10 Things I Love

A while back I was tagged by the marvellous Betty Herbert, (@52Betty on Twitter) author of the equally marvellous blog, and now book, "The 52 Seductions", to share 10 things I love. So here they are...

Beaches (Not The Movie)
I grew up in a seaside village and I can't imagine not living within striking distance of the sea. I think I would get horribly claustrophobic. I love every kind of beach, sandy, rocky, grassy. I'm even rather fond of seaweed. I like to pop the mermaid's purses. My favourite beach is Saddell beach on the Kintyre Peninsula in Argyll. You can stay in little cottages right on the beach and, one day, I will.

Disco
My musical education began with propping a Thorn tape recorder next to the radio to tape the Top 40. Probably my first criminal act. To be honest, my musical tastes have never developed much past that. I might listen to classical music, but if it's pop I want to dance and if I want to dance, it's disco. Do I even mean disco? Sometimes I might mean Carolina Beach Music, or funk or soul. Anyway, I don't mean boys in skinny jeans and low cut t-shirts exposing their wee concave chests. Bless. I mean something like this...

Telly
When I was younger I had lots of hobbies. I used to do canoeing and gymnastics and play the violin. But the only one that's really lasted has been watching telly. Want to sit on your own and cry into your Chablis? Watch the telly! Want to get really irate and shout at the Prime Minister? Watch the telly! Want to see Michael Portillo in a green satin shirt? Watch the telly! This wondrous sliver of shimmering dreams. This electronic encyclopedia of emotion. This shining citadel of learning, flickering in the corner of our lives. I love it.

Bread and Butter
If I had to describe how happiness felt it would be the sensation of my teeth sinking into half an inch of butter on a thick doorstep of white freshly baked bread. I have a strange fantasy about sleeping in a bed made of bread. Can you imagine, cushioned on that pillowy softness, encased in the aroma of buttery crust. Oooh, I feel a bit peckish now...

Ladybird Children's Books
"Her shoes were so wet that the water was running in at the toes and out at the heels." If I close my eyes and conjure up the princess in "The Princess and the Pea", the picture in my mind's eye is never my own. It is the illustration from the Ladybird book of the fairy tale published in the late 1960's. They are the technicolour MGM musicals of children's illustrations: princesses in wasp waisted primrose yellow dresses, millers' sons in open necked shirts and tight breeches. I still have them and when I take them out and look at them I can almost taste the Creamola Foam.

Cushions and Shoes
I am calling this one thing under a notional heading of accessories. I love their infinite variety. If humans were not as wonderful as they are, someone would have invented the cushion and left it there; a bit of burlap sacking with some horsehair, Bob's your uncle. They'd have got as far as the hobnail boot and then gone to the pub. But they didn't. They took these mundane objects and looked beyond their function, they made them pretty and luxurious and funny and fetishistic and they don't half cheer me up some days.

Democracy
I don't wake up every day and actively think "I LOVE DEMOCRACY!" but it's probably unlikely I'd be faffing around here thinking about shoes and cushions if it didn't exist. In my previous job I met elected members from Parliaments around the world, like the representatives from Oyo State in Nigeria, who had been besieged by gunmen in the Parliament shortly before their visit. They asked how politicians and officials were "made" to do things. Were they prosecuted? Were they put in jail? Well, we would say, it doesn't always work, but for the most part people just sort of, um, follow the rules. Boring, but also kind of magical really and certainly precious.

My Daughter
(and Everyone Else Who Knows Me, Or At Least The Ones I Like)
It's hard to say something here that won't make the non-parents throw up and the parents go "WE KNOW!", but I couldn't write this without including my daughter because she is the joy of my life and I adore her. Like millions before me it was a bit shocking to realise how much I loved my daughter, how fierce it is.

I love my friends and other family too and I don't have to wash their clothes for them, which is nice.

Large People Falling Over At Weddings
I don't mind a bit of witty banter but I'm really a slapstick merchant at heart. There's not much makes me laugh more than a sturdy middle aged man in tartan trews crashing full pelt into a trestle table. Unless it's a tented bridesmaid falling off a chair.

