Yakking for Argyll

Hang on. Isn’t the heart of private enterprise supposed to be the old saw ’speculate to accumulate’? And isn’t investment the key to speculation? Not for our feather-bedded UK Government contractors. BAE Systems, due to delver HMS Astute to Faslane in Argyll by the end of this month, has been awarded a fifteen year contract by the MOD to supply ammunition to British troops. The contract is worth £3 billion and includes £120 million which - “allows BAE to carry out much needed modernisation work on munitions factories in the UK, some of which are relying on machinery dating back to the Second World War”. And we’re investing serious public money in irresponsible management like this? And what about the safety of the areas surrounding these dodgy munitions operations - in Birtley, County Durham; Glascoed, South Wales; and Radway Green in Crewe?

Charlie Blakemore, MD of BAE Systems’ Land Systems Munitions wing, says - gaily, of their long obsolete set up: “You can imagine that, with the rate of production we are now at, it’s been some achievement to keep that going in that period to make sure we deliver on time’.” It’s been in your unsafe hands, mate - or more accurately, in your bank.

Did you hear the interview Jacques Rogge of the IOC gave the BBC? He said: ‘a good organiser is a hjmbe organiser. A good organiser is an organiser who listens. The nightmare is an organiser who says “I’ll do it my way” ‘. He seemed concerned about the UK’s lowering of expectations for the 2012 Games. He said that they could not lower the standard set in Beijing. Now - you can bet that the media will run off at the mouth about how we’ll never have the budget to match the Beijing Opening Ceremony. Government Ministers will be perpetually asked about available budgets and will say there can be no more. We will work up a national lather about the impossibility and unreasonableness of it.

That wasn’t what he said. He made no reference of any kind, overt or oblique, to the ceremonials. He spoke of the quality of the Olympic village, the quality of the transport between the village and the venues, the organisation of the venues… Very little of this is about more money and none of it is about public show. He is clearly concerned about our capacity to deliver organisationally. He has a point. The runes are not propitious.

World record sprinter and in-house entertainer - all before he crossed the line - Usain Bolt’s gold for Jamaica in the Men’s 100 metres was one for the history books. Babies in Jamaica will be jumping out of their prams to start sprinting. (And never mind BBC News - Wikipedia has his World Record up there already.)

A Scottish Ambulance service worker has just been jailed for four months at Edinburgh Sherriff Court by Sherriff Andrew Lothian who described his actions as ‘one of the grossest breaches of trust possible’. When a drunk woman patient lay half-naked in the back of his ambulance, Scott Jenkins not only made lewd remarks but crouched down with his camera phone in an attempt to photograph the woman’s genital area. Ruth Anderson, who, with a colleague formed a paramedic small response unit called to the patient before themselves calling the ambulance, was so horrified by Jenkins’s actions that she made a formal complaint leading to his immediate suspension. When Sherrif Lothian heard, during the case, that some of Jenkins’s colleagues in the ambulance service had sent a joint letter of support for him, he is reported to have thrown down his pen, saying ‘That is one of the most distasteful aspects of this whole case’. He then welcomed Miss Anderson’s intervention, saying that she was doing the right thing ‘when everyone around her was not’.

It’s great to find any member of the judiciary whose judgments are so strongly in touch with core human values and common sense; and one not prone to dismissing breaches of trust against women, drunk or sober. When we are at our most vulnerable we have to be certain that we will be treated with the utmost care and respect from public servants paid to do just that. We need courageous whistle-blowers to curb the appetites of those who would undermine the trust our humanity depends upon.

BBC commentator on Montell Douglas’s heat in the Women’s 100 meters: ‘She’s the fastest loser, which is good news’. You know what he means but you still have to laugh.

Henry McLeish is reported to be on the brink of agreeing to run as the Labour candidate in the forthcoming Westminster by-election at Glenrothes in Fife. What is he thinking of? He’s popular in the constituency, it’s not inconceivable that he just might win - but why bother? The mood of the time and the coming home to roost of generations of Scottish Labour pigeons would mean walking into a dead end. And to do this to rescue the party that left him friendless when he needed support? And to do it to throw a temporary lifeline to a Prime Minister who is subject to even more contempt than McCliche was when he was First Minister at Holyrood?

It is to Henry McLeish’s great credit that he has rehabilitated himself so substantially after the nadir of his ejection from office. His recent statements lend weight to his grasp of the present political realities - to the point where some Labour members refer to him as a ‘Crypto-Nat’. So here too - how can he reconcile the perspectives and advice to which he’s recently given voice with taking the shilling and toeing a line on devolution he clearly knows to be out of time? It can only be money. The prospect of a Westminster salary, expenses and pension pot may be enough to make him take the pragmatic option. If he does, his political credibillty - like Claire Short’s - will be irrecoverable.

Footnote: on 20th August JHenry McLeish announced that he had decided not to let his name go forward as a candidate in the Glenrothes constituency. Eyes wide open, then.

There was national horror yesterday at the news that Glasgow’s Stobhill Hospital left a dead man on view in a ward for seven hours to great distress among other patients who were even served meals during the period. While this is partly a management failure through a poor culture of care, it is a human failure of staggering dimensions. Every nurse and every assistant at every level on that ward failed signally as a human being. You don’t need a rule to cover a situation like this. You shouldn’t need to be told. What on earth is going on when individuals lose sight of sheer humanity by such an Olympic distance?

Can’t quite get it that China delivered a breathtaking opening ceremony, can we? We nit-pick to lessen their achievement, maybe to reduce the inevitable gap between this and the kitsch we’re sure to go for in 2012. Let’s hear it for massed Morris dancers. So - the footprints in the sky were computer generated, not real fireworks. That gave us at least two days of whingeing. Then we got overheated because the little girl singing the anthem to China turned out to be miming to another child’s voice. We could hardly cope with the shock of a value system which gave priority to the potency of image - this from a culture which takes it for granted that stage stars often don’t cut it against more photogenic rivals for the equivalent film role. There’s nothing more diminishing then meanness of spirit. China had the vision, the stamina, the discipline, the heart for a massive challenge and the will to deliver. That’s what took our breath away - sheer epic scale, nailed. We’re just not there.

Watching the Russian Ambassador to the UN deny the Russian army presence in Georgia was an extraordinary display of brass neck. Terrifyingly his plausibility wasn’t dented by the assembled press corps. The only reason I ‘know’ he was lying, was a subsequent report from the BBC which I have no reason to doubt was accurate. And in this context his performance really reminded me of a couple of our own home-grown spin-doctors (Blair and his comrade in PR, Campbell). A frightening comparison on both counts.

British badminton mixed-doubles pair, Nathan Robertson and Gail Ems, were down 17-12 in the third game of a key match. They are to retire after this games. An over-heated commentator describing their situation as ‘retire or get to the semi-final’ said: ‘It’s stark. It’s brutal. It’s reality.’

And a BBC commentator, wanting to talk up the Brits in one of the canoe slalom rounds, said ‘he’s lying tantalisingly in seventh place’.

There’ll be more.