Latest news with #FionaRobertson
CTV News
5 days ago
- CTV News
OPP shut down London dispensary
Natural Unit on Wellington Street is seen on Aug. 6, 2025. (Fiona Robertson/CTV News London) OPP have shut down a cannabis dispensary in London that police said was operating without a license. The store which operated under the name 'Natural Unity' saw nearly $50,000 worth of goods seized in a raid at the end of July A 22-year-old man from London faces charges related to the operation of a dispensary without a license, as well as possession of property obtained by crime.
BBC News
27-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
New SQA chief named months before exams body scrapped
The new head of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has been named as Nick Page, just months before the exams body is Scottish government passed legislation on Wednesday to abolish the SQA within months and replace it with a new body called Qualifications Page was chief executive of Solihull Council when the authority was criticised after six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was murdered by his step-mother in June 2020.A review in January 2023 found children faced "significant harm" due to delayed responses from the council's children's services, which it rated as "inadequate". Emma Tustin poisoned, starved and beat Arthur during the Covid lockdown. She was jailed along with Arthur's father Thomas Hughes, who was found guilty of Page resigned as chief executive of the council in the wake of the Ofsted report. He said that new leadership would bring about necessary improvements.A spokesperson for the SQA said: "Nick Page chose to step down from his last role after a critical inspection."It was a principled decision to allow fresh leadership to take improvements forward."The SQA board carried out full due diligence and was unanimous in its selection. Nick was also the unanimous choice of the SQA staff panel which interviewed all candidates." 'Transforming at pace' Mr Page's appointment comes after Fiona Robertson announced she was quitting as SQA chief executive in will begin work at the SQA on 7 July and will then lead Qualifications Scotland when it is established in former teacher said he was "honoured" to take over the role from John Booth, who held the post on an interim added: "SQA is already transforming at pace to build strong foundations for Qualifications Scotland, harnessing the deep knowledge, skills and commitment of our people."We will accelerate that work to deliver a future that improves outcomes and supports learning and teaching."We will also work across the education and skills community to ensure that assessment and awarding align with wider pathways for success."The SQA highlighted Mr Page's "track record of successful delivery, service transformation and improved outcomes across a 30-year career spanning teaching, children's services and local authority leadership".Chairwoman Shirley Rogers, who led the recruitment process for the new chief executive, said she was "absolutely delighted" with Mr Page's added: "His career spans many achievements and a proven ability to lead through both change and challenge."I am confident that, drawing on these experiences and a commitment to learning from them, Nick will drive the positive transformation that ensures Qualifications Scotland delivers for every learner, every educator, and every community."
STV News
25-06-2025
- STV News
Police clamp down on illegal use of motorbikes and quad bikes in forests
Police will carry out patrols as part of a clampdown on the illegal use of motorbikes and quad bikes across Aberdeenshire forests. Officers will be patrolling a number of sites run by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) to curb the illegal behaviour. FLS said there have been repeated incidents of unauthorised access by people on motorbikes and quad bikes in Fetteresso and Durris Forests, and they are asking the public to report illegal activity. Forestry and Land Scotland Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) confirmed that police officers will be at sites to curb the illegal behaviour. The use of a motorbike, a quad, or a 4×4 in the forest is currently an offence. Fiona Robertson, area visitor services manager, said using any motor vehicle on FLS-managed trails is illegal and 'potentially hazardous' for other forest users. Forestry and Land Scotland Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) confirmed that police officers will be at sites to curb the illegal behaviour, which is putting members of the public at risk. 'This includes a high number of walkers, cyclists, and horse riders; not to mention they are working forests with live forestry operations in areas,' she said. Ms Robertson added that the speed at which the people in the vehicles travel is putting others' safety at risk from injury and negatively impacting surrounding residents. 'It's really important that nobody puts themselves in danger by confronting anyone, but if people can pass us registration numbers, dates and times if they witness these types of behaviours, we can inform Police Scotland. 'We want people to enjoy their visits to our forest, but this must be done responsibly and with consideration for other people and the law.' Police officers from Stonehaven will be making regular rounds of the forests to target those involved in dangerous and illegal behaviour. Inspector Mark Young said those identified as using the vehicles in the forests face prosecution, fines, and bans. 'Local officers will be carrying out patrols in and around the forest during the summer months in response to the illegal use of motorbikes and quad bikes in Fetteresso forest,' he said. 'This behaviour is not acceptable; it is illegal and dangerous. Those identified face prosecution, fines, driving bans, and vehicles may be seized and destroyed. 'We work closely with partner agencies to identify offenders with information from the public vital in providing us with descriptions of people or vehicles involved.' Registration numbers and details of incidents can be emailed to or to Police Scotland by dialling 101. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