The Secrets of Long Term Love

Two good friends of mine just got engaged and I am quite delighted for them. It is lovely when two friends get together and they are two lovely friends so the whole thing, basically, could not be lovelier.

I'm a bit of a softy at heart. I love weddings and try to be an exemplary guest. I agonise over gifts (or the price, certainly). I'm also one of those people who cries (especially if there is no free bar or late night buffet).

Sometimes I do worry though, that young couples are not entirely prepared for the reality of long term love. Of course, it is now quite common for couples to live together for a while before they marry, or have a civil partnership, or decide to commit in the long term. But there is a big difference between two or three years of fondue parties with fellow young solicitors and proper, down in the trenches, blood and guts, toe-nail clippings on the armrest, long term love.

So I have taken it upon myself to tell a few home truths. The first rule of long term love is that you have to discuss what is for tea EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Reaching terms of agreement on beverages can also be a minefield. Particularly getting your partner to accept that placing the teabag in the cup the night before, "to save time in the morning", is an early sign of madness.

It is also true that it is difficult to keep the romance alive. Delicate whisps of underwear dancing like snowflakes on the washing line, are replaced by sturdy cotton items resembling dead moles on a fence. The courtesy of only breaking wind in the garden is abandoned, to be replaced by a lift of the cheek and a cursory flap of the Radio Times.

Bearing all of this in mind, I think it is best to approach long term love with low expectations. The key to this is to have a really crap wedding, or rather, have a great wedding but a really crap wedding night, since this best reflects later life when fun times are reserved for going out with your mates.

A friend played a blinder in the crap wedding night department. She and the groom had their small reception in their flat, the idea being that they would slope off to a swanky hotel in the wee small hours. In the end they both got hammered and couldn't face the journey.

My friend went to bed just as a food fight was breaking out and awoke some time later to find her husband climbing into bed, apparently coming down with something, so cold and clammy was his chest. But still, he also had a raging erection. The good news was that the cold and clammy chest was only a large slice of gammon stuck to his pecs, the bad news was that the erection turned out to be half a cucumber in his boxers. Shortly after, the door opened to reveal a sleepwalking male house guest who urinated on the bed.

I rate this as an excellent introduction to long term love, particularly if having children is on the agenda. For the horrors of secret nose-picking, or tights worn two days in a row, pale into insignificance when you enter the long term love landscape of parenthood.

For example, no-one tells you when you're exchanging rings that one day you will dress your concussed husband's head wound with a sanitary towel, before making him have disorientated sex with you, because you are ovulating. Or that he may be forced to take dictation for a shopping list that includes "nipple protectors" while you stand naked after your shower, blowdrying your episiotomy stitches.

I imagine there are people in long term relationships reading this "tutting" and getting ready to launch into a lecture about how to keep long term love "fresh" as if it were a smelly armpit you were forced to sniff on the tube.

I am not about to criticise them. I admire them, I really do. I am in awe of people who have date nights and won't let their wives see them in their curlers. I wish I were more like them, rather than being someone who shouts "OH, DRY YOUR EYES!" when my husband suggests that I might like to change out of my pyjamas in order to go to Homebase.

And yet, and yet, there is also something very special about allowing one other person in your life to see you very far from your best. I'm not cut from the same cloth as I was 20 years ago. Not emotionally, and certainly not physically. If we want to be loved for who we really are, then surely that must admit the possibility of still being desirable with a crumpled face in last night's make-up.

I'm not advocating making no effort for your nearest and dearest, it's a bit disrespectful to say the least. But I also believe that true love has tenderness at its heart, and that tenderness does not require perfection. Thank God.

Twitter: Why the Little Blue Bird is Good

I had a lovely day yesterday. I spent most of it with Celia Pedroso, a travel journalist and food writer from Lisbon. We drank coffee, walked up Arthur's Seat, ate a scrummy lunch and generally had a fine time.

Celia was put in touch with me by a mutual acquaintance, food writer and legendary Metro restaurant critic Marina O'Loughlin. "Fascinating, but what is your point caller?" I hear you cry. Well, rather oddly, I have never actually met Marina. I only know her through Twitter where she tweets under the name @MarinaMetro.

