Leeds Met Squandering your Money?

Well, I don't believe it, as Victor Meldrew used to say. We hear on the news that on Monday 4th July, when Leeds United football club was bought back by its former owner, that the creditors would get only 1p in the pound from the new takeover.

We hear also that one of these creditors is Leeds Metropolitan University, who will get back £500 instead of £50,000. Now sums like this may be peanuts to business, but the question has to be asked: what was Leeds Met doing giving money out to football clubs when this money comes from Government grants and the fees paid by its own students? Do they have a moral right to be risking cash like this when it should be used for the educational benefit of the community?

The VC, Simon Lee, may have some words of wisdom on this, because his subject is ethics...

How many students could have their fees paid for £50,000? Quite a few. Hedgehog's spines rise at this. What else is Leeds Met putting money into? Casinos? Who knows.

Saint Valentine and all that

Well, we've had St Valentine's day, and the media are hyping things up even more than usual. The local BBC weatherman, Paul Hudson, was even selling kisses in a Yorkshire supermarket for a quid (or is it a squid?) a time. We can only hope that there was a facility for paying two quid not to snog him.

I'm rather hazy on who St Valentine was (perhaps avid readers of this column can enlighten me?), but he was probably somebody who met a gruesome death in the past, which seems to be one of the qualifications. Are there any ancient saints who popped their clogs in an armchair, with a good book?

We can't blame the media, of course, for seizing on anything that will push up commercial sales of newspapers and items that we don't want to buy: it's in their nature, much as chewing up seals is in the nature of killer whales. Don't we just love the press?

New Year and Hogmanay

Well, here we all are after another blitz of celebration of a calendar change. Hmm.

Today's moan is for what New Year has become, and nostalgia for the now apparently vanished Scots New Year celebration.

Rather than partying from evening onwards, we used to soberly have preparation, but no drinks or celebration until the striking of New Year itself. A few songs, poems, and reflection on the year were in order, and then, when the clock struck, celebrations would be a raising of glasses, as everbody had their "nerdy". (Abbreviation of New Year's Day, you Sassenach morons).

After that, things would become quite lively, with singing, dancing and general getting of stuff down people's necks. Round about 2am, when the initial celebrations were beginning to pall, hardy souls would tuck a bottle in their pockets and start round the neighbourhood, ringing doorbells and first-footing.

What do we get now? Jools Holland? Aargh. (Mind you, this is not to argue for the return of Andy Stewart). IS anyone out there nostalgic for the old Scots Hogmanay and Nerdy, or is Hedgehod drivelling, as usual?