Wow, there's someone who's had an idea I should have had ages ago. I admit grudgingly. And he even got onto national TV with it! So what's the story? Well, he's a guy who commutes to work with his bike, as do I. What's special about him is that he has a video camera attached to his helmet and posts videos of dangerous maneuvres on youtube. Motorists hate him and send him death threats, cyclists love him.

It's a funny argument and very indicative of the road culture in Glasgow (and beyond? you tell me). There aren't many cyclists, and road planning didn't exactly happen with the safety of cyclists in mind. I don't know how driving instructors prepare car drivers in how to respect weaker participants in road traffic, but looking at the behaviour of motorists and professional drivers in particular, they skipped that lesson altogether. Now, Strathclyde police argues that if someone finds their safety on the roads compromised, they should contact them in the first instance. Well, to be honest, been there done that. The issue is that a) if you get hit by a car or almost hit, or cut off or whatever, usually the shock is so great that you won't remember to memorise the number plate. If you do, b) the police will say that it's your word against theirs. You really need witnesses. And anyway, c) even if the police was right there, I'm sure sweet nothing would be done about it.

This is why I don't think magnatom is taking the law into his own hands. He's just creating a witness - youtube viewers and his camera - which may raise awareness and educate, or antagonise. The latter it definitely will because at the end of the day it is acceptable in Glasgow (and beyond?) to disrespect the rights of cyclists on the road. So motorists feel wronged, although it's actually the cyclist who suffers from dangerous driving of motorists. Why are motorists scared of being found out? If they obeyed the highway code and drove with respect and care, they wouldn't have to fear anything.

Of course we'll get the argument thrown back at us that cyclists bend the rules a bit. Yes, this may be true for many cyclists (not all), but they don't exactly kill by doing so. Magnatom, by the way, also strongly criticises cyclists who don't obey the rules and exposes them too. Personally, I see it as a give and take. Because motorists disregard my safety and right to being on the road, I don't feel obliged to strictly follow the highway code and bend the rules where this is beneficial for my safety and only if it doesn't compromise anybody else's safety. I'm happy to change when I stop experiencing regularly cut offs, near misses and motorists overtaking me without leaving any space, cars parked on cycle lanes and above all severe verbal and occasionally physical abuse for being "in the way" (read: a road user) of motorists.

I can never quite fathom why cyclists get such abuse. Every cyclist is one less car on the road, making space for the cars who are actually on the road so they should be ever so grateful to us. We don't pollute the air, don't use up natural resources or fill the atmosphere with CO2, we exercise and safe the NHS a good deal of money. If motorists begrudge the fact that a cyclist is quicker in the city and doesn't get stuck in traffic jams, why don't they just join us instead of fight us?

I'm seriously considering following suit with this camera thing. Not to post it on youtube but to get valid evidence to pass on to the police.
What a great idea this guy had.

I received my first organic box today.

While avid Cartside readers (cough cough) know that I'm a keen allotment gardener recently minus, well, an allotment, I've never actually ordered an organic box before. Now thanks to Cubling my general meanness is occasionally superseded with ethic and green conscience (which doesn't always match the contents of my purse) and to be fair, she is the best excuse to buy organic.

Not easy got sign up to a box scheme if you live in a tenement flat and work almost full time though. Our neighbours weren't exactly waiting for our deliveries either. But since our move, three months ago, there was really not a great excuse for not ordering a box.
Every Friday morning, the Bellfield Organics van passed our new home, reminding me that I still hadn't ordered an organic box. Of course I also chuckled because I was sure that the delivery in our tiny street must go to our neighbour who advertises the Scottish Green Party with a ceramic tile at her door.

My last excuse was that of the season. After all, there's only so much that can grown in winter in Scotland - and that tends to be the kind of vegetables I'm not exactly keen on. I do like my mediterranean peppers, courgettes and aubergines you see, and usually take flight at the sight of brussel sprouts, kale and, irgh, celery.

Thankfully, Bellfield Organics offer an order that excludes vegetables you don't want. How handy. Still, I felt slightly guilty to place an order minus kale, brussel sprouts and celery, surely making myself unpopular from the word go.

So today the box arrived. There are onions, sweet potato (yay, bring them on!), potatoes, leeks, apples, pears, cauliflower, cabbage. Not too bad at all, even if the quantities are nowhere enough to last us a week.
And then I discovered another vegetable. I think it's beet root. I'm not so sure because, hm, I don't like beet root, it's almost as bad as celery, so I don't see it often enough to instantly recognise it. I truly forgot about beet root, it's just not on my mind very often. So being a considerate mum, I checked in the Annabel Karmel book for beet root recipes - after all, beet root is very healthy. You wouldn't believe (actually, I would) there's not a single baby puree containing beet root. So I can't even try feeding it to Cubling pretending to do her good.

