Well, not really goodbye.

But farewell to this blog for the time being.

Why?

I'm just too busy running The Scottish Football Blog, working full time and trying to keep certain other projects up and running.

This blog was being neglected and I'd rather just stop it now than keep it going and leave it in stagnation for long periods.

You can still read my football writing at The Scottish Football Blog and keep up to date with my professional stuff at Leith Writing and Editing. 

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The BBC is often said to be arrogant and out of touch, treating us, the viewers, with contempt.

Really? Not quite how I see the current "outrage" over EastEnders and the cot death-baby swap storyline.

A few thoughts on the story itself: Have they gone too far? No. I've not got a lot of time for the plot but it's not been dropped into the programme like Bobby Ewing emerging from the shower.

Yes, it relied on coincidences and some far fetched events. But it was a legitimate development in the framework of the storylines and characters involved. This is, after all, fictitious drama.

And that's my first reaction to those that complain: it's not real life and you don't have to watch.

Nobody can have anything but sympathy for mothers who have lost their children but nor should a popular drama be scared to run storylines because of the risk of offending people. Warnings have been given about the content before transmission.

Some people will be genuinely upset by what has been shown. Others should take some responsibility for what they watch rather than immediately adopting victim status the minute something they don't like is broadcast.

As for the BBC? 9000 complaints and, let's say, an average of nine million viewers.

Quick sum: 0.1 percent of the viewers have complained. A tenth of one percent. And that's if we accept every complainant as being a genuine "viewer" rather than a Dacre-sheep following the lead of the Daily Mail.

The BBC changes a storyline because 0.1 percent of viewers complain? That's actually showing contempt for the 99.9 percent of viewers who are making a conscious decision to watch the show without penning a letter to Points of View, or more likely, taking to a completely unrepresenative internet message board to find out exactly how to complain.

0.1 percent of viewers.

I wonder if the Daily Mail would be so quick to change an editorial stance if 2100 "readers" complained. History suggests not.

It's open season on the BBC. And, right now, they don't look like they have the stomach to defend themselves.

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There are things you only do when you're drunk. There are things you will only do when you're hungover. I suppose I must now include visiting Pizza Hut as one of the latter after visiting on Sunday lunchtime.

We arrived in search of the hunger bursting all you can eat lunchtime buffet. Not having set foot in a Pizza Hut for at least a decade I was unaware that the deal doesn't run on the Sabbath. Given the deserted restaurant that's maybe a policy that might require a corporate rethink.

Instead we were offered the Weekend Treat Deal: £9 for a main course plus one of starter, sweet or hot drink. We chose starters plus pizzas.

I opted for the Three Cheese Melts described as:

A mouthwatering mix of Italian style cheeses in a light breadcrumb, baked to perfection. Served on a bed of rocket with caramelised onions, chopped tomatoes and a balsamic glaze.

Baked cheese is a hangover cure par excellence and it didn't disappoint from that point of view. The three cheese parcels were indistinguishable and probably wouldn't have reminded an Italian of home but they were adequate. The bed of rocket was nondescript and the balsamic glaze went beyond treacly and ventured towards the road tar.

Brother opted for Texan Barbecue Chicken Wings, an old favourite. This, of course, is what Pizza Hut does well. Remaining the same. Perhaps not inspired but there a times when reliable is more important than inspired. An early Sunday lunch in Hartlepool is one of those times.

We departed from the beaten track when it came to the pizzas. The thing about a Pizza Hut pizza in the past is that they were not really pizza. The Deep Pan versions were molten lumps of dough and cheese, the thin and crispy were limp affairs. The stuffed crust options were simply another vehicle to allow people who don't actually like food to cram as many carbs into a quick sitting as possible.

The Tuscani Pizza is decribed as 'the Hut's' "thinnest, lightest, crispiest base" with a range of rustic toppings. We both took this option. I went for the Pollo Portobello with chicken, mushroom and a pesto and cream sauce. Brother chose Pollo Piccante with chilli peppers, green peppers and a tomato base.

