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Watter ower a Stane - April 06

by David Renwick Grant

‘The watter rinnin ower a stane’, in my case, will no longer be the Tay at Grandtully in Perthshire but the Quharity at Balintore in Angus. By the time you read this, I’ll have flitted.

It is not entirely from choice, for I have enjoyed my four plus years sojourn in the lands of Clann Donnchaidh. However, my winter let was only ever temporary and I was quite unable to find a more permanent place to rent in the area at a price I could afford, so outrageous have rentals become. I am about to be a pensioner, so it does not really matter that I have been constrained to move but it will be a great tragedy if young people who want to stay in the area cannot find affordable housing, even to rent, never mind buy.

The Conservatives will scrap ID cards if they win the next election. If they can inform the population of what is really contained in this utterly pernicious scheme, they will have a landslide victory.

George Orwell was a rank amateur compared with the Blair-Blunkett-Clarke trio. Everything you do electronically, even using an ATM, will be added to your record. If you include existing measures for tracking your mobile telephone, the taking of DNA samples from anyone detained by the police, and their retention even if the person is totally innocent, not to mention the new FBI-style outfit just announced, it is about to become very simple for the State to take over our lives totally.

A friend of mine swears that Blair has ‘666’, the mark of the beast, tattooed on his forehead. At the rate his hairline is receding, we should soon find out!

Check these out:

http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_national_identity_card
Action:
http://www.defy-id.org.uk/
http://www.no2id.net/

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There have been two bans in the news recently. Now I am not one for banning things, believing that we have quite sufficient legislation already in place to deal with most offences. However, I make an exception for the smoking ban.

Of all the health-damaging habits the human race is heir to, this must be the worst. As an ex-smoker of  20 years and up to 30 per day (though stopped for 23 years), I wholeheartedly welcome it. It is bound to make it easier for people who want to give up.

The publicans moan about the trade they will lose. But will they? I have seldom been in a pub since I stopped smoking, because the acrid blue reek became too unpleasant - and I never did like the stink that clung to my clothes. Now, however, I shall happily go, especially if there is live music. I am sure that there must be many others who feel the same.

* * * * *

The other ban was, of course, the anniversary of the Dunblane atrocity. Ironically, I happened to be in the USA when it took place, where such horrors are not unknown. In many states in America, of course, it is simple to acquire a weapon. It has never been so, in the UK, for law-abiding people to do so.

There has always been a stringent check, especially for rifles, while licences for pistols and revolvers were even harder to obtain. Personally I believe the ban on side-arms was the wrong, if understandable, reaction to a situation that should never ever have been allowed to happen, and would not, had proper checks been done and procedures followed. The result was to force sport-shooters to go abroad to train - but gun crime has increased!

Train passengers are being scanned in case they are carrying a knife. Will this include my Victorinox multi-tool, which has two pen-knife type blades? Both are less than three inches long but I suppose I just might be able to stab some irritating passenger with them. There is a chisel on the tool too.

Once, boy scouts, walkers and country folk carried sheath-knives. I was given my first one, which I still have, aged eight in Norway, where all boys had them. Nowadays, I am not sure I am even allowed to wear a sgian-dubh with my kilt.

I do not dismiss the increase in knife-crime. However, yet again, the innocent and the responsible are penalised because the law is too soft on the criminal element, most of which seems to be confined within certain sections of urban society.

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