The Herald

Alex Biggar; Managing Director of Eponymous Family Business

Alexander Robertson Biggar was born in Glasgow on February 4, 1916, the son of John and Ina Biggar, music merchants of Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. Alex's early education was unusual in that he was always proud to boast that he had gone to a "Girls" school (the kindergarten of Park School for Girls) before attending Glasgow Academy for the rest of his education. In 1932, Alex joined his father in the family business Biggar's of Glasgow, established by his grandfather in 1867, and it was not l...

Bill Jackson

Bill Jackson was first and foremost a teacher, in secondary schools in Glasgow and in the English department at Jordanhill College, but best known as principal lecturer in English in Hamilton College of Education and a major contributor to the development of the teaching of English language in Scottish primary schools. Bill was appointed consultant to the Scottish Committee on Language Arts (SCOLA), part of the structure of the Consultative Committee on the Curriculum which advised the Scotti...

Back-Court Building Sneaks Its Way Through

IN ticking-off those of us with the temerity to criticise the planning system for our lack of understanding of the workings of Glasgow City Council's development and regeneration department, Councillor Robert MacBean makes some quite astonishing statements which I am afraid are at variance with my experience (Letters, April 23). He tells us that planning officers prepare reports on the facts of the matter. This may well be so, but the "statutory Glasgow city plan" seems to be a somewhat chang...

No Concern for the Lives of Ordinary Iraqis

IN your report on the ongoing Falluja conflict, you state that US marines "are wary of causing civilian casualties" in case it inflames the situation (April 29). Then in the same report you state that 600 civilians have been killed so far. If this is the US army holding back, then I dread to think what the impact of an all-out assault would be. In fact, the massacres committed by the US military in Falluja indicate quite clearly that there has been no restraint on their part. But it is embarr...

In Defence of the Scottish Parliament

Mike Russell says he no longer believes in "the grip of the party system" (April 28). If so, it must be the biggest conversion since St Paul. Much of the credit - or perhaps blame - for establishing a tight party-political approach in the previous parliament is due to Mike Russell personally. He clearly took over, with the fervour of a new convert, the Westminster principle that the job of the Opposition is to oppose anything and everything proposed by the executive. He was, of course, also S...

Downtrodden?

AT last, a letter (April 28) to balance the wave of "poor downtrodden" Catholic diatribes from a succession of individuals, the majority of whom, oddly enough, are at the top of their respective professions. My late father experienced discrimination as his chosen field was the heavy-engineering industry. I, too, once was aware of a sea- change in the atmosphere of a job interview immediately after the "what school did you go to" question was asked. In my father's case, this occurred over 40 y...

Lessons From a Land and Property Auction

Attending an auction of land and property at the Central Hotel was a different and a new experience this week. The range of successful bids ranged from (pounds) 940 to (pounds) 1.6m, from a short length of old railway track-bed to a disused police station with "location" and therefore development potential. There is clearly a lot of money "sloshing" round this system. It is, additionally, very clear, as your recent correspondents have suggested, that there are some developers out there more t...

The Population Crisis; Bold Action by First Minister Could Be the Solution

On one point there is broad agreement. Scotland's population is declining and ageing, trends that threaten economic prosperity and the delivery of front- line services. If there are too few economically active people in Scotland, who will pay the taxes to fund hospitals, schools and homes, and pay for doctors, nurses and teachers? Also, who will provide the services an expanding (in relative terms) ageing population calls upon? So much for the problem. Where disagreement has broken out is in ...

Scaremongering and the Eu

According to Alex Orr, the total lack of honest and neutral debate over the EU and EU constitution is leading to xenophobic and anti-EU propaganda (Letters, April 29). This is entirely true but it would be incorrect to assume that misinformation and scaremongering emanate solely from the anti-EU camp; Europhiles and those with a vested interest in the EU machine are equally guilty. Only this week Romano Prodi, the president of the EU Commission, was indulging in his own scaremongering, announ...

Slopping Out

Time for a New Beginning Eu Gravy Train Shows No Sign of Hitting Buffers

Gravy train. The expression dates from the 1920s. Then, Europe was between two world wars. After the second, a grand project was embarked upon to ensure that the continent was never again engulfed by conflagration. Peace, prosperity and stability were to be shared in a common enterprise, the European Union. Tomorrow, it will embark on the next stage of delivering these goals when 10 former Soviet bloc countries join the club, taking membership to 25. What should be a day of celebration is, ho...

