Highway Code for Incompetents.

‘Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.’
-Napoleon Bonaparte.

I want a pair of M2HB machine guns mounted on my car. I also want the legal right to use them at appropriate moments.

The appropriate moments to which I refer occur when my progress along the road is impeded by a moron who either didn’t read the highway code, has made a conscious decision to ignore the rules and guidelines presented therein, or, worst of all, did in fact read it but lacks the requisite number of active brain cells to put the knowledge to practical use.

When I am halfway round a roundabout, and the halfwit who pulled onto that roundabout at the same time as me, indicating to go right, suddenly swerves to the left as they approach an exit half way round the roundabout, having either changed their mind half way round or got the whole process completely wrong right from the start, I should have the legal right to move in behind the offender and riddle the vehicle and its driver with several .50 calibre BMG bullets.

Other roundabout offenders who should suffer my hail of vengeful lead are those who enter a roundabout in the left lane, then veer into the right lane half way round, then back to the left lane as they exit the roundabout.

Bad lane discipline on roundabouts is the most heinous and life threatening crime that I witness daily as I drive my children and wife back and forth from wherever we are going that day. Those dim-witted legally qualified drivers who regularly perform this crime deserve to suffer the fury of my nose-mounted M2HBs.

As I drive past the smoking wreckage of the offender’s vehicle to continue my journey, I can smile in satisfaction, knowing that the roads are now safer and freer flowing due to my having rid the country of an idiot who cannot drive properly. Okay, admittedly there may be a little congestion while the wreckage gets cleared away, but the long-term benefits of exterminating these road vermin are immeasurable.

I do not claim to be the best driver in the country. But I do get through a journey without causing - by my being in the wrong place or making a manoeuvre incorrectly - any other drivers to brake hard or swerve aside to avoid a crash. I expect everyone else to do the same. This is not an unreasonable expectation.

Everyone who possesses a driving license has went through a lot of training and practice, and passed a test under the eye of a rigorous examiner. They should all therefore be expected to drive properly.

Driving properly involves maintaining good lane discipline. It involves using your mirrors to know what’s happening behind and around your own vehicle. It involves thinking ahead and knowing where you’re going before you have an ‘oh shit, that was my corner’ moment and change direction suddenly, causing others to swerve or brake to avoid a collision with you. It involves using your indicators, so that the traffic is not held up unnecessarily because other road users fail to receive the telepathic messages you are transmitting to tell them where you are going.

It also involves driving at the speed limit. And I’m not going to complain about people driving fast here: speed doesn’t kill; incompetent idiots kill. What bugs me is people driving slower than the speed limit. People who drive at 40mph on a road that has a legal speed limit of 60mph, when the conditions are safe and there is no reason to be going slow, deserve to be purged from the world. When I was learning to drive, my instructor never permitted me to drive at 20mph slower than the legal limit. The speed of a road is the speed at which it has been judged safe to drive on that road, and the speed at which normal traffic should be expected to be moving on that road. This is not an unreasonable expectation either.

Just as a related point of interest, it is amazing how many of those who drive at 40 in a 60, then enter a 30 zone and keep driving at 40. Their inconsistency demonstrates quite well their lack of understanding about proper driving, and their total disregard for the safety of other people.

When conditions aren’t good, like in very wet or foggy conditions, sensible drivers slow down and take extra care. Those who don’t are idiots.

A note on fog. All cars have fog lights. These bright lights are there to alert other road users to your presence in poor visibility. Using them is sensible. But the roads are polluted by morons who don’t use them properly. The Highway Code states that you should only turn on your fog lights when visibility has dropped to below 100 metres.

BELOW 100 METRES! As in ‘less than 100 metres’. Meaning that if you can still see other cars that are within 100 metres, you should not turn on your fog lights. What’s complicated about that? Obviously I am far more intelligent than most people, because that sounds fairly simple to me, but the roads are full of people who turn on their fog lights as soon as they spot a low cloud.

Also, the Highway Code instructs us to turn the fog lights off when visibility returns to normal. At least my copy of it does. I am starting to believe though that I may have a rare misprint of the Highway Code, because most peoples’ obviously says something like: ‘Once visibility has returned to normal, you must keep your fog lights on for at least 48 hours, in order to blind everyone who drives behind you.’