And yet, there we were, Celia and I, two real life people chatting in the sunshine, brought together by a person I have only known as a series of 140 character tweets and a picture of a giant slug in horn-rimmed specs.

I used to attempt to explain the attraction of Twitter to non-Tweeters, but no longer. Now I simply hang a sign round my neck saying "I use Twitter so, yes, I am a moron." It's less painful and does not distract me from getting quietly slaughtered while the conversation moves onto bunions and how much to spend on cheese at Christmas.

The fact is Twitter is much like life. On Twitter there are good eggs, bad eggs, smelly eggs, clever eggs, sexy eggs, pompous eggs, an egg to suit every pocket really - as long as you're careful how you sit down. Also, just because the eggs are not actually in your pocket, do not presume that they will not one day end up in a delicious real life egg sandwich. Are you following this? Thought not. In which case, read on. Or not.

Being on Twitter is a Substitute for Living Life

An assumption often made by anti-Tweeters (let us call them "hostiles") is that relationships on Twitter are a substitute for bona-fide corporeal relationships.

Fact 1: Tweeting does not render one incapable of texting, or hiding from the neighbours like a proper normal.

Fact 2: I have friends in real life and I see and speak to them often. Sometimes even when, quite frankly, I really cannot be arsed.

Fact 3: A cursory glance at my timeline shows that, miraculously, people who tweet can do other things as well. They work, they go to the theatre, they run, they read, they cook wonderful food, they walk up hills, they swim in the ocean, they care for ill relatives, they help out at school. Their lives are as rich and diverse as anyone else's. Clearly there are exceptions, like Piers Morgan, but they are in the minority.

Twitter Friends Are Not Like Real Friends

Fact 4: I follow more than 600 people on Twitter and I'm not going to pretend that they are all bosom buddies. I am not about to invite the postman to dinner either, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have the odd exchange about the weather.

Fact 5: Some Twitter friends become real life friends. I know because I have drunk wine, eaten cake, danced and laughed with them. I had mentally tacked a large "No Vacancies" sign to the "new friendships" part of my life. Twitter brought back a bit of the freewheeling attitude to friendships that I had when I was younger, when I was quite happy to have half-cut partial strangers arrive at the door in order to watch Vic and Bob and share a slevery bottle of Irn Bru.

Fact 6: Sometimes, though perhaps rarely, you can develop a real friendship and fondness for people you have never met. I don't understand why people who think "84 Charing Cross Road" is charming and delightful refuse to believe that people can establish a genuine connection on Twitter.

People Only Talk About Rubbish Like What they have for Breakfast

Fact 7: Have you taken part in any real-life conversations of late? See my earlier point about bunions and cheese. I am as likely to talk crap in real life as I am on Twitter. In fact more likely because, like squeezing yourself into a tight party dress, you have to make a bit of an effort for 140 characters.

Fact 8: For lazy toe-rags like me Twitter is heaven sent. It is like having the zeitgeist elves visit while you are sleeping. Tweets I have favourited send me to wonderful photographs of Victorian London, obscure Northern Soul recordings, the full text of political speeches, recommendations for books and films, copies of research and inquiry reports. As well as sites where you can draw stick men and watch kitttens ride on tortoises.

I don't like everything about Twitter. There are times when a clash of "tone" makes it feel prettty uncomfortable - like going out for dinner and having the person next to you strip naked and sit on their lasagne, crying, while other diners are playing scrabble or trying to put a hat on a guinea pig.

There are plenty of things about Twitter that irritate the hell out of me. The playground spats, the pack mentality, the displays of aggression and snide remarks. But, let's face it, walk down Princes St on a Saturday and you're bound to bump into one or two total and utter gits.

Twitter can also be a bit exhausting. I think it may have been Greg Stekelman, aka @themanwhofell who said it's a bit like having an angry wasp in your brain. The knowledge that it's whirring away all day and all night, like a giant pedantic cocktail party can make it hard to switch off. But then, some people get addicted to Benylin.

Sometimes I see myself from the outside, staring at a never ending stream of tiny people on my phone and think "The whole thing's bonkers." But I don't ever think, as its critics do, that it is a barrier to "real" experience.

