Mackay Scotland Today and Yesterday

Witness to a Changing Nation
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80425-196-6
Verlag: Luath Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten

This book is the story of a changing Scotland as it was heard and seen by the people of Scotland. We all may have our ideas about where we are headed as nation and a society, but none of us knows. That makes what lies ahead so fascinating. Just like what's gone before. JOHN MacKAY John MacKay is one of Scotland's best known broadcasters. His career as a reporter, anchor and presenter has spanned from the Thatcher Years to the Independence Referendum and beyond. MacKay has been witness to the major stories in the country's recent past. There have been the tragedies of Lockerbie, Dunblane and Clutha; sporting triumphs and tears; the opening of the new Scottish Parliament; the drama of parliamentary elections and referendums; interviews with Prime Ministers and First Ministers; and the death of Donald Dewar. From being in a room with a grizzly bear to trying to calm an irate - and topless - Alex Salmond, MacKay's career has been nothing if not varied. Using archive scripts, interview transcripts, recollections and personal diaries, he tells the story of one of the most tumultuous periods in Scotland's peacetime history.

JOHN MACKAY is a Scottish broadcast journalist and STV News presenter. John is co-anchor on STV News at Six and presenter on Scotland Tonight, the country's most popular news and current affairs programmes. A highly-respected journalist with over 30 years' experience, John has covered many of the biggest news stories in Scotland in recent times and has been witness to Scotland's transformation as a society and a nation. John's fiction writing draws upon the oral traditions of his Hebridean background with a trilogy of bestselling novels set in the Isle of Lewis, the first of which has been adapted for the big screen.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mackay, John

Leseproben

1987

Sunday 4 January 1987

The Sunday Post

NEW ROW OVER COLD PAYMENTS

Braemar, Scotland’s coldest village, shivered in temperatures of 16 degrees below freezing on Friday with underfoot temperatures even lower at 19.3 degrees below. But the freezing conditions haven’t been enough for OAPS in the village to qualify for extra heating allowances under the Government’s new Severe Weather Payments Scheme.

DIARY: Spoke to SNP Chairman Gordon Wilson. Pleasant and well prepared. His comment was more of a dictation eg ‘stop, new sentence.’

BARLINNIE RIOT

A riot erupted at Barlinnie Jail on Monday 5 January 1987. One hall was trashed and some prison officers were taken hostage. Prisoners took to the roof of the jail. Banners were hung alleging brutality and slates were thrown.

Saturday 10 January 1987

DIARY: Stood around in freezing conditions waiting for a statement following the end of the Barlinnie siege this morning. When the Scottish Office spokeswoman finally came out, I put my tape recorder out and taped the statement… Only problem was the pause button was on, so I never got anything! Fortunately, the statement was also printed. In the end we waited around for hours for very little.

Tape recorders – strictly speaking cassette recorders – were only beginning to appear at news conferences. The spokeswoman had looked at me askance as I thrust it in front of her. Maybe it was because the pause button was still on.

Thursday 22 January 1987

The Sunday Post

IT’S NOT EASY SITTING BESIDE A MINISTER AT IBROX

DIARY: Afternoon working on a story about a Rangers fan who pays a minister some cash each week so that he can shout abuse at games. Would like to do more news.

Sunday 25 January 1987

The Sunday Post

Livingston MP Robin Cook plans to meet senior management of Golden Wonder to discuss the threatened closure of their plant at Broxburn with the loss of 340 jobs. The crisps and snacks company announced the closure in an effort to streamline their operations, but Mr Cook claims that supermarkets ask that their brand name crisps be produced at the Broxburn plant because of its high quality produce.

DIARY: Also rewrote story of the Queen’s fury over the leaking of the Duke of Edinburgh’s letter to the Marines over Prince Edward’s resignation. So, five articles in this week’s issue.

Friday 30 January 1987

DIARY: Got total of £27.40 in expenses, so that’ll keep me going until my salary is in the bank – what there is of it. The editor signing my expense sheet says, ‘you sport boys eat well.’ I’m news.

Saturday 31 January 1987

DIARY: Was down in the case room for a while watching how they put a page together. It certainly is an art, but a dying one. It seemed very fiddly to me and the new processes should speed it up.

The paper was changing, as most did in that period, from the old method of hot metal type to new, cheaper computerised technology.

Saturday 14 February 1987

DIARY: Went to a wedding in Milngavie. The story never existed (all to do with nine brothers wearing the same suits).

This was a typical experience. Every reporter has gone out with a heavy heart knowing that what will meet them will bear little resemblance to what was promised, but knowing, too, that they need to bring something back for the newsdesk.

Sunday 22 February 1987

The Sunday Post

ROLLS ROYCE PROTEST

Almost 2,000 workers at the Rolls Royce overhaul plant in East Kilbride will stage a two-hour walk out tomorrow in protest at privatisation plans.

