Food

Who’s Having the Chips?

SOMEWHERE in the Italian lakes, perhaps, a tall and portly head waiter called Philippo is presiding theatrically over an elegant, fashionable, and suitably expensive restaurant. In my mind’s eye I can see him clearly against a background of lake and mountain, and can hear the rolling cadences as he tells some party of diners about the day’s bill of fare. What he does not know is that he almost certainly if indirectly inspired a character in the latest Rumpole by John Mortimer.

Social Affairs

Ultrasound, a Scots invention that emigrated

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.

Social Affairs

Is Tam Baillie the right man to be Scotland’s Children’s Commissioner?

From the Daily Telegraph Jan 4 2011 – by Jackie Kemp

Despite budget cuts of almost £1 billion next year, Holyrood is about to pick a Children’s Commissioner, and give them a multi-million-pound budget, for six years. Tam Baillie, the incumbent, is the clear front-runner, but Jackie Kemp asks whether he is the right man for the £70,000-a-year post and if MSPs are bothering to find out.

Social Affairs

Asylum Seekers in Glasgow Face Eviction

Asylum Seekers Akokpe Kangnisoukpe and his 3 year old daughter Rose

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.

Out of KIlter
Social Affairs

Out of KIlter

Tuition fees: widening the gap between England and Scotland. From the Guardian Education Nov 15

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.

Social Affairs

Professor John Orr, teacher and writer

Published Date: 29 October 2010
By JACKIE KEMP
Professor John Mackinney Orr, teacher and writer.

Born: 26 July, 1943, in Gillingham,  Kent.

Died: 8 September, 2010, in Dirleton, East Lothian, aged 67.
 
A thinker, a talker and an intellectual free spirit, as well as a teacher and a prolific writer, professor John Orr, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social and Political Studies at Edinburgh University, leaves many gaps with his sudden death at the age of 67.

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.

Politics

An inspector calls

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.

Social Affairs

Football is generation game for Hibs Family

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.

Social Affairs

A good egg

Mail on Sunday magazine Hens adore mushroom risotto. They are also keen on asparagus stems and the tops of strawberries. They are more curious than the cat and make a…

Travel

Travel Delhi

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.

Travel

A la carte camping your way

 From the Herald 25 Jul 2010

It is camping, but not as we know it.

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.

Social Affairs

SpongeBob takes the curriculum by storm in Scotland.

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.

Children at St Mary’s primary in Leith are surrounded by artefacts relating to SpongeBob

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.

Social Affairs

William Dalrymple shares his impressions of modern India

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.

Social Affairs

Dougie Campbell; Musician and blacksmith

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.