TWO directors at one of Scotland’s most successful stock market performers have taken the unusual step of giving up share options worth more than £430,000 to reward staff.

Smart Metering System’s chairman Kevin Lyon and non-executive director Nigel Christie surrendered 179,375 options, which are priced at 60p compared to the current share price of more than 300p.

The move has enabled the Glasgow company, which specialises in gas metering services, to grant options on similar terms to a number of staff, including chief financial officer Glen Murray.

The company said the surrender of the options was in recognition of the performance of the business over the past two years since it floated on AIM.

Financial advice group Argyle Consulting has swallowed rival Edinburgh Risk Management (ERM), boosting its assets under advice to more than £650 million.

Glasgow-based Argyle, which also has an office in Aberdeen, said gaining a foothold in the capital would help grow its own business in the city. ERM will continue to trade under its own brand.

ERM chairman John Barry said: “Joining Argyle will allow us to further develop ERM with [its] backing and considerable resources. Ultimately, this will enhance our existing proposition to clients.”

Ryanair’s Cawley to step down in March

Ryanair’s deputy chief executive Michael Cawley is to step down in March in order to pursue other business interests.

Cawley, who has been with the airline since 1997 and is responsible for its commercial strategy, is expected to remain on the carrier’s board as a non-executive director.

Chief executive Michael O’Leary said: “I am grateful to Michael for his enormous contribution to … growth and development of Ryanair. I am pleased that he has given us such a long notice period so that he can assist his successor over a substantive handover period.”

RBS leads banking facility at Tui Travel

Europe’s biggest tour operator Tui Travel hailed the “continued strong support” of its banks yesterday after signing a new £300 million credit facility.

The group, which owns brands including First Choice, Gulliver Travel and Thomson, said the three-year deal will improve its flexibility and strength. Royal Bank of Scotland co-ordinated the debt deal.

Tui’s chief financial officer Will Waggott said: “We are pleased to have agreed this new credit facility, which will improve the flexibility and strength within our capital structure.”

Aker’s £290m deal is its biggest in UK

OILFIELD services outfit Aker has won its largest contract in the UK, netting a £290 million deal to built the underwater production system for a field in the North Sea.

Making control systems and wellheads for the contract will support about 70 existing jobs in Aberdeen, with the rest of the work – including engineering, procurement and production activities on devices such as manifolds and “trees” – being carried out in Norway.

Aker refused to reveal the name of its client or the name of the North Sea field, but will start delivering kit next year.

BONUSES awarded to directors at Glasgow internet technology group Iomart doubled their basic pay last year.

Co-founder and chief executive Angus MacSween earned a £243,800 bonus on top of his basic salary of the same amount.

The bonus took his total pay package, including benefits and pension contributions to £514,603, up from £458,951 the previous year.

Sarah Haran, chief operating officer, received a £150,000 bonus and £150,000 salary as part of a £315,525 package, up from £293,783.

Finance director Richard Logan received a £120,000 bonus on top of his £160,000 salary for a package of £298,058, up from £271,885.

Chairman Ian Ritchie received fees of £50,000, unchanged from the previous year.

In total, boardroom pay and fees rose by 9 per cent to £1.23 million. The bonuses came after a series of acquisition deals helped the company deliver a 56 per cent jump in annual profits.

Deals during the past year included the £1.4m purchase of Skymarket in July 2012, and the takeover of Melbourne Server Hosting the following month for £6.7m.

The company achieved adjusted pre-tax profit of £10.7m for the 12 months to the end of March, up from £6.9m the previous year. Acquisitions accounted for almost half the profit growth, and the firm also benefited from the shift towards “cloud” computing, where customers outsource the storage of their data and applications.

In May, MacSween told The Scotsman that he expected the company to make further acquisitions in the year ahead. Revenues grew 29 per cent to £43.1m. Shares in Iomart have more than doubled in the past year.

Easyjet’s estranged founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is to vote against the budget airline’s plan to buy 135 Airbus planes.

Sir Stelios, who still has a 37 per cent stake in the airline and regularly opposes the current board’s decisions, yesterday claimed the new fleet was not needed and its real cost had been kept secret from shareholders. EasyJet announced last month that it would buy 35 A320 aircraft and 100 new A320neo jets, with options for a further 100.

It did not reveal the value of the deal – which must be approved by major investors at a meeting on 11 July – but said it had negotiated a “very substantial” discount.

EasyJet sent a detailed circular to shareholders late last month and airline executives have been meeting top institutional investors to discuss the order over the past two weeks, sources close to the airline said.

Sir Stelios said the company circular threw up an “unexplained difference” between the $76m (£50m) list price it gave for the planes and the $88m for the same planes published on the Airbus website.

“I believe these decisions have been made behind closed doors, mostly by City insiders playing with other people’s money,” Sir Stelios said in a statement.

EasyJet declined to comment on Sir Stelios’s remarks. Airbus also declined to comment.

Despite his objections, Sir Stelios said he expected the deal would be passed by the majority of the budget carrier’s shareholders.

Shares in EasyJet closed up 51p, or 3.9 per cent, at 1,347p.

Retailing magnate Sir Philip Green is to step up overseas expansion of his Topshop-to-Miss Selfridge group Arcadia over the next year to 18 months with new outlets opening from Azerbaijan to South America.

The billionaire retailer has also decided to beef up the presence of his Topshop and Topman brands, which largely target younger fashion-conscious customers, within the Nordstrom’s upscale department stores in the US.

Green said yesterday that Arcadia planned to open 185 outlets abroad through franchise partners by August 2014, also covering its Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge and Wallis brands.

Retail industry experts said the move was a step-change on the 110 new foreign stores Arcadia is already committed to opening in this financial year.

Green, who also owns Bhs and made an unsuccessful attempt to take over Marks & Spencer in 2004, said: “I believe that Topshop and Topman are real fashion brands that deliver trend-led product on pretty much a weekly basis to our stores and websites around the globe.”

He said their success owed much to a “constant stream of fresh must-have pieces”, which gave Arcadia the confidence to push ahead with its twin-pronged international push embracing fully-owned flagships stores and franchisee-run outlets.

The Topshop and Topman brands will go into a further 28 Nordstrom branches, having opened in 14 last year. The plans include putting Topshop’s shoes into Nordstrom’s upmarket footwear departments and the brand’s cosmetic products in the stateside group’s beauty halls.

Arcadia will also introduce company-owned Topshop and Topman stores in other US cities, including the retailing hubs of Boston, San Francisco and Miami.

Topshop opened its first outlet in Hong Kong last month, and there are plans for a further 49 stores across the Far East, an economic region that has escaped the worst of the consumer squeeze that has hit the UK and eurozone.

Over the next year, the company says it will also open its first Topshop and Topman stores in Azerbaijan, launch Miss Selfridge in Chile and Australia, and introduce the value menswear chain Burton into the Far East.

