The Herald

Policeman's Computer 'Had Child Sex Images'

A police officer had thousands of sexual images on his computer, including pictures of child pornography, a court heard yesterday. Hamish Tocher, a 44-year-old sergeant with Tayside Police, denies making the images at his Dundee home between March 16 and June 14, 2002.

He Was Unpopular but He Was Right

Ten years on, the legacy of Fergus McCann's arrival at Celtic is there for all to see. I don't think we should indulge in too much messiah language in the context of McCann, as some are wont to do, yet look at Martin O'Neill, at the modern Celtic, at Seville last season, and at regular 60,000 crowds inside a breathtaking stadium. Absolutely on a par with the influence of Jock Stein, the trigger for it all was the McCann revolution at Celtic.

Hundreds of Schools Close in Heavy Snow Storms

SNOW storms continued to cause chaos in the north and north east of Scotland yesterday but gave ski operators hopes of a bumper weekend. Heavy snow, and driving winds which whipped up drifts, caused severe disruption on roads across the area. Some motorists abandoned their cars and walked in an effort to reach their destinations.

Primary Pupils to Be Screened in Tb Scare; Staff Member Is Diagnosed with Disease

MORE than 130 pupils at a primary school are to be screened for TB as a result of a member of staff being diagnosed with the disease. Testing will begin over the next few weeks at Albert Primary School in North Biggar Road, Airdrie, Lanarkshire.

Pentagon Bans Low-Tech Mines but Stockpiles 'Smart' Devices

THE US military is to scrap three million landmines after 2010, but will continue to use 15 million "smart" devices which can be programmed to deactivate or self-destruct within days. The US army also has 10.4 million smaller anti-personnel mines used to protect infantry positions in hostile territory and which it has exempted from the proposed ban.

He Was a Powerful Man Who Suddenly, Sadly Lost His Nerve; Henry Mcleish Resigned As First Minister Three Years Ago, Alone in a Political Feeding Frenzy. His Autobiography Reveals More About His Personality Than He Might Think. By Murray Ritchie

There is a dark theme to which Henry McLeish returns repeatedly in his self-serving but revealing autobiography - his own fateful loss of self-confidence. The trouble is he never quite gets round to admitting it. He repeatedly skirts the problem with observations such as: "I had not appreciated the magnitude of the job . . .", and he blames the attention of a media with an "attack mentality". He dots his book with little telling asides about his performance in the biggest job in Scottish poli...

Bird Flu and Attacks On Research

IN the past week The Herald has carried two items of great importance. The first was the warning that if bird flu mutates to become infectious from human to human we could be in danger of an epidemic of the proportions last seen in 1919, when Spanish flu killed around 30 million people worldwide. Studying this possibility is very urgent since vaccines would take months to organise and prepare. The crucial research to gain this knowledge can only be done in primates. The second was the decisio...

Blair's Body Language Says It All

During this week it has been shown again that the old adage, "Actions speak louder than words", holds true. Three actions have been presented to British voters and the world which are of major importance because the government and Mr Blair in particular failed to act on two of them. The first and most important act was the failure of the government to prosecute the former GCHQ intelligence officer, Katharine Gun; this in itself was an admission that her "leak" was true. The second act was Cla...

If It Struts Like a Duce, Then Heck . . .

LABOUR Party? Fascist? Moi? Can I assure Alex Gallagher (Letters, February 25) that I can still see signs in Edinburgh Labour of the party of Wilson and Callaghan? True, in his own neck of the woods, North Ayrshire, it looks more like the party of Ulbricht and Kadar. But fascist - no. But how about Blair and his circle and the New Labour "Project"? Neo-fascist? Independent organisations like the universities, the BBC, trade unions, professions have been marginalised, sidelined and intimidated...

Integrity, Integrity, Integrity: What Blair Will Need to Win a Third Term

INVERNESS holds a special place in the history of Tony Blair and the Labour Party. It was there, at Scottish Labour's conference in March 1995, that the young leader won a landmark victory that strengthened him for every other trial to follow. A few months earlier he had shaken the party to its socialist core with his intention to ditch Clause 4. Scotland, birthplace of the party's founder and keeper of its radical soul, was to be the first major test of that plan. He passed. Yesterday, almos...