I've been thoroughly cheesed off and Twitter has lifted my mood, I've been happy as a clam and Twitter has made me happier. It has made me laugh, it has made me cry, it has patted me on the back and it has made me pull my socks up. Twitter is not the pinnacle of human achievement, but it's thought provoking and fun and I'm glad I found it.

Twitter is what you make it, and what makes it are the people. You know who you are and I'm glad to have met you.

Raising My Heckles

I just love heckling. I cannot tell you how much I love it. It's almost as good as the thrill you get when you buy a jam doughnut and find two angry wasps in the bag.

So imagine my delight when I went to see a comedian the other evening and got treated to some top notch heckling. Bon mots such as "Speak up!" "Not funny!" "Oi! You! Yeah, you! Ha!" kept the audience entranced, or at the very least, homicidal.

For if brevity is the soul of wit, these guys were really, really, really, reallly great. No, really, they really were, really good.

At times they were positively avant garde, dispensing with the tired tradition of heckling with words and critiquing the performance with atypical groupings of syllables and urgent grunting. Some heckles may even have been produced by body parts other than the vocal chords.

I do hope that if any of them ever get to have sex, their partner shouts out "BOOOORING!" just as they are hitting their stride.

Anyway, in honour of that fine body of men (oh yes, they were men) I have set out below some of the most momentous heckles in history.

10, 000 BC: IN THE MOUNTAINS

Troglodyte 1: Man! Or rather, neanderthal man! A bolt of light came down from the sky and hit that twig and all of a sudden my little hairy tootsies are roasty toasty! Whoa! What's all that about?!? Tell you what, let's get more twigs and keep it going! Yay! This is like that time when me and the missus nearly fell in that volcano and...

Troglodyte 2 steps forward and pours water on the burning twig.

Troglodyte 1: I guess it did need more work.

12th CENTURY: SOMEWHERE IN ITALY

St Francis of Assisi offers up a prayer to God.

St Francis: Lord make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, ...

Unknown peasant: BALDY!

St Francis : Pardon? Oh, I like that actually.

15th CENTURY: ITALY (AGAIN)

Leonardo Da Vinci holds forth to a group of students on his many diverse and marvellous achievements in art, design, engineering, cartography. Suddenly, a passing washer woman cries:

"IS THERE NAE END TAE THAT MAN'S TALENTS?"

(Some records attribute this to a member of the audience in the Glasgow Apollo during a Roy Castle show, but true to the spirit of the piece, let us not be troubled by the facts .)

CIRCA 1600: LONDON ENGLAND

The opening night of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre.

Hamlet: To be or not to be, that is the question.

Unknown peasant: Make your mind up, son.

NOVEMBER 19, 1863: GETTYSBURG PENNSYLVANIA

Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg address.

Lincoln: Four score and seven years ago...

Unknown pedant: Oi! Big nose! "Four score and seven?" What's wrong with "87?"

Lincoln: ...our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, ...

Unknown pedant: Ooh, "brought forth"! Lah de dah! What's wrong with "made"!? Bloody left wing intelligentsia! Plain English too good for ya?!

Lincoln: ...conceived in liberty

Unknown pedant: LIBERTY BODICE! BIG GIRL'S BLOUSE!

Lincoln: ... One nation, under a groove. Er, um, sheesh, I've lost my place now...

Unknown pedant: YOUR MUM! YOUR MUM!YOUR MUM!YOUR MUM!

(The unknown pedant subsequently became a successful political blogger.)

I could go on. (Please don't - Ed) Instead I will give you the words of Teddy Roosevelt.

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

I'm not sure I'd condemn all critics quite as harshly as President Roosevelt. Intelligent criticism is an essential componment in public discourse and the evolution of art forms. Even some hecklers are quite funny. Just not the ones I heard the other night. And to those of you who disagree, I would simply say, "LOOOOSERS!".

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Today the great and the not so good who presided over the shocking saga of phone hacking at the News of the World will appear before a committee of MPs to be held to account. (Or at least those not under arrest will.)

As a piece of political theatre no doubt it will be gripping. It may even provide some of the answers to important questions about who knew what and when.

