Jul 21
Our newspapers and television news are bombarding us at the moment – almost literally – with images of war and its dreadful effects. Whether the images are from the streets of Gaza or from the fields in Ukraine where Flight MH17 came down, we are confronted hourly with the horror and destruction that results when …
Jul 02
I spent a gloriously uplifting evening last week as the guest speaker at the annual Speech Night at St George’s School in Edinburgh. The young women whose achievements we were applauding were poised, grounded and ready to go out into the world, so in addition to the thoughts I gave them about how to make …
Jun 16
The Queen’s Baton passed into Scotland early on Saturday morning, headed for the Commonwealth Games which begin in just over a month’s time in Glasgow. A symbolic handover took place at the border, when the Baton was handed from the great former decathlete, Daley Thompson, to one of Scotland’s current main hopes for the Games, …
Jun 04
Taken out of context, this catchy line from South Pacific could well be applied to Dame Daphne Sheldrick, who celebrates her 80th birthday today. Dame Daphne was born of British ancestry in Kenya in 1934, and has spent her life caring for orphans of wild animal species from black rhinos to zebras, and warthogs to …
May 22
As reported in yesterday’s Guardian, a WHO study (to be published in full later this year) reports that the number of teenagers in England who self-harm has trebled in the last ten years, and is now around one in five. Self-harm – cutting, burning or otherwise harming oneself – is a sign of intense mental …
May 10
Ever since 300 girls were abducted from their school in north-eastern Nigeria last month – almost exactly a month ago, in fact – it has been hard to find anyone across the globe who does not regard their abduction as anything other than a most dreadful and despicable act, unworthy of fellow human beings. The …
Feb 17
It is easy to forget sometimes that we are immensely privileged to live in a society where we can take justice and freedom – of action and speech – for granted. No society is perfect, of course, and nor is any system of law or government, but on the whole, living in Australia, or the …
Feb 10
I read a potentially rather depressing report recently about a survey of British teenagers post-GCSE (aged around 16), who were looking ahead to their futures and commenting on what was important to them, what they envisaged doing with their lives and what skills they thought they would need. The main takeouts of the survey, as …
Nov 22
In the 1994 award-winning film, Forrest Gump, the eponymous hero (played, as anyone who has seen it will remember, by Tom Hanks) utters the words “My momma always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get’”. It is a film worthy of its many Oscars, Golden Globes and …
Nov 08
An article in this Tuesday’s Sydney Morning Herald caught my eye very early that same morning – it was a story about Melissa Barbieri, former captain of the Australian national women’s football team, who finds herself without funding after taking a year out to have a child. In order to keep playing in the W-League, …