I heard on the news yeterday morning of the death of Jimmy Reid.

He came to notice as one of the leaders of the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in the early 1970s during Ted Heath’s government. His speech to the workers was unforgettable, “There will be no hooliganism, there will be no vandalism, there will be no bevvying,” for the world was watching.

That last bit is true. The world was watching. The good lady was in Germany at the time on an exchange visit. (I hadn’t met her yet.) She saw the speech on German television and heard the laugh when bevvying was translated into the German equivalent in the subtitles.

It is the word bevvying which makes the sentence resound. Without it, and Reid’s emphasis on it, the speech would probably have been less remarked. In retrospect it was a very Calvinistic piece of oratory for someone who was at the time a communist.

That in the end, despite a tactical victory in changing the government’s mind, the campaign to save all the UCS yards failed – they are all gone I believe and only Yarrow’s remains building ships on the Upper Clyde and that depends on Royal Navy orders – does not detract from the essential nobility of the effort to maintain the dignity of employment and prevent a descent into joblessness and the blight that follows. It was perhaps the last grand hurrah of the trade union movement.

Reid was the great example of the intellectual from the working class, possibly largely self taught. I remember him on a television chat show relating the typical argument between two such Glaswegians. As one is thumping the other he is saying, “Ah telt ye. There are 45 islands in the Indonesian archipelago.”

As a result of his new found fame he was elected rector of Glasgow University. I was a student there at the time and this was the one and only occasion till a local election some five years ago that my vote ever helped elect anybody.

Jimmy Reid 9/7/1932-11/8/2010. So it goes.

I’m not a golfer, but it’s impossible to live in Scotland and not be aware of the sport. Even more so in Fife where every wee town seems to have its own course. Lundin Links – barely a blink as you drive through it – has two; one which is usually used for Open qualifying and the other, Lundin Ladies’.

St Andrews, of course, is littered with them, demand for the Old Course being so great as to be unsatisfiable. So, in addition there are the New Course, the Eden Course, the Jubilee Course, the Castle Course, the Strathtyrum Course and the Balgove Course – and those are only the ones run by the St Andrews Links Trust.

The Open Championship – if you’re being parochial you’d call it the British Open – is underway at the moment and so the place is transformed. You can’t move in the town normally for golf shops etc. so goodness knows what it is like at the moment. So much of a distraction is the tournament that St Andrews’s other modern attraction – the University – shuts down for the duration.

Myself and the good lady caught the preparations last week. A small army of mowers was shaving the first fairway.

On the sand just where the Swilken Burn finally flows into the North Sea there was a spectacular piece of driftwood. It almost looked like it had been sculpted.

From the links it looked like a sculpture of a cow but closer in more resembled a dinosaur.

You can see bits of the tented village in the second photo. It wasn’t quite in readiness but there were signs for banks and “Fish and Chips” and other stuff which I forget. It must be a huge money spinner – not all of it going to the town, sadly.

When the open is at Muirfield you can see the tented village from Kirkcaldy, gleaming whitely across miles of Forth estuary. The proprietors there call themselves “the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers” but I believe they don’t allow women to be members – which may not be quite so honourable in this day and age.

Of course in central Scotland you are never far away from a course on the Open rota. Carnoustie is only across the Tay estuary from Fife and both Troon and Turnberry are on the Ayrshire coast, no more than a couple of hours drive away. (You just can’t avoid golfing puns in a piece like this.)

St Andrews is a favourite place for myself and the good lady but we’ll be giving it a miss this week. I’m sure you see more of the action on the TV anyway. I’ve caught some of yesterday’s and today’s play and I’ll be watching the climax on Sunday. At least I’ll be out of any wind and rain.

I’ve not written anything so far about the huge oil leakage in the Gulf Of Mexico as it’s not really something you can do anything about except deplore it. It’s also far enough away from Britain as not to be a main news story in the middle of an election.

I would say, though, that this has been an accident waiting to happen. It was almost certain that with widespread offshore drilling a major ecological catastrophe would ensue.