Car Parks. There’s another bugbear. Specifically the direction of traffic in car parks. Most car parks now are quite large affairs with multiple lanes. The ground of these car parks is decorated with large (about four foot long) white arrows showing us all which way to go. I say ‘decorated’ because that is all most people seem to think they are for; to break up the monotony of grey tarmac. Certainly, most people ignore them and go whatever way they want, then look at me as if I’m the idiot because I’m facing the ‘wrong’ direction and getting in their way.

Feel the wrath of my machine guns!

There are more. Many, many more examples that I could mention, but in the interest of keeping the word-count to a level that most people will read, I’ll content myself with the examples made so far.

If you are a good driver yourself, you doubtless agree with everything I’ve said. Apart from maybe machine-gunning people. Most folk don’t get quite that angry. Maybe I was shot with a machine gun as a child and the deep emotional scars have left me with a propensity for gunning down those who upset me.

Certainly, gunning the offenders from the road would be an effective cure, but it isn’t really PC is it? As prevention is always better than cure, maybe there is a way to prevent these people from polluting the roads.

IQ tests maybe? Apart from your theory and practical test, maybe you should have to pass an IQ test to be allowed to drive a car unsupervised? (On a similar vein I think IQ tests should be passed before you are allowed to have children, but that’s a discussion for another day).

Maybe giving driving licences out in different grades?

You must achieve grade A to be permitted to drive anywhere anytime.

If you get a grade B, you are mostly free to drive, but you are not allowed out at the busiest times, say between 2pm-6pm on weekdays.

Grade C means you are only allowed to endanger other road users by your presence on a Sunday, and weekdays between 10pm-5am.

I think that would work. It would help a little at least.

But sadly, as with so many of my brilliant ideas to improve society, it probably won’t see much approval from the masses. Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to put up with getting pissed off every time I get behind the wheel. Though I will need a new steering wheel soon as I’ve nearly chewed through the current one.

The Ignorance to Cancer

'Ignorance is not innocence but sin.'
-Robert Browning.

On Sunday 26th March 2006, Scotland’s First Minister Jack McConnell became probably the first politician who has ever done something that earned my complete agreement, support and admiration.

The ban on smoking in public places in Scotland was a significant step towards ridding us of this horrible, disgusting, repulsive affliction. Normally I am of the opinion that people should be permitted to do what they want, as long as they are not directly harming or inconveniencing anyone else.

But smoking does harm and inconvenience other people. Everyone knows it does. Everyone knows that smoking causes cancer and other diseases, not only in the smokers themselves but also in other people who are exposed to their second-hand smoke.

It amazes me that people still smoke. I find it really truly astoundingly confusing that people ignore the weight of scientific and empirical evidence, and continue to suck these poisons into their own bodies. More than my amazement that they do this to themselves is my disbelief at the overwhelmingly ignorant, selfish and uncaring manner in which they inflict it on others.

I can’t believe that people don’t understand or believe that cigarette smoke is harmful. There is simply too much evidence and recorded fact. If you don’t believe me, do some research of your own; there’s an abundance of information out there.

There has been decades of research - since 1900 – which has proven a link with tobacco smoking and cancer in the lung, larynx, head, neck, stomach, bladder, kidney, oesophagus and pancreas, and there is a proven, definite correlation between the numbers of adult men who smoke, and the numbers of adult men diagnosed with lung cancer.

About 114,000 people die in the UK every year as a direct result of tobacco smoking.

Tobacco smoking causes 90% of lung cancer cases, and is responsible for one in three of all cancer related deaths in the developed world.

Cigarettes contain over 4,000 toxic chemicals, about 50 of which are known to cause cancer. Apart from the obvious nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar, cigarettes are known to contain acetone (which is nail polish remover), ammonia (which is toilet cleaner), arsenic (which is rat poison), dieldrin (which is an insecticide), formaldehyde (which is used to preserve dead bodies), hydrogen cyanide (which is the poison used in gas chambers), methanol (which is rocket fuel) and titanium (which is a metal used to make aeroplanes). I could go on, but I think the point has been made. The list is extensive, and everything on it is as worrying as those mentioned.

Second-hand smoke is dangerous to passive inhalers, and is especially harmful to children, as their bodies are still developing. Children who grow up in smoking households are known to be far more likely to suffer from asthma, middle ear infections, chest infections, coughs and colds. Medical research also suggests that they are more susceptible to meningitis.

Cot death is twice as likely for babies whose mothers smoke.