George MacDonald, the executive editor of Retail Week, commented: “The Topshop brand has real legs internationally, catering as it does to a fashion shopper who increasingly follows global trends often exemplified by British brands.

“British retailers generally see a lot of opportunity overseas at present, while trading conditions in this country remain difficult.

“Sir Philip is using a variety of business models to expand, from franchises to company-owned stores, so opening up a variety of potential growth avenues.”

Mark Carney began his first day in the hot seat at the Bank of England facing distinctly mixed signals on the health of the economy.

As the Canadian-born Governor took over the reins from Sir Mervyn King yesterday, a key survey suggested that the worse may be over for Britain’s embattled manufacturing sector.

The latest Cips/Markit purchasing managers’ index showed overall activity rising at its fastest pace in more than two years last month. It marks the third consecutive month of gains from a sector that has proved a drag on growth throughout the downturn, boosting hopes that Britain’s factories are recovering.

Referring to the Bank of England’s first ever foreign Governor, David Tinsley, UK economist at investment bank BNP Paribas, described the figures as “good data for the new boy”.

Carney will also take solace in a quarterly economic snapshot from the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) – published today – which shows the recovery gathering strength with business confidence on the rise.

However, the news is not all good. Yesterday’s credit report from Carney’s new employer highlighted a worrying fall in lending to businesses – one of the main problems facing the UK economy.

According to the BoE data, net lending to non-financial companies fell by a further £1.3 billion in May after a slump of £3bn a month earlier.

The Bank of England and the Treasury have been trying to spur credit growth to support Britain’s economic recovery via their flagship Funding for Lending scheme (FLS). It offers banks cheap credit if they maintain or increase lending to households and businesses.

While there is some evidence that demand for funding remains low as businesses pay down debt, experts rounded on the latest statistics, which also showed a sharp fall in lending to small and medium-sized firms.

Howard Sears, founder of SME consultancy Astuta, said the report would be “as welcome as a bucket of cold water” for the new Governor. He added: “Bank lending to business is in a flat spin. Rudderless and falling fast. The only grain of comfort in the Bank’s otherwise depressingly familiar lending scorecard is that the rate of fall is declining.

“The banks blame lack of demand, while many businesses complain about banks that have become so risk-averse they have all but stopped new lending to business.”

Howard Archer, chief UK economist at forecasting group IHS Global Insight, said the figures highlighted why the Bank and the Treasury had felt the need to extend FLS, with the focus on incentivising lending to SMEs. “It is too early to tell if April’s extension to the FLS has had any impact at all,” he noted.

Most key measures in today’s BCC survey are stronger than those reported in the previous quarter, though the resulting balances remain below their 2007 pre-recession levels.

Director-general John Longworth said: “If we want Britain’s economy to be great, rather than just good, pro-growth policies will need to continue for decades to come.”

Three osprey chicks were given a clean bill of health yesterday as they were fitted with tags that will track their progress around the world.

The female chicks were born to a breeding pair in the Glentress Forest area of the Borders 40 days ago.

Yesterday, conservation experts took them out of their nest to give them a health check, weigh them and fit identification rings to their legs.

The numbered rings will be used to let birdwatchers track them when they migrate to Africa in the winter and report any sightings back to the Forestry Commission.

A man hit by a bus on a Glasgow city centre street has been taken to hospital.

• A man hit by a bus on Glagow’s Sauchiehall Street has been taken to hospital

• Incident occurred at 5.30pm as motorists advised to take alternate routes

Emergency crews were called to Sauchiehall Street between the A804/Newton Street and Holland Street, at 5.30pm.

Police said a man was taken to hospital but no further information about the man or his injuries has been released.

A spokesman said: “A male has been taken to hospital following a collision with a bus on Sauchiehall Street.

“A cordon has been put in place and inquiries are ongoing at the scene.”

A statement from Glasgow City Council traffic department said Sauchiehall Street was closed to all traffic between the A804/Newton Street and Holland Street “due to an ongoing police incident” and advised motorists to find an alternative route.

Elmbank Street was also closed to all traffic between Bath Street and Sauchiehall Street while Holland Street was closed between Bath Street and Sauchiehall Street.

SCOTLAND’S life sciences sector was given a double boost yesterday with the House of Lords calling for the streamlining of “regenerative medicine” rules, while medical testing kit maker Omega Diagnostics eyed a $160 million (£105m) market.

The Lords science and technology committee warned that the UK is “under-prepared” for the opportunities presented by regenerative medicine, such as using stem cells to repair damage to patients’ bodies.

Committee chairman Lord Krebs said: “We also need a co-ordinated approach so that we can translate the successful research that we have in the UK into medical results. Investors need to see the route from bench to bedside.”

Michael Hunt, chief executive at ReNeuron, the Aim-quoted company that uses hospitals in Dundee and Glasgow for its stem cell work, added: “The potential barriers to commercialisation identified in the report are real and important and we endorse the recommendations proposed in the report to address them.”

News of the Lords’ report came as Alva-based Omega reported that it is gearing up to grab a slice of the HIV testing market in Africa, where charities have set aside $160m to buy diagnostic kits for in the field.

Omega yesterday posted a 1 per cent rise in turnover to £11.3m, with a 13 per cent increase in sales of its food intolerance kits helping to outweigh a “poor” pollen season in Europe, which had dented sales of its allergy tests by 7 per cent.

Chairman David Evans said “it is now time to deliver” on the company’s strategies.

WHEN Glenn Chandler set out to bring a forgotten gay classic to the Fringe he could hardly have guessed the story would become so topical.

The creator and writer of Taggart had always wanted to create an adaptation of Sandel – Angus Stewart’s 1968 novel about an illicit love affair between a pupil and a teacher.

But the Bafta-winning writer could never have anticipated how many similarities there would be between the fictional story and that of Jeremy Forrest – the teacher jailed last month for five and a half years after a relationship with a female pupil.

“It has startling parallels with the Forrest case – and I did have people saying I should wait a year,” says Chandler, who will also be directing the production.

“But it is a faithful adaptation of the book – I am not making any moral judgements. In the book, the relationship between the two comes through as a very positive relationship.”

Edinburgh-born Chandler says he always wanted to adapt Sandel: “It is one of many gay novels I read as a teenager. I think it is beautifully written. I would put it into the same category as EM Forster’s Maurice. It is a classic of gay literature.”

The novel begins when the two main characters are 14 and 19. Antony Sandel is a choirboy, David Rogers is an undergraduate. After their relationship is discovered, Rogers is forced to leave Oxford but then becomes Sandel’s teacher – bringing them into closer proximity.

“You could argue that the guy who is the teacher should know better,” says Chandler.

“But the strange thing about the story is that the younger boy is the manipulator.

“He is the one driving it forward. And although in some ways you are expecting some kind of tragedy things don’t work out as you expect.”

At the time Sandel was written, homosexuality was still illegal. In 1967, the year before publication, it was decriminalised in England and Wales, with the age of consent set at 21, and it was not decriminalised in Scotland until 1980.

