Holyrood goons reported in Guardian

Miserable tartan-trewed old fiends who guard the refreshments at Holyrood have been roundly ridiculed in the Guardian diary

Stranraer rail link under threat

Steam excursion on Stranraer line last week Photo: Marc Turner

by Bruce Whitehead, Sunday Herald 18 April 2010

Transport campaigners have warned that the rail line which links Stranraer to Glasgow could face closure in under three years due to rising costs and the loss of direct ferry connections to Ireland next year.

The Scottish Association for Public Transport says there is a real prospect that the line could face closure south of Ayr from 2014, when the franchise is due for re-tender.

A spokesman said:

Gaza – a year on

I’ve finally managed to open more photos of the convoy to Gaza in Feb 2009. Here are some of them.

BBC Strategic Review

Since Mark Thompson announced cuts to 6 Music and other programmes (no doubt partly to pay for his enormous £800,000 salary), there’s been a massive howl of fury from music fans and staff. But the problems with the BBC go much deeper. Here is my response to their consultation for the Strategic Review; please feel to free to borrow from it and to make your own response here

The headings are the BBC’s from its strategy review consultation website:

Are the priorities right?

No. They should be:

The Scotsman in shock turnaround over bridge

On Tuesday the Scotsman – noisy cheerleader for a second Forth road bridge – finally did its job as a nationally trusted newspaper and reported the facts about the government’s flimsy case for building a new one. My letter (unpublished, surprise surprise) sums it all up:

Dear Editor,

At last The Scotsman has seen the light: the case for the new Forth road bridge is falling to bits. As Damascene conversions go, this one takes the biscuit. This paper was the cheerleader for the renewed campaign in 2006 which led to the main parties foolishly scrambling to win votes in 2007 on the rash promise of a new bridge. At last Bill Jamieson – executive editor no less – has decided to put into print what he must have known all along – because the ForthRight Alliance has been saying it – by reporting the manifest flaws in John Swinney’s collossal bridge folly, to whit: FETA are highly confident drying will arrest the corrosion so why spend £2.3bn on a new bridge? The FRA chair

IN MEMORY: AL NOOR

I am very sorry to announce that Al Noor from Preston, one of the best of our group of convoy drivers who brought medicines to the people of Gaza last February, has died in a road accident. He was killed along with two of his brothers-in-law. I know that his steadfast faith would have been a comfort to him in his final moments, and to his family in this sad time. I would like to say that his conversation, his joie de vivre and even his jaunty walk left me with a smile on my face every time I was with him. I shall miss him and regret always not having met up again after our return.

Bruce Whitehead, co-driver, Vehicle 7 (Ryder)

Al Noor, on extreme right.

Forth Road Bridge Bill: a white elephant we cant afford?

TOMORROW the long awaited Bill for a new road crossing of the Forth will be presented to parliament with the likely support of all MSPs except the two Greens.

The government is pressing ahead despite last week’s YouGov poll for Friends of the Earth showing that 57% want the bridge repaired, not replaced. A funding row with Westminster means the government will have to take money from other public transport schemes to pay for what environmentalists say will be yet another subsidised car route. A local residents’ pressure group say the new approach roads will be illegal, as the two access slip roads will be too close together to meet European traffic planning safety rules. On top of all this, the ForthRight Alliance, which is considering a legal challenge, says the engineering and economic case for another bridge is highly dubious, contradictory and worst of all – a colossal waste of public funds on a project which will double traffic CO2 across the Forth.

Scotsman re-posts censored letter

Bruce's press watchdog, Buzz

Nice to see that after a stiff email to the Press Complaints Commission and the Scotsman’s Readers’ Editor Ian Stewart, the letter referred to below has now been re-instated on the Scotsman website for the publication date, 1 June.

The Scotsman gags anti-bridge campaigner

THE SCOTSMAN has landed another blow for press freedom – by proving it has the freedom to ignore and suppress those views it doesn’t like. After publishing my letter criticising plans for a new Forth road bridge in the paper on Monday 1 June, editors at the increasingly tabloid rag took umbrage at my opinion and decided to censor it by dumping the entire letters page!

My Peckham barber story in Guardian

See my piece in the paper here; last item

Government’s case for £4.2bn bridge in tatters

© 2003 Edinburgh-Scotland.net

FIRST DATA from cable drying programme yields encouraging results – confirming the chief engineer’s opinion that he is “highly confident” corrosion will be halted. By Bruce Whitehead – Sunday Herald 19 Oct 2008

Glasgow’s recycling programme doomed

Glasgow city council wants to spend £135m on machines which will churn up municipal waste into fibre, but environmentalists say that’s a bad idea. By Bruce Whitehead, Sunday Herald 2 Nov 2008

Euro courts could halt 2nd Forth road bridge

EXEMPTING THE new Forth crossing from public enquiry could start European court action. By Bruce Whitehead - Sunday Herald 14 December 2008

Landfill soars but councils escape penalties

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SNP defends suspension of landfill penalties. By Bruce Whitehead 

DESPITE THE huge increase in the amount of waste produced over the festive season, the Scottish government has confirmed that it has halted penalties for councils which fail to reduce their reliance on landfill.