Unfortunately my dish was overpowered by the pesto but the base is certainly the best I've had in Pizza Hut. That's not saying much but marks at least for effort and not making a total hash of it. Brother agreed although I'm not sure the promised fire of the menu materialized with his chillies.

Undeniably, however, Pizza Hut hit a spot that needed hitting. In a time of need the Hut was there, welcoming, friendly, non-judgmental and offering endless refills of Diet Coke. It's a restaurant as imagined by the worst kind of marketing gurus. But they're on to something. As we left, fortified for the day ahead, the place was filling. All shapes, sizes and ages filing in.

Unfortunately the experience tracked me for the rest of the day. Indigestion of the kind I've not had since I started losing weight about 20 months ago was a reminder that the Pizza Hut experience, much like a night out in Hartlepool, is about enjoyment in the here and now and hang the consequences!

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Most of us don't. Like it, lump it, we're stuck with the Festival season. The Cavalcade should exist as a thank you for that, if nothing else.

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The Kevin Bridges phenomenon has kind of passed me by. I didn't see him in Edinburgh last year and obviously don't watch enough panel shows to have been able to properly chart his rising star over the past 12 months.

So maybe I'm one of the few people to have managed to get a ticket for his sell out run at the Assembly Rooms with no preconceived ideas.

And he's good. It's quick, slick and quite Scottish. A 23 year old probably shouldn't rely so much on remembering his school days but the punchlines are probably strong enough for him to pull it off.

I've heard elsewhere that there maybe wasn't a huge amount of new material here. I've got no way of knowing if that's true but it might have been that he felt safer sticking to reliable routines in last night's preview show. The audience certainly seemed happy enough.

Maybe I did leave feeling a bit short changed though. The hype and clamour for tickets suggests that Bridges is going to be doing something really exciting. He's not. With or without new material this is a tried and tested formula. He's better at it than a lot of people but he's not breaking new ground.

Unlike his ticket sales, on this evidence at least, Kevin Bridges 2010 show is going to be solid without being spectacular.

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From the Guardian Edinburgh blog:

I'm very pleased to announce that we've appointed a new beatblogger for Edinburgh – Michael MacLeod.

A lifelong resident of the city currently enjoying life in Leith, Michael will be starting work on this blog in a few weeks time.

Interesting to see how this develops after a bit of a fault start with the launch beatblogger only lasting a few months.

Michael certainly seems to have a background in news. I hope he uses it because the blog has at times come over as a repository for press releases. It seemed at times that companies with a decent Twitter presence - a hint towards their social and new media nous - were a bit over represented on the blog.

The potential, or otherwise, of The Guardian's beatblogging network is still be properly measured.

I suppose the real question is if you feel this site is best served by a traditional player in the media or by new starts offering an alternative to sites like The Guardian.

At the moment I'm not sure Edinburgh is really being all that well served by either option.

So yes, the potential probably is there.

But I don't think anyone, not The Guardian or anyone else, is coming close to getting an Edinburgh news site right just yet.

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And still the Labour leadership campaign drags on. And on.

Maybe the lack of a contest for 14 years means the party has forgotten how to run one.

Apart from that freakish breed of young party activists the rest of us are being bludgeoned into a comatose state. If the candidates failed to enthuse at the starting line how are the electorate supposed to feel now that we've still got a month or more to go?

And all the time there is a lack of effective opposition to the coalition.

My interest was raised slightly by this week's New Statesmen.

Here's five answers for you:

Maybe an academic. Teacher. A teacher, or in a leadership team in a school. I guess a journalist. A novelist.

The question, put to each of the leadership candidates was "If you weren't a politican, what would you be?"

Diane Abbott claimed novelist. A nothing answer, given by a woman who, for all her renegade credentials, is as steeped in career politics as the rest. Novelist is the answer you choose if you can't think of anything else but want to suggest a hinterland, an imagination that politics alone can't satisfy.