Fence for Libdems

Mmr Inquiry

Joan McAlpine's article on MMR and the role of researchers in questioning (PC) orthodoxy was heart-felt (February 26). Earlier Kepler and Galileo got into hot water over their view that the earth went round the sun, and the earth was not the centre of the universe. More recently Dr Arpad Pustai was sacked in Aberdeen for his research on the effects of GM food on the digestion and genetic integrity of mammals. In the 1950s DDT was a new safe wonder insecticide. Later we discover that it accumu...

Motorists Who Behave As If They Rule the World

Practically every day I watch incredulously as increasingly aggressive motorists (often on mobile phones) run red traffic signals, cut off pedestrians trying to cross streets, swerve maniacally to avoid speed bumps and generally behave as if they rule the world. But gosh how they moan. Apparently they shouldn't be fined if caught speeding by cameras; nor should they suffer any punishment when flouting parking restrictions. If roads (and pavements, for that matter) are in miserable shape, then...

In Defence of the Excellent Pubs to Be Found in Scotland

I agree with much of what Joe Fattorini has to say about Scotland's "binge drinking culture" - central Glasgow at the weekend is not a pretty sight after dark - but one of his recurring themes is that our pubs are all dark Hogarthian dens full of vodka-crazed inebriates, which he compares very unfavourably to the allegedly splendid drinking haunts of Italy or France (February 26). What pubs is this poor man visiting, for heaven's sake? Not the fabulous bars of Edinburgh's Old Town, to be sure...

Celebrity Circus

Angelina's carrying a torch for the Olympics Angelina Jolie, the actress will swop her Lara Croft outfit for a tracksuit when she becomes one of the final torchbearers at the Athens Olympics this summer. She has agreed to run one of the last legs of the relay in Athens, the day before the lighting of the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony on August 13. Jolie, 28, has been a goodwill ambassador for the UN refugee agency since 2001. As Lara Croft, she filmed scenes on the Greek island of ...

All About Living the Life of Riley; the Famous Pout, the Distinctive Nose, Those Pretty Eyes . . . There's No Hiding the Provenance of the Latest Model to Take to the Catwalks. But, with the Eyes of the World Upon This 14-Year-Old, How Will She Survive the Glare of the Public?

Riley Keough is in the odd position of being extraordinarily famous, even though hardly anyone knows her name. It's the face you recognise. In fact, it seems logical that Keough would start off with a career in modelling. She doesn't need to do much more than stand there with that distinctive stare, and the name of her grandfather - Elvis Presley - will do the rest. Minimum effort. Maximum media interest. Career under way. Fourteen years old, and already tabloids the world over can barely hid...

From the Herald Archives

25 YEARS AGO SPECULATION on likely bidders for Iona was subdued last night as the "up for sale" notice was announced. The Duke of Argyll said: "I'm very sad about the affair. It is with reluctance that Iona is to be sold." Mr Ronald Ireland of chartered surveyors Smiths Gore said: "I wouldn't be surprised if the Dutch are interested in buying it."

Russell Hunter; Actor Who Was Best Known As Lonely in Callan

For fans of 1970s TV noir, Callan, the image of Russell Hunter will forever remain as Lonely, the seedy, haunted looking grass who the series' eponymous hero, played by Edward Woodward, leaned on in more ways than one. In real life, Hunter could not have been more different. A gregarious bon viveur, raconteur and lover of good wine, he possessed the steely intellectual depth of an autodidact, which he applied rigorously to a stage and screen career spanning more than half a century.

In Memoriam

Brief lives: those we have lost in the past seven days John Charles Footballer, born December 27, 1931; died on February 21, 2004. The "gentle giant" of Welsh football, Charles was a teenage star at Leeds United before going on to become one of the greatest players ever to wear the black and white stripes of Juventus.

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