Artworks That Go to the Wall; Paintings That Will Last Only a Few Weeks Are Among the Best in Richard Wright's Show. By Moira Jeffrey

For many years, I've been forgetting to take photographs. A major family event will pass by, or a two-week holiday, and somewhere down the line I'll realise that there isn't a single visual record of it. Why on earth do I do it? Do I simply prefer a real sunset to one reproduced by Boots? Or do I think that somehow I'll live life more intensely if I have to save my memories in my grey matter rather than on a spool. I hadn't thought much about this personal tic much until this week, when I vis...

Falkirk for the Wild and Wacky

Falkirk might not be everybody's idea of an entertainment mecca, but, over the past five years, Big In Falkirk has grown to become one of the world's biggest "street art" festivals, where music and performance take over the grounds of Callendar Park for a weekend of wild and wacky activity. And in its flagship production of Mischief La Bas's Painful Creatures, a walk through the forest can become an experience both dark and illuminating. Described by Mischief's twinkly-eyed driving force, Ian...

Dance Bird Song, Traverse, Edinburgh

4/5 It's become a T-shirt slogan in some dance quarters, the "see with your ears, hear with your eyes" exhortation to audiences. But, as ever, choreographer Siobhan Davies has the curiosity and wit to peel away the superficial gloss, consider what lies underneath, then intrigue and beguile us into fresh connections with our own "dance" and our own daily space and soundscape. In part, this is the bonus of proximity: ranged round all sides of the 10m square, we sit thrillingly close to the danc...

Rising High From a Pursuit of Originality

PERHAPS you had to be there when legendary hip-hop producer Prince Paul, pictured, met the most influential of the present day, Pharrell Williams of The Neptunes. "I'm like, yo!" says Prince Paul. "It's me like, 'Oh, my God, you're incredible, I'm a big fan', and he's like, 'Oh, but you're a legend; if it wasn't for you there'd be no me'. We sat there paying compliments for a good five minutes straight." Just as Williams will go down in hip-hop history for advancing its boundaries, so Prince ...

Out of Sync and Into Diversity; Jc Chasez Talks of Britney, Justin, His New Album and Coming to Scotland. By Beth Pearson

WHILE Britney went bowling to mark her arrival in Scotland this week, her support act, JC Chasez, was holed up in the hotel bar in Glasgow city centre. It may explain why he appears a little sleepy. His eyes are barely opening behind his low-slung Playboy baseball cap and he slouches, then sits up, then slouches, trying to resist waves of tiredness but not quite pulling it off. Such is the exertion of promoting a debut solo album. Joshua Scott Chasez is one-fifth of *NSync and, like his good ...

The Diary

No lexicon of love DOUGLAS Fraser, co-author of the just-published Political Guide to Modern Scotland, reveals that they toyed with the idea of giving the book the more eye-catching name of Numpties instead, in a crude attempt to pander to popular prejudice. Douglas himself, though, doesn't think that all politicians are numpties - but he was shocked when he looked up "numpty" in the dictionary of Scottish vernacular on the firstfoot.com website to find the example given: "Numpty. Pronounced ...

Look, Parky, You Gotta Get a Gimmick

HI! It's so wonderful to be here again. I just love Scotland. Did you know my grandmother was a haggis farmer in Hoochterteuchtermuchty? What she told me about entrails has stayed with me to this day, which is why I can thoroughly recommend my new perfume and body lotion range, Eau de Highland Clearances. And did I say I had a book and a new daywear range out as well? Sorry about that. Just practising my celebrity spiel for the day I am invited on to the first Parkinson show on ITV. Judging b...

Why a Country Called Europe Is Already Receding From View

THE latest edition of Newsweek has chosen to greet this weekend's historic enlargement of the European Union with the stark front- page headline: The End of Europe. American wishful thinking, resonant of the Bush administration's Old Europe jibe? Or a timely antidote to what French president Jacques Chirac calls "a generous utopia arising from the ashes of war and barbarism" finally turning into engaged 21st-century reality? Newsweek's thesis is that the New Europe of ever-closer political an...

Addressing an Issue That Society has Covered Up - Until Now

Flashers Uncovered Channel 4, 11.05pm New Tricks BBC1, 9.00pm Flashers Uncovered, it is fair to say, made your reviewer pause. Any other documentary about any other variety of sex crime would have been unproblematic. Here we had the most common sexual offence in Britain, one inflicted, it is estimated, on every woman in the country at least once in her life, yet we resolutely insist that the entire phenomenon is hilarious. True, we might regard men given over to this particular sexual compuls...