HILDA REILLY
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time to call time on the anti-snp bias

20/3/2021

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Until now my preferred news source has been Channel 4, with its competent and engaging presenters and its proactive stance in rooting out cankers before other channels have even a whiff of them.
So – imagine my disappointment on watching the Liz Bates clip last night on the leak from the Alex Salmond inquiry, presented with a level of anti-independence bias worthy of Sarah Smith or Laura Kuenssberg. 
​According to Bates, the leak has ‘rocked’ Scottish politics leading to a wave of ‘damning’ headlines. Note the incendiary language, which encourages viewers to believe that issues of the gravest moral import are at stake here. Why no reference to the counteracting messages from the other side – such as Patrick Harvie’s observation that the committee has destroyed the credibility of its own report by the leak, or The National’s carefully reasoned dismissal of the leak as a politically motivated ad hominem attack based on a ‘politics of desperation’? Why, above all, no discussion of the fact that the leak in itself constituted a breach of the ministerial code of conduct, article 14 of which states:

“Members must not provide the media with any other briefings or views on the general contents or ‘line’ of draft committee reports or other confidential material or information. Disclosures of this kind can also seriously undermine and devalue the work of committees.”?

Then Ruth Davidson was allowed to get away with her usual malicious ranting:
‘Everybody has to have faith that the people who are leading Scotland, the ministers and the First Minister are telling the truth. We think that if she had any integrity at all the First Minister would be considering her position today.’
Why wasn’t this called out for the egregious exhibition of hypocritical double standards that it is. Why wasn’t someone from the SNP invited to comment to provide balance?
Instead, Bates moved on to provide air time for the sanctimonious platitudes of Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour party:
‘You take out personality and you take out party, if you have a breach of the ministerial code and a misleading of parliament you would expect that minister to resign.’
Why didn’t Bates take the opportunity to ask Sarwar if his leader in Westminster would be applying the same standards in the case of the Prime Minister?
The vox pops were another missed opportunity to provide some much-needed balance.  Of the four people interviewed, two said they thought that the affair would make little difference to the outcome of the upcoming elections, one said she felt that Sturgeon was becoming less trustworthy and the fourth essentially damned with faint praise, saying only: ‘Could you balance it up with how well she’s handled the pandemic? You need to look at all aspects of it.’
Why didn’t Bates speak with anyone who supported the position that Nicola had done very little that could be judged as truly wrong, a position that is wonderfully summed up by the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and shared by many:
"I have tried and tried to see what the real charge against Nicola Sturgeon is. But, for the life of me, I am failing to see anything beyond minor issues regarding who said what to whom in highly inconsequential meetings. Where? In a UK led by Boris Johnson."
Why is there no examination in the MSM of the insubstantiality of the allegations highlighted by Varoufakis? Why is there only this kind of irresponsible reporting which is liable to undermine the ability of a leader who is doing an excellent job of running the country during a dangerous pandemic – and thereby undermining the welfare of all of us in Scotland?


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finding myself without a roof over my head in miami

28/2/2018

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Last month I was in America again, attending a conference in Fort Lauderdale in Florida. After the conference I planned to spend a few days in Miami and booked three nights in an Airbnb in the Little Havana area. By now I’d managed to get an American sim card and an obliging young man at the university had sorted me out with Uber.
The Uber driver delivered me to the address, a detached, single-storey house rather like a Swiss chalet. The door stood slightly ajar. There was no bell so I knocked. No-one came. I shouted. I stuck my head in and shouted again, more loudly. Still nobody. I called the host on my mobile. There was only a recorded message saying that she wasn’t available to receive calls.
I went in and prowled round the house. It felt like the Mary Celeste. It looked as if it was occupied – computers lying around, television plugged in, fridge full of food etc. There were even a couple of pots of cooked food on the cooker; clearly recently cooked as it hadn’t yet gone mouldy. There appeared to be two bedrooms, one of which was locked. I went into the other one which I recognised as being the one intended for guests as the bed was the same as the one shown on the Airbnb website. The bed had been slept in but not by someone who was expecting to return as the bedding was piled in a crumpled heap and there were no belongings in the cupboards. I was beginning to feel like Goldilocks.
It was already dusk and getting dark inside the house but I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. I groped round all the wall surfaces using my mobile phone as a torch until I found one. I tried repeatedly to phone the host, whose phone remained switched off. I wanted to go and ask the neighbours if they could throw any light on the situation but didn’t want to leave the house. I was afraid that if I closed the door the lock might spring into action and I’d find myself locked out. On the other hand I didn’t want to leave the door open as burglars might stop by and help themselves to my luggage. I swithered for a while. I could stay, go to bed in the used sheets, and hope that nothing terrible would happen during the night, or I could go to the neighbours. I really did not want to crawl under those crumpled sheets so I went across the road and was given a very warm welcome by a Cuban family. They didn’t know my host but had the phone number of her landlord. They called him and reported back to me with the news that she had gone off to Peru. He knew nothing further.
So clearly my next step would be to contact Airbnb. Easier said than done. Like most online operators they make it almost impossible to contact them by phone. It all has to be done by online chat. But my new Cuban friends had a friend who was an Airbnb host and she was able to give us the contact number. This is where the story gets very boring because it involves four hours of increasing exasperation as I try to get them to shoulder responsibility and sort me out with an alternative GODDAM BED FOR THE NIGHT.
Their first proposal was to offer me a selection of placements, with airbnb contributing $11.67 - ie,about £3 per night! - of any amount additional to what the original cost had been. Given that the accommodation now on offer cost about three times as much as the original cost this was sheer effrontery. Incensed, my new Cuban friend seized the phone from me and gave them an earful. Minutes later I got an online message from airbnb telling me that they'd upped their contribution to £200. So far so good - until I got to the place (ferried there by the Cuban lady) at midnight and discovered that the host spoke not a word of English and the accommodation was smaller than the average prison cell. That was how I saw it at the time anyway. The next day, when I was able to take a less jaundiced view, I discovered that the room – a tiny studio – was extremely well designed and top spec and its size didn't matter because it opened onto a large patio with palm trees and hammocks and cane sofas, and who needs to be inside when you’ve got the Florida weather and a space like that to lounge around in.
And let's not be too critical. I hadn't been mugged, murdered or dragooned into the white slave trade, and for that I'm thankful.
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How I ended up in the hands of the Chicago police on my way to Kalamazoo

