Alan McIntyre
What the Craig Ferguson
story tells us
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Andrew Hook
deconstructs a job ad
Barbara Millar
was sacked by VisitScotland
at the last minute
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Rear Window
Professor David Daiches
Blair Atholl, Travel Correspondent of The Midgie, reports from a B&B in Broadford:
The Isle of Skye has been named one of Europe’s top island destinations, leaving Sicily in the shade, by a posh magazine called Conde Nast. Jim Mather, Scotland’s tourism minister, has praised the island’s ‘picturesque, evocative and timeless’ qualities.
Travel industry sources claim that the world-wide publicity over the grounding of the navy’s most powerful attack sub off Skye will enhance the island’s appeal. One, who did not wish to be named, told me: ‘Not only is it the wettest holiday destination in the world, it’s now officially the most dangerous. This will open up a whole new niche market in 2011.’
Trust Blair Atholl to see the sunny side of even the tiniest nuclear incident.
Piper Donna MacCulloch is delighted that a tune she played for Princess Anne’s visit to Eigg is to be entered into the royal family’s private book of pipe tunes. Donna herself is said to be ‘shell-shocked’ – as the Midgie fully expects anyone in Eigg to be.
Walter Humes
They riot in France. Here we only mutter.
Watching the protests in France in response to President Sarkozy’s plans to increase the retirement age, and comparing them to the so-far limited reaction to the more extensive welfare reforms announced in the Westminster government’s comprehensive spending review, I wondered what had happened to the tradition of political disobedience in this country.
There is, of course, an honourable history of direct action in Britain, including the suffragettes, the Jarrow marchers, the poll tax ‘refuseniks’, and the work-in on the Clyde led so successfully by Jimmy Reid. But despite this, and despite the prediction by some trade union leaders that soon thousands would be marching on the streets, my initial thought was that most people in Britain – and Scotland is no exception – are just so apathetic and cynical about politics that the chances of much in the way of visible protest (as distinct from private muttering) are slight.
I was reminded of an article which the Scottish novelist Andrew O’Hagan published in the Guardian last year. He was referring specifically to the English working classes but his analysis could apply equally to Scotland. Deploring what he saw as their debased condition, he remarked on how they seemed ‘so quiescent, so demoralised, so drunk, so fearful of outsiders, so drawn to fantasy and spite and so lacking in purpose as a social group’. This, it should be stressed, is the view of a writer who was brought up in a tough working-class environment in the west of Scotland and who has written powerfully and disturbingly about it (in, for example, his novel ‘Be Near Me’). It would not be hard to develop O’Hagan’s analysis by linking it to the undemanding diet which people are fed on television and in tabloid newspapers, the failure of the educational system to close significantly the achievement gap between rich and poor, and the consumerist culture which creates the illusion that happiness is something that can be bought on a credit card. Putting all these elements together, the likelihood of effective political activism seems distinctly remote.
It would be easy to develop this into a doomsday scenario, in which there is no possibility of resistance. But it is important to remind ourselves that awareness of what is going on is the first step in bringing about change.
Prior to his retirement Walter Humes held professorships at the universities of Aberdeen, Strathclyde and West of Scotland. He is now a visiting professor of education at the University of Stirling.
