RC in non-PC shock...

To my horror, I found I hadn't blogged for almost a whole month. That means I may well have lost the one person reading this blog were it not my father...

Anyway, I am inspired to write following Cardinal Keith's latest bid for the limelight. Not that I can particularly bring myself to address them directly - commenting on the views of a priest with regards to biological sciences being akin methinks to asking Chick Young what he thinks about Siegfried and Brünnhilde's duet from the prologue of Wagner's Götterdämmerung.

No, what vexes me most is the fact that people are somehow surprised that he might hold beliefs that most of us left behind after learning to read. It's like the Joe Devine incident. I, and most other people with a passable knowledge of the blatantly obvious could have told anyone who wanted to listen that that's what he thought about such things. Why it got to be towards the top of the news agenda, both yesterday and today is indeed beyond me.

I can't wait to hear how this gets turned into 'SNP are anti-science' right enough...

Yer taking the Chris....

It seems that just over a week after I'd mentioned him in one of my own posts, Prof Harvie has finally managed to put his foot in it. I'm actually surprised its taken this long. I am a big fan of the MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, despite his worrying obsession with his erstwhile buddy Irn Broon, and have read a couple of his books, and his blog with much interest, along with having had the honour to meet him on a couple of occasions.

Which takes us to the comments in question. I can't comment as to whether Lockerbie is or is not a shitey-hole, but it does make we wonder if Prof Harvie has ever been to Methil, which will be in the Kirkcaldy Scottish Parliament seat, should he stand there again in 2009. Scotland's youth, both feral and non-feral, is much maligned, but I for one am actually glad their sartorial repertoire does not contain knickerbockers, although it could be argued that the 'socks over trackies look' of a few years ago could've been our very own version. And as for the 'Tescotown' reference, I have to say that Lockerbie must count itself lucky to have one - I've found places where the only place for the youngsters to buy their booze is Londis...

So anyway, let's rejoice in in the nutty Professor, who will undoubtedly give us a few more storms-in-teacups over the next few years. I can only hope he doesn't choose to moderate his language is discussing what are, of course, very serious points, and I'm glad that the majority of the party has come out in support of him, and not tried to skirt round the issue at the core of his comments, which is what everyone else seems to be doing.

Genes Genie

If you were a foreigner coming to these shores for the first time in the past week, reading the news would lead you to believe were somehow in the middle of a violent crime wave, perpetrated in the main by middle-aged white men. (Which does make you wonder why the Daily Mail hasn't started a campaign about the dangers of the said constituency?) There's been Steve Wright, Mark Dixie, and today, Levi Bellfield. Three men, many unspeakable crimes, and the inevitable call for the reintroduction of the death penalty.

I'm a lefty, so there will be nothing of that sort on my blog, but one contentious question that was brought up by the first two cases was the use of DNA evidence to catch the killer. Both Steve Wright and Mark Dixie showed up on the National DNA database - but only because of the introduction of mandatory DNA swabs being taken from them. There were those who before saw this requirement as some sort of gross invasion of privacy, an argument which dovetailed neatly with the NO 2 ID campaign, with its fears of the encroachment of the 'database state'.

I hold no such fears. If everyone was to carry an ID card in my pocket with details of my medical history and DNA on it, I would feel ever-so-slightly safer. There obviously still remain many doubts about the government's ability to hold this information, and not lose it, and I don't think that it would stop the most sophisticated of criminals from going on with their business, it will certainly help to convict men like Dixie and Wright one hell of a lot quicker.

Call me a fascist, but if the technology is there, we must use it to our best advantage, because who knows how many cases could be resolved with all the population on this database?

Ordure, Ordure

As if the venerable institution that was once the Labour Party could get any more muck under its fingernails, along comes Michael Martin to do so.

This case seems to be symptomatic of how far the party has fallen, and the fact that it involves someone who should know so much better, or used to know so much better underlines this.

As with most charges of corruption against the party, it is rather difficult to pin any evidence of definitve wrongdoing on the Speaker, but everyone can see that there is something most rotten in the state of John Smith House - just as they could with Sister Wendy, just as the could with Lobbygate, just as they could see with all these Lanarkshire 'Red Rose' dinners.

If I could be most unlike a little Scotlander at this moment, and praise the relative integrity of the UK's Parliamentary system, because we are fortunate that it does set the highest standards of its members, and when they are found to be lacking, they are generally dealt with. What the Labour Party should stand accused of in my eyes is undermining that system, with its incessant bending of rules that , in many cases it seems they have intentionally created so as to be as malleable as possible.

That's why the SNP victory in May was so special. For the first time in more than a generation, the autocrats, and their floozies at the heart of the once all-powerful Labour Party will now have to be on their toes, for they're getting found out all over the place.

And therein lies a lesson for us gnats - please can we never ever reduce ourselves to this simpering level of impotence and irrelevance?

On ne parle pas français / No hablamos español / Wir sprechen nicht deutsch

As Alyn Smith pointed out in his blog the other day, and as we were told all over the Scottish media yesterday, the number of Scots today who speak in anither tung is at some scarily new low. This is of course one of these stories that keep on getting regurgitated by the media, kinda like 'Glasgow has the worst murder / heart disease / poverty rates in the UK /Europe / The Western World', and like that other old chesnut, no-one actually does anything about it.

I amuse myself often during the week by listening to the Morning Extra phone-in thats on after GMS, and this morning the topic was all about our inability to speak anything other than English. We like to content ourselves up here that we're somehow better than the Saxon hordes South of the Border who embarrass themselves when abroad by shouting things at waiters like "EGG AND CHIPS! CAN YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?! EGG. AND. CHIPS!", but from the evidence of this show we're just as bad. Why speak foreign? Seemed to be the consensus, although there were a few enlightened souls who were willing to put their head above the parapet and point out that we're letting ourselves down big time. I have a few problems with those monolinguists, as you'd understand, being a student of French and all that.

