Pity poor Hutton School. Decision day is once more postponed until November. The excuse this time is to allow the Scottish Executive to publish its ‘Guidelines’. I suspect that the Borders educational bosses are hoping that the Guidelines come out strongly against ‘unviable’ little rural schools and in favour of the economy of scale. Thus in closing Hutton (and possibly Burnmouth as well) they can shrug off all local responsibility and put the blame on the Highheidians in the capital. ‘If only it was up to us…..force majeure..don’t blame us etc etc. It might be a bit more convincing if they had not already recommended the closing of both schools. In the meanwhile the schools operate nervously under this form of the Damoclean Sword and it would not be at all surprising if anxious parents remove their offspring anticipating the inevitable. Certainly no new parent is seriously going to contemplate committing their 6-year-old to be educated in what seems to be a doomed establishment.
On a lighter note-the courts as reported in the Berwickshire. Sheriff Kevin appears to have been given the week off but the Berwickshire District Court has leaped into the breach. A Gordon Lady (43) was up before the Beak for admitting that she ‘conducted herself in a disorderly manner, shouted swore (sic) placed the lieges in a state of fear and alarm and committed a breach of the peace’ No lieges seem to have come to actual bodily harm and the breach is not exactly specified unless shouting swearing constitutes such an offence.
It was,, I thought bad luck for Coldingham man to be punished for vandalising a cash machine outside an Eyemouth Bank. Kicking, swearing and recklessly damaging an ATM which has refused to recognise your pin number and then swallows your card seems to me to be reasonable behaviour in these stressful times. The Beak thought otherwisew £100 fine and £70 to the Bank of Scotland as compensation.
