Parliamo Glasgow

A bus driver is to be recognised for teaching his Eastern European colleagues at First Glasgow bus company how to understand Glaswegian slang.

James Lillis, 55, will receive the 4th annual Helen Dowie award for Lifelong Learning at the STUC conference in Perth on Wednesday.
Mr Lillis, who has driven buses in the city for 30 years, runs the workplace learning centre at his depot.

He started teaching “Glaswegian” at the centre after learning basic Polish.

One in 10 drivers working for First Glasgow, the city’s main bus operator, come from outside the UK. The majority of the foreign drivers come from Poland, with Slovak, Hungarian, Lithuanian and Czech drivers also employed.

- BBC News

Deport to rule

First Minister Alex Salmond has written to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith urging her to reverse an immigration tribunal decision.

Swarthick Salins has been told he will be deported with his family because his savings were £78 less than the £800 specified by Home Office rules.

Mr Salins, a 37-year-old Indian, has lived in Scotland for nine years and his three children were born in the UK.

Mr Salmond said the decision was “overly harsh”.

- BBC News

Welcome to the home of Rolf

China’s one million golfers have been urged to try out the sport at ‘the home of golf’.

First Minister Alex Salmond is in China where he has launched the Scottish Prestige Golf Club.

For an annual fee of about £2,650, Chinese players will get membership of a Scottish course, priority tee times and travel agency services. Venues already signed up include Gleneagles, in Perthshire, Carnoustie, in Angus, and Turnberry, in Ayrshire.

Mr Salmond said: “Golf is the growth sport in China, a country which now boasts well over 200 courses with a further 100 now under construction.

“There are now more than a million golf club members in China who are no different to golfers the world over in wanting to experience their favourite sport in its natural home of Scotland, to test their skills at the ‘home of golf’.

- BBC News

Violence of the lambs (or The Chop Strikes Back)

A lamb was seen head-butting a golden eagle, one of Scotland’s largest birds of prey, according to a new report on island birdlife.

The incident is included in the 10th Outer Hebrides Bird Report, which was funded by Scottish Natural Heritage.

The incident involving the lamb and the bird of prey was recorded at Baile Ailean on the Western Isles…

SNH said the book revealed “fascinating insights” into the struggle for survival between birds and animals throughout the islands.

The lamb head-butt incident was recorded in 2006.

- BBC News

The rich get richer and the poor get to perv

Campaigners have secured the £50m they need to buy a 16th Century painting by Titian for the nation.

The painting – Diana and Actaeon – was offered for sale by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland, last summer.

The National Galleries of Scotland and London’s National Gallery were jointly trying to raise the money.

The Scottish Government has pledged £12.5m, £7.4m has come from public donations and £12.5m has come from National Galleries in London….

The painting has been on public display at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh and London for more than 200 years.

Its owner, the Duke Of Sutherland, decided in the summer of 2007 to sell the painting and a public campaign was launched by the galleries last August in a bid to raise the money.

Now the galleries have secured funds to buy Diana and Actaeon, a second Titian painting – Diana and Callisto – will be offered for sale in four years.

The two Titians were created as part of a cycle of works for King Philip II of Spain from 1556 to 1559 and form part of the Bridgewater collection, which has been on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland since 1945.

- BBC News

But then I noticed this in an earlier story…

Should the two galleries manage to raise the necessary funds, the entire Bridgewater collection will remain on long-term loan to the Scottish gallery.

Hang on… as in “buy these two paintings for £100 million or we’ll withdraw the entire collection”? No wonder a Glasgow MP has called the £17.5 million Scottish Government contribution ‘obscene’…

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr Davidson, the member for Glasgow South West, said: “It is difficult to argue that this is part of Britain’s cultural heritage when it’s a picture by a long dead Venetian – it’s not as if it’s Jock McTitian.