Highland schools asked to discuss pupils' phone use
Highland Council has asked schools in its area to have discussions round pupils' use of mobile phones in classrooms.The local authority said excessive use of phones was a "significant issue". Bans are already in force at Nairn Academy and Grantown Grammar School.Last month, councillors unanimously backed a proposal from Labour's Michael Gregson and Conservative's Helen Crawford for a wider consultation to be held.
Mr Gregson and Ms Crawford said phones were having a disruptive effect on children and their education.The proposal agreed by councillors included a commitment from the local authority to support schools that decided to ban the devices.Other Scottish schools have taken steps to limit access to phones in class time.Pupils at two high schools in Edinburgh are having to keep their mobiles in lockable pouches during the day under a new phone-free policy.Students at Portobello High School and Queensferry High School are being issued with special wallets which once sealed require a magnetic pad to unlock them.Pupils are allowed to keep their phones in their possession but will be expected to keep them in the pouches until the bell rings at the end of their final lesson.Moray councillors voted last month to bring in stricter guidelines limiting the use of mobiles in schools from August.Councillors hoped the move would reduce disruption in the classroom, as well as stop some incidents of bullying.Scottish government guidance allows head teachers to make their own decisions on mobile phone use but Moray Council has decided to introduce blanket guidance.Moray's new policy would have exemptions for medical use such as diabetes monitoring.In August, Education Secretary Jenny Gilruth said headteachers across Scotland were trusted to take the best decisions in the interests of their school communities.
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BBC News
33 minutes ago
- BBC News
Whithorn boxer says sport helped tackle her postnatal depression
A new mum has credited the sport of boxing with helping her recovery from postnatal McCallum became the first female boxer from Whithorn's Bravehearts Boxing Club to step into the ring last week when she competed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in she lost her first bout, the 29-year-old said what really mattered was her victory over mental health challenges she faced after giving birth for the first time to her now three-year-old daughter."When I had Ella-Rose I was at my lowest," she said. "The Bravehearts gym saved my life." "It's different to any other mental health that you feel," she explained."You can get depression but the postnatal from having a baby is completely different."It makes you not want to be here anymore. People say you get the 'baby blues' but you don't realise how severe it can be."She said that was where the sport had come to her assistance."I found boxing and it's hard to explain, but I've gone from size 16 to size eight, feel brilliant and got my life back," she said. Natasha, who moved from Ayrshire to the remote town of Whithorn in south west Scotland 13 years ago, had no previous experience of boxing, but the internet helped her to find a club on her doorstep."Because of the size I was after I'd had my little one, I started Googling how to lose weight," she said."And boxing came up, as one of the hardest, but quickest ways to lose weight. So I tried it and I saw the weight falling off."I just got addicted to it, but it helps that you see the improvement in your body. I started looking in the mirror again and seeing the change helps you keep going."Now she says she feels "absolutely amazing"."I can't believe what I've done and how far I've come," she added."I never thought I'd see a way out of where I was, but I have." Natasha has recently launched her own cleaning business - the boxing club is one of her clients - and she is supported by partner John and family, although she banned them from watching her first fight."They're a great support but the boxing is something I've done on my own; it's my thing," she said."My mum's not keen to watch it anyway, and, being honest, I was also a little embarrassed that I might not box very well."I had Tom, my coach there, and there were others from the club supporting me, and that's what it was about." She said their backing had been amazing and they had had "huge smiles" on their faces since her fight."I never thought I'd be in a boxing ring, but I absolutely loved it," she added."I don't know if boxing is for everyone, but I'd recommend women give it a try."Whether you need a lift, something to focus on or not - you don't have to physically box people."She added: "I never realised what boxing training could do, but I know now, and it's given me my life back."I would definitely recommend it to anyone." 'Role model' Tom Jolly, who runs the Bravehearts club, said it was delighted with what she had achieved."We are an open and welcoming club at Bravehearts and it's been great to see more girls and women getting involved in training, and boxing itself," he said."Natasha is a great role model for them."Head coach Wullie Martin said the club was very proud of how she had developed."Natasha made history for our wee club by becoming the first female Braveheart boxer to compete in a sanctioned bout up in Glasgow," he said."I told Natasha that win, lose or draw didn't really matter because as you step in through the ropes of a boxing ring the most important thing is not physical strength, but mental strength."You have to believe in yourself and your abilities to succeed, and Natasha has shown she has that mindset. The wins will come." If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, you can visit the BBC Action Line.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Booze, wood-burners, Sunday roasts... as the list of everyday pleasures targeted by the SNP grows longer, have we EVER been subjected to a more censorious nanny state government?