Contemporary reviews of the novel spoke positively about the love affair, with one broadsheet reviewer calling it “passionate and pure.”

The novel, which has been out of print for many years, is being reprinted by Pilot press to coincide with the production at theSpace in Edinburgh next month.

“We didn’t set out to be controversial,” says Chandler. “It is challenging but I hope it makes people think.”

• Sandel is at theSpace @ Surgeons Hall from 2-24 August (not Sunday 11th) as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, see www.edfringe.com

A 55-year-old fisherman has been rescued from the wreckage of his boat by lifeboat crew.

• Fisherman rescued by RNLI lifeboat after being thrown into sea

• Man, 55, was rescued four miles south east of Torness Power Station

The man was thrown into the sea from his 25ft boat four miles south east of Torness Power Station while making a mayday call at 10am today, the RNLI said.

Dunbar’s RNLI all-weather lifeboat and an RAF search and rescue helicopter from RAF Boulmer in Northumberland were scrambled to the scene.

Gary Fairbairn, Dunbar lifeboat coxswain, said: “We were on scene in under half an hour, when we got there the bow of the boat was sticking upright out of the water.

“Where it was lying was too shallow to get the lifeboat close and so I had to put one of our crew over the side to swim across in case the man was trapped inside. Crewman Alistair Punton was banging on the outside of the hull to see if there was a response from inside when one of the other lifeboat crew saw the guy floating in the water about 300 metres away.

“It was too shallow there too for the lifeboat so Alistair and crewman Stuart Pirie swam over to him, got a rope round him and he was pulled onboard.

“The casualty was extremely cold, possibly hypothermic, and so we started warming him up.”

The fisherman was checked over by paramedics at Torness but declined hospital treatment.

Efforts to raise the boat, the St Peter which is based in Cove harbour in Berwickshire, are continuing.

SEE ALSO

• {http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/transport/rnli-crews-saved-record-number-of-lives-in-2012-1-2751098|RNLI crews saved record number of lives in 2012|January 22, 2013}

When a Hollywood actress tells you that she doesn’t want to be the star of a film, you might want to be liberal with the pinch of salt. Unless that actress is Isla Fisher.

Curled up on a sofa, surrounded by cushions, in the air-conditioned cool of a hotel suite, Fisher is absolutely clear that landing the starring role in a movie is not what she’s after.

“I definitely don’t want to do the lead role in a movie,” she says simply. “That doesn’t interest me. The hours, being away from my young family, the pressure of having to open a movie. Once you go down that road it feels creatively and emotionally and mentally and physically way too challenging for me.”

My face obviously betrays the fact that I am not exactly used to hearing this version of what it’s like to be an actress in Hollywood, so Fisher offers a clarification.

“I’m not saying that maybe in a few years when everybody is older [she’s referring to her two children, Olive, 5, and Elula, 2, with husband Sacha Baron Cohen] I couldn’t do it. But I had that experience with Confessions of a Shopaholic – you’re the first one on set everyday, the last one home. They put your head on a poster – it’s a lot. For me, motherhood comes first and so I loved the experience of that but doing these ensembles like The Great Gatsby and Now You See Me and working on Arrested Development, you get all the perks of your job, the actual job – you get to do great work, you get to carry the emotional arc of the movie, you can take more risks creatively because it’s a smaller role so you can really push yourself to try new things.” And when it’s put like that, you’ve got to admit Fisher has got a point. And maybe the reason she can bring herself to cast this kind of unflinching eye on her professional life is because she knows it from both sides. She knows what it’s like to be fired by your agent when things aren’t going well (this is what happened to Fisher after her first attempt to conquer Hollywood) and she knows what it’s like to see your face blown 30ft high and plastered all over billboards. I think that’s what you call perspective.

“I really don’t have a plan for better or worse,” she says, smiling. “I don’t have that luxury. There must be an echelon of actresses who get to carve out their careers but I’m still at that level where it’s like, ‘oh, you want me to be in that movie? Great’”

Fisher is tiny which makes it look like the cushions are keeping her anchored in the middle of the huge settee. My seat is miles away over a coffee table and an expanse of thick carpet. I try to move it a bit nearer, but it’s so heavy it’s going nowhere. “Can you move that?” she asks, looking a little concerned. “If you can’t, I can help you.” I can do it, I tell her, going red in the face. “I’ve got terrible jet lag,” she says as I wrestle with the upholstery. “I was doing really well but I’ve just hit a wall.” Right enough, her eyes are rolling a bit. “I’ve gone under. I was doing so well.” She flew in from Los Angeles, where she lives with her family, the day before we meet, went to bed at 11pm but woke up at 4am. “Looking back I should’ve forced myself to go to sleep instead of watching Barry Lyndon, the Kubrick movie. It was three hours and 10 minutes long. Bad decision.” She props her eyes open with her fingers and smiles.

From the moment Fisher stole the movie, Wedding Crashers (2005) from under the noses of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, Hollywood seemed to recognise that Fisher could do funny. It being Hollywood, the machinery then kicked in to create vehicles in which Fisher could do it again. Confessions of a Shopaholic soon followed. But Fisher isn’t just someone who knows how to sell a gag. She’s an actor who served her time in the world of the Aussie soaps (she was Shannon in Home and Away for three years). Then, at the age of 21, she took herself to Paris and enrolled at the Lecoq Theatre School which focuses on clowning and mime. There 
followed a spate treading the boards in the UK and then her first, ill-fated, assault on Hollywood.

It was her husband (Fisher met Baron Cohen in 2002 and they got married in 2010) who told her, after watching her lose out on one role after another, that she should try to go for funny roles because she was the funniest person that he knew. But on the evidence of Fisher’s latest roles – the doomed Myrtle Wilson in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby and the illusionist and escapologist, Henley, in Now You See Me – Fisher has a serious side too.

Now You See Me is on a different scale to Luhrmann’s all-singing, all-dancing adaptation but it has a slickness of its own. Directed by Louis Leterrier, the French director behind The Incredible Hulk (2008) and Clash of the Titans (2010), Fisher plays one of a group of magicians known as the four horsemen, alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson and Dave Franco. They play arenas like rock stars and blur the lines between entertainment and Robin Hood-style wealth redistribution. Being part of an ensemble cast, along with Mark Ruffalo, Sir Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, couldn’t have suited Fisher better. It was, she says, fun.

“At any moment, you could look around the set and see Dave 
Franco cutting a banana in half with a card, Jesse just constantly shuffling and working on his dexterity and Woody Harrelson attempting mentalism on everyone which was hilarious. One day he hypnotised Mark, or at least he thought he had, into believing that he was seeing everything in only one colour – I think it was blue, or maybe green – anyway it 
transpired Mark was pulling his leg.”

Fisher’s character is an escapologist so she didn’t have to do as much of the dexterity stuff as the others. She says that she is glad about that because although she enjoyed researching magic thoroughly and studying Dorothy Dietrich, an American illusionist who could catch a bullet in her teeth, and working with David Kwong, the movie’s magic consultant who came up with a lot of ideas, she’s not quite got the attention span required to perfect sleight of hand.

