NOT GOING QUIETLY

Nine years ago two teenagers, known as Neve Lafferty and Georgia May Rowe, aged 15 and 14, walked together for around three miles to the Erskine Bridge. It was a Sunday, October 4, around 9pm, when they stopped at the middle of the bridge, where the water below would be deepest. Both took off their trainers. Georgia left a photograph in a shoe, of her with her half-brother and half-sister. One of the girls draped a scarf over the railing. Then both climbed onto it and, with their backs to the water, linked arms and plunged backwards, the impact as they hit the Clyde below killing them instantly.

Both young women had deeply troubled backgrounds, both were in what should have been a care home, both were repeatedly and systemically failed by those whose duty was to protect them. Neve even left a note saying goodbye to her mum which was unread and casually filed until police discovered it after her death.

Kenneth Roy, one of the finest journalists and trenchant commentators these islands have produced, said his farewells last week. He is terminally ill. His legacy will be the Scottish Review which he set up and presided over for a quarter century, as well as what he clearly felt was the best and most representative piece of his writing, the coruscating and heart breaking account of the two young girls who killed themselves together, the route that brought them to it and the missing interventions which would almost certainly have saved them. Ken will not have approved of that last sentence. He was brought up on short ones. As he put it: “When I filed football reports for the Dundee Evening Telegraph, a sentence of more than six words was mercilessly chopped. You could forget the word 'mercilessly' for a start.”

The report of the preventable deaths of Neve and Georgia May, with its short and brutally crafted sentences, is a masterful and merciless account of the fatal journeys of two girls that no one, in Neve’s words, gave a shit about, all the more powerful in its unemotional recounting of the facts. It remains among the best pieces of writing I have read. Thank you Ken.

http://www.scottishreview.net/KennethRoyGOTB449a.html

HARD TO BEAR

It's a chastening thought but Paddington qualifies for a bus pass this week. It was 60 years ago A Bear Called Paddington was published. A whole industry has sprung up since, beginning in 1971 when the first soft Paddington toy was made by Shirley Clarkson, for her small children Joanna and Jeremy (yes, him.) If she’d only spent a little less time on sewing and more on parenting…!

TRANSPORTS OF DELAY

To last week’s Tory conference and Chris Grayling, the transport secretary who refuses to take the blame for this summer’s rail timetable chaos which left thousands of passengers stranded. He’s due to speak before chancellor Philip Hammond but there’s a bit of a pause. Grayling, who’s clearly gone native, eventually pulls onto the platform seven minutes late. Close but no refund Chris.

Autumn budgets are traditionally unveiled on a Wednesday, but not this year. Hammond has pulled his forward by two days, to Monday, October 29, allegedly to give parliament more time to discuss it because of the looming recess. But the diary is not fooled. If he had held it on the proper day, then it would be on Hallowe’en and the press would have had him Photoshopped as a vampire, or Freddie Krueger, with headlines like “Hammond’s house of horrors” or “Nightmare on your street”. However, we can be assured that, as it won't be Hallowe’en, there will be no treats, although plenty of tricks.

WHAT THE ECK?

Alex Salmond was derided by the media and opposition parties over the white paper, Scotland’s Future, in the run up to the 2014 independence referendum. In it oil revenues were predicted to make up around 12 per cent of public finances after leaving the union, based on a price per barrel of around $100. Labour’s Jackie Baillie called it a “rose-tinted fantasy”. LibDem leader Willie Rennie said oil raised hardly any revenue while even Andrew Wilson, who led the SNP Growth Commission review updating the case for independence, later admitted that North Sea income had been “baked into” spending plans. Well Salmond may well have the last laugh – and let’s face it he’s had nothing to laugh about recently. Because, as I write this, Brent Crude, the global oil benchmark, has hit a four-year high of $86 a barrel. The hike is spurred by growing concerns about how US sanctions will affect one of the world’s major producers, Iran. Couple that with rising demand after the US, Canada and Mexico struck a trade deal, while the Opec cartel is thought to have little spare capacity. Sanctions are DUE to hit Iran on November 4 and analysts are predicting that the price will likely hit that magical $100. I may have been off the day they did sums at school but even my crude maths indicates that a tax take could be around £6 billion a year, although numerate grown-ups are welcome to dispute this.

THE LOWDOWN ON FASCIST CHIC

Austria’s far-right government is planning to ban a range of “undemocratic” hand signs, including the V-sign – no, not that one, the inverted, Churchill version – with fines of 4000 euros for a first offence. In Scotland we just want to criminalise people for waving the right kind of flag at the wrong time. We also have the growth of what I’d call Fascist chic, collecting artefacts from the era of the poisonous little Austrian house painter. The auctioneer Mullock’s is selling several of these on the sixteenth of this month at Ludlow racecourse. You can have this Heinrich Himmler oil on canvas for around £1000. It was painted by Waffen SS commander Fritz Klingenberg (who was fortunately killed by a well-aimed tank shell shortly after he painted the fawning portrait) complete with the slogan “loyalty is my honour”. Had he lived he would have been charged with war crimes, as seven of his officers were for such acts as shooting US prisoners and concentration camp victims. Not that this is in the sale catalogue.

Then there’s the US version of Mein Kampf (possession of which would get you jailed in Germany), guided at £160. Or you might choose the book of anti-Semitic cartoons, Juden Stellen Sich Vor (Jews introduce themselves) – described as in “good, clean condition”, about which I strongly disagree! – for upwards of £750. Sorry, but what kind of people buy this odious trash?

BON VOYAGE

Charles Aznavour – or Shanour Varinag Aznavourian to give him his proper name – who died last week was never on my playlist. He was honoured in a ceremony on Friday led by French President Macron and he had a truly inspiring back story. His parents were Armenians who fled the Turkish pogroms. His father had been a singer but, because of prejudice, became a restaurateur in Paris, although he soon became bankrupt because he gave free meals to other exiles. The family lived in a single room, Charles left school at nine to take small acting parts and sang for loose change on the streets. He sang in cabarets in the Second World War while his parents in occupied Paris hid Armenians and Jews in their apartment. His father also joined the resistance. After the war he met Edith Piaf who recorded songs he had written. They lived together, but not as lovers he claimed. She persuaded, and part-paid, for a nose operation to reduce the size of his conk and when they took the bandages off Piaf commented, “I loved it better before”. Adieu Shanour.

THE FONT OF ALL KNOWLEDGE?

This may seem like an out of season April Fool's joke, but it's true – Australian researchers have designed a new typeface which they claim helps readers better remember information, using psychological and design theories to aid memory retention. It's called Sans Forgetica. As this column is not set in it you'll no doubt have forgotten everything above.