I was a 7 year old revolutionary when I learned my first few French phrases; ca va? je m’appelle; j’habite; je suis. Instantly hooked by the fantooshness, there commenced a lifelong fascination of the foreign and exotic. In P5 at Crieff Primary School I’d a wee notebook
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PUT THE GENERALS IN THE DOCK The buck stops at the top; that is the accepted chain of responsibility and accountability in organisations, institutions and in life. Slobodan Milosevic, David Duckenfield, Ratko Mladic : what links these names is that all were indicted for unlawful killings which
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The ingrained instinct of politicians is to consider how any comment affects their career prospects and so Sajid Javid, an ambitious Home Secretary, immediately responded in Daily Mail speak
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British civil rights – that’s what we were agitating and marching for in 1968. The demand was for the same citizenship rights as those enjoyed in Carlisle or Exeter, Reading or Inverness. With unemployment figures, ranked among the highest in Europe, local authority housing denied to the
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Gabriella clung tearfully to her mother’s arms, terrified that these men again wanted to take Mum away . The woman was Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and the Iranian Police had arrived to return her to prison . She had been granted temporary release to be with her family and
Read more →Sorcha Óg You arrived Sorcha with the dawn on the fifteenth of June, another bairn for Scotland, a sister for Leo and Senan, a daughter for Jen and Neill , another grandchild, a burst of radiance in this gilded summer. Your Gaelic name means ‘light’ and you
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Growing up in Ireland, the Paupers’ Field and the Polo Field were our childhood play areas. As children, the emotional overtones did not register with us nor did any real distinction occur between the two grounds. Seventy years later , I find those memories strangely relevant to
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VALUE TEACHERS – VALUE EDUCATION It is just over 17 years since the McCrone Agreement on Teachers’ pay was signed. An increase in salary of 23% was received by Scotland’ s teachers, along with agreement on the implementation of a 35 hour week. It appeared to be
Read more →Reaching out to people and touching their lives, is not instinctive human activity. It is learned and practiced behaviour. Not all of us are capable of committing to it nor, indeed, do we wish to have any appreciable level of involvement in the lives of others. Only
Read more →Our group of Irish teachers who met President Lyndon Johnson in the White House Rose Garden in July 1967, witnessed a morose, brooding giant of a man who was being rent asunder by the casualties in Vietnam and the growing protests on the campus across the country.
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