It’s bad enough - ignorantly, immorally repugnant enough - that people smoke in the company of other adults; they at least have the chance to voice an objection or leave the area. To do so in the presence of children, to pass on your exhaled poison onto helpless children, takes selfishness and ignorance to levels unapproached by any other social act that a person could perform.

Recent times have seen people start to see sense where smoking is concerned. There are fewer smokers now than there used to be. The number of adults in the UK smoking has dropped drastically, from over 60% of men and over 40% for women in 1948, to less than 25% for both men and women in 2007. That can only be a good thing. It is a step in the right direction. But only a small step. There’s still far, far too much of it.

The smoking ban in Scotland has, strangely, been faced with criticism. Some people proclaim the economic doom that will inevitably ensue. Apart from the fact that the evidence of New York and Ireland show that the economic effects are minimal and temporary, I can’t help but thinking ‘so what?’ So what if there is a bit of economic hardship and pubs don’t sell as much alcohol? The health benefits for the nation far outweigh that inconvenience, and the health of our children is of paramount importance and should take precedence over any other factor. If you disagree with that, then I believe your morals and your very humanity should be questioned.

There exists an organisation known as Forest. They are the smokers’ lobby group. They actively campaign for the rights of smokers. Even they aren’t silly enough to try and deny the harmful effects of smoking. But still they insist that people have a right to do it. Still they campaign for the rights of people to willingly and knowingly damage not only their own bodies but also those of others. In my mind, such an organisation dwells in the same category as politically abhorrent parties like the BNP.

Obviously, I am utterly anti-smoking. But not all cancer is caused by smoking. Apart from smoking, it has been thoroughly demonstrated that excessive alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and obesity are contributing factors to cancer. These are all lifestyle issues. No-one has to smoke, drink lots of alcohol, shirk from physical activity, or allow themselves to become obese. They can all be avoided. Everyone knows that excessive alcohol, lack of exercise and obesity are unhealthy. But a lot of people simply choose to ignore such facts.

As well as the lifestyle factors mentioned above, a lot of cancer causes are largely a product of environmental factors, and are therefore avoidable or rectifiable. Every year there are at least 200,000 known cases of cancer caused by environmental contamination in the workplace. Why is this accepted?

Taking into account all causes, an awful lot of people suffer and die from cancer every year. The most recent fully detailed information available in the UK is from 2007, showing that 80,907 men and 74,557 women died of cancer in the UK that year. That’s 29% of total male mortality and 25% of total female mortality.

Why is this permitted to continue?

We support cancer care and cancer research. And quite rightly too. In my own life, I have seen four people who I cared for very much succumb to this disease and die far younger than they should have. There have been other members of my family, and the families of friends, diagnosed with cancer and been given treatment with varying degrees of success. Out of the love we felt for these victims, and the desire to see others saved the trauma of facing it, we support research into cancer.

But it isn’t enough.

It’s not nearly enough to merely trust in the scientists to develop better treatments, to hope that maybe one day they will discover a cure. Treatment and cures wouldn’t be required if the disease didn’t exist. Obviously, we will never be rid of it, but as the vast majority of cancer cases are related to lifestyle or environment, it is largely avoidable if people cared enough.

If people cared enough for their own health, took some responsibility for their own well-being. If the government and large businesses cared enough to take control of the situation and actually do something about it. If we didn’t have tobacco companies who were driven by the greed for money.

If people cared, and did something about it, we could fight back against this horrible, insidious, life destroying disease.

Instead, we do what we do with everything else. We put on the blinkers. We suffer from apathy. We ignore it until it affects us personally.

They say that everyone will know three people who suffer from cancer. I have already passed my quota. I don’t want to see it again. But I probably will, because the society in which we live is still blind, stupid, greedy, selfish and uncaring enough to largely ignore the problem.

The smoking ban was a significant first step. But it was only the first. We need a lot more.

I'm not OCD, I'm CDO !

'Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries I would give no man a reason on compulsion, I!'
-William Shakespeare.

I often get accused of being obsessive and compulsive. Unhealthily so.

Maybe it’s because I have to turn all the notes in my wallet to face the same way, so that the number is always at the top right corner.

Maybe it’s because I have my kitchen utensils hanging in a specific order, and I get distressed if I reach for something and it isn’t where it should be.

Maybe it’s because when I am following a recipe I have to measure everything exactly. To the gram. To the millilitre.

Maybe it’s because I say things like ‘six minutes past five’, and ‘seven point two miles’ rather than simply ‘five past five’ or ‘just over seven miles’.

