3 Media North and South of the border are commenting on education matters today: exam grade appeals in Scotland and the money available for a catch-up plan in England. Many of the comments tend to be phrased with a focus on party politics and personalities, rather than the situations of pupils, staff and families/carers. It […]

2 It’s good to hear that in West Dunbartonshire we are moving next week to Level 1 (along with Argyll and Bute, and many other areas), but it isn’t a time to gloat, when there are neighbouring areas like East Dunbartonshire and Renfrewshire that remain in Level 2. We’ve been there and had the t-shirt,

1 June month Volunteers Week (1-6) Eight years on from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, Birmingham is appealing for 13,000 volunteers to help with next year’s Games there. Our community and country wouldn’t run the way it does without volunteers: from parent-teacher councils, to youth organisations, to charity committees, to sports club committees, to National Trust

31 Garden wildlife week (31-6/6) This is apparently Garden wildlife week. I know some folk in Dumbarton and the Vale have deer that come and eat their flowers, some have squirrels that cause trouble. We have occasional visits from our friendly local hedgehog that seems to be doing its stuff with the snails and slugs.

29 Vaccine roll-out versus variant spread is a phrase that had been mentioned by several politicians or scientists over the last couple of days. Roll out of the vaccine helps protect people from the spread of the Covid virus, particularly thinking about the variant first spotted in India. In Scotland we have seen Glasgow remain

28 It’s a holiday weekend. The forecast suggests that it might actually be dry and warm, if not necessarily sunny to start with. Hopefully a chance to be outdoors and enjoy the great scenery around. But will people respect the countryside, or leave litter everywhere?   Lord, we moan about the weather, but we need

27 I don’t know how many of us followed every moment of yesterday’s meeting of the House of Commons’ Committee enquiry, but if we missed any or all of it, there is plenty about it in the news today. Was it revenge and retribution, was it ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

26 There was much furore yesterday in England about guidance that appeared online appearing to discourage travel to areas where Covid infection rates are high, and applying restrictions within those areas – all interpreted by those affected as ‘lockdown by stealth’. In the end the guidance was removed and it was put down to a

25 There was an item in the news today about plans to develop offshore windfarms in Scotland, with the potential that they could appear all round the coasts. There was a time when coal-fired domestic heating, railways, power stations and factories produced visible smog across built up areas like the Central Belt, and left buildings