20/1/2018

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​My first ever trip to the US and I was on my way to present a paper at a conference in Michigan: flight to Chicago, where I’d arranged airbnb accommodation for the night, then onward the next day by Greyhound bus to Kalamazoo.
My airbnb host, had given me directions on how to get in from the airport by subway. I didn’t give much thought to how I would get to his house from the subway station, assuming I would just be able to step into a taxi.
I got out of the train and found myself to be the only person on the platform. There was an eerieness about the empty station. I walked out onto the street, expecting to see a taxi rank, or at least frequent taxis passing by. Not a taxi in sight, no pedestrians either, only private vehicles racing past as if the hounds of hell were on their heels.
I went back into the station where one solitary figure was manning the ticket counter, chewing gum and reading a comic strip.  
‘Can you tell me where I can get a taxi, please?’
He looked at me is if I was asking a stupid question. ‘Ain’t no taxis here, ma’am. You call Uber.’
Well, I couldn’t call Uber because I didn’t have a functioning mobile. I’d planned to get a local sim card but hadn’t seen anywhere I could do this at the airport.
I asked him if he could tell me how to get to the address I was looking for. He had no idea.
I walked out into the street again. Still no people. No shops, no restaurants.
I’d looked up the address on an online map before I left home but hadn’t printed a copy of it as I’d been so sure that I wouldn’t need one. How wrong I was. I’d no idea even which direction to take.
Then, way off in the distance, I saw a gigantic M flashing yellow in the skyline – Macdonald’s. I headed off towards it. Surely I’d be able to pick up a taxi there.
The empty sidewalks exuded the same spooky atmosphere as the subway station. I felt as if I was walking through a ghost town, and the Macdonald’s sign didn’t seem to be getting any nearer.
I came to a couple of vagrants sitting on a bench, drinking. They greeted me merrily so I took it that they would be open to conversation.
‘Can you tell me where I can get a taxi, please?’
‘Ain’t no taxis here, ma’am. You ask the police.’ They pointed to a vehicle which I’d noticed prowling along as if driven by a kerb crawler.
I went over and flagged it down. A policeman rolled down the window and looked at me suspiciously.
‘What you doing hereabouts, ma’am?’
‘I’m looking for my airbnb accommodation.’
I told him the address. He gave his companion in the passenger seat a look which I couldn’t read but which seemed loaded with meaning, then jerked his head towards the back seat.
‘Get in. We’ll take you.’
Once I was in the vehicle both policeman lectured me sternly about the stupidity of walking alone, or walking at all, in that area after dark. I was puzzled.
‘But what’s wrong with the area? Those look like nice houses.
‘Nice houses, ma’am. But not nice people.’
It was, I discovered, a neighbourhood notorious for gang warfare and gun violence. As a little old lady walking alone with a suitcase on wheels, a laptop and a handbag full of dollars I would have been an easy target.
We arrived at my destination and I got out of the vehicle with the police still shouting warnings after me. I walked up the garden path and rang the doorbell. No-one came. There wasn’t a sound from inside. There were no lights on. Perhaps I’d made a mistake about the address. I was afraid to look back towards the street in case the police car was no longer there. I rang the bell again. Still no sign of life from inside.
So I had to look round. To my relief the police were still there. I went back and explained to them that although I had a mobile number for the host I couldn’t call him as my own phone didn’t work in the US. They took the number and called it. My host answered. It turned out that the door bell didn’t work and he lived down in the basement.
I went back up the garden path. The door opened and I went in, feeling now that I could be entering something resembling the scenario in Hitchcock’s Psycho.
I reassured myself with the thought that the Chicago police knew where I was.

 
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    Hilda Reilly 

    Enthusiastic Airbnber
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