Maybe it’s because if someone asks me something and I don’t know the answer, I will be unable to focus on anything else until I have consulted a book or a reliable website to find the answer.

Maybe it’s because I am far more critical of my own photography and writing than anyone else. I reject things that other people insist are worthy.

Maybe it’s because of all of the above, and many more examples that my friends and family would take great pleasure in pointing out. They often accuse me of being OCD. I tell them that I’m not OCD, I’m CDO.

It’s like OCD, but the letters are in alphabetical order. Like they should be.

I don’t know when it started. I don’t remember ever not being like this. Surely when I was 4 years old, I didn’t arrange my Lego in size-order. I’ll need to ask my mum about that.

It isn’t just me though. There are others.

My aunt, my mum’s sister, is famously compulsive in a similar way. If you read this Aunty Neen, don’t deny it. You know it’s true.

My daughter is showing the signs as well, so maybe it’s genetic. She does arrange the Lego by size-order. She places things in nice straight lines. I once discovered her rearranging some coins that her big brother had thrown on their gran’s living room floor, placing them on the points where the lines of the pattern on the rug crossed.

Should I worry about her?

Of course not.

Obsession and compulsion are useful. As long as you channel it properly. If you become one of those unfortunates who have to flip the light switch seven times when you enter the room, or can’t stand on the cracks on the pavement, then you are indeed mentally ill. But only separated from those people by a (very) thin line, are those of us who are obsessive and compulsive, but have learned to do something useful with our urges rather than be hampered by them.

My family may mock when I turn up to take charge of a large family dinner and I have a laminated sheet with my ‘battle plan’ on it (precise timings of what has to be done in what order, so that everything comes together at the same time). They may laugh at my obsessive behaviour, but they don’t complain when they are sitting at the table enjoying the meal.

To be organised saves time and effort. To know where everything should be, and to always place it there, is simple efficiency. If you obsess, you will never give up, you will never be deterred by unfortunate circumstances or setbacks; you will pursue your goal no matter what forces oppose you. You will be capable of achieving great things. All you have to do is stay on the right side of the line; don’t let it become a crutch, make it become an opportunity.

There are doubtless times when I really infuriate my friends and family. They shake their heads, puzzled. They don’t understand why I have to stay up late at night when normal people are sleeping, because ‘I have to finish this chapter’, or ‘I need to finish writing this right now’. We may be in a hurry to get somewhere, but if I lift money from an ATM, it can’t go into my wallet until the notes are facing the right way.

I don’t know if I’d be able to change. I wouldn’t want to anyway. Obsession and compulsion are as much a part of ‘me’ as are size 11 feet and red hair. You have more chance of halting the ebb and flow of the Atlantic tide than you have of making me behave any differently.

I’m obsessive about being obsessive. I like life this way.

GREAT OR MODERN ?

'These are not works of art at all, unless throwing a handful of mud against a wall may be called one. They are the works of idleness and impotent stupidity, a pornographic show.'
-Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.

If you appreciate great paintings, I applaud you. If not, I mourn your loss.

Humankind has been painting almost as long as they have been doing anything else. Art is one of the most basic and poignant methods we have of expressing ourselves. Any child can – and indeed every child I have ever known does – draw and make pictures. It is a basic urge, an intrinsic and irresistible impulse that we all submit to at some point. Even those of us who have little or no artistic talent doodle and draw little pictures sometimes.

I have a personal interest in art history. It is one of my favourite subjects. As with all of the things I like to learn about, I do accept that most people do not share my hunger. Most people who do not have some art education will not fully understand (or even care) what words like ‘foreshortening’ mean; they won’t know the difference between ‘surreal’ and ‘impressionist’; they will not look at a painting and be thinking of things like perspective and vanishing points.

But I will not accept the idea that anyone can stand before a great work of art and not appreciate it. Whether for the pure and simple fact that it is nice to look at, or because it accurately portrays a historical figure from before the days of photography, or because it tells a story. Everyone can – or at least should – appreciate a good work of art when they see it.

If you have never stood before an original work by Raphael, you cannot possibly imagine how perfectly seamless the brush strokes are. If you have yet to stand with a work of Rembrandt a few feet from your eyes you would not believe anyone else who tried to describe in words the texture of it.

If you can stand in the middle of the Sistine Chapel and look up at Michelangelo’s ceiling, behold the sheer majesty of it, breathe in the historical weight of the ambience of the place, and not be stirred, then you must be devoid of a soul.