Industrial unrest over privatisation was standard fare during the Thatcher years. This one had a personal connection because my Faither and brother worked in that plant.

Friday 27 February 1987

DIARY: Out at a special AIDS press conference at Glasgow Uni. Prof Jarrett at the forefront of the race to find a vaccine said, ‘The permissive society is dead.’

The AIDS scare was reaching its peak in 1987. A Government-funded campaign told us, ‘There is now a danger that has become a threat to us all. It is a deadly disease and there is no known cure.’ This was emphasised by a gravestone with AIDS chiselled on it and the slogan ‘Don’t die of ignorance.’ It’s questionable that it was ever really a threat to us all, but the advances in treatments for HIV mean that people can now live long, healthy lives with the virus. And it’s probably fair to say the permissive society is still alive.

Thursday 19 March 1987

DIARY: Frustrating day. In work I was landed with a couple of shitty jobs, including collecting quiz questions. That after we’d had an informal meeting about making the news harder.

I’ve seen this time and again from young people starting in newsrooms. There is a natural desire to get on, but it is easy to forget that you have to serve your time. That includes doing basic jobs.

GENERAL ELECTION 1987

As a junior reporter on a Sunday newspaper I had little involvement in covering the 1987 General Election. The following report, to which I contributed these vox pops, looked at first-time voters ahead of the election.

Sunday 22 March 1987

The Sunday Post

YOUNG SCOTS SAY ‘NO’ TO MRS THATCHER

Every party recognises that first-time voters are going to be a crucial factor in the next election. Since the last General Election in June 1983, 2.1 million voters have had their names added to the electoral register. They now account for almost five per cent of the total electorate of 43.4 million. Their votes could swing the result in many marginal constituencies and affect the overall result if it is a close call.

GILLIAN FISHER: There is no way I would vote for Margaret Thatcher and I have no confidence in Neil Kinnock. The Alliance will get my vote.

JAMES SMITH: The Labour Party is biased against Catholics, so I won’t be voting for them. The Alliance just don’t appeal to me and there’s no way I would vote Tory. It seems the SNP is all that’s left.

ANDREW WITHERSPOON: I don’t have to think twice. My parents have always voted Conservative. Coming from a private school, which Labour want to abolish, I think I’ll stick with that philosophy.

In June 1987 Margaret Thatcher won an historic third term with a significant parliamentary majority across the UK. That picture was not reflected in Scotland. Labour won 50 seats, the Conservatives dropped from 21 seats to ten, the SDP Liberal Alliance got nine seats, the SNP won three, an increase of one.

Sunday 17 May 1987

The Sunday Post

Princess Anne yesterday praised the people of Inverclyde for their record-breaking fundraising efforts. In her role as President of Save the Children, the Princess told a massed crowd at a charity fete in Greenock that they had renewed her faith in hospitality and generosity. Dressed in a red, woollen, two-piece suit, the Princess was treated to a series of displays, including a performance by a wheelchair dancing troupe.

DIARY: Down in Greenock… From 11.00am to 4.00pm and it was dull. I reckon we could have left after the Princess arrived at 12.15pm. Not much of a story. Felt sorry for her if she has to visit these affairs so often, meeting dull dignitaries and watching the same displays. Having said that, the fetes are great for locals – the whole town seemed to be out.

Sunday 12 July 1987

The Sunday Post

A plan to have an open-air Christmas market in Glasgow’s George Square has caused a storm of protest. The proposed market would have 72 stalls, four chalets and an entertainment stage in the Square during the festive period. Now, a petition opposing the plan has been launched by stallholders at the all-year-round at Barrowland. They claim the George Square stalls would threaten their livelihoods and other markets might be forced to close.

Sunday 12 July 1987

The Sunday Post

The Glasgow Garden Festival is already proving to be a success nearly a year before it begins. Sales of the first batch of season tickets (at £15 a head) have been in excess of 70,000, smashing the organisers’ estimates of 25,000… Orders for the season tickets have come mostly from the Glasgow area. But 15 per cent have come from around the world, including Canada, the US and Australia.

Sunday 19 July 1987

The Sunday Post

Thousands of Scottish would-be holidaymakers were caught in a nightmare yesterday as their Glasgow Fair Fortnight got underway. Bus, plane and weather problems combined to cause chaos and misery and ruin expensive holiday plans. The Scottish Bus Group strike led to angry scenes at bus stations in Edinburgh and Glasgow when passengers expecting to leave for resorts such as Blackpool, Scarborough and further south were told most services had been wiped out.

The Glasgow Fair, Blackpool and Scarborough are evocative of a different age of holidays.

During that summer I saw an advert for news trainees at BBC Radio Scotland. I ignored it initially because I didn’t think broadcasting was for me. A combination of curiosity and youthful optimism made me submit an application late on, but with no real expectation of being selected from the thousands of others who applied.

Friday 18 September...