Let’s not bother, baby

This week I have experienced something I never expected. I had a baby.

Admittedly it was only for 24 hours and was made of plastic, but the ‘Think it Over’ baby is as good an approximation of the real thing as any $300 robot will give you.

Call it peer pressure, call it recklessness, but I had been talked into this by a colleague who works for the youthwork charity Fairbridge. They run courses for young people to get them to think about the reality of parenthood, in the hope that they try harder to avoid it, or at least be a bit better prepared for it if it happens. Alex wanted a young(ish) single MSP to take part in the programme, to help build a bit of publicity.

In order to ensure that Alex now owes me a second pint, I will mention at this point that the programme is sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The closer this week came, the more anxious I grew. Having not one parental bone in my body I was unsure how I would cope being woken in the middle of the night to change a nappy… even a pretend one that didn’t really get mucky.

The day did not begin in the most hopeful of ways. Sitting on the Glasgow-Edinburgh shuttle I was horrified to see the spouse of an MSP who shall remain nameless knock my coffee over my Blackberry, the PDA device which is my usual electronic ball and chain. Fortunately it survived, and if anything seems a little more wired than usual.

On arrival at Fairbridge there was an icebreaker quiz, in which I demonstrated exactly how much sexual health information I have forgotten since I worked in that field. Then it was baby time.

The ‘Think it Over’ babies are quite lifelike, and their body weight is distributed in a realistic way for a child of about three months. They are not short of voice. Having gone through the ritual of naming the little tyke (it couldn’t really be anything other than Alex, could it?) we got down to basic lessons. Pleasant gurgles should be encouraged, and even indulged. Wailing demands more interventionist action, from nappy changing to feeding, to bouncing and burping. All seemed straightforward, until the train home.

It’s rare enough to see a man holding a baby in public of course, but a man in a suit, on the commuter shuttle, holding a plastic bottle to the mouth of a plastic baby is even rarer. To anyone who shared that carriage with me, I can only say that I hope I looked as silly as I felt.

Having managed the journey home with only moderate humiliation, I settled back into the routine, and between us little Alex and I managed to work up a pretty good call and response act. He called. I responded. Within a couple of hours, the shrill noise of the baby’s cry had worked its way into some sensitive corner of my brain of whose existence I had been blissfully unaware. The slightest creak of a floorboard, or squawk of a car outside, brought me running.

Feeding was a little tricky – not feeding him but feeding myself. I planned an entire meal which could be cooked and eaten with one hand should the need arise, which indeed it did.
However he must have been a happy child, as I had five hours of uninterrupted sleep that night. Then the 5am start to shower, pack, dash to the BBC for an early interview and then hit the rush-hour train back to Edinburgh.

I come away from this experience with some greater sensitivity, I hope, for those tired parents who are coping with the real thing day in, day out. But my own lack of parenting instincts have been entirely confirmed. It wasn’t so much a ‘Think it Over’ baby, as a ‘Let’s not bother, baby’.

NEWS RELEASE - congestion and air pollution

GREEN MSP: GLASGOW “MOVING BACKWARDS” ON TRAFFIC CONGESTION & AIR POLLUTION

- Glaswegians encouraged to have their say on transport strategy and air quality

Glasgow needs more ambitious action to tackle traffic congestion and illegal air pollution, says Glasgow Green MSP, Patrick Harvie, as he urged residents to feed into current and forthcoming consultations.

Over the coming months Glaswegians are being asked to have their say on the city’s transport strategy and air quality (1). More areas right across the city now have air that is not fit to breathe and traffic levels are predicted to increase by 40% by 2020. Pollution and congestion damage the economy and public health. A recent Audit Scotland report also said Glasgow needs to do more to improve the environment (2).

Mr Harvie said, “Everyone wants a city where shops and services are easy to get to and where the air is safe to breathe. We can’t shift the problem around the city, we need to tackle the cause - Glasgow’s soaring traffic levels. That is why I have set up a campaign to clean up Glasgow’s air by looking at a wider range of options such as improving public transport and introducing a low emission zone to help vehicles use cleaner fuels. (3) We also want our city to develop in a way that makes it easier to walk and cycle everyday, for example, by developing safe routes to school, work or local shops.”

ENDS

More information -

1. Moving Glasgow Forwards online questionnaire

Consultation will take place on Air Quality Management Areas including Byers Road / Dumbarton Road (February), North Street (March), Royston Road (April), Parkhead Cross (May) and City Centre (June). www.glasgow.gov.uk

2. www.audit-scotland.gov.uk

3. Glasgow Clean Air Campaign

Sorry I’ve been silent!

I need my wrists slapped this time, and really quite firmly. I’ve falled behind with the website once or twice before, but never for three months!

Over the course of today I should get some of the backlog up on the site. Apologies for the delay.

Decision time for the LibDems

Holiday copy deadlines being what they are, this is the first column I’ve written since Parliament broke up for our recess. Two weeks away, and what a time it has been. By late December it was very clear that senior Liberal Democrats had made up their minds, and that the party leader would be given his marching orders early in the new year. But I honestly didn’t expect the story to unfold with such drama.

