From the Herald 28 Dec 1995
Scots pioneered the technology and techniques for one of the most amazing pieces of medical equipment in hospitals today.
Yet, as Jackie Kemp discovers, lack of insight and investment meant that their innovation was ignored here and taken over by other countries.
Akakpo Kangni-Soukpe and his three-year-old daughter Rose, from Togo, are among more than 1,000 asylum seekers in Glasgow being moved on. Photograph: Murdo Macleod.
A similar article appeared in the Guardian on November 24. All reference to the housing group ‘Angel’ was removed after a polite request for a comment was greeted with a letter from libel lawyers Carter Ruck.
With tuition fees in England set to rise in 2012, the divergence between Scottish and English higher education looks likely to grow.
Edinburgh University: there are four universities in Edinburgh alone, so there is some scope for merging of functions and facilities.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian
Five centuries ago, while the gilded youth of England headed off to Oxford each autumn with their retinues, the kilted sons of Scottish fisherfolk and farmers – tradition has it – walked to Scotland’s ancient universities, each carrying a bag of oatmeal on their shoulders – rations for an entire term.
Born: 26 July, 1943, in Gillingham, Kent.
One of those will be in the cafe of the Edinburgh Filmhouse where the internationally known film theorist often sat in lively discussion with students or fellow cineophiles, chewing the fat over what they had just seen. On 13 November, the Filmhouse is to show a tribute screening of one of his favourite films – Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light.
Jackie Kemp gives a low mark to the people who adjudicate on schools. From the Scottish Review (www.scottishreview.net) http:/www.scottishreview.net October 5 2010.
There is a Chinese proverb which says: ‘Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself’. Education therefore is about the pursuit of knowledge rather than, as George Bernard Shaw put it, ‘knowledge in pursuit of children’. In recent times Scottish education has seemed more like the latter than the former with a surfeit of top-down state-led box-ticking initiatives aimed at having all children achieve this level or that level by certain ages.
Evening News October 4 20010. by Jackie Kemp.
THERE have been good times and bad over the years but, up or down, win or lose, there are few games that John Rudden has missed at Easter Road since he first walked onto the terraces holding his dad’s hand on a Saturday afternoon in 1936.
Not many of the familiar faces he first saw at games are still there, but the 79-year-old lifelong Leith resident is now joined by a new crew of fellow season ticket holders – two of his grandsons and two great-grandsons.
The Guardian, Tuesday 28 September 2010
Jackie Kemp meets the professor of brewing who is working with Benjamin Zephaniah to excite black students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6MogWTJKKc – paste into google
Herald Saturday mag August 9 2010
“Mum, it’s fine.” Even on the other end of a mobile phone I can tell my 13-year-old daughter is rolling her eyes. “What could happen?” What indeed. She and my friend’s 12-year-old son have jumped in an auto rickshaw and headed across uptown Delhi to go shopping – without permission.
From the Education Guardian
Scottish universities are breaking new ground this summer – literally – as work begins on Heriot-Watt’s bespoke £35m campus in the Middle Eastern state of Dubai.
From the Herald 25 Jul 2010
The French may not yet be talking about ‘le glamping’, but they are certainly au fait with the concept. From gypsy caravans to an atmosphere-controlled plastic bubble with a clear view of the sky to a sumptuous two-bedroom treehouse, where breakfast is hauled up each morning in a basket on the end of a rope, the campsites on France’s Atlantic coast offer an a la carte choice.
The Times July 1 2010. There were tears and a rousing final chorus of the school song as St Margaret’s pupils, staff and parents said goodbye. Photo Tom Main.
What should be in the curriculum? Thanks to a cutting-edge initiative at a Scottish school, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dr Who, The Titanic and Famous People are currently taking top billing in the classroom.
From the Education Guardian, June 15 2010 with added material which did not appear in the published article.
Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian.
St Mary’s primary in Leith, Edinburgh, is taking advantage of wide freedoms under the new Scottish Curriculum for Excellence to allow the children to choose their own topics as a jumping-off point for learning.
The use of topics as Trojan horses for smuggling maths, literature and science into children’s heads has been popular since the 60s, but in the recent past much more detailed national curriculums both north and south of the border made it harder for schools to do this and gave them a more limited choice of themes.
From the Herald Saturday magazine, June 14.
A travel writer who, after 25 years of immersion in Asia has graduated to a historian, William Dalrymple is fired up about his next project. “It’s about the First Afghan War: 2,100 East India Company troops march into Afghanistan in 1839, one single Brit rides out three years later,” he says, with obvious relish. Dalrymple has recently returned to India from a month in Afghanistan where he is excited to have found five previously untranslated Dari chronicles about the war. This, he feels, will enable him to “give the Afghan perspective” on that forgotten imperial adventure.
Published on 8 Apr 2010. Dougie Campbell, who has died aged 65, was a businessman leading light of Glasgow’s folk music scene as the bandleader of The Last Tram tae Auchenshuggle, which played at the weddings of supermodel Kirsty Hume and actor John Hannah and twice won the world ceilidh band championship.
From The Herald, Friday April 2 2010
Critics say NTS management is stuck in the present and using government money to undermine the language. Observer March 26.
Recipe for health: Jackie Kemp and family, including son William, were able to enjoy Delhi’s exotic cuisine. Mail on Sunday Jan 10.
Travel writer is turning his attention to the family legacy from the Times Dec 24
The Herald 23 Nov 2009. Excessive salaries in the public sector are wrong and help to exacerbate social problems such as obesity, drug-taking and violent crime, an academic and author has claimed.