“I realised very early on that to be a really good magician – aside from the misdirection and connection with the audience, which was relatively easy for me to do because I’m already trained as an actor – there’s the actual attention that’s required, repeating an action again and again until you’re flawless, I do not have that kind of will power.

“These guys do it for 10 years, the same thing, again and again. It’s amazing. I’d give up after a week. I also never improve at things. I get to a certain point and then as soon as I feel I’m vaguely good at anything I just give up. I can’t push myself on to become an expert.”

The film pivots on the tension between being a sceptic and being a believer. Although Fisher says she knows which side she thinks that she’s on, her friends would tell you something different.

“I definitely see myself as a believer but I know my friends see me as a sceptic,” she says. “I know they do because I sometimes get told off for being, you know, apocalyptic.” She laughs sheepishly. “I’m a ‘fraidy cat. I’m the person with the earthquake kit at home. I think it’s getting worse as I get older. Someone finds a crowbar – ‘what’s this Isla?’ It’s to lever the furniture up to get out from the door frame.”

I tell her she’s reminded me of some short stories I read in which a character hid a generator in his back garden for when the world ends. She starts laughing. “I have got a generator,” she says, eyes going wide. “When avian flu started to be talked about I was the first one to buy a mask.” She laughs more. “I’m slightly exaggerating but I am definitely ‘fraidy cat. If I’m in my car and I have to make a decision between taking the freeway and taking a side road, I’ll take the side road.”

A Diet Coke arrives for Fisher – much-needed caffeine to keep the jet lag at bay. ‘I love you,’ she says to the nice young woman delivering it. Then she takes a sip and her face twists up and the glass is placed back on the table never to be touched again. Not that she complains, though. In fact, 
jet-lagged Isla Fisher is perfectly lovely company. Legs tucked up beneath her, in her den of 
cushions, she runs her fingers through her long, red hair and tries hard to keep her eyes from rolling in her head. I feel a bit bad for putting her through a question-and-answer session, I tell her, when obviously all she wants to do is pass out. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I was feeling really great and actually I was feeling pretty smug about it, so it serves me right.”

And to be fair, it’s not exactly an interrogation. There’s nothing to interrogate Fisher about. Her story is impressive, but not in the slightest bit salacious (unless you count that episode when she was engaged to Darren Day back in the 1990s.) She grew up the daughter of Scottish parents. Her dad worked for the UN and the World Bank, so the family travelled a lot. Starting a new school every year was a good way to learn how to be funny since that was the easiest way to fit in as the new girl. Nowadays she’s happily married with two young daughters. She doesn’t talk about any of them in interviews but doesn’t make a fuss about that either. The family lives between London and Los Angeles.

“I think London feels like a base,” she says. “Although I think I have spent more time in LA recently. Maybe I live in LA now. Do you know what, I do live in LA because for the last two years that’s where I’ve been.”

I tell her that it must suit her, if she hasn’t really noticed that she’s moved. She nods.

“My upbringing was very 
nomadic and I’ve been an actor my whole life, I started when I was 11, so it’s been well over 20 years.” She rolls her eyes. “Actually, let’s not put a number on it,” she hams. Fisher is 37 and doesn’t look anything like it.”

Fisher proudly tells me that her dad is from Bathgate and her mum is from Stranraer. “We did our family tree and we’re Scottish as far back as it’s possible to be Scottish,” she says, grinning. As well as meaning that she knows all about the “little rituals and cultural differences” that are part of being Scottish – she names Hogmanay and our food as particular areas of expertise – it also means that Fisher’s comedic background is British. She grew up on The Goodies and Blackadder. She loves Monty Python. Now her tastes extend to what you’d expect from any smart woman who’s already written 
several scripts for development. “I love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Rebel Wilson,” she says. “I love Sarah Silverman’s stand-up and I love Chelsea Handler. I am a fan of funny women.” Ask her what her favourite comedy film is, though, and she doesn’t hesitate for a second. “My all-time favourite funny movie is still Bruno. I love it. It’s just so good.”

It makes me laugh that Fisher’s choice is the movie in which her husband plays a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista, often wearing very short leather shorts. There can’t be many people who you could say that about.

With two major releases in almost as many weeks, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Fisher’s career is bumping along at a fair pace, but she says it’s deceptive and really she doesn’t work very 
often. And despite how comfortable she seems being holed up in hotels speaking into dictaphones, it’s not how she usually spends her time. “The Valentino leather skirt and Valentino fancy lace sweater is probably two percent of my life and the sweatpants and dirty 
ponytail is 98 percent of my life,” she says and laughs.

Sounds like a pretty good 
balance to me.

• Now You See Me is released on Wednesday

Reinventing museums as arms of social and welfare support risks losing sight completely of their true worth, writes Tiffany Jenkins

One of the exhibits in the Mary Queen of Scots exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland is a collection of a gold necklace, locket and pendant, known as the Penicuik jewels, thought to have belonged to the executed monarch. These jewels are believed to have been given to the Queen when she was held captive. They were gifts of loyalty – much more than mere decoration – to bind supporters to the Crown.

I have always found jewellery to be humanising objects. That they touched her skin, wafted scent and were, no doubt, worn with pride brings the story of Mary Queen of Scots to life. That is what museums can do. Through the display of objects they can open up the past.

Unfortunately this is not how many in the museum sector now understand their role, as demonstrated by the launch this week of the campaign: “Museums Change Lives” which looks at how museums impact on individuals, communities, society and the environment. The Museums Association – the UK wide professional body for the sector – has asked museums to “raise their ambitions” and “commit to improving [their] impact on society”. The association’s report cites projects with unemployed and homeless people, the isolated elderly and children in care.

“We know that museums can sometimes reach people in ways that nothing else in society can,” Museums Association president David Anderson said. “They have long been far more than just buildings and exhibitions. ”

But the “just buildings and objects” belies contempt for museums. What about the objects? Artefacts are not even mentioned by Mr Anderson, presumably considered of lesser significance than the therapy and social work he thinks museums should do.

If someone asked you what could help strengthen communities and contribute to a fair and just society, would you say “museums” ? Probably not. It’s not that they don’t have a social impact, but this is not their primary role, nor is it the best approach for addressing inequality, poverty and lack of aspiration.

It is not new to instruct museums to pursue a social purpose, it is an entrenchment of an agenda that has already had a deleterious impact. Back in 2000, the Department of Culture Media and Sport, for England and Wales, published the report Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries and Archives for All, which asked cultural institutions to orientate around a social remit. It was an agenda that was embraced by many in the sector across the country as they were in crisis. They were no longer certain of their purpose and were looking for a new role.