"I guess a journalist" comes from Andy Burnham. Perhaps the most honest answer - he was a journalist before he became an MP. Although as he became a special advisor in the Labour government at 28, his dedication to the fourth estate was perhaps always questionable.

The dullest answer is probably Ed Miliband. "Maybe an academic." It points to a man at ease with his own intellect. He first suggests that he might have been an actor. But quickly retracts - the shadow of Blair's "all the world's a stage" routine looms large. 

But that route was open to the young Ed. PPE at Oxford, Economics at the LSE. He's no slouch. Academia opened its doors. Instead Ed began working for Labour Party at 24.

The most craven answers come from Milband, D and Ed Balls.

"Teacher" says David. Oxford, MIT, Institute for Public Policy Research, Labour Party. A CV designed to reach the top in politics. Until being asked that question I doubt he'll ever have even considered being a teacher.

Teaching also seems to hold a sudden appeal for Ed Balls. Although he's not even human enough to just say that: "A teacher, or in a leadership team in a school." It takes a frightening level of ambition to not only consider another career but imagine yourself in a promoted post in that career in the very next breath.

When others were becoming teachers Ed was taking a more politicised route: Oxford, Harvard, Financial Times, began working for Gordon Brown at 27. Clearly his evangelical conversion to educating the young came late in life.

A stupid question in a throwaway survey.

But it does say something about the state of the leadership election. At least three of the candidates are running the race they've always felt destined to run. Career politicians are nothing new but they run scared from the label.

And no wonder, as their life experience creates yet more distance between them and the constituency they seek to serve. The disconnect - Labour's greatest failing - is widened.

Worse than that though, teaching was - and is - seen by many as a vocation. Ed Balls and David Miliband didn't share that conviction, never have and never will. They shouldn't cheapen one of our most important professions by using it as cheesy political exercise.

The candidate that said: "I always wanted to come into politics so that I could help teachers" would have won my vote. None of them were brave enough.

> Still not declaring. But: I'll vote for a man. He won't be the frontrunner. He won't be called Balls. 

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It says much about the Scottish psyche that these figures will be greeted with as much pride as anguish: Wha's like us? Damn few, and they're all pished.

Expect much talk of minimum pricing over the next few days:

Alcohol sales in the off-trade were double those of licensed premises, accounting for 68% of all Scottish drink sales and retailing at around 43p per unit.

The Scottish Government hasn't tackled this problem with any common sense.

The smoking ban was brought in with good intentions but the consequence was always going to be a hammering of the pub trade. People are staying at home, drinking more for less.

And the new licensing laws are little short of a bad joke. Even the authorities don't really know what to make of them. But the end result is the same. Pubs take the full force of new rules, drinkers can drink more for less at home.

I've been at a couple of meetings about this. The question of supermarket pricing has been raised. The reaction was pretty much a shrug of the shoulders. There is a recognition of the problem but councils are too cash strapped to risk the legal wrath of a supermarket chain.

Will this report change that?

I doubt it. Expect the government to try and push responsibility for tackling the supermarkets to the councils who are too scared and skint to do anything about it.

So we'll all still drink. But we'll do it, perhaps horrifyingly destructively, at home. And the pub trade will continue its slow suffocation as the government watches on.

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Made my annual-ish trip to Northumberland last month and enjoyed another excellent meal in Alnwick Gardens' Treehouse restaurant. Spectacular setting, fine food and friendly staff. 

Unfortunately, as ever, I didn't get round to blogging a review at the time. And didn't take notes or anything. So I don't think I can do it justice now.

But a hearty recommendation nonetheless.

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The Edinburgh Evening News reports:

IT'S been blamed for boozy violence and derided as the drunkard's favourite.Now Buckfast is top of the menu for diners in Leith, where a restaurant is using the fortified tonic wine in its new range of summer ice creams. Englishman, Scotsman and an Irishman, or E:S:I, is serving up Buckfast ripple ice cream to its lunchtime customers - and despite the drink's reputation, it's going down a storm with discerning diners.

Nice bit of publicity for the restaurant. (Which I've still to try despite it being a five minute walk from my flat.) But not a completely original idea.