But it cannot hope to address the fundamental issues raised by this scandal, not least because of the extent to which politicians have been made complicit by their failure to act. So there will be the inquiries and possibly, perhaps probably, the prosecutions.

As I write this I am on holiday abroad, not on-line much and therefore very much out of the loop. Muffled cries of more resignations and arrests have filtered through, but the allegations of wrongdoing seem essentially unchanged. As appalling as the story has been, in recent days there has been a sense of stasis, of further revelations going over old ground. There may be little more that can usefully be said at this point.

And yet I can’t stop thinking about it. Why? What is it about this story that makes me keep turning it over in my head? I keep on worrying at it, trying to make sense of it. Conflicts still rage around the globe, nations teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. A few hacked messages, the attempted smash and grab of a politician’s bank details, seem pretty small beer by comparison.

So why do I care so much? Is it the ruthless power of a media dynasty? The household names who cried foul but were deemed fair game? The politicians who raged and wept in private but in public kissed their tormentors and wished them well?

I think it is because it has shaken my faith in the system. It has made me question whether I really know the country I have lived in all my life. I am aware this sounds rather melodramatic. Maybe it is. Maybe I’m a bit hysterical; maybe not.

I wrote recently about democracy, about the fact that I worked for a long time in the Scottish Parliament and that, during meetings with politicians from emerging democracies, I felt very lucky that I happened to live here and now, in a political system where, basically, those in charge follow the rules. I felt lucky to live in a country with a delicate system of checks and balances, evolved and refined over many decades, which protects us from corruption and power without responsibility. But, in relation to hacking, that system failed.

I am reminded of the received wisdom about great disasters. In essence, "man-made” disasters occur when not one but several mechanisms fail simultaneously. We have been failed by not one, but three of our most important institutions: an elected parliament accountable to the people, a free press, and an independent police force. If this wrongdoing had not been exposed, who knows how much further we would have drifted toward catastrophic democratic failure.

Again my melodrama detector is flickering. But it is difficult to overstate the seriousness of what has been uncovered. The unscrupulous behaviour of some journalists on one newspaper, or even a number of newspapers, is only the beginning. The serious breach of trust is that, as evidence of that behaviour began to emerge, politicians failed to act decisively, the police failed to investigate fully, the wider press failed to report. The refined system of checks and balances did not work, more than that, barely seemed to exist.

But we have been fortunate. We have been fortunate to have practitioners in these institutions who were not persuaded to let questions lie unanswered. The story may never have seen the light of day if not for the exemplary journalism of Nick Davies and The Guardian. MPs such as Tom Watson, Chris Bryant and Norman Fowler continued to campaign on these issues when no-one wanted to listen.

But overall we cannot escape the fact that we have been let down. So how on earth did we get here?

The story of how sections of the press have increasingly felt an entitlement to private information is a whole other blog in itself. Suffice to say that the “they were asking for it defence” most recently expounded by the former News of the World journalist and moral amoeba Paul McMullan, is wearing pretty thin, not least because many of the victims of hacking were not celebrities or public figures. (Though frankly, I thought hacking was a pretty big deal even when it was starlets, and Max Clifford because rest assured, if they'll do it to the rich and famous, they'll do it to you.)

As for the politicians, I am glad they have acknowledged that things had got too cosy by half with the fourth estate.This is the ray of hope to have emerged in these murky times. If the main parties stand together, this is the best chance they will have had in many years to free themselves from their self imposed servitude.

For while there may have been reasons for politicians' complicity, there was no justification. If you put yourself forward for high public office we have a right to expect you to make brave moral choices. We certainly have a right to expect you to confront the abuse of power even where it might be held against your party or you personally. The alternative is a whole political class in hock to the media barons.

As for the Met police, their behaviour has in some ways troubled me most of all. Incompetence? Poor judgement? Cover-up? Corruption? I'm not loving any of those as explanations, to be honest. When we start to doubt the willingness of the police to investigate without fear or favour we really are in serious trouble.

So where do we go from here? Tougher regulation of the press is surely unavoidable. The PCC has been overseeing this essential national industry like the management committee of a private members club. That cannot continue. But we must remember that good journalists got us out of this hole when elected members, regulators and police were missing in inaction. We need a regulatory system that encourages and protects the kind of reporting undertaken by The Guardian on this story, while curbing the worst excesses of intrusion and abuse.

