MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on in Scotland.
As fake as Trump's hair
I didn't turn out in my Hebridean home town of Stornoway to welcome The Donald Trump and his Organisation last week as he played the rich returning son of his late mother from the Isle of Lewis.
And that's not just because I live and work in Glasgow.
According to my sources, Trump sprayed around precious few dollars during the precious few hours that he was on the old island as part of his campaign to develop a massive golf and housing project on the Aberdeeenshire coast.
Seemingly, though, he let it be known that he might spray a few extra dollars in future to help with the restoration of the derelict Stornoway castle. As fake as Trump's hair, it's not really a castle anyway. It's really a Victorian baronial pile built by Sir James Matheson of Jardine Matheson on the proceeds of the 19th century opium trade in China which was supported by the British state and military. He made so much money out of countless Chinese opium addicts that Matheson didn't just build a "castle," he bought the whole island.
Matheson or Trump, I'm not for the bending of the knee to wads of ill-gotten cash. Keep any castle development clean and do it with no strings attached, using public money - taxed properly from the rich, of course.
Donald: you're fired!
List MSPs' 'turkey' vote
DESPITE having imposed the additional member system of proportional representation on the Scottish Parliament in the first place because it was the nearest thing to first past the post that they could actually get away with, Labour has never really come to terms with it.
Some of the Labour MSPs even blame the electoral system for the loss of the Scottish election last year and not Labour's own failures to convince the people that it was worthy.
So it was little surprise last week that the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party supported a proposal to give constituency - ie first-past-the-post - MSPs £17,000 more than list members for staff costs.
The proposal would have given constituency MSPs £64,300 and list MSPs £46,700 each year to pay for assistants on the basis that constituency MSPs have a bigger workload.
It was even less surprise when the Labour minority was defeated by an alliance of mainly list MSPs fom the SNP, the Tories and the Greens, who voted to maintain the equal status of constituency and list members.
Turkeys don't often vote for Christmas, do they?
Refugee week shines spotlight on the facts
TODAY marks the start of Refugee Week Scotland, a now annual event to celebrate diversity and raise awareness.
According to the Scottish Refugee Council, which runs the event, there are approximately 10,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Scotland, mostly living in Glasgow. Of these, around 4,000 are asylum-seekers.
The majority of new asylum-seekers to Glasgow are coming from Iraq, Iran and Eritrea, having fled war, torture or persecution. Asylum-seekers are not allowed to work and are forced to depend on state support, though many do voluntary work which benefits the community and helps maintain skills.
Among the events and activities during the week are theatre, film, music and sports. A parliamentary reception will be hosted by Bill Butler MSP on Wednesday and the Refugee Week Scottish Media Awards takes place on Friday June 20, which is World Refugee Day.
You can find a full programme at www.scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk
A particular highlight is Life After Iraq, an exhibition of work by award-winning photojournalist Angela Catlin and writer Billy Briggs, who travelled to Syria to document the lives of some of the millions of ordinary Iraqis living there after fleeing their homeland.
The exhibition also gives an intimate insight into the lives of Iraqi refugees who have come to Scotland seeking safety.
It runs from now until October 2008 at St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art in Glasgow.
Glasgow activists' solidarity sleepout
ONE of the most remarkable campaigning organisations in Scotland has to be Positive Action in Housing, which is led by the redoubtable - she'll like that - Robina Qureshi.
As part of Refugee Week, PAIH is organising its second annual sleepout in Glasgow's George Square on Thursday night in support of asylum-seekers in Scotland.
The idea is to draw attention to the destitution caused to the hundreds refused asylum every year who are, as Qureshi puts it, "deliberately being made destitute in Glasgow by government policy."
Many people seeking asylum whose claims are turned down are unable to return home.
"But they are denied all state support, thrown out of their housing and are not allowed to work," says Qureshi. "They have no money for food, shelter and the everyday things we take for granted.
"This misery is a direct consequence of government policy. Destitution is being used to drive people out of the country, but many thousands simply cannot leave and are now homeless and hungry."
More than 100 people slept out in last year's events.
Check www.paih.org or call (0141) 353-2220 for information about how to get involved in the sleepover.
The real apprentices
LABOUR'S John Park, list MSP for Fife and formerly of the STUC and Unite: The Union, has been seeking support for his private members Bill to establish a right to undertake an apprenticeship for young Scots aged between 16 and 18.
The consultation phase for Park's Bill closes on Tuesday. I hope that he gets the support that he needs for this worthy measure and if it increases the number of young people getting a good training and a decent job out of it, that would be great.
The real problem is that not enough employers are prepared to invest in training enough apprentices to meet the need for skills in the economy.
A right for workers to have an apprenticeship will be meaningless if there are insufficient places. Unite's call for a national training levy on employers in all industries, which was restated at the union's Brighton conference earlier this month, would provide the framework in which a right to an apprenticeship could be realistically delivered.
Preferably, with an increase in the minimum wage for apprentices, which should extend to cover 16-18-year-olds, another Unite policy.
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