The Museums Change Lives plan alters the true purpose of museums: to advance our knowledge of civilisations of the past, to understand the world and its history. The shift in the museum’s role changes the content. If curators think that they are meant to be raising self-esteem, addressing homelessness or improving mental health, their eye is not on research or finding out the truth about the past. They have other outputs in mind.

As a consequence of this shift in what is valued in museums, there has been a deleterious impact on curatorial positions, as they no longer are seen as important as education, outreach, and press officers. Over the last decade, according to a survey in the Museums Journal, the number of natural history curators has declined by more than 35 per cent. The number of art curators plummeted by 23 per cent. Research work has been decimated. Ironically, with the backdrop of the lack of confidence in knowledge, the projects that have tried to make a social difference have at the same time been defensive about museums – very few social inclusion projects involve engagement with the best objects or ideas – and tend to be tokenistic PR for the museum.

Museums matter because they hold some of the most important objects – the real thing – from the human civilisations, from which we can learn a great deal. These institutions have always held an important caretaker role, but they are of great importance today because we are too enthralled with ourselves to the detriment of understanding how things were. Today, we experience a kind of presentism, that is, we have become so dislocated from the past it is hard to imagine how things were. Additionally, our culture is in awe of new technology. The dominance of the internet, the virtual and the connected in our lives is tremendously useful, but we tend neglect the real, that which does not change, quickly, at the click of a mouse. In museums it is possible to have a transformative experience, engaging with a precious and unique artefact that sheds light on the past. It’s about them and then, not us now.

What’s heartening is the public don’t share the view of the Museums Association. In research conducted by Britainthinks – a research consultancy – they found that the public were highly supportive of museums as organisations with the core purposes of the “care and preservation of heritage”, “holding collections and mounting displays”, and “creating knowledge for and about society”. Britainthinks also found that the public were critical of the other agendas adopted including “fostering a sense of community”, “helping the vulnerable”, and “protecting the natural environment”.

The report concludes: “It is because these core purposes are deemed so important, and because museums are well-placed to achieve them, that museums are so admired. It is also for these reasons that there is a reluctance to endorse additional purposes: there is a concern that museums will undermine their core purposes and overreach themselves, a concern that is particularly acute given the perceived threats to their continued existence.” Well said.

Museums should not be trying to change lives in the present, but to understand past lives. They are precious jewels that we cannot afford to lose.

AS WILLIAM Wallace braced himself on the butcher’s block waiting to be diced and his head placed in pole position at London Bridge, it probably occurred to the arch-separatist that he hadn’t properly thought the unionist argument through.

For example, he had failed to factor in the possibility that the cost of communications in a Longshanks-free Scotland would increase, with town criers asking for more money to wander to and from settlements, demanding so-called roaming charges.

Fast forward 700 years or so and thankfully, Jo Swinson, UK consumer minister, has made aghast folk aware that the cost of freedom may add tuppence or so to the price of a postage stamp. I am certain that for previously undecided voters, the East Dunbartonshire MP’s perspicacious intervention is something of a clincher in favour of remaining part of the United Kingdom.

Away from the puerile, scaremongering, screeching from the foaming mouth of Scotland’s very own Cassandra, government figures this week revealed that the educational gap between poor kids and their wealthy peers has narrowed. Almost 82 per cent of vulnerable children found “positive destinations” after leaving school, compared to 95.2 per cent of those least deprived, a difference of 13.3 per cent (down from 18.3 per cent).

Positive destinations are classed as employment, training and post-school education but, as with most things, the devil is in the detail. For example, no distinction is made between a bright kid in a housing scheme taking a low-paid job in Tesco and a lad from a leafy suburb securing a high-salary career at the local bank. Further, a place in a new university, such as Napier, is granted equivalence with studying at one of the nation’s prestigious traditional universities.

I found it heartening that there has been a significant decline in the number of looked-after children leaving school at the earliest opportunity, down from 88 per cent to 79 per cent. (This has to be tempered by the fact only 30 per cent of all school students leave at 16). Maybe I was just unlucky but in over 30 years of teaching I never encountered a looked-after youth in any of my upper school classes. Sadly, due to their often horrific experiences, many of these cared-for kids did not attend regularly or suffered broken education as a result of moving from school to school. It is to our education system’s credit that these young people are no longer invisible, although clearly much work needs to be done in this area.

It’s remarkable that these record-breaking statistics have been achieved against a background of cuts and high youth unemployment.

There is a view that the financial crisis, in some ways, works in favour of young people. From a bottom line perspective, youngsters are cheaper, hence a hotelier, when hiring a chambermaid at the minimum wage rate, may opt to recruit a 16-year-old girl at £3.68 rather than take on a woman at £6.19. This would help to explain why all hospitality and retail workers look young to me (come to think of it, police officers have acquired a callow appearance these days).

Named and shamed by their propensity to produce gross amounts of Neets (Not in Education, Employment or Training), some hair-shirted local authorities have pressurised their education directorates to devise strategies to improve the lot of those most at risk of becoming criminals and single mums. In days gone by, a careers office in a school was somewhat low-profile, hidden in the bowels of the building, usually neatly sandwiched between a disused jotter cupboard and the boiler room. Today, there is a phalanx of professionals on hand to advise youngsters: guidance staff, social workers, youth workers. In addition, some colleges have outreach programmes that raise awareness of their existence and pupils are given the opportunity to peruse software programmes that assist in matching them with possible future occupations.

It will not have escaped Ms Swinson’s attention that at 15.2 per cent, Scottish youth unemployment is much lower than the UK rate of 19.5 per cent. I feel an overwhelming desire to print off that stat, stick in an envelope and mail it to her Westminster office before the price of a stamp rockets.

To win the day the Yes campaign must show foresight and remember that what is said before the vote can have a powerful effect on what happens after the result is known, writes Jim Sillars

That’s it then, Yes people can relax, clear our minds of anxiety created by those opinion polls and terrible bookies’ odds, and enjoy what’s left of the summer. Alex Salmond, taunted by his opponents as a “loser” tells us, like another famous Scot fighting for independence, John Paul Jones of US Navy fame, that he has not yet begun to fight. Nae bother, the best is yet to come.

It seems the Scottish Government’s skirmishes with Westminster and Brussels over Nato, defence, Trident, currency, pensions and EU membership, have been mere minor episodes in a phoney war – a few probing patrols sneaking onto each other’s territory with no casualties, and no prisoners to fortune. The SNP blitzkrieg that will sweep the enemy from the field and secure a Yes victory will come in the autumn, when Alex’s White Paper will dot every “i” and cross every “t” of policy, and answer every question. He will, as in the past, overturn those polls. If only.

I have my doubts about how able a machine is the Scottish civil service from which will emerge the White Paper, and I have serious doubts about the political ability of the Salmond circle to conduct affairs from now until polling day. Even the dogs in the street must by now be aware of just how formidable is the team formed at Westminster to defeat independence.

A comparison with the quality of the material produced by the Treasury and that produced by Salmond’s office in recent weeks, shows a difference between a Premier League and a Third-Division outfit. As for political ability in what is a new arena, the big league, for the SNP leaders (and especially their advisers), there is cause for concern.