Telegraph
14-06-2025
- Telegraph
Forget The Salt Path – this tale of Britain's ancient stone sites is superb
Stay awake all night, and you'll find that euphoria hits you with the dawn. It was with a similar euphoria to the one Fiona Robertson describes at solstice festivals that I finished her poignant, scholarly and poetic book. Stone Lands is about ancient standing stones and their cultural significance. Robertson has hunted down megalithic sites all her life, and for 20 years she shared this enthusiasm with her husband Stephen. After his early death from cancer she continued to visit them; as such this is also a memoir about that loss and the beginnings of her recovery. The Greek poet Michaelis Ganas wrote that 'duration is passion', and Robertson's book is cleverly crafted to explore that principle both in the survival of extraordinary neolithic monuments and the relationship with her husband, cut short in their 50s. In episodic travels, she visits stones in Avebury and Pembrokeshire, the Isle of Mull and Dartmoor, the Medway and Taransay, the Scilly Isles and Iona. She's more fascinated by druidical and pagan groups than part of them, and at solstice events she's an observer, like most travel writers – no bad thing. But when it comes to megaliths, she's absolutely part of the movement. She knows her stones, the places they sit, the reasons that they sit in the ways that they do. She knows about the websites like the megalithic portal (try it: it's endless fun), and the difference between the sandstone and the granite, the slate and the quartz. She also knows the theories and stories about the stones' making. These are mysteries so deep they'll never be solved, but some speculate that megalithic sites were places of healing pilgrimage – a kind of neolithic Lourdes – or stone family trees. Most famously, stones such as Stonehenge which align with the sun of the winter solstice are believed to map the turn of the year towards spring, or even, in the case of the Calanais site on the Isle of Lewis, to provide a landscape-size tool for measurement of the lunar calendar. I would have enjoyed even more speculation about the reasoning behind the efforts of man to build these structures, but perhaps the tenuous evidence doesn't justify it. Still, she writes lucidly about the archaeological histories of the stone circles. Here Robertson adds all the layers of interest stamped on the ground by writers and artists who have been inspired by standing stones; their writing maps some of the cycles of interest and destruction that the stones have gone through. There's the archaeologist John Aubrey, for example, whose book Monumenta Britannica marks him out as 'the first true stones obsessive' in the 17th century; then there's the physician William Stukeley, who fought against the spoilage of stone circles for use in building. Finally, she quotes Paul Nash, bemoaning the restoration of Avebury henge which left it 'dead as a mammoth in the Natural History Museum '. Robertson is at her most impressive as a writer describing her love for Stephen. Most people, I suspect, can sympathise with both the love and the horror of illness and loss which is so painfully and beautifully described here. But what is more unusual is how Robertson reflects so profoundly on the ways that places add to that love and passion, and provide anchoring points across the years of a relationship. The couple's first long walk along the Ridgeway in high summer to Wayland's Smithy, with blisters and light hearts, can be directly compared to her emotions on an autumnal visit after the failure of Stephen's chemotherapy, and to Robertson's May visit after his death. Philosophical it may be, overblown it isn't. There's a beautiful reality here – Robertson's children come with her on these trips, not expunged as other writers' children might have been – and we see them kicking their heels on megaliths and eating chocolate biscuits in the rain. Sometimes the stones are impossible to find, or so small they seem completely insignificant. It's also hard to write well about death: most writers are dragged under by the weight of its profundity, and entangled in the seaweed strands of its macabre and almost disgusting sentimentality. It's easier, perhaps, to write about love, but not love of duration and happiness. Robertson manages to do both with originality and clarity, and can occasionally be very funny too. Mostly, though, her book has the purity of one about holidays, and so deals with death in slices of pure feeling. That's how you link the deeply personal, with its sometimes confusing detail to the transcendent weirdness of the landscape over 5,000 years ago. It is in the mists of this parallel world that the book ends, not with a miracle of 'healing', but with euphoria: how strange it is that our ephemeral ancestors left landscapes which can help us confront our own mortality, Robertson reflects, and so gave us temples to hope.
