Friends

At the beginning of July, Scotland’s first Inspector of Funeral Directors will begin work and everyone in the ­profession is awaiting her arrival with keen interest.

Nestled at the heart of Scotland’s Great Glen, Loch Ness Shores is an award-winning camping and caravanning site that draws thousands of visitors to the village of Foyers every year.

Fifty years ago, the Beatles launched the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on the world – and the world was changed forever. 1967 was quite a year. It was the “Summer of Love”. Revolution was in the air, a revolution as much of consciousness as of physical uprising. Apparently the drug LSD heightened the awareness of many artists as they reached new levels of musical virtuosity. They could see so much more, they said. Visit the Pink Floyd retrospective at the V&A in London for a brilliant exposition of the psychedelic era and what followed.

Over the years the rule of thumb for following notice provisions in contracts has been to take things literally. The courts have favoured a strict approach to the interpretation of contractual terms, which means following things to the letter. If your contract says: notice must be given by a letter delivered by first-class post as the clock strikes 11am, don’t let anyone tell you that 11:15am or another delivery method will do just as well.

Viewers of BBC Horizon may have seen comedian Rory Bremner’s programme exploring the science behind a medical condition which he suspects he has – Adult Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Age Scotland is welcoming the Scottish Government’s announcement of the appointment of the first ­inspector of funeral directors in Scotland, Natalie McKail.

Since the result of the EU referendum, there’s been much talk of the “sea of opportunity” for fisheries but little detail on what this will look like in practice. Less still on how we can do more than maintain the status quo, but instead become world leaders in sustainable fisheries management.

How can we digest the almost continuous flow of worrying news in recent weeks capped by the truly catastrophic and apparently entirely avoidable fire at Grenfell Tower? How can we make sense of the threats posed by a sequence of terrorist attacks in London and Manchester?

Ask the Scottish Government their strategy to reverse the ongoing decline of local bus service provision and they point to the £53.5 million Bus Service Operators’ Grant scheme, which equates to roughly 14p per kilometre fuel rebate on registered journeys. In addition, the National Entitlement Card government subsidy is £202m per annum.

Rail’s great strength is its ability to move large quantities of freight safely, swiftly and sustainably: the end product of low-friction, steel-wheel-on-steel-rail technology, operating over a segregated route network. But that segregation inevitably means that rail is less ubiquitous than its road haulage competitor, with public roads serving virtually every site across Scotland which generates freight traffic.

A third of the population knows someone with dementia. With nearly 100,000 people in Scotland living with dementia and 700,000 informal carers across the UK, it is a growing concern. For businesses, it is also an opportunity. Because the cost of dealing with dementia is so high you can see this is a significant market, one that commercial producers are beginning to target.

Forestry has come a very, very long way in the last 50 years. In 1967, forest cover in Scotland was about half what it is today. The government’s focus was solely on producing wood, while the businesses who would eventually use that wood, including sawmills, were still in their infancy.

Meeting the needs of the present without compromising those of future generations is the basis of sustainability. Academic Hans Rosling predicts that by 2070 the human population will peak at about 11 billion, a 4bn increase from 2017. Arable agriculture occupies 10 per cent of the earth’s surface and rough grazing another 20 per cent; no more useable land is obviously available. It is now commonplace to talk of the extinction of many obvious species of animals and plants, let alone those less obvious. Habitat loss is the primary cause and agriculture must share part of the blame. Eighty per cent of crop yield is currently fed to animals to satisfy our excessive desire (not need) for daily meat consumption. Current agriculture has increased efficiency some tenfold in the last century but nearly one billion people still have insufficient food for good health. In fisheries and the supply of water we still act like hunter gatherers fighting to maximise our supplies. Forests are still being cleared for crops or for the polluting foolishness of burning wood for energy. The goal must be to return huge swathes of land to nature, not only for the animal and plant life with whom we share the world but to ensure we do not damage the great cycles through the atmosphere and oceans on which our lives depend. We should aim to limit ourselves eventually to one half of the useable land and oceans and leave the rest entirely alone.

Having watched the election debates unfold and seen the lines used in campaigning, much of the language seemed unhelpful so far as promoting dialogue and understanding is concerned.

One in four Scots will suffer poor mental health at some stage in their lives, that is known, but still there is a stigma surrounding talking about the subject and at the end of last year Support in Mind Scotland (SiMS) with Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) decided to explore the issues of mental health in rural Scotland.

V&A Dundee is coming soon – the new museum is on schedule to open next year, revealing the extraordinary story of Scotland’s global importance in design. But what does this mean for the country at large? Why do we believe this museum can be an important catalyst for new creativity in schools, communities and businesses across Scotland?