And maybe not free from political interference.

This is a BBC story from 2007:

An award-winning ice cream parlour in East Lothian has stopped selling Buckfast sorbet, a "gimmick" which had been condemned by the justice minister. Di Rollo of Musselburgh has been selling the sorbet to over-18s for six weeks after the new flavour was invented by one of its workers. The parlour said it had been withdrawn because it was not selling well. Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, the local MSP, said its introduction had been "crass and insensitive". Mr MacAskill, who represents Edinburgh East and Musselburgh, pledged to crack down on "irresponsible" alcohol promotions earlier this month.

He told the BBC Scotland news website:

"Things such as this reinforce the problem. We should stick to exotic flavours of ice cream. Some things are just not funny. Scotland has a problem with alcohol, it's a well-known fact.

As far as I'm aware Mr MacAskill hasn't yet commented on the latest attempt to combine culinary creativity with a not particularly enjoyable - but blindingly effective - tonic wine.

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OK. So all the posts on this blog seem to be announcing one thing or another. But I've made the decision to move over to Posterous from WordPress.

A couple of reason for this.

Reading about Posterous launching an import tool obviously.

Also Posterous seems more suited to what I want corriganreid to be. I'm finally admitting to myself that I don't really have the time to blog regularly about one subject or a series of subjects. So this will be more about links, short rants, reviews etc. 

How often? As often as takes my fancy.

Hopefully it will be entertaining, informative and blah blah blah.

Enough with the navel gazing.

Welcome. And enjoy.

(Apologies for loss of formatting during the migration. If you are looking through older posts then I'm really sorry. I'll get round to sorting it. Soon. One day. Eventually)

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I never quite seem to get round to updating this blog as much as I should. In my own defence I've been going like a train across on The Scottish Football Blog.

So given that I can't cope with two blogs why would I launch a third? Well Leith Writing and Editing (for that is what it's called) is a touch different. It's my "professional" blog to advertise my services as a freelance writer, editor, journalist, contributor etc etc. So while there will be posts across there they are more likely to be about a life spent freelancing or linking to my various projects than about Scottish Football or, in the case of this blog, whatever comes to mind.

Please check out Leith Writing and Editing and let me know what you think. Or, indeed, if you want me to do anything for you. Ta corriganreid

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Twitter "phenom" @BevaniteEllie has been writing about the Labour leadership contest on The Guardian's Comment Is Free site:

Harriet Harman is right: a political movement is growing. Labour can seize this moment and become a formidable campaign force again. We can regain the members we lost and those on the left who seek a progressive home. But to do so we, as a party, must trust and invest in our membership, old and new.

I'm not going to linger on "we, as a party must trust." It's just nice to know that Ellie and her cohorts are prepared to share the party with those members who aren't part of their clique.

But I would ask that the word "progressive" is banned from all further hustings. I'm sure you'll have other watchwords that drive you equally mad. Let's replace this meaningless twaddle with some real discussion of policy.

The leadership debate can't be run as a soundbite jamboree.

Candidates falling over each other to be seen as the most "progressive" might titillate the minority in the political elite.

It means very little to the people that Labour need to "re-connect" (another bad buzzword) with.

Sadly for Ellie, if she really does want the party to move forward and seize the moment, in Ed Balls she has backed the candidate least likely to do that in the eyes of the movement and the electorate at large. My vote? I'm not yet ready to declare.

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In the mid 1960's my grandfather went on, what we could call today, a fact finding and relationship building trip to the United States and Canada.

By then he was in charge of the Orthopaedic Workshop at Edinburgh's Princess Margaret Rose Hospital and, I'll modestly concede on his behalf, had developed a reputation for the quality and ingenuity of some of the designs and solutions he came up with to help the victims of diseases like polio.

So, in many ways, he went across the Atlantic as an ambassador for the National Health Service.

As he told it in later years the reception he got was overwhelmingly positive with staff in the States appreciative of not only the breakthroughs that NHS staff were achieving but also enthralled by the very concept of a National Health Service that recognised no distinction of wealth or class.

