IT will in all probability have escaped your notice, unless you have a member of the Fourth Estate within your household, but the deadline for entries for this year’s Scottish Press Awards is fast approaching – as has been evidenced in Herald Towers this week by a surge in the number of searches of our archives and the increased whirring of the office printers. Categories, in case you didn’t know, range from Sports Photographer of the Year to Journalist of the Year – there is a total of 21 gongs up for grabs.
It occurred to me yesterday, as I gathered my thoughts for this column, that it is a pity that there is no category for Reader Contributions. Correspondents to the Herald’s Letters Pages would undoubtedly be right up there.
Just in the three weeks since I last contributed to this slot, we have published many examples of carefully considered comment, insightful analysis, wit, humour and what I consider to have been some fine writing.
I particularly enjoyed the analogy provided yesterday by Dr Hamish Maclaren of Stirling, who recounted a flying lesson in which he was instructed to acknowledge the control tower – “Say ‘Roger, wilco, then don’t change a thing. Taxi the aircraft exactly as you’ve been taught.” Emergency department doctors, he wrote, should do the same with regards to the four-hour treatment target – “politely acknowledge, then do exactly as you’ve been taught”.
In a similarly erudite fashion, both Thom Cross of Carluke and DH Telford of Fairlie evoked the wisdom of the poet Horace with regard to opinion polls, while we have been treated to quotations from such diverse authorities as Spike Milligan, Groucho Marx and Dr Henry Kissinger.
The aforementioned Mr Cross also enlightened us regarding the sculptor of the memorial to Lord Melville, which sits aside the central column in Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square. We learned that Robert Forrest’s canon also includes statues of the Duke of Wellington, William Wallace and Tam O’Shanter. Truly, all human life is here.
As evidence of this, we have discussed over recent days topics ranging from Brexit, a second independence referendum, President-elect Trump, education and the health service to the Stone of Destiny, the resurgence of mutton, Alexander Greek Thomson, texting etiquette, and more.
We have even strayed into the world of association football, a topic we tend to leave to our sports colleagues. But the offering yesterday from Mark Boyle of Johnstone was too tempting to resist. “I am sure all fellow Scots will rejoice at the news FIFA is expanding football’s World Cup Finals from 32 nations to 48”, he wrote. “Now we can look forward to not only Iceland and Wales, but Liechtenstein and Gibraltar as alternatives to support when we fail again.” Ouch. Foul, ref?
Contributions similar to the ones cited above are, it goes without saying, more than welcome. You know the score by now: no more than 500 words, no gratuitous or personal abuse, please include an address for publication.
We cannot, of course, guarantee that there will be any actual awards up for grabs. Some honours do not require baubles.
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