Patrick Harvie
Apologies for absence

Having read the article entited 'Breakdown of trust' (SR 221), I hope you will understand that as a parliamentary group of just two MSPs, we are simply unable to take part in every debate at Holyrood even if we wished to. I'm sorry that we weren't able to take part in the debate [on withdrawal of funding from St Margaret of Scotland Hospice] on Thursday, due to our having prior commitments, but I hope that you will acknowledge that the reason is a lack of time rather than any lack of interest or concern. In particular I was disappointed to read the suggestion that the protection of hospice facilities is 'not our scene' – indeed both Robin and I have spoken strongly on this subject in the past.
     During most weeks, there are very many events at Holyrood, including members' business debates, which we would like to take part in. It is simply not possible to be there for all of them. In particular, we often need to focus on those which relate to our own regions, Glasgow and Lothians, where possible. I do hope that you will understand.

Patrick Harvie is Scottish Green Party MSP for Glasgow

Alison Prince
Non-dom for survival

Sheila Hetherington (SR 221) rightly points to the tendency of privileged Brits to swan off and live tax-free in other countries – but the picture can be very different. My daughter, ejected from her Housing Trust flat 20 years ago when it was needed for more desperate people as a result of Thatcher's council house sales, bought a cheap ruin in France. The ground floor was awash with water when she moved in, but she slowly put it to rights. She has lived there ever since because, as a single mother, she has never been able to afford to return to the UK. She tried it, but six months in a rented flat near Dover proved that the high cost of child care forced her to work all day at an unrewarding job, returning in the evening to an upset toddler who had been missing her mum. Where, she wanted to know, was the sense in that? So she went back to France.
     With the fall of the pound relative to the euro, her sterling income is now effectively halved. It's a tough problem, but the hardest years are over and she’s moving up in her profession as an English-language TV journalist. A return to Britain, however, is not on the menu. It's easy to get used to a comprehensive, consumer-led health service and social provision that makes life possible. Taxes? Well, first earn enough money to tax. The non-dom status can be a matter of survival rather that status protection. For the independent-minded among us, Britain, where we are constantly shown that money counts for more than people do, is not an attractive option.

Alison Prince is a journalist and poet

Jill Stephenson
Out of hours

R D Kernohan (SR 221) tells us: 'The range [of rugby-playing talent] would have been even wider and sooner if Scottish rugby had not been damaged by Scottish education – first when local authorities began to level down and split up their schools in the name of comprehensive education and then when Scottish teachers, a generation ahead of Scottish doctors, insisted on a five-day week which sorely damaged sport in the state schools'.
     It is true that in the Golden Age (before the 1980s), teachers engaged in all sorts of after-school activity. In the 1930s and (the war apart) 1940s, my father, a science teacher at a school on the other side of Edinburgh from his home, went off early on a Saturday morning to referee school team rugby matches. In the 1950s, I played in school hockey matches for which one of the umpires was our sewing teacher. She did this before playing in her own team's match in the afternoon. Other teachers rehearsed the school orchestra or choir after school classes had finished, or coached drama or debating clubs. This largely came to an end, certainly in state schools, in the 1980s. Kernohan does not tell us why but gives the clear impression that teachers became lazy and unwilling to do more than teach their classes in normal school hours.
     It is not quite as simple as that. In the 1980s, when Sir Keith Joseph – known (un)popularly as 'the Mad Monk' – was Mrs Thatcher's secretary of state for education and science (before anyone thought of attaching 'skills' or 'business and innovation' to 'education'), schoolteachers felt that they were under attack. This was not mere paranoia. Sir Keith harboured a deep suspicion of professionals, and he came to the conclusion that, to get teachers to work in the way that he believed they did not but should, there should be a new contract of employment for them, spelling out in detail what their duties and obligations were. The new contract, however, had nothing to say about after-hours sport, drama, debating and so on. After some guerrilla warfare, teachers scrutinised their new contract – intended to get them to make more effort than they allegedly were making – and realised that it said nothing about after-hours work. So they stopped doing it.
     After a few years, politicians observed, with plaintive puzzlement, that schools no longer offered after-hours activities. They were incapable of drawing the obvious conclusion. I wrote to the then secretary of state for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind, about this at the time. Answer came there none. No surprise there.

Jill Stephenson is former professor of modern German history at the University of Edinburgh

Liz Taylor
Lorna Blackie

With typical dignity and lack of fuss, Lorna Blackie has died in her favourite armchair at the age of 81. With the newspapers on her lap she literally fell asleep.
     Though she had made her home in the Staffordshire village of Acton Trussell for the last eight years, Lorna will be best remembered as a citizen of Edinburgh where she worked as a journalist and also as co-owner of one of the city's first boutiques, Campus, in the Grassmarket.
     An imposing figure, always beautifully dressed, Lorna was a familiar figure in the Lawnmarket where she made her home and walked daily with her beloved Scotty dogs for almost 50 years. She first lived in James Court before moving to a fifth floor flat in Blackie House which had a spectacular view of Fife from the drawing room windows. In Blackie House she held memorable parties where people from all walks of life – and all political opinions – met. Lorna was a fervent SNP supporter and in 1987 wrote a book entitled 'Clans and Tartans, the Fabric of Scotland'. She was also a close friend of Winnie Ewing who she met at university.
     After growing up in Glasgow and graduating with honours in English from Glasgow University, she began her Edinburgh journalistic career in 1956 as a reporter with the Daily Express where she stayed till 1969 before going freelance and working for a large range of publications, as well as doing PR work for the National Trust for Scotland and the Commonwealth Games.  Active in the National Union of Journalists, she was elected chairman of the Edinburgh freelance branch, and made a life member in 1995.  
     At the same time as working as a journalist, she opened Campus in 1966 with a partner Betty Davies. It expanded rapidly and soon had branches in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Oxford and Nottingham. Lorna left the partnership in 1989.
     She was considered to be so much a part of Edinburgh life that it was a surprise to her friends when she retired and moved to Acton Trussell in 2001 to be near her sister Audrey, brother-in-law Peter Lucas and their large family. Even though she was far away, many of her old Edinburgh friends made regular visits to see her and she will be much missed.

Liz Taylor is a journalist and author