But one doctor quizzed him aggressively about the service. When my grandfather's responses were overwhelmingly positive – a position he held throughout his life – the doctor dismissed him with the cracking line: “Commie bastard.”

It was the end of a short and less than beautiful friendship.

Being a contrary sort the exchange probably hardened my granddad's resolve to be ever more evangelical in his praise for what was then, and checking his passport I see he arrived in October 1964, still a young and radical service.

And he really did believe that the creation of a free to use healthcare system, a system available to anyone who needed it, was an achievement for Britain to be truly proud of.

He would be both amused and angry that today the NHS has become a target of abuse for the American right.

Amused that the views of that doctor are now the default position of talking heads on channels like Fox News. Angry that the service he worked for, the service that allowed him to help thousands of British people and many others across the world and in America, is the target of such misrepresentation and scaremongering by people who choose not to acknowledge the essential goodness of the principles on which it was founded.

We can't ignore the fact that the NHS has flaws. Some of those flaws are common to any large organisation. Some are peculiar to the NHS. Many of them can be blamed on politicians and the revolving door of policies that has passed for government in this country for too long.

We must also take some of the blame. It's taken the interference of the American right – familiar hate figures for those on the British left – to rally us to the compelling #welovetheNHS trend on Twitter.

We're too often complacent about the NHS, too often slow to defend it when it comes under attack. If an American wanted to build an argument against the NHS then a flick through the archives of our popular press would provide plenty ammunition.

The misrepresentation and scaremongering begins at home.

When you speak to people they always have an NHS horror story. When you dig deeper most of the stories concern a friend of a friend, the details sketchy. Mistakes do happen – and in healthcare that can have the most terrible consequences – but more people get the highest possible levels of care than don't.

That remains something to be proud of, something to shout about.

Another family vignette. A few weeks ago my mum was in hospital getting treatment for a broken wrist. Chatting to one of the nurses she was horrified to learn the amount of theft that happens in the hospital. Patients and relatives steal anything and everything.

In sixty years we've gone from lauding the advent of universal healthcare to stealing the pictures off the wall when we go for treatment. Maybe it's some of us rather than the NHS who should be having a long hard look at ourselves.

But for all that the NHS continues to provide a service that is the envy of much of the world. Some might argue that if you work hard and save your money you shouldn't have to pay for healthcare for the people that don't.

That's not a world view I share. It ignores the fact that many people who work incredibly hard still couldn't afford to pay. It ignores the fact that children who have no control over the lives their parents choose to lead would be equally penalised by a country that had given up all pretence of fairness.

Making money shouldn't absolve you of your moral responsibility as part of the community. The NHS is our most enduring and important monument to that principle. Today thousands of people will receive treatment from the NHS. Some of it will be lifesaving, some of it will be minor but it will all be free. Many others will lose loved ones in NHS hospitals but even in their grief they will know that the staff will have done everything that could be done.

You must live in an upside down world if you consider that to be evil.

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A busy day at the BBC.

The tabloids denied their extra pound of flesh, Jonathon Ross free to continue at the BBC. Heavily shackled no doubt but free to continue.

The big news though was the block put on the launch of the BBC's video led network of local news services. That move has been applauded by the Newspaper Society, its members claiming that the launch of the BBC service would have put their own local operations out of business.

If that had happened it would have been because a properly funded, well run BBC service would have been in direct contrast to the underfunded, amateurish local journalism that so many of us have to suffer today.

Stewart at Sour Alba has already discussed the disaster that Johnson Press has made of the Scotsman websites, robbing its three titles of a unique online identity, a mess that is reflected in the print editions.

From my own experience Johnston's Midlothian Advertiser, a paper that, in fairness, was helpful to local charities, had to print an apology a couple of months ago because it printed no fewer than seven mistakes in a three paragraph story about a golden wedding. Apparently a case of a reporter not being able to take notes correctly over the phone.

The general feeling seems to be that we no longer have a local media worth speaking of.