Even someone without an educated interest in art should, when standing in the dining hall of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, look at Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper on the back wall, and be moved and amazed. This 15ft by 29ft mural painting, which covers the back wall, was created by Da Vinci from 1495-1498, and has, due to the experimental nature of the technique he used, badly degraded over the years. Even in its current poor state though, it looks like part of the room. The lines are so perfect that the back wall seems simply to continue into another space that contains a table where Jesus and his apostles sit. Everyone will appreciate the sheer emotion and expression displayed by the figures in the image, the dynamic poses of the twelve apostles, the expressions on their faces. Even if you can’t actually name the apostles in order, if you aren’t consciously aware that Jesus sits at the vanishing point of the image’s compositional lines, even if you have never been made aware of the possible significance of the number 3 in the structure of the work, or if you are unaware of many other facts and details of academic artistic interest, you will - you should – be stirred to your core by seeing this masterpiece.

If you have read a certain popular work of (ahem) ‘literature’, you may be aware that the figure commonly accepted to be the apostle John in The Last Supper is quite feminine and may actually be Mary Magdalene, and you may be aware of the mysterious alleged ‘extra hand’ wielding a threatening knife. Such speculation and alternative theories about the exact meaning behind, nature of, and message contained in, a work of art, add to its mystery, its attraction. While I personally am largely disdainful of such mad theories, anything that makes people who wouldn’t otherwise do so look at a great work of art must have some small benefit.

If a work of art provokes literature and commentary, if it finds a place in a museum or gallery, if people travel from all over the world to view it, if it is held aloft as an example to others, then it must have something. It must be special. It must be great.

Everyone appreciates great art. Everyone from those educated in the history and terminology of art, to those who don’t really care about such things. Their appreciation may be for different reason. They may ‘get’ something completely different from the work. But the act of appreciating by so many people is what makes a work of art truly great.

While studying art, I have had to examine and write essays about many different works of art. I have discovered that there are some things I don’t like. Impressionism, for example, doesn’t really work for me. I know that the likes of Claude Monet and Edouard Manet did do some art that I like, but they also did those fuzzy, blurry, indistinct, messy things that just seem completely pointless to me.

Equally pointless and rubbish are the works of Pablo Picasso and other Cubists. What bothers me most about these people is that I know they have done good art, there are paintings of theirs which I like, but the ones they are famous for, the ones they get acknowledged for and the ones that people commonly recognise as theirs are the ones that I can’t help but thinking of as worthless rubbish.

However…in an uncharacteristic show of understanding, I can (sort of) see why some people do like those kinds of paintings. There is obviously still great skill required in their creation. And they are different. Different always goes a long way to make things stand out.

Maybe it’s because I’m a photographer, and I just like things to look like they are supposed to. Maybe it’s because I studied history, and I like to think of art as a reliable record of what the world has been like. Maybe I’m just too simple, and there’s something in them that’s just too deep for me to see it. Whatever the reason, I don’t like them, but at least I can appreciate that other people do.

I have however, discovered a phenomenon that has me baffled, has my brain spinning in confused circles, and about which I can find not the slightest morsel of understanding.

For some reason that I cannot grasp, Jackson Pollock’s work is appreciated.

I once had to write a 1,500-word essay about a Jackson Pollock ‘painting’ (and I use the word very lightly). It was painful. It hurt, deeply hurt, to write from an academic viewpoint about what I saw as a nothing more than a random mess of spattered paint. How can that be art?

Yeah, yeah, the very question of ‘what is art?’ is a whole philosophical debate about which we could argue and debate for several lifetimes. But putting aside everything else, I am thinking here simply of art which is good to look at; art which inspires the imagination; art which stretches through history to tell us what has gone before, what life was like back when it was created, what people thought and believed in the past; art which makes somewhere look attractive; art which helps us to relax; art which provokes emotions; art that can be appreciated by everyone, anyone.

And that I think is the nub.

Modern art is designed, purposefully crafted by its devious creators, to be seemingly impenetrable to the unenlightened. The haughty art academics surround these ‘non-art’ creations with flowery words, elaborate descriptions, and suggestions of arcane meanings that the uneducated masses cannot hope to comprehend.

The skill of modern art seems to be more of sophistry and rhetoric that real artistic talent.

