Radio 4 Live

I was invited as a guest on Saturday 28 August, on Radio 4 Saturday Live to discuss how miners and mining communities cope with tragic events including mining disasters. With some nostalgia and a few unpleasant memories of my 23 years as a younger coalminer, the interviewer understandably moved to the fantastic breaking news about the 33 Chilean miners trapped in a copper/gold mine.

Chilean miners

The joyful news that the miners trapped underground in the Chilean Atacama Desert were alive was a fantastic moment. Nevertheless the euphoria and new found optimism for their safe return must not divert their …

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 Festival of Politics  - 20 August, 2010.

I was very pleased to accept an invitation from the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament Alex Ferguson MSP to be a panel guest at this year’s Festival of Politics at an event held in the Chamber of the Scottish Parliament on Friday 20 August, 2010. The event was a Question Time format on the subject “how politicians and political institutions are seeking to engage with the public, in an age of increasing political cynicism.”

The panel of guests lead by the Presiding Officer included  Peter MacMahon, Assistant Editor, The Scotsman; Professor Charlie Jeffery, The Institute of …

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Pakistan Floods

Some British charities have expressed a fear that there is a drop in donations to the Pakistan Flood Disaster, attributable to David Cameron’s unscripted criticism of Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, made in early summer during his visit to India. We must not allow concerns or criticism of the Pakistani Government to deny humanitarian aid to the millions of Pakistanis suffering in what could be the world’s worst flood disaster.

These floods are comparable only to the tsunami in Indonesia, 2004 and could surpass even that tragedy in water borne diseases and loss of life. The U.N. says that six million …

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Coalition “milked”

This ConDem coalition government started off abolishing Child Trust Funds, freezing Child Benefit, cutting child Tax Credits and we now know they were about to scrap free school milk for infants, until the Prime Minister and Downing Street overruled a Health Minister when the ghost of Maggie Thatcher (the milk snatcher) rose to haunt and taunt David Cameron into another PM veto.

This is the second time Cameron has overruled a Minister in as many weeks. First it was “parties for prisoners” and now “milk snatching”. Last week’s drooling adoration for the Banks and bankers contrasted very badly with David …

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Lockerbie bomber

Last week Peter Sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper was told by an English appeal court that he would die in prison and would never be eligible for parole because of his conviction for murdering 13 women in 1980-81. Contrast the Ripper with the Lockerbie bomber Al-Magrahi who was convicted of murdering 270  victims by bombing a Pan Am flight to America; where 189 were American citizens, and the Scottish Justice Minister’s decision to free him and return him to his family in Tripoli.

American Senate

We should not ignore the American input to getting agreement with Gaddafi to drop his nuclear weapons …

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