Local radio provides nothing.

Scottish TV is desperate to jettison any commitment to local news.

Now, and anyone subjected to even five minutes of Jackie Bird's Children in Need spectacular will agree, BBC Scotland can be dire.

But the BBC Trust appear to be telling the public that they are well served enough already.

That's complete nonsense, this is a victory for the lobbying of media companies who should actually be held to account for the substandard service they provide.

Competition from the BBC may have forced them to up their game. As it is now local media will be left to die out, controlled by companies that either don't understand or won't stump up the cash to adapt to a changing world.

And when the local papers have gone, their websites limped into the sunset, commercial regional TV news disappeared what will be left with? Politicians and the BBC Trust screaming at a Director-General telling him to do something about it?

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A few hours to go. By this time tomorrow we should know if Barack Obama is to become the next president of the United States. I tend to be of the opinion, despite all the talk of this being a global election, that we should keep our noses out of the democratic processes of other countries.

This possibly applies especially to us Brits who often slip into insufferable superiority when we laugh at politicians from elsewhere. On this occasion we're on even thinner ground because we're sorely in need of figure like Obama to breathe some life into our own grassroots.

In saying that though I'm desperate to see Obama win. For a lot of reasons. Firstly the reality of a black president seems so close now, unbelievably close, and I really didn't think that would happen so quickly.

Looking at Britain I wonder if we have a society, an electorate, ready for an achievement of that magnitude. I personally feel that Obama's big win came over Clinton.

I don't find McCain convincing - from what I see from over here much of his reputation is based on the past. This time round I think he's been stilted and unprepared for the freshness his opponent has brought to the campaign. The cynical misjudgement that led him to give Sarah Palin a place on the ticket might, when the final votes have been counted, be seen as the disastrous final act in a long political career.

Had he even met her?

And does he really want to ride to the presidency beholden to the people who represent her natural constituency? And, of course, there are benefits to the world focus on the election. Obama can enthuse people across the globe.

He might be handed an opportunity that looked impossible two years ago: A leader of America who has both the intent and goodwill to make positive change elsewhere. A leader of the free world that we can all look to for leadership. That would be refreshing. But expectation can go horribly pear shaped.

An American president has very little time to actually be president, the electorate are always looming large in the Oval Office. The inexperience that has actually become an asset in the campaign could still be shown to be a critical failing in office.

Then there are the practical problems. An Obama presidency is going to have a lot of opponents, swathes of the population will feel disenfranchised and they have the potential to be far more vocal and disruptive than the forgotten souls who felt Dubya had stolen the White House.

And, inescapably, there is an American economy built on sand, cowering from whatever tsunami will hit next.

That might not make change impossible but it could make it unpleasant.

The weight of expectation can also weigh heavily, when you represent people's dreams the adulation can quickly turn to bitterness. But who goes for this job expecting an easy ride? My prediction is a close win for Obama, I think closer than many people expect,  and it will be nice to simply enjoy that for a time. 

The nightmare might start soon enough, why don't we just savour the dreams for now?

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The US election, the Glenrothes by election and, more importantly, the Edinburgh council by election for the Forth seat. A big week all in all. I was treated to a miniscule insight into how hard it must be for both McCain and Obama in Cambridge the other day.

Having a quiet drink in The Anchor, overlooking the ever peaceful Cam, my tranquility, indeed the tranquility of everyone in every pub within three streets, was shattered by the kind of American who I thought had been consigned to the dustbin of stereotype history.

Loud, proud and badly dressed our Sherman Tank buddy was in the mood for a rant. His general point was that he and his kin were disenfranchised and had been since 2000.

The reason for this jettisoning was, and I'm not making this up, that George W Bush was a left wing president elected thanks to a liberal conspiracy in Florida.

I assumed that he had been visiting the American cemetery nearby.

Was this, I wondered, why so many people had travelled so far to fight against fascism? Well, maybe, they did die to preserve freedom of speech. Too often, of course, freedom of speech today is used as an excuse for ignorance.

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