "Not the brightest light bulb in the pack" are not pretentious enough for today’s Tories; the in expression appears to be "Not necessarily the sharpest nail file in the beauty salon."

Puzzling over two comments; Iain Gray, the Enterprise Minister says that a major cause of the recession here is the weak international environment. Helen Liddell, Secretary of State for Scotland, says that Scotland cannot remain immune from that environment. Editorial in the Scotsman thinks they should get their story straight.

While it is normally anathema for me to defend any Labour politician, even if it is Helen Liddell making her weekly remark, I can see no basic difference in the comments; I worry that I am becoming reasonable. (See Synopsis: Liddell - Lady of Leisure.)

The Labour Minister for Trade (Westminster) is considering legislation against companies which use Enron-style off-balance sheet entries to hide their true trading position.

Off-balance sheet entries which the Parliament’s Select Treasury Committee are looking at include: Network Rail £21 billion, Channel Tunnel Rail Link £3 billion, London Underground £15 billion and the initial capital element of PFI debt £35 billion. These are all classed as private debts by the Treasury, but it is exactly the same kind of accounting scam; they are all government debts. Pluck first the beam from thine own eye.........

SYNOPSIS

ONLINE PETITION:

Here's a quick way to register your protest on behalf of the Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, who's been sentenced to death by stoning. It's due to take place after she has weaned her baby daughter.

Please go to http://www.mertonai.org/amina/ and click on "sign our letter" to support Amnesty International's campaign. Please also show your support by forwarding this link.

ANDREW WILSON CALLS FOR QUANGO INVESTIGATION
Wed 28 Aug 02

Shadow enterprise minister Andrew Wilson tonight demanded an urgent independent inquiry into the revelation that Scottish Enterprise staff were instructed to engage in overtly political activity. A BBC Scotland investigation has discovered that Scottish Enterprise management issued instructions to staff to use the company's resources to tackle Tory criticism. An e-mail entitled, Conservative Comment for Action, listed eight different recommendations for the campaign. Mr Wilson said: "This email is simply unacceptable and is indicative of a level of political engagement by civil servants that is totally wrong. At a time when Scotland is in a state of economic crisis it is to be regretted that officials and others are being distracted from dealing with the big issues on hand into such a needless political spat with a fringe political party."

SNP ASKS SCHOOLS TO USE NEW FERRY SERVICE
Wed 28 Aug 02

Education officials are being urged to use Scotland's first direct ferry link to the Continent for school trips to cut the time pupils travel on congested roads when going abroad. The SNP said using the Rosyth to Zeebrugge link, launched in May, instead of services from English ports could reduce round-trip journey times on coaches for some schoolchildren by more than 16 hours. Kenny MacAskill, the party's shadow transport minister, launched a paper in Inverness claiming the new ferry would particularly benefit pupils in the Highlands who face lengthy bus trips to get to ferry ports such as Hull and Portsmouth. Mr MacAskill said: "The Rosyth European ferry is not a Fife but an all Scotland project. It offers opportunities socially, economically and environmentally for the Highlands and it needs to be supported. We should therefore ensure that school trips to Europe which leave from the Highlands use the ferry, as the alternative is to travel further by road." Using the ferry for school trips would boost the service economically and help it integrate into Scotland's transport system, he claimed.

SNP CONCERN OVER OFFENDERS PAY PLAN
Wed 28 Aug 02

Teenage criminals could be paid for on-job training instead of going to jail, under radical proposals. The plan would be see young offenders aged 16 to 17, who fail to pay fines imposed on them by the courts, paid the minimum wage to carry out employment training and community service. The SNP have warned it may make criminals think they are being rewarded for their wrong-doing. Michael Matheson, the SNP's deputy justice spokesman, said: "Our concern would be that, to some young criminals, it could look as if crime does pay after all."

SNP SEIZE ON WAITING LIST U-TURN
Tue 27 Aug 02

Opposition politicians tonight seized on a decision by health minister Malcolm Chisholm to dump deferred hospital waiting lists. SNP leader John Swinney, who has regularly battled with First Minister Jack McConnell in the Scottish Parliament over deferred lists, claimed victory for what he described as an Executive U-turn. "Jack McConnell and Malcolm Chisholm have finally had to accept that their use of the deferred waiting list as a means of keeping patients off the waiting list figures has to stop," said Mr Swinney. "They have been repeatedly caught fiddling the figures over closed lists, deferred lists, and reclassified lists, yet for month after month they denied there was anything wrong. They deliberately distorted the facts and misled both Parliament and the people of Scotland." Earlier this year, a report from the auditor general found a large increase in patients on deferred waiting lists, which should only be for those not immediately available for treatment. Unlike the main waiting list, the deferred list is not covered by a guarantee that the maximum wait for inpatient day treatment will be 12 months.

TORNESS PROBLEMS "WORSE THAN FEARED"
Tue 27 Aug 02

Problems at the Torness nuclear power plant are greater than first feared, according to reports today. A blade on a giant metal cooling fan, which spin at 3000 revolutions per minute, broke off at the power station near Dunbar in May this year - forcing one reactor to shut down. Experts have now reportedly found the fans are riddled with tiny cracks. A nuclear expert warned the fans could shatter, with fragments crashing into the reactor's protective casing. SNP environment spokesman Bruce Crawford said: "Nuclear power is an inherently dangerous industry. It is high time these things were shut down." British Energy shares have already slumped to record lows amid fears of a loss of income following the shutdown of a reactor at its Torness power plant.