I don't accept that tougher regulation and press freedom are mutually exclusive. I have never believed that a regulatory and wider legal framework which protects legitimate private information and press freedom is beyond the wit of legislators. There are other areas of law, (medicine for example) which throw up difficult questions of competing rights, freedoms and responsibilities.

Frankly the issue, while complex, is not as impossible to resolve as some journalists would have as believe. In that respect we must remember that the media, as the messenger, is also the subject of the debate. This is quite unique. No other profession enjoys the privileged position of directly arguing its own case in the court of public opinion.

Of course we must listen to the views of the press on how their industry should be regulated. Their experience and insight is essential. But sometimes insight is gained at the expense of perspective and objectivity.

Stronger regulation does not have to mean a move away from self regulation. There are analagous examples such as the way in which doctors are “policed” by the General Medical Council which could be followed. Why can a body of (former) journalists and lay people could not be given the power to impose large fines and also decide that newspaper executives and editors may not be fit to hold senior positions?

I care passionately about the quality of the press in this country. It's not only the banks that are too important to fail. A strong and vocal press should be our national conscience, asking questions others would rather ignore, calling out bad decisions, forcing the body politic to acknowledge its failings.

Press, politicians, regulators, police, we need them all to act in the public interest, because the public interest is what matters.

Transformative Teaching or Why We Really Are All in this Together

Teachers and teaching have been in the news a fair bit of late. Although that's not strictly true because there has been very little discussion of teaching itself. The heated debate has been mostly about pensions and holidays. Subjects dear to all our hearts of course and therefore understandably likely to stir strong emotions. Thank God they're not also talking about making gherkins mandatory in cheeseburgers or Twitter might spontaneously combust.

All this chat about teaching, (and the fact that tomorrow is the end of term here in Scotland so we are doing all that end of term stuff like concerts, presents for the teachers, drinking neat martini and smoking cocktail Sobranie in the loos,) sorry, where were we? Oh yes, all the chat about teaching has made me think about my own teachers. Recently someone also asked me if I had a favourite teacher.

The truth is, not really. I remember lots of teachers, but I'm not sure that I'd pick one out as a favourite. I remember Mr Anderson who ate his chocolate biscuits before his sandwiches, I remember Mrs Bailey with the crazy beehive and hairy legs, I remember Mr Roger who ran up and down in front of our desks pretending to be a sperm. I remember Mr Eastbury who came in one day rather half-cut and sat cross-legged on his desk; and Mrs Paterson who played the tape of an "O" Grade German student who, in his oral exam, said everything in English but with a German accent and who called the characters in the story Fritz and Gretel.

There are a couple who stand out from the crowd though. One was Mr Stevenson who took us for English. He looked a bit like Gimli from the Lord of the Rings, if Gimli had worn Hush Puppies. He read aloud and acted the parts and fulminated loudly if we didn't like the things he liked. It was in his class that I read "A High Wind in Jamaica" and "The Great Gatsby" for the first time. He also gave me the worst mark I ever received for a creative writing piece.

It was all about a clever girl who worked as a secretary in order to support her ailing mother. It was mostly a description of her outfits, with a bit of romance chucked in. It was basically the literary love child of The Bunty and "Scruples". He gave me a "D" and wrote on it something like "This is very boring. You are better than this." I think all of those things explain why I might have been a little bit in love with him.

Then there was Mrs Rochester a music teacher who joined in my fifth year and took over the choir. She was very tall and theatrical and she conducted like her life depended on it. The senior choir grew from 20 pupils or so to over 100. They could barely fit us all on the stage. We sang carols and old songs from musicals, but with her we also sang Gilbert and Sullivan pieces and "Worthy is the Lamb". Put simply, she had ambition for us. She therefore also expected more of us than the other choir masters had done. (Though any pupil could join.)

Neither of these teachers changed my life. Frankly I came from a nice middle class home and was reasonably bright and didn't really need my life changing. But they both taught me very well. They had a passion for their subject which lit the embers of enthusiasm which lurk in even the most painfully cool and self-conscious adolescent breast.