Before dealing with the issue of political ability, there is a question to ask of SNP backbenchers about the White Paper. What it says, or does not say, its substance or lack of it, will be one of the defining moments of the campaign. Whatever its content, SNP backbenchers will find themselves anchored to it. The question arises, therefore, if they are going to campaign for it, do they have a say in its content? Or will they see it only on the same day as the public, and thus, unlike the public who can be critical of it, be faced with the instruction from the Whips to give it unconditional support? Will they be excluded or included in its formulation? It’s a fair question.

Now, back to political ability. I have remarked before in this newspaper about the lack of intellectual rigour in the Salmond camp.

There often seems to be policy made, if not on the hoof or shot from the hip, certainly without thinking through its consequences and, critically, how it will be received by people with a variety of legitimate interests, including other countries whose support we need to mobilise, or who should be rendered neutral, this side of polling day. The recent threat to close the North Sea to EU fishing boats if Brussels gets shirty with our application to continue membership, is a case in point. Of course the Scottish fisheries waters will not be available to EU boats if we are refused continued membership, and a great area of sea will be removed from the Common Fisheries Policy(CFP). But it was the blustering, aggressive, offensive tone in which that fact was relayed, which betrays a lack of the sophistication required in international affairs.

The SNP had better realise now that there is a “before” and “after” scenario. In the months before polling day, the European Commission, senior MEPs from states other than the UK, and member states’ governments can be expected to make statements calculated to be downright unhelpful to the Yes side. None of them want to see any disturbance to the present set-up, or have a precedent set about the legitimacy of secession. If, however, Scots vote Yes, it will be a different matter. The EU will have to deal, not with an unwanted hypothesis, but with a new political reality in which their worldwide boasts about promoting democracy and the rule of law, will be put to a worldwide test.

All the negative stuff they said when Scottish independence was a hypothetical, will be swept aside, realpolitik will operate, and while continued membership will not be seamless, nevertheless the door, with conditions, will be opened. They will also be desperate to find reasons why Scotland is not to be seen by others as a precedent.

The problem is that the “after” doesn’t happen until after. It’s what is said and done during the “before” that will affect public opinion, and the result. To threaten, and antagonise the member states who do have a stake in the North Sea’s contribution to the CFP, and give them good reason to undermine the Scottish Government’s claims about the certainty of continued membership, is not wise.

A more sophisticated approach, and one that would put our putative partners on the back foot morally and politically, would be to ask them about the cemeteries. When De Gaulle took France out of the military side of Nato, he insisted that every American serviceman be removed from French soil. Lyndon Johnson instructed his Secretary of State Dean Rusk to ask him about the cemeteries. When face to face with Rusk, De Gaulle repeated his instruction, whereupon Rusk asked him if it applied to the thousands of US dead buried in France from both World Wars?

So, the team in the Scottish Government should stop the aggro and take old Lyndon’s advice. All over Europe there are Scottish dead who sought to free France, Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Italy once it changed sides, while others now in the EU were, shall we say, not quite on the side of the anti-Nazi angels between 1939 and 1945. On what moral and practical grounds can our present partners in the EU tell us to get out? Does my uncle Jimmy, and thousands of other Scots who went over and there never came back, mean nothing? Never mind the fish Alex, ask them about the cemeteries.

As for the practical concern of our present partners, about creating a precedent, there is an explanation that can ease their worry. Present Scotland to them as being sui generis – being different from and having no secession implications for any other area within the member states. Stack up the arguments that make us different – the unusual voluntary nature of the agreement in 1707 and the legal and legislative uniqueness of the Act of Union with its recognition of our separate legal system and other institutions. The Lord Advocate is a smart lawyer. Get him on the case.

Let bluster and braggadocio give way to the sensible practice of diplomacy, playing on those historical strengths that my uncle and others helped create with their sacrifice, and endeavouring to persuade by reasoned discussion (perhaps a diplomatic team to visit every capital). Above all, no more macho quick-fire policy that takes no account of consequences. It’s time to start winning friends and influencing people over there. Remember to get to the “after” Yes has to win the “before”.

• Jim Sillars is a former deputy leader of the SNP

The BBC was once a great national institution. Cumbersome perhaps, slow to innovate at times, bureaucratic without a doubt but, up until relatively recently, it retained a Reithian certainty under which it was charged, in the words of the great man, with a remit to “educate, inform and entertain”.

Times change, and an institution like the BBC has had to change too. The stern Free Presbyterian principles which Reith, a Stonehaven-born son of the manse, imbued in the Corporation had to give way to a newer, dare we say, freer ethos as the face of broadcasting changed dramatically to reflect societal changes.

However, while more modern attitudes at the BBC may have, in some cases, helped it become more creative – producing everything from great dramas through powerful documentaries to its still magisterial coverage of major sporting and political events – there was also a significant downside to its modernisation.

Whilst it had to lose the most restrictive of the Reithian values, in its upper echelons at least the Corporation which emerged adopted the values – if that is the right word – of the worst kind of corporatism with senior managers demonstrating an arrogance, complacency, elitism and hubris which would not have been out of place amongst now disgraced bankers.

A harsh judgement of an organisation which still does much good and is said still to be the envy of the world? Not if you read the report published yesterday by the National Audit Office (NAO), which severely criticised the BBC for handing out more than it had to in generous severance payments to 150 senior managers, and in so doing risking “public trust”.

Given the top ten payments in the three years to December 2012 accounted for 20 per cent of £25 million, the NAO charge of risking trust is something of an understatement. The excuse offered by the BBC’s new director general Tony Hall that “these payments were from another era and we are putting a stop to them”, has the desperate air of a man slamming shut the stable doors long after the horses have bolted, carrying off hundreds of thousands of pounds paid for from the licence fee we are all forced to pay.

Mr Hall may be new in the post, but he is a BBC veteran and he must surely be aware that while these massive payoffs were being made to trim a bloated management – which should never have been allowed to grow as bloated as it did – hundreds of ordinary BBC staff were losing their jobs and were not treated with the obscene generosity of their feather-bedded one-time managers.

In its modern version of Reith’s remit, the BBC says its mission is “to enrich people’s lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain”. One of its key values is that “trust is the foundation of the BBC”. Mr Hall should take a long, hard look at these words, and reflect on what they mean for his organisation.

Beware fire in the sky

Releasing Chinese lanterns into the air has become the latest of many fads and trends imported into this country. The practice has been adopted for celebratory occasions like weddings, as the lanterns are said to bring good luck.

While the sight of dozens of paper frames with candles below them floating heavenward can be very moving, events in the West Midlands of England should make us pause to consider whether this latest fashion should continue.

Why? Here are some facts. Lanterns are believed to have caused the massive plastic recycling material blaze in Smethwick. More than 200 firefighters attended the incident. Three were taken to hospital. The fire resulted in a 6,000ft smoke plume and caused an estimated £6 million damage.

