Social Affairs

I believe I speak for others at the Herald when I say I am utterly heartbroken and furious at the massacre of our once great newspaper. This whole issue is about far more than the fate of one group of newspapers. It affects us all in Scotland.” This cri de coeur posted anonymously on the allmediascotland website was prompted by news that one of Scotland’s two quality national newspapers is facing its third round of budget cuts in three years, this time to cut the annual budget by between £2m and £3m. One hundred jobs will also go from the three titles, the Herald, its Sunday sister and the Glasgow Evening Times. The Herald had been set a target of making 39p per pound for shareholders and, because it had fallen short, cost-cutting was deemed necessary – management had even asked staff for suggestions on how to save money.

INVOLVEMENT in volunteering is having a dramatic impact on young people, the voluntary sector and the unemployed, according to ProjectScotland. In just over 18 months the national volunteering scheme, which launched in 2005 and is based on the successful AmeriCorps programme, claims to have changed the perception of volunteering among the young.

It also claims significant benefits to businesses, participating charities and agencies, and the volunteers themselves.

According to figures revealed to Herald Society, involvement in ProjectScotland halves a young person’s chance of being unemployed, increases fundamental communication skills and enhances the ability of voluntary groups to make a difference.

IN THE pre-dawn darkness of a winter’s morning, I often hear bumps as my nineyear-old, having jack-knifed out of bed, gallops downstairs to enter Runescape, an internet game that mimics an alien world, complete with three religions, its own monsters, myths and quests.

For him, tapping on the keyboard is obviously the equivalent of the wardrobe route to Narnia as utilised by the Pevensie children.

In an effort to understand what I am dealing with here, I have tried playing it myself, but it doesn’t work as well for me; I fumble and stumble, unable to control my “avatar” (the screen image representing my character online), unable to complete the simplest quest.

I, you see, am a digital immigrant, and like a non English-speaking mother who gets her children to do the shopping, I have to ask for my son’s help with apparently simple tasks.

“When somebody makes you feel like a fool, when somebody is so terribly cruel, you can feel your anger down deep in your soul, you can hold on to the feeling or you can let go.”

A boy tries to light dry grass under a pyramid of twigs. Eventually, it catches and he lies on his side to blow the embers into crackling life. Tonight he and his friends will dine on a thin stew made of thistles and heather leaves, cooked over the fire. They will sleep in a makeshift bivouac on a bed of ferns.

School’s out for summer – but there is a lot of angry rhetoric still rumbling around the corridors. Scotland’s largest teaching union has threatened to ballot for a strike if the Scottish Executive fails to accept its demand for maximum class sizes of 20 across the board. Its members say this will lead to better attainment, especially for disadvantaged children.

And yet the Scottish Executive argues that research into the educational benefits of small classes is inconclusive and that it may not be the best use of resources.

‘See that building over there?” My guide points down the road to a white monolith whose large windows dominate the surrounding landscape. “That’s the social work department. And, see, if you were a battered wife going in there to seek help, your man could stand here and see you going in and out and in every one o’ they rooms. You’d get the hiding of your life when you came out. It’s like a lot of things in Easterhouse, it’s not very well thought out.”

Residents of this sprawling Glasgow housing scheme, one of the most deprived in Europe, have their reasons for being sceptical of grand visions intended to improve their lives. But, in the case of a primary school reorganisation that is to shut 10 schools and four nurseries in the area, replacing them with three “campuses”, they are less sceptical than actively angry.

IN France, “give us our daily bread” is a saying that still stands and the trip to the boulanger for a mouth-melting fresh baguette is a cherished part of life. The French like their bread fresh, traditionally made and free of preservatives, which means it goes stale very quickly. In Italy or Greece, the stuff is dipped straight into olive oil and eaten with every meal. In Arab countries, it comes flat and chewy while in some parts of Germany it is black and made with rye.

In contrast, British bread is mostly awful. As a result of our weekly supermarket shopping habits, it comes in stay-fresh foil packets. Bizarrely, it rarely goes stale but it can become mouldy and still feel soft thanks of to the crumb-softening enzymes within the mix.

Ask pupils to propose changes to the design of their school and the response from some might be to ask for a quicker route to the exit. But in fact the kind of suggestions pupils come up with are often far more constructive – and unexpected. Synthetic grass, more pegs for coats and bags and even a soil-less garden are among ideas received by architects working with Scottish schoolchildren.

Pupils should be consulted over new school building design, claims the government. But a leading ecological architect warns that this risks being little more than a box-ticking exercise under the current system of public private partnership (PPP).

Poverty remains the biggest single factor in determining how Scotland’s primary schools are likely to perform in tests, a Herald study has shown. Writing ability is particularly closely related to social deprivation, with the wealthiest schools doing twice as well as the poorest.

The numbers give a “desperately disappointing” picture of the first cohort to complete their primary school education under a Labour government, according to education experts who say an intense, society-wide effort is needed to eradicate the social deprivation that makes school tests an unfair contest, which the poorest are bound to lose.