Climbdown delays homes energy performance scheme

 

Government gives landlords more time to get certified

  by Bruce Whitehead

 

 

 

 

 

 

SCOTTISH MINISTERS have been accused of breaking European law after the government suspended fines against landlords who fail to obtain an Energy Performance Certificate for new lettings.

Former ambassador “flash-publishes” new book after legal threat

Sheku Turay, victim of Sierra Leone conflict (Photo courtesy FIONA ABOUD)

By Bruce Whitehead (published in Sunday Herald, 11 January 2009 – no link yet)

CRAIG MURRAY, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job for opposing torture of terrorism suspects, has adopted the tactics of Kirk Douglas as Spartacus to publish his latest book. Mr Murray’s Edinburgh-based publisher Mainstream dropped the story, which deals with the arms-to-Africa scandal of the late 90s, after legal threats from solicitors representing the mercenary soldier Colonel Tim Spicer. In the Kirk Douglas epic, the hero’s followers each claim: “I’m Spartacus!”, confusing his Roman pursuers. Now a network of over a hundred websites and blog owners have signed up to post the book online tomorrow, in a bid to foil any legal attempts to take down servers or sites carrying the text.

Engineers’ confidence in bridge cables grows

Exhibitors’ views prompt fresh questions over bridge funding

by Bruce Whitehead

 ENGINEERS WORKING on plans for the Forth replacement crossing have indicated that they are increasingly confident that cable drying will arrest the corrosion  affecting the existing bridge. The finance secretary John Swinney has said he cannot be sure that dehumidification would work, and that this justified his decision to spend £2.34bn on a new crossing. However, Transport Scotland engineers have told public transport campaigners that they are “pretty confident” that the final conclusions on the dehumidification project will show that the present bridge can have a “substantially longer life” with only minor renewal work.

CND damns government over nuclear firm

 

EXCLUSIVE: 

  AND  MADE BY

 

 

CND brands Forth bridge contract “disgraceful”

By Bruce Whitehead 

SCOTTISH CND has attacked the government for having double standards after it emerged that the contractor building the new Forth crossing is now also a manufacturer of nuclear weapons, which the SNP strongly opposes. CND Scotland’s treasurer Jim Taggart said the government’s determination to continue the contract with Jacobs Engineering, which bought part of the Aldermaston nuclear weapons establishment last month, was disgraceful.

Forth road bridge contractor also makes nuclear weapons

 

 

The Guardian Diary today publishes my story about how the Scottish government, which wants Trident gone, is letting Jacobs Engineering, which makes nuclear bombs, build the new Forth bridge. Read the Guardian piece here (5th paragraph) and the full story, including the split in Scottish CND, below.

Scottish Aid reaches Gaza

by BRUCE WHITEHEAD

EIGHTEEN SCOTTISH volunteers have successfully delivered 25 tonnes of medicines to Gaza after a marathon 3,700-mile drive through Europe. The aid was donated by multi-faith groups including churches and mosques across Scotland. Despite setting off a week after the George Galloway convoy, the 17 Muslims from Glasgow, Preston and Bolton mosques, joined by this journalist, managed to beat the much larger group by nearly two days, arriving at the Rafah checkpoint last Saturday. Abdul Aziz, who helped organise the shipment, said the drivers had confirmed the trust placed in them by thousands of Scottish and English donors.

Jewish lady hijacks Gaza convoy

The Guardian Diary today relates my story of how a lady motorist managed to pull over the Scottish Gaza medicine convoy in Germany; unfortunately the Guardian got confused and thought we were the George Galloway convoy… now where would we get Havana cigars like his? Read the story here (second par)

Remember Exxon Valdez? The oil didn’t go away…

“Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!”

 The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.

 ”Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR DAMN HAND IN IT!”

She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village’s fishing ground. Gail’s hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez. Read more…

FETA in confusion over cable drying

CONFUSION HAS arisen over the dehumidification work being carried out on the Forth road bridge, following a public meeting in South Queensferry attended by four MSPs and around 60 local residents. The SNP Lothians MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville told the audience that thebridge’s chief engineer Barry Colford had denied saying he was ever “highly confident” that dehumidification would arrest the corrosion which is affecting the cables. But at the same meeting, Queensferry community council chair Tom Martin claimed that the press officer for the bridge, Chris Waite, had told him there was “a high degree of confidence” that the cable-drying technique would succeed in arresting corrosion, although it was impossible to be absolutely certain.

Even more France…