As a result of this incident, fire chiefs in the area have called for an “urgent review” into the use of Chinese lanterns, a call echoed by Keep Britain Tidy chief executive Phil Barton who says they are “clearly dangerous”.

Now, we should not, of course, over-react to this incident. It is very unusual. The chances of the flaming lanterns landing where they did and causing a fire must be slim. Nevertheless, we would be foolish to ignore the potential dangers they bring.

We do not want to appear to be po-faced killjoys, or indeed to advocate some new layer-

stifling-layer of bureaucracy in an already over-regulated world, consideration must be given to the continued use of Chinese lanterns in this way.

Commonsense tells us that sending flaming objects into the air must be a risk. Perhaps we should stick to other ways of marking events.

THERE are few issues which genuinely unite the three main party leaders in Westminster – preventing Scottish independence is one, being supportive in times of national tragedies and fighting terror are others.

But this week began with a new show of unity between David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband on the need for one austerity measure at least to continue – on MPs pay.

It seems that while the rest of us suffer pay freezes and rising living costs, if we keep our jobs at all, MPs are to be handed a whopping great £10,000 a year pay rise.

For quite obvious reasons the three leaders have baulked at this proposal from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which, after its crack-down on expenses, might not be an obvious friend of the MP.

All three leaders are, after all, agreed on the need for national austerity, although Labour argue they would be fairer. Austerity is not the easiest sell to the public at the best of times, but is particularly difficult when MPs are potentially set to enjoy a huge pay rise.

And it seems many MPs are willing to join the club of turkeys voting for Christmas in opposing the pay rise. Tory backbencher Tim Loughton was one of the first to come out and say he would not take it. Mr Clegg soon followed.

For the first time the matter is out of MPs hands. They will get the rise whether they want it or not, taking them to over £75,000 a year.

This is because as a result of the expenses scandal all matters regarding pay and remuneration of MPs are in the hands of IPSA and there is no challenge. So an MP actually has to take active steps to avoid a pay rise

However, no matter what their party leaders may say, most MPs will be quietly relieved and gladly take the cash.

The reason for this is that while MPs pay is an easy hit for those who hate the political classes, being an MP is not a cheap business, especially now their expenses have been greatly tightened.

The argument that they would be better paid in the private sector was somewhat shot by the difficulty many MSPs who lost their seats in 2011 found in getting work at all.

But there is an issue that if the rate politicians are paid is pushed down, only the rich like Messrs Cameron, Miliband and Clegg will able to enter politics at all – or those with wealthy backers like the trades unions.

This writer knows of one MP in a tight, marginal constituency who apparently only avoided bankruptcy by moving into the home of a constituency party chairman. The MP who complained that he would not be able to have children because of the expense of the job may have pushing it a bit far though.

However, while most people will be shocked that MPs are once again enjoying the benefits the rest of us are not entitled to, it may be that in order to have good politics and politicians the pay rise might be a price worth paying.

Life is peachy for Mavis Staples right now but, like all great blues singers, you can believe in the trouble she’s seen every time she opens her mouth.

Mavis Staples: One True Vine

Anti, £13.99

Star rating: * * * *

She first came to prominence as lead singer with the Staple Singers, the family group led by her beloved father “Pops” Staples, whose hits Respect Yourself and If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me) became civil rights anthems in the 1970s, but went into an extended period of mourning after Pops died in 2000.

Salvation came in the unlikely form of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy who has become to Staples what Rick Rubin was to Johnny Cash – a careful curator who has helped Staples reconnect to her gospel and rhythm’n’blues roots while introducing her to new but kindred territory.

Following the Grammy-winning You Are Not Alone, One True Vine is their second collaborative collection of covers and originals and it’s a low-key dispatch which makes full but sensitive use of the ache and empathy in Staples’ voice. Unlike a lot of church singers who invest their delivery with a testifying fire, Staples follows her father’s edict to “make it plain” and abides by Tweedy’s preference for her lower register.

In turn, he writes beautifully for that range, contributing three originals to One True Vine – the healing balm of the title track, sonorous bluesy brooder Every Step, with its sombre intimation of good news, and Jesus Wept, a spare but eloquent ballad on which Staples sounds careworn in contrast to the soothing female backing chorus.

Alongside loving readings of a trio of old gospel numbers – the slowburn soul of What Are They Doing In Heaven Today, the rhythmic call-and-response number Sow Good Seeds and Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus), a sprightly twist on the old blues trope – Tweedy has shrewdly sourced a handful of songs which Staples takes to like a natural, including Low’s modern southern devotional The Holy Ghost, Nick Lowe’s light and breezy Far Celestial Shore and Funkadelic’s Can You Get To That, guest starring the fabulous bass vocals of Donny Gerrard.

Staples also honours her pledge to record at least one of her father’s songs on every album she releases, selecting the stealthily funky black pride number I Like The Things About Me for a prime showcase of her ability to say it loud without needing to shout.

Traditional political divisions are on the wane across the province, as voters move away from the old certainties, writes Cera Murtagh

Politics in Northern Ireland has always had a “parallel universes” quality to it. Elections are two largely separate shows, as unionist parties vie with each other for the votes of the Protestant community while nationalist parties fight it out for Catholic support. Religion and constitutional position are treated as interchangeable in contests at times dubbed “sectarian headcounts”.

But recent evidence suggests these age-old categories could be eroding – and with them the political certainties. Much has been made of the recent census figures in which a new, seemingly shared, national identity emerged. A total of 29 per cent of people in the 2011 census identified themselves as Northern Irish, with 21 per cent defining themselves as Northern Irish only, compared to 40 per cent as British only and 25 per cent as Irish only.

Perhaps an even more significant trend to arise from these figures, however, was the potential for a breaking up of the “religion – national identity – political aspiration” triad. A total of 48 per cent of people identified themselves as Protestant while only 40 per cent saw themselves as British. At the same time, 45 per cent identified themselves as Catholic, yet only 25 per cent labelled themselves as Irish. Indeed, recent opinion polls show the percentage of people that favour a united Ireland to be less than 20 per cent and actually indicate that a higher proportion of Catholics now wish Northern Ireland to remain part of the British state than those seeking Irish reunification. Being Catholic can no longer be assumed to go hand-in-hand with being Irish and nationalist, nor is being Protestant an automatic sign of being British and unionist.

What’s more, an increasing proportion of people across the board are rejecting national alignments. In recent surveys, more than 40 per cent consistently identify as neither nationalist nor unionist. Public opinion is a complex thing, but these polls tell a consistent story: that the significance of traditional political positions is waning, while the attitudes and identities of two groups long held to be diametrically opposed converge. So what does all this mean for politics in Northern Ireland? Is this shift translating into a new political configuration? Not yet, appears to be the answer. Nationalist and unionist parties still make up 96 of the 108 seats at Stormont, while parties that try to straddle the divide – the Alliance and the Greens – remain relatively marginal.

