The Herald

The Diary

What's the story? BBC Scotland kiddies' fave Balamory won a Bafta children's TV award in London on Sunday. Unsurprisingly, the cast, pictured right, arrived at Stansted airport the next morning in a dreadfully fragile condition only minutes before departure time. Balamory producer Helen Docherty had safely tucked their metallic trophy inside an empty cardboard box. When X-rayed, it provoked an instant alert. The cast's mortification at delaying fellow passengers then worsened. "It's OK," a se...

Mr Blunkett's Professional and Private Lives

IN an ideal world, every person has the right for his/her private life to remain private. But we do not live in an ideal world and so anyone may suffer from an invasion of privacy. This is most likely to involve public figures who are easily recognised nationally and internationally and who are closely monitored by the media. Unfortunately, Mr Blunkett's privacy has been breached, revealing that his private life has apparently not been above reproach and, as a result, has impinged on both his...

New Deepcut Review; Minister's Statement Fails to Reassure the Public

To date, the unexplained deaths of four recruits at Deepcut army barracks have been the subject of five reports, three coroners' inquests and an ongoing Commons defence select committee investigation. To that list can now be added a further review, announced by Adam Ingram, the defence minister, yesterday. Frankly, it stands as much chance of establishing what caused the deaths of privates Sean Benton, 20, Cheryl James 18, Geoff Gray, 17, and James Collinson, also 17, between 1995 and 2002 as...

Devilish Instrument

THE key sentence in Elisabeth Mahoney's appraisal of that devilish instrument, the mobile phone, is: "Why don't we just quietly focus on each other?" or, one might add, just be quiet, civilised human beings (Magazine, November 27). Periodically, I return by train to my home village in Sutherland. What was once one of the world's most sublime rail journeys, from Inverness to Wick, is now a hellish endurance test. Immediately one thankfully takes leave of that most unlovely of so-called cities,...

Gha Rents Will Not Rise Above Rate of Inflation

Brian Finch is right to point out the double negative in our recent tenant consultation newsletter (Letters, November 29). The proposition should have read: "I agree with a rent increase of no more than the rate of inflation." Glasgow Housing Association would like to once again confirm that rent for our tenants will not be increased by more than the rate of RPI inflation until at least March 2008, in line with our promise made at the time of transfer, and not 2007 as Mr Finch asserts. We hav...

No Financial Help

ON November 26 The Herald published a letter with incorrect information about the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Martin Foulner writes of Carnegie Endowment's "sponsorship" and financial support of Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko. This is wrong; the endowment has given no financial support to Mr Yushchenko. Carmen MacDougall, vice-president for communications, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue,

A High-Gain but Low-Cost Housing Strategy

Melanie Reid (November 30) describes the rural second-homes problem with admirable clarity, but strangely omits to identify community ownership and reformed planning law as the way forward. The bottom line is that there is no land shortage in Scotland. We have vast empty spaces averaging four acres each - that's three football fields per woman, man and child. The problem is that current ownership patterns concentrate land in the hands of those who capitalise from scarcities of their own avari...

Identity Cards

R B DAVIS (November 29) writes in favour of ID cards that "those of us with nothing to hide have nothing to fear". And are those of us who advance this particular argument so deaf to the echoes from history that they really can't hear how chilling it sounds? Every time someone comes out with it, I grow even more determined to carry an identity card only some considerable time after Hell has frozen over. Maggie Craig, Smiddy Hoose, Ruthven, by Huntly.

Inside Holyrood

Glasgow and Oulu

Privatisation and Prison Profits

THE projection, rather than prediction, that Scotland's prison population could reach 10,000 within a decade really does give considerable cause for concern (November 27). To already have the highest per capita prison population in Europe, along with the worst health, highest number of teenage pregnancies, one of the worst hard- drug problems, homeless problems, murder rates, suicide rates, etc, is growing testimony to the bankruptcy of successive Tory and New Labour administrations. What you...

Recognise That the Situation in Iraq Is Improving

THE situation in Iraq is an unhappy one, and I've never before read anything about it that raised so much as a wry smile. But suddenly The Herald is full of letters that provoke an outright belly laugh. First we had Tom Park (November 27) complaining about the tactics used by the Black Watch on their successful night raid recently. Mr Park thinks they should have marched into the area in broad daylight with pipes playing. Aye, and maybe they should have worn red coats, too, just to help their...

Free Therapy?

Time for Scots to Walk Tall Self-Belief the Key If We Are to Thrive in Today's World

Before the day is out, someone will have calculated how many extra nurses or hip replacements could be purchased for the fairly modest investment the Scottish Executive is prepared to make in its new think-tank, the Centre for Confidence and Well-Being. The statistic will then be used to construct an outburst of synthetic outrage about using taxpayers' money to generate "hot air" when it could be put to tackling waiting lists or staffing busy wards. The flaw in this argument is that without s...

Molly Weir; Vivacious Television and Film Actress and Writer

The long-running performers - Logan, Milroy, Fulton - have gone, turning the lights out after them, leaving us sitting bereft in the stalls. Now the diminutive Molly Weir of boundless energy is the latest departure. But she has the last laugh, with a remark worthy of Mae West. "I was offered roles in One Foot in the Grave. One of the parts I didn't get was because they wanted someone a bit dull - and they reckoned I was too vivacious." There were two girls and two boys in the Weir family in t...

Martin Currie Attracts (Pounds) 2.7bn in New Business

MARTIN Currie, the fund manager, yesterday hailed a "record financial year" after notching up a 38% increase in revenues. The Edinburgh-based spec-ialist investment house raked in (pounds) 2.7bn of new business in the year to September 30, 2004, taking its funds under management to (pounds) 7.7bn, a rise of some 31% in 12 months.

Low-Key Debut for Microemissive

Big Food Cuts Price for Baugur

Kingston Promises Dividend

Unique Role for Enterprise