They've clobbered smokers. Thought – aloud – about criminalising the ownership of cats. Its Fife panjandrums are now leaning on local chippies to slash portion-sizes – in the averred interests of public health: now, SNP surrogates threaten your Sunday roast. The ink had barely dried on the first Scottish Parliament minutes before that first cohort of MSPs had banned fox-hunting and hare-coursing. Passed a whole Act about dog-fouling. Our underemployed, overwaged legislators are still after anyone gasping for a fag - in the latest wheeze, you can now be prosecuted for puffing within fifteen metres of a hospital boundary, even if you are on the other side of the street. Disposable vapes are in their sights too: for years it has been an offence to vape at any Scottish railway station, even on a platform in the open air. No pleasure seems safe from the Nats, from their fatuous efforts to police football chants – indeed, the initial law was so intrusive, and so unworkable, it had to be abandoned. Forget that soothing drink, by the way. 'Minimum pricing,' whacked up again last year, means you're now shelling out more for a litre of sherry than, back in 1999, you had to hand over for a bottle of Famous Grouse. Our English neighbours enjoy cheaper beer than we do. And now the Nats have a real new beef with us. The Scottish Government's Climate Change Committee, wagging a sententious finger, says we should all be eating 30 per cent less red meat. And that farmers – as if they did not have trials enough, with scant profit-margins and over-weening bureaucracy in one of Scotland's loneliest jobs – should rear a third fewer sheep and cattle. Even that shocker has had to jostle for attention with other ridiculous headlines. NHS Fife, for instance, is leaning on the hot takeaway trade to cut the typical portion of, for instance, fish and chips. And the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission suddenly has anglers in its crosshairs. Fishing practices should be reformed, it drones, as fish are 'sentient beings' with 'emotional experiences that matter to them.' It hopes ministers will soon review the law regarding 'actions that occur in the normal course of fishing.' Such a move, panted one newspaper and as if it had just unmasked Lord Lucan, 'could outlaw many aspects of angling such as hooking a fish and removing it from the water.' SAWC does, admittedly, have form. Only in February, it thought about forbidding cat ownership in parts of the country where there was demonstrable predation on birds and small mammals. It would make still more sense to shoot every last bird of prey out of the sky and, if SAWC wants a rough guide, between 1837 and 1840 gamekeepers in forested Invergarry killed 285 common buzzards, 63 goshawks, 27 white-tailed sea eagles, 15 golden eagles and 18 ospreys. Not to mention six gyrfalcons, eleven hobbies, 275 kites, 371 rough-legged buzzards, 462 kes-trels, 78 merlins, 63 hen harriers and seven orange-legged falcons. The First Minister, of less stern stuff, limply assured the public that the SNP administration had no plans to ban pet cats. Last year, too, the Nationalists were even forced to abandon a crazed scheme to ban wood-burning stoves in new-build houses. It feels increasingly as if you cannot take three strides in what one of John Swinney's predecessors once hailed as 'the best small country in the world' without being lectured, harangued, re-proached and disapproved of. Tobacco, sugar, booze, salmon or that jumbo-sausage supper… ministers have their beady little eyes on us. And, no doubt, others have eyes on them too. It is only fair to point out that this culture of censure, rebuke and righteously rapped knuckles long predates the SNP's 2007 ascent to power. From practically the start, the devolved new Scotland rapidly won much wry comment for eat-your-vegetables nanny statism. After the first MSPs had solemnly voted themselves a com-memorative medal. In 2005, for instance, Nora Radcliffe – Liberal Democrat MSP for Gordon, till Alex Salmond toppled her from obscurity into oblivion – called for a ban on the boiling of live lobsters. The Scottish Executive, as it then was, pelted us with posters and raucous TV ads about the horrors of everything from eating too many crisps, through dodgy electric blankets, to the enormity of consigning your Christmas turkey to the fridge before it was completely cold. And, in April 2006 and to widespread trepidation – many journalists hurried up from England, hoping for riots on the streets – Jack McConnell's administration banned smoking in enclosed public spaces. A policy, in fact, first suggested by a Nationalist MSP, Stewart Maxwell. But Scots submitted to it so meekly that one wonders how much it emboldened another First Minister, fourteen years later, to impose all sorts of ridiculous restrictions on our liberties during Covid. At its height, you could not sit down on a park bench, enjoy coffee with a neighbour in your garden or leave your house more than once a day. It was even decreed an offence to venture beyond the bounds of your own local