The Queen's Ferry

After an incredibly busy summer, and despite being in the middle of all manner of projects and University assignments, we moved to South Queensferry in November.

Saint Margaret of Scotland, star of 11th century reality show The Only Way is Wessex established the place as a ferry port for pilgrims on their way to St Andrews. I don't think the Ferry runs anymore, but it still feels connected to Fife.  The Scotmid sells the Dunfermline local paper.

Despite the fact that our time here over the winter has been dominated by Hurricane Bawbag and other extreme weather, I have warmed to the place.  We have a lot more room for Artemis to grow into, a garden for her to run about in, and more varied places to walk the dog.  The local boozer The Ferry Tap is a great small town pub with basic food and a guest ale, and it shows the football.  The commute hasn't been as bad as we feared, although Donna's 6.20am bus on school days is pretty bleak.

One things that has struck me on moving here from Leith is how far behind it is as a community.  This may sound overly judgemental, but I just wanted to point out some observations of things that remind me of the Leith I moved to in 1999.

1. Dog Shit.  Leith Links, when I first got a dog, was a treacherous mire of scattered poo. Over the last seven or eight years a real dog walking community grew up in and around Leith Links and this provided genuine peer support and pressure on others to clear up after their dog.  It has got to the stage where it has become relatively rare to find muck all over your shoe when you get back to the house.  (More likely you'll find broken bits of Stella bottle in your dog's paw..)
The Ferry, it seems, has yet to grasp this most basic tenets of community living.  Every spare bit of grass is littered with shit, including the playpark and playing field opposite where I live.  It's even more infuriating when you have a two year old who loves to run about and go to the swings.

2. Dangerous driving.  Leith is still pretty bad for speeding and running lights, especially by those cyclists resplendent in reflective gear who think that their 'green credentials' excuse them from cycling at 20mph along a pedestrain walkway.  Queensferry however, takes road safety back to 1999.  People haven't yet found their indicators, and the law about using your mobile phone whilst driving doesn't seemed to have reached the town.

3. Fly tipping. There is an ex-railway path that goes from Leith academy to Seafield.  It was common to find whole binbags of dirty nappies along this path, along with stolen bicycles, broken bottles, mattresses and the like. Those people, it seems, now dump things in areas of green space in Queensferry.  I really can't understand this whatsoever.  In the 21st century there is more awareness than ever about the importance of the environment, locally and globally.  They even have the luxury of kerbside recycling in the town.

4.  Connectivity.  More time travel here:  Fibre optic cable hasn't yet reached this district of Edinburgh, and neither of us can use our mobile phones in the house.

I'm sure I'll be accused of negative nimby-ism here, but we have no regrets.  The view of the bridges, the garden, the lovely high street, the pleasant and approachable neighbours all set it apart from our previous area.  Most of all, though, we needed the SPACE.

The Language of Opposition- how the Labour Party eats shoots and leaves.

Mehdi Hasan's latest piece in the New Statesman about how Labour consistently allow the Tories set the political agenda through the use of language accurately sums up how I've assessed the Labour party since I stopped flirting with the youth wing of the party in my teenage years.

Stephen Timms, shadow employment minister, appeared on the Today programme supporting the government's idea of a benefit cap.  Not only is he accepting the targeted right-wing cuts agenda of this most neoliberal of governments, he's treating Ian Duncan Smith's statement that no 'normal' person would oppose the cuts as a statement of fact.  Hasan rightly hauls him over the coals for this.  After all, there is a raft of evidence to suggest that child poverty will increase, on top of all the other symptoms of malaise gripping the country.  


In the 80s, when Thatcher called them socialists, Kinnock and chums looked nervously about them, shrugged and said 'no we're not'.


In 2002 Peter Mandelson claimed 'We are all Thatcherites now'.  This was an example of how the Labour Government had adopted Thatcher's model of a 'strong economic policy' - one that had stemmed from her waving of Friedrich Hayek's 'The Constitution of Liberty' about in the late 70s.  In only 22 years the Chicago School economics had gone from forces of reaction to cross-party consensus.

Someone, please give the guardian's Neil Clark a tardis... 


The truth is that since the 70s the parliament in which the richest in UK society suffered their worst income growth is that of John Major's government.  During the last of the Labour governments, between 04/05 - 09/10, the richest income group actually saw their income rise by more than anyone else in society:

IFS 2011

So much for the 'Third Way' then.  Turns out it was the 'Same Way'.  Certainly the message from Labour now is 'Same Way' and they can't even think of a spinning sound bite to hide it behind.  Every time the Conservatives move to the right and claim that they've adopted the centreground of British politics the Labour party dutifully follows.

Timms has every right to be nervous.  The poor guy has been stabbed by his own constituents, I'd hate to think what Ed balls said to him after the Today performance. Although Balls himself seems to revert to nervous blinking when faced with an opportunity to attack government policy.  Timms even failed to bring up unemployment, which last week rose to its highest level since 1995.  As shadow employment secretary that's inexcusable whatever political party you represent - as a Labour front bencher it's ridiculous.  

