Old Glasgow

We got up late again today. I assume we'll adjust to the time sometime before we leave. We decided to go back downtown and do a walking tour that we learned about from the tourist office.

But first food. We found a good Indian buffet for lunch before we got started. Glasgow is a very metropolitan city with people from all over the world. This is not a new phenomenon. Scotland has a long history of mixing peoples from all over: the Picts and Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Irish, and Vikings all settled here at one time or another. That mixture seems evident in everything from the names of places to architecture.

The tourist office is a busy place which both provides information on transport of all kinds and sells useful items for visitors like maps and tour books as well as Glasgow/Scottish keepsakes.

The tour included much of the oldest parts of Glasgow



It was a cassette based tour that gave us a nice lay of the land so to speak. It took us to the oldest house in Scotland, several churches, art galleries, "the tech" university, and so on.

We spent almost four hours doing the tour including stopping for a pint at a bar. We got a little lost a few times because the tour tape and accompanying map weren't as clear as we required. For example, several times were meant to retrace our steps back to a previous point before continuing. A couple of times we had to rewind the tape and review the map. Once or twice we must have appeared very lost because a couple of people asked if we needed help and provided us some excellent direction to get us back on course.

My iPAQ's GPS system seems good for driving around, but not as good for walking for two reasons. First, getting signal when on the sidewalk between tall buildings is a challenge. Standing in the street solves that but has its own problems. The second problem is that I don't think the software I have answers the "where is the closest X from where I am now" very well. If you know where you want to go, it will tell you how to get there, but it seems you can't just turn on categories of things (ATMs, restaurants, etc.) which is unfortunate.

After finishing the tour and returning the tapes we went back to Safeway to get some more supplies. Then we took the bus back to the house.

TV

TV here is interesting. Not a lot of Scottish TV--much of it is BBC produced. Random observations:

• Wife Swap is an interesting show. I guess there is already an American version in the works. Funny how there are few BBC channels yet the manage to export so many shows to the US.
  
• How Clean is Your House is also interesting. Two women, Kim and Aggie, come in and, like Queer Eye For the Straight Guy they make comments about how disgusting and silly things are in the victim's&emdash;I mean star's house. We're not just talking about cosmetics. These ladies take samples from the kitchen and toilet and send it to the lap to find out what bacteria and viruses might have moved in. They also give some good cleaning tips and
  
• More American brands advertised on TV than I expected. Breakfast cereals surprised me another was Dannon yogurt. Also, some commercials are for different products, but almost the same script as the US equivalent. Churchil Insurance for example, very similar to Geiko.
  
• Big Brother Also has a US version I think but it is on for hours a day here. You don't just see highlights of their day--you can pretty much watch them sleep. About as interesting as watching paint dry mostly. Amazingly, these people seem confined to the house like prisoners. Seems like cruel and unusual punishment, but they don't seem to mind.
  
• Closed captioning: doesn't seem to exist here. I noticed in several places like the news and on the safety film on the plane they use the old fashion method of having an interpreter in the corner of the screen. American TV hasn't done much of that in 20 years.
  
• I miss TiVo®!
  

On the subject of TV, I saw a BBC report that talked about Britain's Terrorism Act which seems to be very similar in nature to our Patriot Act. A recent study showed that police are generally stopping everyone more often, but particularly blacks and Asians.

‘‘stop and search’’ operations under the anti-terrorism law have dramatically increased, with searches on Asians witnessing a massive rise of 302 per cent. ‘‘stop and searches’’ under the terror legislation more than doubled in 2002-03 compared to the previous year. A racial breakdown showed the number of such checks on ethnic minorities increased significantly more than those on White people, the report said. Overall, Black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched than Whites,

In the previous year, they were five times more likely to be stopped and searched. Asians suffered the highest increases in stop and searches under the terrorism act powers, rising 302 per cent, from 744 in 2001-02 to 2,989 in 2002-03.

In the same period, stop and searches under the terrorism act rose 118 per cent, from 6,629 to 14,429 for white people, and by 230 per cent, from 529 to 1,745 for black people. According to the report, police in some areas had reduced their use of the tactic in the wake of the Stephen Lawrence report, which claimed the operation was being used disproportionately against ethnic minorities.

Blair's press secretary, in response to the report said, "Our commitment to race equality was as strong as ever. The imbalance illustrated by the figures today was unacceptable. That was why the Home Office had decided to set up a new unit - the Stop and Search Action Team - which would look at how the powers were used. It would also work with police forces to address the concerns around this policy."

The issues here are the same problems we face at home. What fantastic opportunities for finding common solutions to these problems.

I started reading Clinton's book today. It is interesting so far, and an easy read.