12           News headlines today say that the economy contracted by almost 10% last year. For most people that is a statistic that doesn’t mean a lot. But people can relate to businesses they knew closing: shops, pubs, cafes and more; people they know being made redundant, or not being offered hours of work under their […]

11           The sun is shining in Dumbarton, the sky is blue and the snow (such as we have) looks picturesque. The situation in other parts of the country (eg Aberdeenshire and the Borders) is rather different, where they have had heavy snow and very low temperatures. Key workers, including the staff driving the gritters and

10 There have been headlines yesterday and today about regulations coming in requiring travellers from abroad to quarantine when they arrive in this country. For many of us travel to or from ‘abroad’ is not on our radar at the moment – if we could just go to Helensburgh, or Glasgow or Braehead… But there

9              Safer Internet Day Especially during this pandemic, millions of us have relied heavily on social media and the internet to keep in touch, to shop, to keep going. However, in recent weeks we’ve seen concern about the use of social media in trying to invalidate the result of the American elections and trying to

8              International Epilepsy day The second Monday in February is International Epilepsy Day, which is marked in 130 countries to acknowledge and highlight the problems faced by people living with it, their families and carers. According to the WHO over 50m people worldwide are living with epilepsy. What is it? A sudden intense burst of

6 On Wednesday an independent report commissioned by the Scottish Government on the future of Social Care was published. Will it be turned into law, will only part of it be turned into law, what do people involved with Social Care think of its recommendations? Over the past year the role of the Social Care

5 More rain, more sleet today – but hopefully the prospect of it drying up by Sunday. Oh to have some summer sunshine and heat! Summer sunshine and heat seem to be focussing the minds of politicians and commentators at the minute. As the vaccination programme rolls out there are increasing calls for easing of

World Cancer Day Cancer is a horrible disease. It can attack anyone, regardless of age, gender, lifestyle, ethnicity or whatever. Tremendous progress has been made in dealing with many forms of cancer (though in some cases the treatment can be quite hard), and research is ongoing in learning more about the various forms of the

3 It is an encouragement to us all that so many vaccines are providing effective test results, with the potential that there should be a substantial supply to roll-out around the world, and to be available to provide back-up in subsequent years should regular inoculation be necessary. The co-operation between countries and companies could be