The Herald

Alastair Trevor Clark Part of a Dedicated Team That Helped Lead Nigeria to Independence

ALASTAIR Trevor Clark belonged to that now dwindling band of Scots who gave loyal and distinguished service to Britain's colonial empire as an administrator and soldier before retiring to lead an equally eminent career in public life. He was born in Glasgow on June 10, 1923, the son of the city's senior depute medical officer of health, and was educated at GlasgowAcademy and Edinburgh Academy. That his career should have turned out as it did owed everything to serendipity and also, it has to ...

Tenuous Link Between Electorate and Legislature

COMING from a particularly vocal supporter of the EU, Alex Orr's letter (May 31) on France's referendum vote was remarkably effective at illustrating the inherent failure of the European Union project: the tenuous link between electorate and legislature. France was at the very forefront of this political experiment and the French people glimpsed a future of decreasing accountability and transparency, legitimised and entrenched through the constitution. Indeed, as Mr Orr stated, the people of ...

The Diary

Warning sign NEW Celtic manager Gordon Strachan, below, met the fans outside Parkhead yesterday where he was asked to sign a few autographs. "Don't sign that, " cried one fan, "you'll end up with two new washing machines next week."Ah, the east end banter.

From the Herald Archives

25 YEARS AGO A SINGAPORE company has won a contract to build oil- platform supply vessels for Seaforth Maritime. A spokesman for the company said the decision to place the order with Singapore Slipway and Engineering Company (PTE) Ltd was taken after considering bids from 36 other yards. He added that the company had its vessels built in Britain and that "the Singapore yard was the most competitive bidder in price and delivery". 50 YEARS AGO LACK of rural transport in the Border country is c...

Best Way for Scotland to Help Malawi

STEPHEN Maxwell's letter (May 31) rightly highlights the problems that an executive-led public appeal for Malawi could cause. In the 1970s and 1980s educational development work in the Third World was undertaken by a number of Scottish universities and colleges. The work was funded by a variety of organisations, including the UN, Unesco, the British Council and the EC. Glasgow College of Building and Printing, in partnership with the British Council, private firms and public-sector department...

Childhood Asthma

YOUR front-page report (May 31) highlighting the potential dangers of inhaled steroids to treat childhood asthma will cause alarm to parents of children with asthma in the light of the fatal accident inquiry into the tragic death of Emma Frame. The findings of Dr Malcolm Donaldson's research are bound to worry parents, but we feel it is important to weigh the risks and benefits of giving medicines to children. All medicines have to be treated with care. Inhaled corticosteroids are a crucial t...

Scotland's Long, Distinguished Biennale History

THE Scottish Arts Council, British Council and National Galleries of Scotland are about to open the second presentation of contemporary art from Scotland at the Venice Biennale, Scotland & Venice, Selective Memory. Yet this is not the second presentation but the sixth, at least.

A Victory Despite Legal Defeat Widow Deserves Credit for Taking On Tobacco Company

IMPERIAL Tobacco won the legal argument yesterday when Margaret McTear lost a landmark court case to hold the cigarette manufacturer responsible for the death, from lung cancer, of her husband, Alfred, a heavy smoker. But, in every other sense, victory belongs to Mrs McTear. She fought a long and indomitable campaign against the company. Denied legal aid, she and her lawyer, who represented her on a no-win-no-fee basis, took on the might and wealth of a major corporation knowing the odds were...

Where Are the Creative Misfits in Beck's?Moira Jeffrey Laments a Lack of Vision As the Beck's Futures Jury Opts for the Sedate

THE Sixth Beck's Futures Prize, at the CCA in Glasgow, should be among the best that this annual show has produced, but somehow it's a lacklustre affair. This time round, Beck's has a very grown-up jury, shorn of celebrities and bolstered by senior art-world figures. It has reduced its numbers from its usual crowded beauty pageant of 10 competitors to a more stately six. For a prize that has always blustered about its youthfulness while secretly opting for artists who are older than it is kee...

Briefing: Nutrigenomics

WELCOME to the latest hi-tech food fad. Q: Which is?

The Real National Disgrace in Education

CORRESPONDENCE on the absence of a Scottish question in the later modern history option of this year's Higher history paper one seems to have produced a debate of the deaf. Professor Tom Devine suggests that the absence of a compulsory element of Scottish history in schools is a "national disgrace". In contrast, Mike Haggerty of the SQA defends the setter of the exam paper by informing us that the absence of a Scottish question this year is the result of sound educational procedures designed ...

Why Bribery May Be a Fat Lot of Good

GENERALLY speaking, jurisprudence isn't part of the school curriculum, but responses to the problem of obesity in young people appear to provide something of a primer forwhy people obey rules. In Scotland the implied motivation is reward. Just as law-abiders get to keep their liberty, pupils who choose healthy over unhealthy food in Glasgow school canteens receive points which they can redeem at the end of term for book tokens, cinema tickets, iPods and Xbox games and consoles. As reported ...

Nhs Review

MICHAEL Johnston, consultant in accident and emergency at Ninewells Hospital, asks why his speciality/area of expertise has been excluded from the team conducting the review of NHS 24 (Letters, May 31). I suspect the answer is fairly obvious and is one very well- known in senior management circles: "I've made up my mind; don't confuse me with the facts."

Let's Sit Down, Talk About Europe and Have Our Say

'A CONSTITUTION should be short and obscure, " said Napoleon Bonaparte, who went on to found his own ultimately unsuccessful united states of Europe. The Giscard constitution, rejected by France on Sunday and probably by the Netherlands today, failed on both counts. It was much too long, at more than 400 pages, and too literal, attempting to encapsulate 50 years of European treaty law in one document.

Defence of Frost

IT COMES as no surprise that Ian Bell, who has always struck me as being a bit of a jumped-up yob, should hurl such abuse at Sir David Frost when reviewing (May 30) his final Sunday breakfast show. I've always thought that being polite to folk was a far better interviewing technique than the bigheaded, sneering boorishness of Mr Bell's hero, Jeremy Paxman (or John Humphrys or Gordon Brewer, for that matter). David Frost always managed to get much more out of his interviews as a result. I'm no...

Geldof 'S New Targets Awareness On Africa Is Harder to Raise Than Money

THE twentieth anniversary of Live Aid and the meeting of the G8 leaders at Gleneagles next month was always going to be too good a coincidence to miss for a man with the political instincts of SirBob Geldof. "Overmy dead body, " is an approximation of his response to the notion of marking both events with a reincarnation of the original groundbreaking extravaganza - simultaneous concerts in London and Philadelphia. The performer turned campaignerwas right to perceive that any attempt at Live ...

Talking to Cameras, and Not Each Other, Is a Marital Road to Ruin

One Week to Save Your Marriage BBC2, 9.00pm The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy BBC2, 11.20pm