Anyone with a shred of decency would have sympathy for Mr Kennedy’s personal struggle with alcohol, and although I have never voted LibDem he always struck me as someone who had pulled off that rare trick of being an effective politician while still looking like a human being. But his popularity in the country wasn’t enough to sustain his authority with the parliamentary group, and I must say I’ve as much sympathy for them as for him. They have come out of this very badly, appearing uncaring and calculating.

The reality, I suspect, is that they have been as patient, understanding and supportive as they could be. To support someone who is making a recovery is one thing, but there’s only so long they could be expected to prop up a party leader who continued to turn up drunk to work and whose performances were sometimes literally unbroadcastable. We can only hope that his prospects of long term recovery will be improved when the spotlight is no longer trained on him.

As for his party, they have an important decision to make. In moving on from Mr Kennedy’s leadership they must decide whether to take a clear political direction in response to the changing environment, or to plough the same furrow for a few years longer.

The first option is represented by the candidatures of Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes (as I write Oaten’s hat is in the ring, while Hughes hovers about ringside, coyly fidgeting with his brim) while Menzies Campbell is widely perceived as a ‘caretaker’ candidate, offering a uniting leadership for perhaps four or five years, till the younger MPs are ready, or the party is ready, or something like that.

Campbell is clearly a powerful presence both in Parliament and in the media, and it would certainly be distinctive to have a party leader who can bring the authority of age to the job. All things being equal, he might be the best bet.

But things are not equal. The party isn’t only choosing a personality to front up the next election campaign. They are choosing how to develop as a force in politics, and if they choose not to choose they may come to regret it.

David Cameron’s leadership of the Conservatives may turn out to be all spin and no substance, but it does appear to be having one real effect – reinvigorating his party. The next UK election looks certain to be fronted up by three new faces, and if the LibDems want to retain anything like the number of MPs they now have they will need to be trying to set the agenda between now and then, rather than merely responding to it. It will be difficult to do that when they’re still unsure of the direction they really want to take.

The LibDems, like my own party, have suffered from many stereotypes over the years. One of theirs has been that of the perpetual fence-sitter, unwilling to commit to any course of action. Their choice here is a risky one for sure, and may make the difference between building on their 2005 success and slipping back into obscurity. But their worst option is not to choose at all.

Sad day for human rights in Scotland

Human rights are one of the fundamental building blocks of our society.

So wrote the Scottish Executive when it published its consultation paper on the possibility of creating a Scottish Human Rights Commission. This body would have “the capacity to make a difference to everyone living in Scotland now and in the future by helping to develop a culture of human rights through both promotion and protection of our rights” according to the then Justice Minister.

Having rights in theory is one thing, but without the ability to claim those rights and have them defended against attack, they are worth little. And boy, are they ever under attack at the moment.

From detention without trial to the spread of CCTV into every corner of society; from CIA rendition flights to inhumane and degrading prison conditions; from compulsory ID cards to the police power to disperse groups of two or more people; our human rights are in real need of defence.

But over and above the existence of rights and the availability of recourse, the real goal of a society which considers human rights to be a fundamental building block should be that our rights should be respected without the need to jump up and down about it. We should be aiming for a society in which we all have an understanding of our own rights, and of how our decisions can affect others’ rights. A society in which rights are respected as a matter of course, and in which lawyers and courts are needed only rarely.

To achieve that we need much more than legislation. We need, as the Scottish Executive proposed, a Commission which is independent of government and can promote the culture of human rights and investigate when necessary. But we also need individuals to have access to advice and support when they feel their rights have been violated. Most importantly, this advice must be able to help people resolve problems without the delay, the expense and the hassle of going to court.

So I was deeply disappointed, as were many people in Scotland, at the recent announcement that the Scottish Human Rights Centre was to close its doors for the last time, having finally fallen off the financial tightrope. The Centre was a voluntary organisation with a remit to campaign for the defence and promotion of human rights, and to offer individual advice to people and to organisations. For nearly thirty years, originally under the name of the Scottish Council for Civil Liberties, it had carried out this work with little funding but with the energy and commitment of many volunteers.

The loss of the Centre leaves a gap in the human rights field in Scotland. Over the coming months the Scottish Parliament will continue to work on the Bill which will create the Commission. If that Bill passes (there have been worrying signs of political cold feet recently) the Commission will be there to take up some aspects of the Centre’s work – the general promotion and awareness raising about human rights, and the guidance to public bodies about their responsibilities. But the advice to individuals, and the harder-edged campaigning work will still be needed, and the Commission will not be able to take that role.

If the Scottish Executive is serious about a culture of human rights, if it really views them as fundamental building blocks of our society, it must find a way to ensure that the work of the Centre continues in one form or another. Our rights don’t just exist on paper, but to truly embed them in our culture will take more than one act of Parliament.