So then, my next order will exclude four vegetables. Ever heard of the vegetarian who doesn't like four vegetables? (hangs her head in shame)

Hello everyone. I'm furious. Or rather, I was flipping furious yesterday. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but oh my was I furious. I almost cried with fury, just that I was too, well, furious. Air travel, which I don't like at the best of times, has become an obstacle course. Especially if you travel from London. Now, I KNOW you can't take liquids in greater quantities than 100ml on planes. I KNOW you can't take sharp objects onto planes. And I DO try my best not to accidentally leave screwdrivers and pliers in my handbag again (don't ask...) because I would really rather like to keep them.   more »

I've been so overwhelmed with my new life as a mum, trying out all the amusements that can be had with a baby, that there's been little time for my usual interests. A post at A Midwife Muse reminded me that I still need to blog an update on a letter I wrote to my MP about what to me appears to be indirect discrimination in the application of statutory maternity pay entitlements. In fact, this whole issue is very much connected to my frantic participation in all things baby, because frankly, I have little time left.    more »

Methinks that there is a legal loophole which may be considered discriminatory, hence I've written to my MP asking him to take this up. here goes my letter. I'd encourage women in a similar situation to do likewise and would appreciate comments.

"Today I'm writing to you because I've come across an issue which seems to me to be discriminatory and I wonder whether you would be able to take this up in Parliament.

The qualifying conditions for Statutory Maternity Pay are such that it will only be paid if a woman did not start a new job while she is pregnant, in which case she may be eligible for Maternity Allowance. My own case falls into this category: I got a job offer which I accepted and found out I was pregnant at the point after the offer was made. I did not have a break in employment between the previous and the new post, and have been employed without break for the last 10 years, 9 of which in full time employment, but all 10 in taxable employment.

However, as my new employer has a very good maternity policy, I do receive Contractual Maternity Pay - even if for a slightly shorter duration than if I had been employed for longer. Therefore, personally I don't experience a financial loss. The loss is on my employer's side - normally, had I been employed before my pregnancy started, the Dept of Work and Pensions would have covered the SMP percentage of my salary for the first 6 weeks of my maternity leave (i.e. 90% of my salary). As I was pregnant when I started, this is not the case and my employer has a financial loss of 90 % of my salary for 6 weeks. To make things worse, my employer is a charity and I feel rather guilty about his situation.

Moreover, for a woman in this situation who is employed by an employer who only pays SMP (as is the case for a friend of mine, who didn't change jobs but her contract was renewed due to a synergy agreement between an old and new employer), instead of receiving 90% of her salary for 6 weeks, she will only receive MA at £108 a week, regardless of the fact that she's still doing the same job as she did the previous 3 years and has not in fact changed posts.

I feel this is discriminatory because it may discourage women from making career choices or penalize pregnant women who may not even know they are pregnant and only find it out after they've changed jobs. It also penalizes employers who have laudable maternity policies and pay contractual maternity pay. Furthermore, in the case of my friend, the employer changed without her contribution or choice and she now only receives MA, thus leaving her on much worse financial terms.

I believe that if SMP was based on the continuous employment of a woman prior to and during her pregnancy, rather than length of service with her current employer, it would be much fairer. As it stands, it seems to me to be discriminating against pregnant women and, in some cases, their employers.

Yours sincerely,"

Tomorrow is the start of Real Nappy Week.

And I'm not blogging this because all I can think of these days is baby (although that's not entirely wrong either). It's more a case of something that you never thought of much coming to visit you in different shapes and forms all over the place. Not the nappies or their contents mind you, rather the idea of real nappies.

Of course there's the personal choice issue which we went through in the past two weeks. Initially, real nappies meant extra work to me and the environmental benefit had a big question mark attached to it, after all, laundring soiled nappies has an environmental effect too. Add to that convenience and I never really gave it a proper thought. Then it all changed. Parentcraft classes, without being pushy at all, suggested immense cost savings of real nappies, and gave figures to the environmental damage: 2.5% of UK household waste are disposable nappies, 90% of which which end up in landfills, taking years to decompose. Still, there's the laundry issue. But with new systems of nappies, laundry can be done at lower temperatures and in effect, they actually just go in with the general extra baby wash. Plus we don't have a drier anyway.