Timms is no stranger to the misuse of English language within the Labour Party though.  When not regurgitating Thatcher's rhetoric they've been exemplary at spouting gibberish.  He held such glamorous ministerial positions as 'UK competitiveness Minister' and 'Minister for Digital Britain', in which role he allegedly claimed that the 'IP' in IP address stood for intellectual property...

Timms is no fall guy.  Neither is appropriately named Balls or media 'darling' Miliband.  The whole parliamentary party is at it, and has been since I can remember.  Things can only get better?  Not if there's absolutely no alternative being offered, they can't... 

"One reason I changed the Labour Party is so that we can remain true to our principles." Tony Blair  

"Now is not the time for sound-bites. I can feel the hand of history on my shoulder" Tony Blair on the signing of the Good Friday Agreement

Sov Gott

As someone who has bouts of insomnia, I know only too well how hard it can be when you can't sleep.  Artemis has been, in the last two weeks, somewhat troubled at bedtimes too.  Being that she only recently turned two, we've put it down to the onset of the infamous 'terrible twos'.  It's always easier to find stock reasons for things - like the responses to the London riots - 'It's poverty' or 'They're just bad eggs' - predetermined explanations that allow you to take predetermined actions.

My predetermined idea of dealing with the 'terrible twos' has always been this:
Don't falter.  Don't give in.  Ride it through.

Tonight however, Artemis showed me that this plan was as over-simplistic as the stock 'throw all the neds in jail' response that we saw after our society started to crumble this summer.  When we've been putting her to bed recently, she's been demanding the bottle of milk we used to give her in bed as a baby.  This demanding has got so loud, so vociferous that we've started to worry that the neighbours will think we're killing her.  Neither Donna or I are the sort of people likely to give in, and we've both been using different tactics in the battle: sternness, ignoring it, letting her get up again for a taste but then returning her to bed.  Tonight though, for no other reason than I'd ran out of options, I just held her, sang, and responded to the high pitched begging with sophisticated reason.

"You can't have a baby's bottle anymore, as Granny said, the babies need them now"
"But I could have a big girls cup..."
"But the big girls cup wouldn't let you lie down.  It would spill all over your bed."
"But I just want more milk"
"But, you see, there isn't any way to give you milk in your bed"

After a few repetitions of the word 'please' faded away she told me quite plainly

"It's the dark."  Ah.

"What about your night light?"
"It's just purple" she explained.
We had, only this last week, bought her a nightlight from Ikea, a cute ghost face.  The first night we'd put it on Temi hadn't caused a fuss, and ridiculously we didn't put two and two together.  But she's since learned that this thing goes off after a while.  She doesn't trust it anymore.

Feeling like an idiot I offered "I've got an idea!  Why don't I put on the hall light.  look, it's nice and bright.." and I let the light spill into the room.  She immediately pulled the cover over her and started to blow gently into her small harmonica (a new gift from our friend Sarah Middlemiss.  She loves it, and I figured sounds less like a murder than the alternative)

I sang a verse more of her night time song.

"Get taller when you're older" she said to me plainly, looking up at my standing figure in the gloom.
"Yes" I said at her little face. "Temi will get taller"
"Temi will get taller and Daddy will get taller"
"No.  Daddy will stay the same.  Maybe Temi will get taller than Daddy?"
"Yes."

It won't be hard.  But this feels profoundly like our first 'deep' conversation, the type of conversation where you are trying to make sense of the world and you think your parents will hold the answers.  I felt an indescribable mixture of pride and terrifyingly responsibility, all of a sudden.

The important thing is that, whatever situation we're in, by preparing for a battle we might be missing a much, much bigger picture.

"Father Christmas is coming."   She's getting the idea of Christmas then.

"Yes"  I reply, "I'd better go and tell him what a good girl you are.  Back in a minute."   And I leave her to her harmonica, her glowing ghost and some undoubtedly amazing dreams.

The Overcoat

Well the dust hadn't settled on the amazing experience of performing Gogol's The Overcoat at this year's Fringe before I was swept away with getting married.  The bells hadn't stopped ringing on that before I was starting my Journalism retraining.  Phew.  In fact I'm writing this from University. 

Before I talk about any of that I need though to express the incredible amount of pride I have to be associated with The Overcoat, a Finnish production that encapsulated the kind of physical, entertaining ensemble theatre that I saw here in Scotland during Communicado's heyday in the 1990s.  The Scottish press took what felt like an age to notice us, but once they started crawling out of the Traverse they took notice, with the Scotsman giving the show 5 stars and the Herald comparing the show to 7:84 classics.  The Stage gave Billy Mack, who played the silent hero Akaky MacKaky, their 'best actor' award in their Fringe awards.  Billy became the first person ever to win the award twice, and it was great honour to be there.
One of The Stage judges, Natasha Tripney, commented on his performance “Although he’s the character the play is all about, Billy Mack’s role is not a showy one. Mack brings us fully within the experience of a man we might otherwise not be able to understand and empathise with.”
There was a daft picture of us all on the front of the Stage, jubilant at a victory for the little guy.

