THE black and white photograph helped accentuate the bold front page heading that read, grimly, ‘Glasgow: Jobless capital of the UK’.
As front pages go, it was nothing short of arresting, with the full story promised on pages four and five of official figures showing that nearly a third of households in the city have no-one in employment.
And so Edinburgh-headquartered The Scotsman told its readers that Glasgow had overtaken Liverpool as the worst city in Britain for jobless families.
Not the merest hint of schadenfreude at Glasgow’s plight… which was given a much more modest berth in The Scotsman’s Glasgow rival, The Herald. On page 12.
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HE was flying no doubt for the first time in a long time. War veteran, John Cruickshank was attending the RAF Leuchars Air Show, and found himself featured on both the BBC and STV evening news bulletins.
And in doing so, he flew back in time, STV having him aged 94; BBC Scotland, half an hour later, reporting him aged 93.
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THEY must be at their wits’ end, the sports staff at BBC Scotland. If there is anyone with the authority to determine whether a football club remains separate to whatever financial difficulties its custodians are suffering, then it might be helpful to explain and do so very, very loudly.
And then we might save sports reporters stumbling over how to describe the status of Rangers FC – in the wake of its relatively recent, well-documented financial woes – and potentially incurring the wrath of either the club’s fans or its staunchest opponents.
And then, hopefully, no further need for BBC Scotland to issue yet another apology over what language should or should not have been used, as reported in The Herald at the start of the week. And yesterday too.
PS Not that everyone is happy that the BBC issued an apology at all, including veteran sports writer and broadcaster, Archie Macpherson, again in The Herald (in the paper’s Agenda slot).
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LEADING with Labour leader, Ed Miliband’s speech to the Trades Union Congress may have suggested it was a bit of a thin day, story-wise, but that was not the reason why STV’s early evening news bulletin on Tuesday was reduced from its usual half an hour to 15 minutes.
It was to make way for a World Cup qualifying football match later in the evening – Ukraine versus England, but except for viewers of, er… STV.
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PUBLISHING guru – Scot, Mike Soutar – was one of the guest speakers at a magazine festival in Glasgow yesterday.
You may have spotted him as one of Lord Sugar’s trusted advisors on the BBC hit series, The Apprentice.
And once, as well as running the rule over candidates hoping to make the final pairing, he welcomed candidates on a magazine creation task.
He told delegates at Magfest how proud he was with his welcome speech to the candidates, at his ShortList Media London HQ.
And how the speech that was finally broadcast was an amalgam of about five separate takes, as the first fantastic effort was ruined by a door being slammed somewhere in the building, thus rendering it unusable.
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