I suppose since the industry doesn’t have a good safety record overall it could have happened to any oil company engaged in deep sea drilling. So it was partly bad luck it was one of BP’s rigs that exploded. But BP do seem to have made a decision to go specifically for oil growth and not diversify into other options.

So; is this the price we have to pay for oil? Are we too wedded to the lifestyle oil has helped to foster? (A lifestyle encouraged by governmental decisions which have downplayed public transport options and failed to invest in them or, in the case of the US, deliberately in the 1920s and 1930s built infrastructure that relied on the motor car as a means of getting about.)

Despite its myriad other uses the main thing we do with the stuff is simply to burn it away – which is really a criminal waste. But it is still the cheapest and easiest way to carry on modern life.

Yet oil, via the motor car, is probably the prime factor in the atomisation of people’s lives which has led to the erosion of the civil society I recall from my youth.

Is a disaster like this enough to turn our species away from the path of exploiting ever more remote sources of the thick, sticky black liquid?

The answer to that last one is likely to be. No.

The earthquake in Haiti is a human tragedy. Not just for those killed outright, or perhaps lingeringly under the rubble, but also for the survivors who now have no homes, no shelter, no food and are waiting for help to arrive.

It also shows the fragility of city life.

With houses and hospitals demolished, a multitude of roads blocked, electricity and other networks severed, the rescuers’ difficulties are profound. The possibility exists that even if food, medicines, blankets, tents etc arrive in good time there is no way to distribute them effectively – even with the best will in the world.

I am lucky to live in a country where such disasters do not occur.

The attack on the Togolese national team bus in Cabinda, Angola which has triggered their government’s decision to order them home is, of course, shocking. My sympathies go to those who have lost their lives or been injured, and to their families.

The shootings do, though, raise a question about why Angola was chosen as the host nation but moreover why, when that country was given the nod, Cabinda was allocated as a venue for some of the games.

It seems that, while elsewhere in Angola is more or less trouble free, Cabinda was well known as a dangerous area. Would it not have been wiser to avoid it?

Still, the milk, not to mention the blood, has been spilt now.

What I will say is this. The absolute necessity after any such event, whether it be terrorist attack, a criminal endeavour or even an act of foreign enemy is to carry on regardless. This is what Londoners did during the Blitz, what Birmingham, Manchester, Warrington and London did after IRA bombings.

Despite the fact that they would not perhaps have been in the correct frame of mind to take part in football matches the Togolese players may have wished to do this. Their government, as is its right, has taken the view that they should not place themselves in more danger.

(Aside:- where does this rate on FIFA’s dictum that governments should not interfere with the affairs of their footballing authorities?)

Togo’s government’s position should not be that of the tournament organisers, however. If the tournament had not gone ahead it would have sent a signal to any group of nutters that they could prevent international sporting events from occurring – or even being scheduled. That is surely not an outcome to be preferred.

The suitability of South Africa to host this summer’s World Cup ought not to be affected by any of this. Yes, Angola borders South Africa but I believe that border is hundreds of miles from where the matches are to take place and security ought not to be unduly affected on that score.

PS. Unlike the past few occasions the African Cup Of Nations does not seem to be available on any of the BBC channels.

Pity. I had been looking forward to it.

Later edited to add:- Angola does not have a border with South Africa. (I was confusing it with Namibia, which does. They’re both up the left side a bit.)

See my previous rants about politicians and poppies here and here.

Well. This year Jack Straw sported one in the House of Commons on the 20^th October!

That’s ridiculous. It’s at least 20 days before Remembrance Sunday (or 27 if it’s the Sunday after the 11th November.)

Doesn’t the Queen get to pick which Sunday it will be if the 11th is on a Wednesday?

Edited to add. I spotted Gordon Brown with one at Prime Minister’s Questions on the 21^st (yesterday) yet on the lunchtime news yesterday it said Dame Vera Lynn was to launch this year’s poppy appeal.

How come politicians get there first?

Re-edited: The Conservative spokeswoman on last night’s Question Time on BBC 1 had on a quite ridiculous effort: not the standard issue at all. It was as if she was saying my poppy’s bigger than your poppy and so I’m better than you. (Or more patriotic; or something.) It was actually more like the special ones the Queen wears. I’d have been more impressed if she’d had on a normal one like the general public buys – no green leaf. That would have been enough of a contrast with the other panellists.