Then, a fellow attender at the parentcraft class claimed that nurseries will not use real nappies for some sort of health and safety reason. And if you have to stop using them at 6 months when maternity leave stops, well, it's hardly worth the expense. But in fact, she was wrong: all the nurseries I spoke to do accept real nappies.

And convenience? Well, first I researched real nappy systems and gave up. It all sounded way too complicated to make sense before baby arrived. Thankfully, help was at hand and I had them shown to me by friends using them: it was actually all very easy and straight forward. I am convinced enough to give it a shot and the trial packs are sitting ready for baby to have fun with.

However, there's the issue of initial cost associated with real nappies, and that's where it goes horribly wrong here in Glasgow. While adjacent councils offer cash incentives which would help families on lower incomes, in the city with the greatest number of low income families, no incentives are offered. According to the Scottish Green Party, who issued a press release on the topic, Glasgow is one of the local authorities who doesn't even take the opportunity to join in or contribute to Real Nappy Week this year.

A shame really, and it makes you wonder. Just today, we received a glossy leaflet, with a letter signed by Glasgow City Council's big man Stephen Purcell, about tackling litter issues in the city. It asks us to use recycling bins, to report fly tipping, to encourage youngsters and those they learn it from to use bins rather than drop their litter. The message comes with a focus on the local community, and nice pictures of our own neighbourhood, trying to bring it home to us.

It's all very nice and commendable, but there is a bigger picture and I wonder whether Glasgow is missing out on something that could make a real difference. Cash incentives are an easy way to encourage people to change their behaviour, and publicity opportunities shouldn't be wasted like this.

Last Thursday, two asylum seeking children were stabbed by their fellow pupils at a Glasgow school. It made the Evening Times headlines, and even got a short mention on UK wide media. Interestingly though, a similar attack at another school in Glasgow passed by without media attention.

As to the reasons of this difference in treatment, I can only speculate. The incident on Thursday happened at a school which has a track record of successful integration of asylum seekers, active citizenship and campaign work. For one, the school and pupils must have been shocked that this could happen just there. And a school with good media contacts, and with pupils and parents used to speaking to the media, news are likely to travel faster.

Still, no serious fight is straight forward and the media coverage won't tell the whole story. Initially I was surprised that the stabbed children were significantly older than the alleged attackers, as I was surprised that the fight at the other school did not get mentioned in spite of its newsworthy potential (I won't disclose details simply because I don't think there's any benefit of doing this, suffice to say that the schools consider both attacks to indicate that there is a problem that needs to be addressed jointly).

Pupils and teachers seem to agree that the attacks indicate unresolved tensions, which may have a racist undercurrent, but which are by no means straight forward and simple. It is about background and clashes of background, but it may also be about jealousy, teenage angst and a general power struggle between very specific groups of people. This, as such, is normal and to a certain extent unavoidable, but of course the viciousness of the attacks (both used instruments that can cause severe physical harm) indicates that action is needed.

Maybe these attacks give us the opportunity to understand a struggles of identity, race and faith on a deeper level, by engaging with both perpetrators and victims, who in fact may both be either. However, the fact that the stabbing occurred at schools where this engagement has already been happening for over 5 years calls for new approaches and a questioning of the effectiveness of anti-racist work as we know it. Awareness raising and putting yourself into your asylum seeking classmates shoes isn't enough.

At the start of Islamic Awareness Week there will be initial opportunities, but it's not just about Islam and awareness, and it's certainly not about a week.

The court case against the construction of the 5 mile extension to the Glasgow M74 motorway has collapsed. After years of campaigning, this is the sad result. The motorway will now be constructed right through the south side of Glasgow, splitting communities apart and add further to congestion, greenhouse gases and pollition of a city already plighted by bad road planning. It's a defeat, ultimately, at the same time, the construction of the M74 was delayed thanks to the campaign, so for now, I don't have to cycle underneath 6 lanes of Motorway. But it will come, and this is not a reason to celebrate.
Interestingly, during the campaign, many people came to stalls to tell us we were treehugging nutters. I never quite understood this - obviously, the Motorway extension seems to be what those in favour labelled a "missing link". Yes, it is missing. But the initial plan, to build two motorways right through the city, west north, and now south, was wrong. You can't undo the first implementation (the M8, splitting city centre and west end, city centre and north Glasgow). But to continue with a mistake, just for the sake of symmetry, I just don't get. I also don't see any real benefits of putting in the 5 miles between Rutherglen and the Kingston Bridge, as you cannot access the motorway from the south (which actually would be useful to me). The only benefit is that of through traffic from England being able to continue on Motorways, and this may alleviate some traffic on Glasgow roads, especially heavy traffic. However, already it is possible to make these links with not much of a detour, so the benefit is tiny. On the downside, as the public enquiry into the plans brought out, the disadvantages outweight the benefits big time. More pollution, the upheaval of dormant chromium, having a motorway on stilts right at the doorstep of many Glasgow south and south eastern suburbs. I don't even dare to imagine the construction traffic, noise and disruption.