SNP CHIEF LOSES THE PLOT AFTER BREAK-IN
Tue 27 Aug 02

A novel being written by a leading SNP politician to help win Scots over to the cause of Independence has been stolen in a break-in. SNP treasurer Jim Mather, who spends much of his time touring Scotland's boardrooms to persuade business leaders of the case for Independence, and his student son Dougal hit on the idea of a book to fire Scots with national fervour. They want to publish the book on Tartan Day, April 6, next year - just a month before the Scottish Parliament elections. But the project has been dealt a major blow when thieves broke into Dougal's flat and stole his laptop with 150,000 words of the novel stored in it. Dougal also lost three years' worth of work towards his history degree. Jim Mather today said the novel was intended to make the economic arguments for Independence more accessible to a wider audience.

ECONOMIC WARNING TO SCOTLAND
Sun 26 Aug 02

Scotland could become a poorer country than Greece or Portugal within the next 50 years, according to economists. The Centre for Economics and Business Research said the country needs more entrepreneurs and tax incentives to encourage companies and investment. The experts also said there should be greater deregulation, allowing businesses to flourish without the burden of red tape. The economists said Scotland suffers from a "lack of entrepreneurship culture" and they urged Scottish banks to offer more support to business start-ups. SNP economy spokesman Andrew Wilson said: "Scotland's economy is in recession, manufacturing is in crisis and we have a Scottish Executive that is constrained because of the lack of financial powers at its disposal and the lack of ambition that it has for Scotland. Scotland's complacent Labour establishment needs to wake up to economic reality. It is only with financial independence and a focus on placing Scotland's economy at a competitive advantage to the rest of the UK and Europe will we be able to reverse a mediocre economic performance that has slipped into crisis."

The Government is working on a secret plan to rescue British Energy, the nuclear power giant, whose financial difficulties are threatening to turn the UK's biggest power generator into the next Railtrack. A team within the Department of Trade and Industry have been working on "Project Blue", a plan to step in and take control of British Energy before it faces financial ruin. The problem is particularly embarrassing for the Government after being forced to renationalise Railtrack in all but name after it ran out of money, and the growing cash crisis in Nats, the privatised air traffic control service. The service is struggling to cope with technical problems and a drop in air traffic in the wake of 11 September. British Energy is now losing around 4 pounds for every megawatt hour of electricity it sells. Its problems have been added to because it has had to close Torness nuclear station in Scotland after an accident - a move that could cost the group 80 million pounds. SNP environment spokesman Bruce Crawford said the reports were a "very worrying development". "It's very clear that nuclear power isn't competitive in the short and medium term," he said. "The Government appears to have its own agenda for supporting nuclear power. But this current crisis underlines the need to press ahead with support for the emerging renewable energy sector. With the potential for a massive expansion of renewable energy from wind, wave and tidal power - combined with output from traditional sources - Scotland is in a perfect position to develop a balanced and sustainable non-nuclear energy strategy. It's time that Scotland's renewable energy potential was turned into action. We must say no to nuclear and start investing now in renewables. That would be a better use of taxpayers money than a bail-out for British Energy."

LIDDELL FACES FLAK AS "LADY OF LEISURE"
Sun 25 Aug 02

Scottish Secretary Helen Liddell was embroiled in fresh controversy today over her workload after it emerged that she carries out only one official public engagement every week. The Scottish Mail on Sunday revealed Mrs Liddell has intended only 57 public functions in her role as Secretary of State, prompting renewed calls from opposition politicians for her position to be scrapped. MP Pete Wishart, the SNP's Westminster whip, said: "Helen Liddell and the Scotland Office are luxuries that Scotland cannot afford. It is clear that the job of Scottish Secretary is not even a part-time one. It is a vast waste of public resources better spent on health and education in Scotland, instead of being used to keep Helen Liddell in a style to which she has become accustomed." Figures show that, in the next financial year, gross administration costs for the Scotland Office, which looks after a few remaining areas of Scottish governance post devolution, will be over 8 million pounds, supporting a staff of 130.

The leaders of Scotland's four main parties have backed a campaign condemning religious hatred. The Daily Record has joined forces with the Nil by Mouth campaign against sectarianism to draft a pledge condemning religious hatred. The move follows widespread condemnation of a sectarian death threat which drove Celtic's Neil Lennon to pull out of the Northern Ireland football team on Wednesday. SNP leader John Swinney was quick to pledge his support today. He said: "I am proud to associate my party with campaigns to tackle sectarianism. Only last year, I invited Cara Henderson, the founder of Nil by Mouth, to speak at our party conference. Sectarianism in all its forms has to be tackled and the SNP will be at the forefront of the struggle. I congratulate the Daily Record on their fight." Nil by Mouth was set up after the sectarian murder of 16-year-old Mark Scott in 1995. Mark had his throat cut in a busy Glasgow street as he walked home from Parkhead wearing a Celtic top.

YOUNGSTERS GATHER FOR PARLIAMENT DEBATE
Sat 24 Aug 02

Around 130 young Scots were gathering in the Scottish Parliament chamber today to debate a range of issues from minority languages to sexuality. This weekend's meeting of the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), which first convened in 1999, is the first full session to be held on the Mound. Today's business was including a motion opposing the bar on homosexuals from giving blood and one backing the promotion of Gaelic, Scots, Doric and Norn. Other motions today include a call for a change in the media's approach to young people and another supporting a ban on smoking in public places. Issues being debated on Sunday include corporal punishment, the treatment asylum seekers and the role of religious schools. Speaking ahead of the event, SNP shadow parliament minister Fiona Hyslop said it provided an "ideal opportunity" for the young people to experience what goes on within the debating chamber. "Young people, from all walks of life, have a lot to contribute to Scottish politics and I am delighted they are being given this opportunity," Ms Hyslop said. The 228-member SYP meets three times a year with members, aged from 14 to 25, elected in three categories: two per Holyrood constituency, two per national voluntary youth organisation and by self-nomination at the organisation's general meetings.