There has been a lot of talk in the football world about “simulation” – or diving as it’s more commonly known in Britain – ever since the Eduardo incident in last week’s Champion’s League tie.

Arsenal’s manager Arséne Wenger has sought to defend his player on the grounds that Eduardo suffered a horrific tackle two seasons ago and therefore has a tendency to pull out of challenges.

Why, then, did you pick him, Arséne? (Do you not have a duty to protect him from such terrors?) Also, he won’t be much cop on the field if he goes around avoiding tackles. And hasn’t your saying so made him a target?

Much comment too has been made on the fact that had the referee spotted Eduardo’s dive he would only have received a yellow card. With the simulation charge and guilty finding he faces a two match ban. This is said to be unfair.

Which only goes to show how much bollocks the average football person talks.

For which is worse? Trying to deceive the referee and failing; or actually succeeding in conning the official?

The greater punishment is just. It ought to be higher for the latter.

After all, attempted murder is a lesser charge than homicide.

“This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11.00 a.m. that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.”

- Neville Chamberlain, 3rd September, 1939.
(The above link also leads on to the BBC audio file of the speech.)

Don’t you just love that use of the word “note?” (Chamberlain’s pronunciation made it sound more like “nit.”)

Not demand, not insistence.

Note.

How British, how understated, how public school. How ineffectual.

That note certainly put the wind right up the buggers, and no mistake.

Today is the anniversary of the main triggering of the calamity that overshadowed the second half of the Twentieth Century and hence loomed large in the childhoods of people, like me, born years after the events it precipitated.

Germany attacked Poland.

Though the war in Asia had been going on for some time following Japan’s invasion of Manchuria it was this European outbreak that signalled catastrophe would be a global affair.

Chou En-Lai (Zhou Enlai) is reported to have said when he was asked what he thought were the implications of the French revolution that, “It is too early to say.”

The same is true of World War 2.

I’ve no idea whether Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, was guilty of that offence or not. There are certainly grounds for believing he was innocent, high among them the fact that the main witness against him is said to be living the high life in Australia bankrolled by US government money. Megrahi was also quite probably sacrificed by the Libyan leader, Colonel Ghadaffi, for the sake of normalising relations with Britain and the US at the time.

There are many aspects to the whole murky affair which are strange; not the least of which is Kenny MacAskill’s – in best Rev I M Jolly mode – peculiar invocation of a higher power. The only conclusion to be drawn overall is that nobody’s hands are clean.

However, and this is the key point, even if Megrahi was/is guilty, to show him compassion is to demonstrate a sense of morality, of decency, way above that of someone who places a bomb on an aeroplane in an attempt to kill everyone on it. That a provision for such a release exists in the Scottish justice system is something to be proud of.

In this regard the phrase “to temper justice with mercy” comes to mind. Surprisingly, as it’s more the sort of thing to be found in the New, it comes from the Old Testament; which tends to be more fire and brimstone, not to mention vengeful, on the whole.

Some of the American relatives of those killed on the plane have stated in interviews that, in letting Megrahi out of jail, justice has not been done. Well, it has; as the Scottish system allows for compassionate release. 28 out of 31 such appeals have now been granted in Scotland in recent times. (One of the three not allowed was an earlier one for Megrahi when his condition was not so serious as it now seems to be.)

In any case, to keep someone in prison when they have an illness that is terminal smacks to me of vengeance rather than justice. If vengeance was the equivalent of justice then the law would sanction vendettas.

There has also been a lot of outrage expressed over the reception afforded to Megrahi on his return to Libya. (Insert alert about reprehensible cultural stereotyping here.) Personally, I thought that for middle Eastern types the greeting was remarkably restrained.

The waving of saltires has been commented on in disapproving terms. The thing that struck me there was, who’d have thought there were any saltires at all in Tripoli?

But… especially to those Americans who are complaining about Megrahi’s welcome home. You do exactly the same!