MENTION the word empire and most people will think of the biscuit, or if a film fan, the movie magazine.

The world's biggest ever empire, the British Empire, can now seem as remote as the Roman Empire. So surely the British Empire Medal, with its figure of a helmeted Britannia holding a trident, and the jingoistic message "For God and the Empire" etched around it, has also been consigned to history.

Well it almost was. Prime Minister John Major, trying to update the honours system over 20 years ago, scrapped the BEM, as it was seen as the working-class gong, with the middle and upper classes aspiring to the MBEs and OBEs instead. Major hoped that by having more people awarded the MBE, with the demise of the BEM, it would make the honours system classless.

It didn't quite work out however. Many people who had given outstanding and unstinting service to their communities were forgotten about, and so David Cameron reinstated the silver BEM, with its rose-pink ribbon edged in grey, a couple of years ago. One difference with the BEM is that it is awarded, not by a member of the Royal Family, but by the local Lord Lieutenant, the Queen's representative, who, in Glasgow, is the Lord Provost.

So it was a few days ago that Lord Provost Sadie Docherty presented the latest British Empire Medal in its red box to 91-year-old Flora Glekin, a sharp-as-a-tack retired teacher from the South Side who has helped children through charitable work all her life. When only a teenager just before the War, Flora was taken by her mother, who spoke German, to meet children who had fled Nazi Germany in the kindertransport, the humanitarian effort to rescue 10,000 Jewish children who faced death under the regime. Recalled Flora: "I went there really to allow them someone their own age to speak to. One of the children told my mother that she had a brother who was going to be killed by the Nazis. At that time, if you sent some money you could save a child."

Flora helped her mother Freda to raise the funds to bring the brother to Glasgow and he went on to become a successful businessman, setting up his own engineering company in Scotland. His father in Austria was killed in Buchenwald.

Flora became a teacher, working for 30 years mainly in Carnwadric, the small South Side housing scheme struggling with deprivation when Flora worked there. She went on to teach special needs children.

Outside school, the foundations of charity work had been laid by her parents. Said Flora when she was presented with her medal: "My parents were very charitable people. My father taught me that when someone comes to you for charity, you give what you can, but more importantly, you thank them for coming - although I don't think I was always thanked."

Many of us find it quite difficult, almost embarrassing, asking people to give to charities. But as Flora explains: "I'm not asking for myself, I'm asking for people who need help. I once went to Ralph Slater, you know who ran the menswear company, asking for a donation and I apologised for asking. He said to me, 'Don't apologise. It is harder for you to ask, than it is for me to give'."

So every year for her entire adult life, Flora has raised tens of thousands of pounds annually. A clothing sale every year raises about £30,000. Not is her age slowing her down. She helped organise a charitable version of Strictly Come Dancing with local contestants in Glasgow just a few months ago which raised another £30,000. I can still recall the sedate Glasgow lawyer in sequinned waistcoat, tap-dancing enthusiastically across the stage, who won the contest.

On a visit to Israel she saw the work of the Women's International Zionist Organisation which helps children in need there irrespective of race or religion. She was encouraged to go back to Glasgow and organise a ladies lunch where each could donate £500 to the charity in order to sponsor a child. Recalled Flora: "I was horrified. I said it would never work in Glasgow. But the charity was very persuasive, so we drew up a list of six women and we thought maybe one or two of them would make such a donation, but they all did. So then we thought of another six and the same thing happened until we had 52 women, and we raised £26,000."

It was when Flora was chatting to jewellery designer Shirley Brown about her charity work that Shirley was astonished at what she had done, and wrote to the Queen suggesting Flora for the Empire Medal. Local MP Jim Murphy did the same when Shirley asked him to, and thus the award was announced in the Queen's New Year's Honours List. Modestly Flora says: "Naturally, I'm delighted to get it, but I feel I have got it only because of the generosity of other people."

So the modest ceremony took place in the Lord Provost's Dining Room, a small but ornate room overlooking George Square with portraits of Rembrandt, Irish poet WBYeats and Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid looking on. Gold chains flashed everywhere as apart from the Lord Provost, the Dean of Guild of the Merchants House and the Deacon Convener of the Trades House were in attendance.

As Lord Provost Sadie Docherty put it: "It's meeting people like Flora and hearing their remarkable stories that make my role as Lord Provost worthwhile."

If anyone gets too big for their boots in Glasgow, someone will usually tell them: "Do you want a medal for that?"

Flora Glekin never asked for a medal, but in receiving one, she has helped shed a light on the huge charitable work that is done so quietly in Glasgow. No matter what you think of his politics, perhaps this is one thing that David Cameron did indeed get right.