1) Learning foreign languages is too hard - Is it hell! If I could have a pound for everyone who has said to me "oh you must have such a knack for languages. I tried, and could never do it. Im sciency you see..". Yes, to an extent, you have to 'get' languages, but not to study them at an elementary level. Anyone can get to a certain level in any modern European language (OK, take away the Slavonic ones and Finnish & Hungarian) because all you actually need to do is learn them by rote. I've had folk who could understand long physics equations tell me that they could never learn verb tables. Its a nonsense. We build languages up to be some elite thing that only arty clever people can do, when in fact it is no more difficult, or harder to get, than anything else. Anyone can get to a passable level.

2) Everyone speaks English - It is the world's second language, I'll not dispute that, but it is a myth to think that everyone speaks it, or indeed wants to. And just because you can get by in English doesn't mean you should. To quote Scotland's youngest MEP, you buy in your own language, but you sell in theirs. Even knowing a little can go a long way, if only putting the shitters up someone who's being awkward with you on holiday because you make them think you can speak their lingo.

3) We need to get the 3 R's right before we worry about anything else - Again, utter tosh. I've learned more about the English language, and how to manipulate it, from learning modern languages than I ever have in an English class. When you learn to appreciate how language works, it becomes easier to make it work for you. Being able to step out of one's own linguistic cage from time to time is also immensely important in one's intellectual development. Charles V's famous "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse" isn't as daft as it first sounds. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses. English is a good all-rounder, and posesses a wealth and depth of vocabulary unmatched by anything else, but it sure can't do it all - I spent last year trying to understand things like Mallarmé's L'après-midi d'un faune (ok, cheese baguette!) , and I certainly didn't get there by translating it. The implicit meaning of the poem is lost in translation. That's why the Illyiad is apparently boring a fuck when you read it not in the original Greek. That's why people recite the Koran, and don't always translate it (ok, there are other reasons for that!), shall I go on?

As Alyn pointed out in his blog, most Europeans have got so used to our linguistic sloth that they simply assume no-one speaks anything other than English, and for the most part we don't. What worries me most is the dearth of students learning Modern Languages in conjunction with more applied courses - the year I spent in Marseille I met Spaniards studying pharmacy, Italians studying marketing, and Hungarians studying astrophysics. The EU offers students, through the Erasmus programme, a whole range of options to study elsewhere in the EU. Why are our engineers not going to Germany to study for a year? The biggest exporter of high-end goods in the World, and we're depriving our students the opportunity to go and work there because we're suprised when they want us to be able to speak German? It's bad for our students, because they aren't getting this great experience, and it's bad for our economy, because we're not sending Scots over there, and we're not setting up enough links with Europe.

And the solutions? As Christopher Harvie points out in his excellent wee book Mending Scotland, our status as an anglophone country can be worked to our advantage in this respect. Why should we not be inviting over students and teachers from other EU countries, give them some time learning English in a native-speaker environment, and then as part of the bargain, get them to speak to us in their language for a while, so as many people as possible can see the benefits of speaking something else. The death of the school exchange must be lamented, but this could go some way to remedying it.

Ultimately, why should we not aim to be the best wee polyglot-but-anglophone country in the world? Why should each and every University graduate not be passable in at least one of French, German, Spanish, Italian or something more exotic? We've got to start 'em young, and keep 'em there, by getting more Modern Languages teachers in the primary schools, (so more jobs for me!) and an end to the cop-out of letting people drop the subject before Intermediate 2, because 'it's too hard, Miss'.

But alas, again we probably won't se anything done about it, like the poverty in Glasgow, because it'll probably be too difficult to accomplish, and there is not exactly a whole host of polyglots in the upper reaches of power. When was the last time you saw an MSP speaking something other tha English? Answers on a SAE please...

Hasta luego, Fidel

So he's gone, and somehow I'm sad. He liked a bit of the political oppression, and didn't have much time for gay people, but still we liked him. I really must get to Cuba before it becomes one big massive Mob town again.

Northern Crocked

Now, I must preface this post by saying that I am not Alistair Darling's place-man in the SNP but why so much stooshie over the nationalisation of Northern Rock? I can understand why people on the left would be unhappy that the laissez-faire macro economic policies of Gordon Brown's treasury allowed the whole thing to happen, but the slating poor Alisdair has been getting is almost making me feel sorry for him. It actually makes me wonder if Gordon put a Scot in as Chancellor, knowing full well that he'd have to deal with all the crap caused by himself, and so put all the 'Scottish Raj' rumours to bed...

Despite the fact that I am of course an anglophobic little Scotlander, I do actually get on quite well with people from the North East, and even live with one. It was interesting to go out to dinner with her (Old Labour) family before Christmas, and hear of their exasperation of the way the Tyne-to-Tees was being slated in the media at that time. If you remember these couple of weeks, it was the time of the undead canoeist (from Hartlepool), the lost disks (which I did read somewhere probably weren't lost after all, I'll need to find that link), and of course Northern Rock. Most folk who live in that part of the world bank with the Rock, and have been to concerts or events sponsored by it. If it should fall, the supposeed rebirth of the North East as a science and cultural hub will too, and who knows what the consequenses would be for the hundreds of thousands of normal families in the North East who bank with the Rock.

Yes, string up Adam Applegarth and all of his cronies, and give all of you who thought that Gordon Brown's 'years of continuous growth' would come without a price a slap o the wrist. But spare a thought for Alisdair Darling and his family, and how all this bad press will affect the fee he'll be able to command as an after-dinner speaker when he is eventually thrown to the sharks.