But these trends have not gone unnoticed. Unusual noises have been heard coming from nationalist and unionist quarters of late, with the leader of the largest unionist party, the DUP, Peter Robinson, using his annual conference speech last year to declare an aim to reach out to Catholic voters. This move may have had more to do with softening the party’s hard-line image to attract moderate Protestant voters, than any effort to bridge the divide. But now a new force has emerged that appears more serious about that task. The NI21 party, launched last month, has recognised the emerging trends in Northern Irish society – a growing Northern Irish identity, disillusion with “us and them”, “orange versus green” politics and an increasing demographic of pro-Union Catholic voters – and is seeking to tap into them.

Formed by two former members of the Ulster Unionist Party, Basil McCrea and John McCallister, NI21 positions itself as an entirely new force in Northern Irish politics; a party of the 21st Century breaking with the stale patterns of the past. McCrea and McCallister put forward a moderate, right-of-centre policy agenda and pledge to stand on issues rather than identity.

With the slogan “Aspire to Better”, NI21 is positioning itself as a grown-up party, set on tackling the challenges facing Northern Ireland as a whole. Its representatives promise to focus on the issues that matter to people regardless of their religion or national identity – like jobs, schools and healthcare – rather than focusing on symbolic issues like flags and emblems. Not shying away from the constitutional question, they define the party as pragmatically pro-Union – avoiding the “unionist” tag with all its divisive connotations. And the party intends to appeal to voters from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds.

A fantasy project for a pro-Union party? Not according to its founders. They appear to believe there is a constituency of Catholic voters out there who would not define themselves as unionist but are nevertheless happy with Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom. These people might feel Irish – or Northern Irish, or Irish and British – but at the same time enjoy the benefits of British welfare state institutions like the NHS, or the relative stability of the British economy in recent years compared to its Irish counterpart. They might not wish to wrap themselves in the Union flag or attend an Orange Order parade, but they may support a pragmatic pro-Union party that promotes cultural diversity and bread and butter issues in a new, shared Northern Irish society. This elusive group, though visible in opinion polls, seems to disappear at elections, either staying at home or voting along traditional lines. Whether NI21 can persuade them to make that leap remains to be seen.

Could these developments see a reconfiguration of Northern Ireland politics, where parties begin to stand on policies rather than identity, and campaign across society at elections rather than simply mobilising “their” section of the community? That shift might be a long way off. But the evidence suggests that the “parallel universes” of Northern Irish politics may not be set in stone.

• Cera Murtagh is a PhD Researcher at the University of Edinburgh studying the politics of post-conflict societies.

With the departure of guitarist Chris Urbanowicz last year, Editors have moved on, or at least away, from the sub-Joy Division angst to arena pop territory.

POP

Editors: The Weight Of Your Love

play it again sam, £13.99

Star rating: * *

Current single A Ton Of Love, a brazen bash at aping U2’s driving, soaring style, and the slightly overcooked Arabian string-soaked noir of Sugar at least exploit Tom Smith’s stadium-sized baritone but the polished production on this fourth album pitches them onto the indiefied MOR slurry heap alongside Coldplay, The Script et al. And who’s ever heard of those guys, right?

FIONA SHEPHERD

Michael Chapman: Wrecked Again 
light in the attic, £13.99

Star rating: * * *

Seattle label Light In The Attic continue their noble quest to unearth neglected gems from the archives with this re-issue of Michael Chapman’s fourth album, originally released in 1971 on the Harvest label. Wrecked Again was the Yorkshire singer/songwriter’s attempt at making a Memphis soul album, which manifests as a soothing place between folk, jazz, rock, pop and psych. It marries trippy Pink Floydian guitar with peppy brass and strings on the title track and recalls Mike Nesmith for the country quirk, Lee Hazlewood for the hangdog soul and even Neil Diamond for the sweep of Shuffleboat River Farewell.

FS

Classical

Robert Zuidam: McGonagall-Lieder

challenge classics, £14.99

Star rating: * * * *

Strange as it may seem, the text source for this intriguing song cycle by contemporary Dutch composer Robert Zuidam is two poems by Scotland’s acknowledged best bad poet, William McGonagall. Maybe it’s true to say that bad poetry begets inspirational music, because Zuidam’s McGonagall-Lieder – a sequence of two sung and three instrumental pieces – is strikingly colourful and illuminating. Coloratura soprano grasps the theatricality of the athletic vocal writing with bristling virtuosity – like a latter-day Jane Manning – while conductor Oliver Knussen ignites equal vigour from the small instrumental ensemble. Fun, and thoroughly eccentric.

KEN WALTON

Folk

Martin Simpson: Vagrant Stanzas

Topic Records, £13.99

Star rating: * * * *

A time served English folk singer and guitarist who spent 15 years living in New Orleans, Martin Simpson combines consummate skills in fingerstyle guitar, slide playing and banjo with an outstanding ability to articulate the matter of a song without becoming thirled to the accompaniment, whether to the lonely whine of his slide playing or with a full-blown band. Here, however, with the help of producer and Sheffield neighbour Richard Hawley, he has come up with an intimate solo set, ranging from the gentle Mississippi holler of Diamond Joe to such elemental balladry as Waly Waly and a fine variant of The Wife of Usher’s Well, Lady Gay. He ranges through contemporary material from Dylan and Cohen, as well as Chris Wood’s beautifully wry atheist’s anthem, Come Down Jehovah, while his own Delta Dreams fondly evokes a trip through the US’s Deep South in a ’55 Chevy.

JIM GILCHRIST

Jazz

Leo Blanco: Pianoforte

own label, Web only

Star rating: * * * *

The Venezuelan pianist is in Scotland this week as part of a UK tour marking the release of this fine solo set, recorded in a former seminary that is now a theatre in his home town of Merida. Evidence of the building’s former use is aurally evident in the occasional chiming of bells heard on the recording, which Blanco turns into a musical dialogue, including the short closing track, Haiku for Bells and Piano. The selections on the disc were made both with and without an audience in the building, and illustrate the pianist’s compelling gift for melodic and rhythmic invention, and his subtle use of the wide spectrum of tonal colour and dynamics available from the excellent piano. Several pieces are specifically designated as improvisations, but his improvisational flair is equally evident in his treatment of his attractive compositions.

KENNY MATHIESON

World

Lili Boniche: Anthologie

WVF, £15.99

Star rating: * * * *

What first strikes the ear is the timbre, like Aznavour’s stripped of its husky warmth: and indeed Aznavour did sing covers of some of his best-known songs. Lili Boniche (1921-2008) had an extraordinary career, beginning humbly in the Casbah of Algiers but acquiring national stardom thanks to the weekly radio programme he was given at 15, then moving on to stardom in Paris. The ‘Francarab’ style he created drew on Caribbean and Latin-American forms, but the classical Arabo-Andalusian music he grew up with in his Jewish family remained his speciality. Compelling.

MICHAEL CHURCH