authority. When I in March 2021 had briefly to scamper back to my Hebridean lair, by deserted roads through silent towns, for an armful of Astra-Zeneca, I was so terrified of being stopped and challenged I carried a sort of letter-of-transit from my GP. Meanwhile, our unfortunate children shuffled down school corridors in sweaty masks as – concerned about classroom ventilation – ministers wondered aloud about sawing the bottoms off doors and Nicola Sturgeon tut-tutted that Prince William dared to visit Scotland. Behind this are two dark realities. The first is that, while finally responsible for a host of public services, the Scottish Government (and, by extension, the Scottish Parliament) delivers virtually none of them. Local authorities school most of our children; local health-boards direct primary care and hospitals, and so on. When it finally did have an immediate and grave responsibility, from the dawn of 2021 – vaccinating the elderly and the vulnerable against coronavirus – the Scottish Government made such a laboured fist of things that, quietly and with the deepest tact, Whitehall sent in the army. The second reality is that there is a very old middle-class tradition in Scotland of censuring working-class pleasures. In an era when, for most ordinary people, Sunday was their only day off, clergy insisted on the shuttering of galleries and museums. In a noted Court of Session case – with consequences, generations later, for the Western Isles – it was finally ruled that the good and respectable folk of Burntisland, most conscious of their goodness and respectability, could not ban the Sabbath visits of excursion steamers. In 1875 the Religion and Morals Report for the Free Church General Assembly railed that, to a large extent, 'our farm servants are ignorant, licentious, profane and rude'. What yokels might have thought of Free Church ministers is not recorded. Meanwhile, Presbyterians grew so obsessed with the demon drink that, by the Great War, many congregations celebrated Communion with non-alcoholic wine. And, in 1907, a United Free Church minister assailed a new social phenomenon as 'perfect iniquities of Hell itself,' capped in Glasgow Corporation's 1909 roar about 'the great and increasing evil' it was doing to the city's young men and women. Business ventures 'owned by 'aliens and Roman Catholics,' touting an unnecessary product 'epitomising,' gasped one gentleman, 'the evil of luxury being smuggled into the souls of Glaswegians.' The target of such ire? Italian ice cream cafés. As if not to be outdone, the Free Presbyterian Magazine warned young Highland lasses, seeking urban employment, of the perils of the white-slave trade. They should not, for instance, accept sweets from strangers. Retreating from such past larks to the latest decrees from those with the rule over us, it is striking how few stand up to logical examination. Take the Scottish Climate Committee's clamour for less beef and fewer cows; the reduced bleating of sheep. This is presumably pegged to three core tenets of tree-hugging faith: that reduced upland grazing will in scant decades see the regeneration of much Scottish forest; that cattle-feed is a wildly inefficient use of grain; and that cows, naturally flatulent, are responsible for about 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gases. The precise figure is, in fact, disputed. But the Committee's lordly loftiness flies in the face of basic realities. For one, about 65 per cent of all the land in Britain can bear nothing but grass. Cows and sheep – hold the front page – eat grass. We cannot. Our cloven-hooved stock will, accordingly, be an essential part of our food economy till the end of time, and the beef industry in particular has for years been working hard to reduce its carbon footprint. For another, much of upland and coastal Scotland is too high – or too exposed to salted winds – to bear significant woodland. Life in somewhere like Lewis or Tiree is, as someone once said with feeling, like living on the deck of an aircraft-carrier. Snow can fall on Ben Nevis in any calendar month of the year. And, even were it otherwise, the Climate Change Committee seems to be blithely unaware of the real menace: deer. The deer population on Britain, as Patrick Galbraith details in his rather good book about Brit-ain's vanishing birds - In Search of One Last Song - is completely out of control: two million beasts on the trot, the highest in a thousand years. The ideal on a well-managed Scottish estate is five deer per square kilometre – on some, numbers are at an unsustainable twenty per kilometre. The depredations of muntjac alone have wiped out the nightingale in many parts of England. Deer threaten the survival, too, of black grouse, ptarmigan and the capercaillie. They are, additionally, responsible for many fatal road-accidents; and there is no more ferocious foe of forest than browsing Bambi. But households remain reluctant to buy and cook venison – and, absurdly, much of the venison for sale in Britain today is imported. In any event, most of us eat less red meat these days, not least because it is so expensive: you will struggle to buy a family-sized pot-roasting cut for less than a tenner. And in the Hebrides, well within living memory, it was a rare treat: fish and potatoes all week, with meat (and the related broth as the first course) on Sundays. There are other environmental realities that seem to have eluded the Climate Change Committee. Without cattle, as the Royal Agricultural Society of England has pointed out, 'there would be no dung, which would vastly reduce the presence of dung beetles in their habitat. 