So why did the court case collapse? Well, the lawyers pointed out to the main underwriter of the appeal, Friends of the Earth, that on each point of the case, the Scottish Executive used discretionery decisions, which they have a right to. So although the decision to go ahead with the motorway went against a public enquiry, it seemed rightful and the court case was likely to get lost. If lost, Friends of the Earth would have had to pay not just their own legal fees, but also those of the Scottish Executive, which clearly weren't going to be low. What would have been worse though is that this case would have presented a precedence for any community campaign challenging the Scottish Executive and would have put a lid on similar initiatives and campaigns. That was the final straw. I would call it legal blackmail.

The only hope now is that the SCottish Executive think again. And stop being influenced by corporate agents. In another world...

Consider my cringe inducing use of clichee in the post title. Sorry. Truly. Particularly because I'm not sure if I am in fact overreacting simply because I'm German. If so, sorry again. I have a feeling, though, that I'm not, and that what I'm about to say is actually not about nationality, but about the traps of assigning nationality.

I watched TV last night. Not a frequent occurrence it has to be said. After a delightful episode of the Apprentice, somewhere on British TV, a badly made documentary was shown (please leave a comment if you know the title or channel). I didn't quite manage to get to the core of the point of the programme, but there was a highly irritating, marching presenter, with a know it all, seen it all attitude, destined to enlighten us about hideous architectural outburst of German national socialism and how they reflect Nazi ideology. Let's not get into the utter pointlessness of the programme, or the worrying notion that it did no more than stating the obvious and showing us disgusting buildings which must have resulted in viewers' numbers going rapidly downhill by the minute.

Rather, let us consider his lingering on the term "German", his continuous attempt to relate fascism to the German mentality, and to suggest that fascism came natural to Germans and would continue to fall on fertile grounds in the German psyche. Now, I'm the first to expose xenophobia, racism and all that in Germany, don't get me wrong. But to insist with such fervour that fascism and national socialism are almost interchangeable with the adjective "German", and to claim that  Germans welcome(d) an ideology which  promotes "compulsion" and "communality" because Germans love compulsion and doing things in masses, and that they get a real kick out of it, well no. Get lost.

Fascism was an international movement based on nationality, ideas of superiority, belief in progress and a new order for a changing society. It misled people through ideological indoctrination and brainwash. It almost destroyed the world as we know it. It's not just a German phenomenon, even though in Germany it reached its most horrific incarnation. However, ideological indoctrination, genocide, death and labour camps, torture and the simple and horrific disregard for anyone considered to be different is by no means a localised or historical incident. We should spend more time spotting the Hitlers of today and exposing them, rather than waste time reiterating that the Germans were the "best" Nazis, while making the terms "German" and "Nazi" so conveniently easy bedfellows.

I'm in two minds about the recent discussions about the Home Office and deportation of foreign criminals. Not so much in relation to the issue as such, but the fact that conveniently, the whole shebang achieves two outcomes which I'm more than happy about without even the hint of campaigning actions, angry letters and making myself unpopular. It exposes the undeniable shambles the Home Office civil servants have created and steers attention away from removing asylum seekers. They must all now be very busy with deportation orders for criminals that hopefully asylum seekers may have some breathing space. Hopefully.

On the downside of things, I've received a campaigning summary from someone who is the victim of this current fashion of deporting anyone the Home Office can lay their hands on. As we know, the Home Office are slightly unsuccessful in laying their hands on too many, having managed to lose track of the real baddies. So now anyone available is being issued a deportation order, to make the statistics look better soon and the electorates happy campers all around. The most recent victim of such political whims is a Chilean national, brought up here and resident here as a political refugee since Pinochet took over. Remember? That was 1977. He committed a crime, went to prison for three years, and is now due to be deported as a foreign criminal.
To Jamaica.

The Home Office clearly hasn't paid attention in their geography class. Just to make it clear: Chile: south America, main land, west coast. Jamaica: island, middle America, east coast. To be honest, I don't know what his sister is so worried about. I'm seriously considering committing a crime myself - I'm foreign, maybe I'll be deported to Jamaica too?  No more rain, lots of cocktails, beach, sunshine.

Knowing my luck, they'd deport me to France though.