Why go to the time and trouble of creating a real work of art, when you can throw together any old piece of trash, hide your brazen brass neck behind a carefully crafted mask of mysterious musing, and throw together some elegant explanation of the message the art is supposed to convey. You will (as long as you are a ‘real’ artist, who has been properly educated and qualified, and conforms to what the establishment expects) doubtless be backed up by a legion of sycophantic supporters who will add their own swanky descriptions of your wondrous creation to support its genuineness.

Leonardo Da Vinci died in 1519. Today the Mona Lisa is an artistic treasure beyond price. It is a simple portrait of an unnamed subject. Nearly 500 years after its creator’s passing, a great work of art is still a great work of art.

Jackson Pollock died in 1956. In the 25th century will people still be appreciating his ‘One: Number 31’? Will it be a priceless artefact held securely in a museum, visited by millions of people every year?

Know what I think?

I think the archaeologists of the 25th century will uncover the ruins of New York’s Gallery of Modern Art, find it, and think ‘oh look, someone spilled some paint…they must have hung it up there so that no-one stood in it and soiled their shoes’.

But I bet the Mona Lisa is still being appreciated even then.

R.I.P. Justice (20 Aug 2009)

'I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!'
-Barry Goldwater.

Just after 7pm on Wednesday 21st December 1988, Pan Am flight 103, a Boeing 747-121 named ‘Clipper Maid of the Seas’, exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The plane was carrying 243 passengers and 16 crew.

The initial explosion ripped a 20-inch hole in the plane’s fuselage, and the plane rapidly disintegrated. The nose section was torn off, exposing those inside to rapid depressurisation, resulting in tornado like winds, lethal flying debris, and a sudden drop in air pressure that would cause the gasses in people’s bodies to expand to four times its normal volume and make their lungs swell and collapse. Victims who were sucked from the plane were exposed to outside temperatures of –46oC.

Events happened so rapidly that no emergency procedures were started, and no distress signal was made.

Within 3 seconds of the explosion, the nose section, the fuselage and one of the engines were falling separately. The fuselage continued to break up as it fell. The 31,000-foot (9,400 m) plummet to the earth lasted about two minutes. The debris of the plane, the flaming aviation fuel, and the bodies of the victims rained down on and around Lockerbie.

A 196ft (60m) wing section, carrying 200,000 lb (91, 000 kg) of aviation fuel landed on Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie. The impact caused a seismic event that was recorded as measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale. The wing, several houses, and two families of Lockerbie residents disappeared without trace in the resulting crater.

Counting the eleven people who died in Lockerbie the death toll was 270, and included people from 21 countries.

On 31 January 2001, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer was convicted of 270 counts of murder for his part in the atrocity. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and told he would serve at least 27 years.

On 20 August 2009, Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, announced that Megrahi was to be released from prison on compassionate grounds, as he is in the final stages of prostate cancer and is expected to live no longer than a further three months. Within hours, Megrahi was on a plane bound for Libya.

Megrahi had been in custody for a total of ten and a half years. That amounts to about a fortnight of imprisonment for each of the 270 victims. And that, we are supposed to accept, is justice.

That is what the sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandchildren, grandparents and friends of the victims must be content with. The only person convicted of the most horrendous terrorist atrocity ever in this country is now a free man, after serving an embarrassingly inadequate sentence.

So what that he is dying. That does not, in any way, absolve him from paying for his crime as long as possible. To allow him to die a free man, to grant him the privilege of returning to his homeland where he will be welcomed as a hero, and will live his last days in the comfort of his friends and family, is an insult to the memories of the 270 victims.

Kenny MacAskill has spat upon their graves. He has slapped the face of each and every person still alive that lost loved ones that day.

On 20 August 2009, justice was murdered in Scotland.

IT'S NOT A BLOODY MONKEY!

'Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge.'
-Holbrook Jackson

I have always had a great love of the natural world. The first books I ever owned were Mysteries and Marvels of Nature, More Mysteries and Marvels of Nature, and The Nature-trail Omnibus, all published by Usborne. From then until the present day I have been buying and reading nature books, and I watch every natural world documentary that I can.

I do not actually know a single person who does not get a bit of pleasure from watching a pride of lions surrounding a wildebeest and ripping it apart for their dinner. Everyone enjoys nature programmes; I just enjoy them a bit more than most other people, and see them as a source of education rather than simply entertainment. Every fact I can pick up from such programmes gets logged away in the jumbled collection of facts that inhabit my brain.