'As well as delivering a myriad of ecosystem benefits, such as sequestering carbon into the soil, dung beetle larvae are a key food source for ground-nesting birds. It is estimated that dung beetles save farmers in the UK £367 million per year…' Then we have that NHS Fife obsession: how big is your fish supper? In fact, fish and chips – cooked properly and well – is a remarkably healthy meal. There is, for instance, no added sugar. It is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins B12 and D, and high-quality protein – and less fat than a typical serving of, say, chicken tikka masala or an oil-slicked Chinese takeaway. 'Typically,' assures one authority, 'fish and chips on average have 9.42 grams of fat per 100 grams, while the average pizza has 11, chicken korma 15.5 and a donner kebab a whopping 16.2…' We come to SWAC's vapourings about angling. One rather doubts such solicitude extends to every creature of the earth. Even the Commission's august personages doubtless prefer life without headlice, tapeworms and rats and most, presumably, vaccinate their children. It remains official NatureScot advice to smash dead any American signal crayfish you meet in our fresh waters and, for over two decades, it has been determinedly exterminating feral mink in the Western Isles. Where SWAC may have a point is the dubious practice of 'catch and release.' My own view is that you should only venture out with the rod for fish you can eat and, having caught your salmon and thumped it on the head, you head for home and the deep freeze, rather than hauling in fish after fish, weighing them, measuring them, taking a few snaps for social media and then returning them to the deep. Not forgetting a protracted chat about emotional experiences that really mattered to them. But, in coarse fishing, catch and release is the whole point: we might, perhaps, command barbless hooks, or even the soluble sort decreed in the pursuit of bluefin tuna. The wild Atlantic salmon may not always be with us; the typical Scottish political animal will add to the gaiety of nations for decades to come. Bossy, virtue-signalling, carefully picking its targets, and unconsciously living what Ronald Reagan once mocked as the prevalent tenets in modern statecraft. If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it – and, if it stops moving, subsidise it.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Surge in support for Reform in by-election puts Labour seriously under threat, warns expert
A SURGE in support for Reform in a hotly-contested by-election puts Labour seriously under threat, an expert has warned. Nigel Farage's party finished a close third with more than 26 per cent of the vote narrowly behind both Labour and the SNP in the ballot in Hamilton, Scotland. The party said it was a 'remarkable' turnaround picking up 7,088 compared to just 58 votes in the constituency in 2021 as it attempted to win its first seat in Holyrood. Election guru John Curtice said it would be a 'serious misreading' to believe that Labour had turned round its election fortunes, with the Scottish elections next May. He told the BBC: 'Reform are making the political weather north of the border, as indeed they are south of the border.' Reform deputy leader Richard Tice said: 'We've come from nowhere to being in a three-way marginal, and we're within 750 votes of winning that by-election and just a few hundred votes of defeating the SNP.' The performance came just hours after Zia Yusuf resigned as party chair plunging the party into chaos following a row about banning burqas. In a parting shot, he said he no longer believed trying to get Nigel Farage elected as PM was a 'good use of my time'. Mr Yusuf's shock resignation - just weeks after masterminding their local elections triumph - came after an internal row about banning the burqa. The multi-millionaire ex-businessman had attacked the party's newest MP Sarah Pochin as 'dumb' for asking Sir Keir Starmer to outlaw the Muslim face covering in the Commons. But insiders said tensions at the top of Reform had been brewing for some time, with the chairman feeling increasingly sidelined. In a statement, Mr Yusuf said: 'Eleven months ago I became Chairman of Reform. Watch moment Nigel Farage makes back door exit as Reform UK leader dodges protesters in Scotland 'I've worked full time as a volunteer to take the party from 14 to 30 per cent, quadrupled its membership and delivered historic electoral results. 'I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office.' 2