It doesn't end there though.  At the end of November we are to reprise the show at the theatre that employed us: Helsinki’s Ryhmäteatteri.  This will be an incredible experience I'm sure, for the show was a smash hit in Finland before Catherine Grosvenor adapted it for Scotland.  Come over in November and give us a wave!

Tower of Babylon? Yes please.

The demise of the News Of The World has been far more entertaining than any of the horrendous mysogynistic sleaze it ever printed.  Murdoch's attempts to retain control by shutting down the paper in his own terms seems to have backfired, and now the pressure is on Cameron to show that he's not in bed with News corp.  Tony Blair must be sweating too, if any of the deals with government become public.  Tabloid hacks, as we've seen, play dirty, and now there's a bunch of them out of a job and pissed off.

Join usss and we can ennnd this destructive conflict

But it seems it doesn't end there.  The Socialist Workers Party, desperate for any bit of publicity, are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Tommy Sheridan getting an appeal over this, even though they disagree with him over which dead Russian is best.  After all, his perjury trial was about evidence he'd given against the News Of the World in the first place. The only problem with that, of course, is that perjury is still perjury, and the fact remains that he was going to a sex club with a News Of the World journalist in the first place.  Talk about sleeping with the enemy, that's taking it a wee bit far Tommy...

A far more interesting development is the emergence of the Information Commissioner's Office report 'What price privacy now?' which examines the trade in confidential personal information.  The 'operation motorman' investigation identified the following publications as the worst culprits of illegal transactions: 1. Daily Mail 2. Sunday people 3. Mirror 4. Mail on Sunday 5. News of the World. So it turns out the News Of The World had 182 illegal transactions, and the Daily Mail had 952!  The horrendous Daily Mail, which would put a story about the 'danger' of asylum seekers on the front page over absolutely anything.  The day the zombie outbreak happens, the Daily Mail will be reporting that the infected were economic migrants after a sook at the Nanny state's nip.

Surely in the wake of the News Of The World's demise hacks at the Mail and the Mirror group must be sweating, not only because all the power of Murdoch's evil empire be gunning for them, but also because they've been breaking the law too, and the whole thing could implode.  As Cameron tries to backtrack ungracefully from his own associations with Murdoch and Coulson, and Milliband tries to shake the shackles off his own party, expect more revelations, swipes and political fallout as more and more people try to save their own skin.  Also expect to government to bury a ton of bad news.  If it was an episode of The Thick Of It people would think it  a bit much...  I'll get some popcorn.

In the meantime read Toynbee's column The Emperor Has Lost His Clothes.  She's shamefully New Labour, but it's a good read.

Waggle, mama

Much as I like to bemoan big business and stick it to the man, I'm delighted to hear that Wagamama is to open a branch in Edinburgh.  When I used to spend more time in London I loved to visit the south bank Wagamama, because as well as being speedy and affordable it manages what a thousand chinese and thai takeaways fail at, making fresh tasting vegetarian eastern food, and without using msg.  I have recently visited the Aberdeen Wagamama, and they impressed me with a 'Summer Roll' starter- noodles and fresh greens with herbs wrapped in rice paper with a dipping sauce to die for, a delicious sweet mint, fresh coriander and chilli dip.  Its like a party in your mouth.

On the subject of condiments, our fridge has been relatively bare recently.  Marks and Spencer Red Onion and Mint Chutney is pleasant, and be wary of the Chilli Pickle from the same range.  Spread thinly.  Not because of the heat, but because of the strong flavour.

The PS3 has been as busy as always.  When SONY got hacked they took the Playstation Network down for nearly a month, and when it came back online everyone got two free games.  I've just finished the first of my freebies, the open world superhero epic Infamous.  It was fun, reminding me of the old Spiderman games from the Playstation 1 and 2.  And you certainly can't argue with the price.  I also purchased Dungeon Siege III, a co-op dungeon crawler.  It is enjoyable, but the search for the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance goes on.  Baldur's Gate : DA remains the optimum dungeon crawl: hack, slash, loot, level up, rinse repeat.  It's hard to say why this formula is so satisfying, and why that PS2 classic has never been equalled.  Perhaps its the sense that you are constantly being rewarded with new spells and shiny armour.  Perhaps its the fact you don't need to engage too much brainpower to get rewarded.  Nevertheless, its obvious why I've never ventured into the World Of Warcraft.

I'd end up like this.

Still waiting for more games to come out for the MOVE attachment.  The Playstation's answer to the Wii is an impressive piece of technology, more accurate and full of potential.  But the games to make use of it are still lacking, and until then videogaming in this house remains a pretty supine activity.  

Donna has at least made attempts to get moving, in the form of Vicky Binns' 'Dance It Off', an aerobics video in the traditional sense, in which a soap star follows the orders of a terrifying taskmaster.  Binns herself is inoffensive, her choice of hot pants is not.  

The dvd comes straight from the 'Bargain Binns', and we have been reliably informed that her weight is back on...  What's next then, if we want to be thinner and more attractive for our own wedding? Zumba?  MOVE games?  A diet solely consisting of summer rolls from Wagamama?