THE LIST
AIDS BENEFIT NEWS
Remember the week ofAlDS Benefit events back in April‘.’ Money raised in Scotland has now been totalled up and came to 130.000 gross (£l‘).()(l(l net. after expenses etc). The money has been sent to the International Aids Fund. based in London. where it will be combined with funds raised throughout the country prior to redistribution.
Some ofthe money raised will then be redistributed to Scottish AIDS Monitor and Milestone 'I‘rust. who organised events in Scotland. Scottish AIDS Monitor have applied for {25.000 to help them continue their counselling work for patients with AIDS. while Milestone 'I‘rust have applied for {40.000 towards equipping a new hospice for AIDS patients. So far plans to adapt the building. based in 'I'orphicen. for the hospice have met with considerable resistance from the local community; but at present. plans are still going ahead.
There will be further AIDS benefit events during the Edinburgh Festival. The gay cabaret group The Insinuendos will donate proceeds from one of their Fringe performances (9 Aug) in the (iilded Balloon Theatre to S.A.M. . while
Fire Island Group Disco will run three cabaret nights (each Wed during the Festival) followed by discos. donating proceeds to S. A.M.
BBC DESIGN AWARDS: THE MEGGET RESERVOIR
Overall winner ofthe recent BBC Design Awards. voted by the general public. was the Megget Reservoir Scheme in Selkirk about 45 miles south of Edinburgh. The award has been given to something which is ‘more conservation scheme than design.‘ remarked one national paper adding "I‘he designer was in fact nautre.‘ While this maybe an argument against having to judge in competition a reservoir against. say. a postage stamp. it seems a bit unfair to criticise a scheme for ‘colluding‘ with nature when the environment is so often ignored or obscured by new building. The scheme. which has already won the Financial Times Architecture at Work Award. 1986. was commissioned by Lothian Regional Council and completed in 1983. If an aerial view shows little of the design because the portal in the hillside entrance to site was built in the local drystone and the grass and trees and shrubs have been extensively planted round it to soften its impact. then so much the better.
ALY BAIN FOR FREE
The next series at Aly Bain and Friends
is being lilmed in Glasgow at the Riverside Club, Fox Street on 15, 16 & 17 July, and Scottish Television extends an invitation to List readers to
“ 4.5
be part ol the audience. Doors open at 6.30pm and tickets can be obtained, tree at charge, by ringing Scottish Television on 041332 9999 and asking for Donny O’Rourke or Fiona White.
Robert Dawson Scott encounters Flying Scotsmen.
I went to a posh wedding a couple at weeks ago between two scions ol the Scottish ruling class. My dears, simply everyone was there from the Secretary at State downwards. Or should that be upwards? Anyway what caught my attention, apart from the bride, who was as radiant as brides are supposed to be on these occasions, was that all the guests—who hail orginally lrom Perthshire, the Borders and so lorth — seemed to have llown in that morning on the Shuttle. They were a congenial bunch, rich, noisy and confident; the boys are mostly something in the City, the girls do things like executive
catering and they all stay in alarmingly expensive apartments in places like Fulham and Wapping.
These are people who have lorsaken the Road to the Isles lorthe road to the Isle oI Dogs. It's not that they have abandoned their background altogether, but they are a bit selective. Forthem Scotland is about Balls—they love ‘em; Fishing—they catch ‘em; Burns Suppers—they have 'em; and Kilts— they wear 'em, though only on special occasions, cl. Balls and Burns Suppers (cl. also Jigs and Reels which they dance with a lrenzied abandon the object of which seems to be to see how many times they can birl their partners around without theirteet touching the ground. The girls love it). They also buy a lot of malt whisky though mostly to give to their English lriends because they don‘t actually like drinking it a whole helluva lot. lwouldn‘t like to presume on their political allegiances but as far as they‘re concerned the North-South divide is the Great Glen.
Hold on a minute, you're muttering, it he’s trying to pass all the old one about Scotland's greatest export being her people, a nation in exile, somebody
called Jock singing ‘I Belong to Glasgow' on the Kowloon waterfront, it won't wash; we‘ve heard it. Course you have, though it's usually taken to reler to to emigration rather lurther alield than the other end of the M1 You‘ve probably heard the one about all Scotland‘s national institutions being controlled from anywhere but in Scotland but the extent ol this colonial status bears some repeating especially in the light at the crisis— it is not too strong a word — at The Scotsman. Apart from the DC. Thomson redoubt in Dundee (not to be coniused with the Thomson Organisation which owns The Scotsman) and a lew mavericks like the splendid West Highland Free Press, it's hard to lind any ol the Scottish media controlled by Scots. Wherever you look the story‘s the same, whether its whisky or lorestry. Even the Scottish Tourist Board is run by an Englishman, albeit with the slightly eccentric zeal of the converted.
Does it matter? Well, Idon't know, I‘m only the piano player. But I lound mysell chatting to a leading ligure in the SNP at this same wedding bash (obviously neither of us could keep up
I with the last London gossip) who was
ruminating on the state at the economy. It seems that all the new initiatives in central Scotland are coming from one at two sources. First there are the multi-nationals (controlled anywhere lrom Tokyo to Houston) building new production capacity which would at course catch pneumonia the minute the world economy so much as thinks ol sneezing. Then there’s the new businesses starting lrom scratch which are all run by incomers to Scotland. New business ventures and dynamic new indigenous entrepreneurs, with the honourable exception ol the man behind Murray International Metals are about as rare as an American tourist wearing a tartan to which he is entitled. Not an enormously encouraging train ol thought from a man whose whole luture is predicated on the viability ol Scotland as an independent economic unit. Until I realised that it he was looking in central Scotland he was probably looking in the wrong place. The constituencies the SNP really needs to win are MacKensington and Chelsea.
The List 10— 23.]uly3