I do (honestly) understand that most people are not interested in being educated by those programmes; that they watch them purely for entertainment. I do not expect anyone to retain every detail the narrator of such programmes passes on. But there is one very simple fact of the natural world about which I cannot avoid getting severely pissed off every time it is ignored or blatantly contradicted: chimpanzees often, continually and infuriatingly get called monkeys. They aren’t. They’re apes.

Apes.

Let me say it again. Apes.

Not monkeys! Apes!

The difference is very simple. With few exceptions, monkeys have tails. Macaques are the only real point of confusion: there are twenty-two species of macaque, several of which don’t have tails, but they are all monkeys. Apart from Macaques, if it’s monkey shaped but doesn’t have a tail, it isn’t a monkey. Chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas and orang-utans - which do not have tails - are apes.

Easy isn’t it? It’s not complicated in any way, not nearly in the same league of understanding required to recognise the differences between the planet’s thousands of species of insects and arachnids. You don’t have to be David Attenborough to look at a chimpanzee and know that it is an ape, and not a monkey.

There are several other common mix-ups; animals that get defined incorrectly or given the wrong name by uneducated people.

An example is when some innocent soul sees a rook and calls it a crow. While this does irk me somewhat, I accept that the offender might have no great love of ornithology, so I simply, and very politely, point out their misunderstanding to them, and describe the differences between the two species.

All too often this innocent attempt at education is met with open and undisguised hostility, and an accusation of being ‘picky’, ‘pedantic’ (the misuse of which is another matter…), ‘grumpy’ or ‘a smart arse’.

Whenever someone calls a mushroom a plant, I alert them to the fact that fungi, in fact, belong neither to the plant or animal kingdom, but are their own life form with traits in common with both plants and animals.

If someone uses the word ‘seagull’ in front of me I tell them (in the hope that they actually give a damn) that there isn’t actually any such thing as a ‘seagull’, but a collection of birds like the great black-headed gull, the large white-headed gull and the little gull, all of which tend to get miscalled ‘seagulls’.

Those examples cause me a bit of annoyance, and I try to educate the offender whenever they arise. The chimpanzee monkey/ape confusion annoys me much more than any of the other natural world misunderstanding though, simply because of its frequency and repetition.

I get even more annoyed (angry in fact!) when someone commits this sin in front of my children, especially if they are talking specifically to my children and misleading them into believing that the chimp (ape!) is a monkey.

And that is the root of why this aggravates me so much. I want my children to be educated. I want them to understand the world around them. Anyone feeding them false facts is impeding their education.

One morning while taking my son into nursery, one of the other children had with her a cuddly chimpanzee toy. When she showed it to me and told me she had a monkey with her today, I corrected her, and told her it wasn’t a monkey. My wife shook her head at this, in a sort of mildly disgusted way, and said that it didn’t matter if a four year old believed a chimp was a monkey. My reply was to ask her, why then do four year olds go to school? By the time our children are four years old we are enrolling them in formal education. The beginning of any process is the most important stage, the foundation that sets the tone for what is to follow; if we are lax about educating children, willing to allow misconception and false facts into their minds, how can we expect them to embrace proper education?

Education is required for the development of children into sensible, rational and socially useful adults; education that is given to them by their school teachers and the elder members of their family. A child’s brain is a hugely thirsty sponge; always curious and willing to learn, always observing and assimilating, and it is the duty, the undeniable responsibility, of the adults in a child’s life to guide them and pass on as much as possible of their own accrued knowledge and understanding of the world, and to help the child in discovering and exploring all areas that interest and excite them. If children are to learn from their environment, then that environment must be providing truth, real facts, and reliable information.

Someone not knowing something, or not understanding something properly and fully, does not, in itself, annoy me. I know that no one can know everything, and I appreciate that most people do not share my hunger for knowledge. Obviously people are going to make mistakes when they encounter a gap in their knowledge, and that is only to be expected. But people making the same mistake continually, calling a chimp a monkey every time they mention one, even after being told (repeatedly) that it is not a monkey, raises my blood pressure to a level that is dangerous to both my own and their health.

The problem, I think, is apathy. Absolute lack of interest. Lack of interest for one’s own level of education, and for the education of the children around oneself.