One of the many unfortunate things about the nature of the debate surrounding today's action is that discussion of teaching, of the transformative power of a good teacher has been squeezed out. I am not belittling the importance of the issues under discussion. Teachers have every right to fight for a decent pension. I do not expect them to do it simply for the love it. They deserve fair recompense like the rest of us.

They derserve fair recompense because the job they do is very important. For parents what could be more important than the education and social development of your child? For non- parents what could be more important than nurturing the citizens of the future?

I think we all need to be honest about both the burdens and benefits of our jobs (if we have one). Many of my friends and members of my family are teachers. They work hard in a stressful and important job for a salary that could not (except in some very rare cases) be called vast.

Some teachers are wonderful and work above and beyond the call of duty. Some are not that great. My husband works in education and I know how wearisome it is to be needled about your holidays by a lawyer who earns four times what he does. But, having shared the long summer holidays with my husband for the first time these past two years, I also know the rare delight of having that "breathing" space.

I recently met two young women who, despite having worked full time for their employer for two years, received 8 paid days holiday a year because they were retained on 12 hour a week contracts. I am categorically not espousing that as the way forward. I was shocked and angered by it and saddened by their acceptance of it.

I don't think a fairer deal for them will be the result if teachers' pensions are eroded. But I do understand why they might feel resentful and how preying on such feelings drives a divide and rule philosphy which is to the detriment of society as a whole.

Teachers are not, and do not claim to be, martyrs to the cause of our children's future. Neither are they indolent parasites. MPs are not all avaricious monsters, most journalists do not routinely tell lies for a living, even some bankers are quite nice people.

Basically, let's remember, we really are all in this together.

Voter Apathy? Vote Yes 2 AV

Tomorrow Scots will go the polls to choose the next Scottish Government. In doing so we will use a form of proportional representation, a system which aims to ensure that the number of Parliamentary seats each party wins better reflects their support in the country.

We've done it now since 1999 and no single party has ever had an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament. Miraculously the sky has not fallen in, a plague of locusts has not descended upon the land and Tunnocks tea cakes remain as delicious as ever.

Why do I bring this up now, you yawn?

Because, as you jolly well know, tomorrow Scots, along with the rest of the United Kingdom, will also go to the polls to vote in the referendum on whether to change our voting system, from "first past the post" to the alternative vote or AV; and the experience of electing the devolved administrations shows that it is possible to introduce electoral reform without inducing a national nervous collapse.

AV is not a proportional system. More's the pity in my opinion. (If you want to know more about AV you can read all about it on the Electoral Reform Society's website.) But at the moment it's the only bum numbingly dull electoral systems debate in town. For truthfully, most folk would rather be forced to stir a pot of boiling tripe non-stop for 24 hours while listening to the collected speeches of Nadine Dorries, than discuss electoral systems.

And the doomsday scenario for the Yes 2 Av camp is that this apathy, coupled with fear of the unknown, will see the campaign for change hit the buffers. But actually those of us suffering from voter apathy are the very people who should be voting yes 2 AV.

Trust in politicians seems to be permanently at an all-time low. People are tired of "Punch and Judy" politics. The electorate wants to see fresh new faces and a new approach in Parliament, not the same old party hacks.

Well frankly you can't have that and first past the post. First past the post is all about the old two party hegemony. That's what it's designed for. That's when it works best. If you want to see a new kind of politics, why vote to keep first past the post? It's marching for change in concrete wellies.

The truth is systems can only deliver so much. Certainly that's true of AV which is not the fundamental change that many reformers are looking for. Much relies on changing the culture of politics and the behaviour of politicians, and indeed political reporting, which traditionally rewards those who land political punches rather than build bridges.

Trying to create a new politics on the foundation of first past the post is like grafting a pig's ear onto a mouse's back - entirely alien to the host body.

AV is not perfect. No electoral system is. It will not right all the wrongs of the current political system. But if we say no we are resigning ourselves to more of the same for longer than I can bear to imagine. I'll be voting yes for positive reasons. But even if you're fed up and tired and bored and can't be bothered. In fact especially if that's how you feel, if you're overcome with apathy, why not vote Yes 2 AV?