I began to realise in the summer of 2006, when a joyous day that I had been eagerly awaiting finally arrived, just how bad this problem is becoming. In Glasgow we have the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It is one of my favourite places in the country; a building I could happily get lost in for hours (days even, if they’d allow me) and never get bored. This, Glasgow’s finest collection of art and museum pieces, was closed for three years during an expensive renovation and rearrangement. When the doors finally opened to the new and improved museum, I joined the hordes of people flocking in. My first feelings of joy were, sadly, overcome by the frustration and annoyance of having to share the place with hundreds of other people. In the past you could wander round for hours without ever having another visitor closer to you than ten metres. But now it was crammed full of people.

Though it was annoying having to jostle with other people to get in to see some of the exhibits (and having to queue to use the toilet!), I was at first pleased to see that so many people were visiting the place; this degree of interest could only be a good thing, right? Soon however, they started to bother me. What bothered me was the apparent, obvious and annoyingly verbal shows of ignorance and apathy displayed by so many people; people who were there in the company of children.

“Look at the leopard David,” I heard a woman’s voice while I was taking a rest on a seat amid the stuffed animal displays. A leopard? I thought, raising my eyes, unaware that there was a leopard nearby. I must have missed that one! I gazed around myself in a confused state for a while. Then my eyes settled on the woman with the small boy standing before the Cheetah. A plainly and obviously labelled cheetah.

A cheetah…not a leopard!

The next few minutes required the expenditure of a lot (an awful lot) of willpower. I had to wrap my hands under the seat and hold on so tightly that it hurt my fingers, bite my teeth down hard on my tongue until I almost drew blood, force my eyes closed as tightly as possible and picture a peaceful beach with smooth white sand and a gently lapping blue ocean.

Had my willpower faltered even slightly, for a fraction of a second, I would have leapt to my feet, grabbed the idiot woman by the hair, slapped her a few times, and guided her face to within inches of the plaque on the cheetah’s display that identified it, in English (her native language), as a cheetah.

Had the ignorant offender seen the cheetah from afar, or had the plaque identifying it for what it was been absent, and she had mistakenly said “Look at the leopard David” within hearing distance, I would have been tempted to point out her error to her, and tell her that it was in fact a cheetah. As it was however, she was standing right in front of it, and could plainly see the adequately sized plaque. Her mistake was not simply due to a lack of knowledge. It was born of an ignorant, stupid, uncaring attitude. Here she was in the company of a young boy, who she had presumably brought to this centre of education and knowledge so that he could see displays of things that he would not otherwise get to see, to allow him both to appreciate them, and learn from them.

All of the displays in Kelvingrove are clearly labelled, with every exhibit named, and have hundreds of facts and useful, interesting pieces of information placed alongside. If you are at all literate, you can learn a lot during a relaxing wander round the place. If you are too young to read the plaques yourself, you can safely rely on the adults who are with you to read the information contained thereon and relate to you the relevant knowledge about the display you are currently standing before open mouthed and wide eyed in wonder.

Places like Kelvingrove are wonderful, stimulating places. Every room opens to new wonders, round every corner is a new vision, atop every table and in every glass cabinet is a marvel of the world; all gathered together for our education and appreciation. I would love, dearly, dearly love, to be able to wander round that place with the innocence and wonder of a child, to forget that I had seen it all before and to feel that exhilarating rush of wonder as my eyes fall on each new artefact of the world for the first time.

But what is the point of taking your child to such a treasury if you are not going to encourage them to learn from it, to assist them in taking home at the end of the day some small amount of knowledge or understanding of the world that they did not previously have?
Since I became conscious of this, and have been watching for it, I have seen an uncountable number of adults in Kelvingrove walking along behind their children, talking about what happened on Coronation Street the previous evening, or what Rangers’ line-up will be tomorrow, while the children scurry back and forth excitedly. I want to grab them all by the shoulders, shake them thoroughly and shout in their ears “Join in with your children you useless bunch of lazy uncaring morons! F***ing help them to understand it all!”

Even worse than those who stumble along behind blind and apathetic, are those, like the woman at the cheetah display, who make a pathetic pretence of participation in their child’s education. “Look at the leopard David” she said, having seen a large cat-shaped thing with dots on it. A second of interest was all it would have required for her to read the plaque and discover what the stuffed creature actually was, and her son would have left that day knowing something. As it was, he left thinking a cheetah is a leopard. All that he gained from having his mother with him in the museum that day was a lesson on how to be ignorant and foolish.

That woman, and every other person like her, I would happily shoot. Our children have a better chance of learning and growing up to do something useful and fulfilling with their lives without them.

With those people out of the way, chimpanzees can be apes, not monkeys, and our children will know the difference.