A man has been taken to hospital after two cars were involved in a crash.

• Accident on A76 in Dumfries and Galloway leaves man injured

• One driver was taken to hospital after two-car collision

The incident happened on the A76 in Dumfries and Galloway, three miles south of Sanquhar at 4pm, police said.

The road was closed and diversions put in place for more than three hours while emergency services attended.

An ambulance took the driver of one of the cars to Dumfries and Galloway Hospital, a spokeswoman for the Scottish Ambulance Service said.

A police spokeswoman said: “We received the call at 4.06pm to a two vehicle road traffic collision three miles south of Sanquhar on the A76.

“The male driver of one car was taken to hospital.”

Meanwhile, three people have been taken to hospital after a campervan and a car collided on a highland road.

At 5.50pm emergency services were called to the A835, three miles south of Lairg in the Highlands, a spokeswoman for the fire service said.

“Crews used cutting gear to free one male from from the Peugeot car, he was taken to hospital by air ambulance. The couple in the campervan were taken by road ambulance to hospital.”

Police said road diversions were in place.

THE new clarity provided by the SNP yesterday on the defence force required by an independent Scotland is a most welcome contribution to the referendum campaign.

Former Royal Marine and now SNP minister Keith Brown, along with Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, have brought some much-needed detail to this crucial area of the national debate.

The SNP’s decision to put some flesh on the bones of its defence plans follows the publication of two think tank reports just days apart, both highly sceptical about the efficacy of an independent Scotland’s defence capabilities. The reports, from the Scotland Institute and the Henry Jackson Society, left many questions hanging in the air. It was right that the SNP moved to address them now, and not wait until the Scottish Government white paper expected in the autumn.

Among the details that can now form the basis for a more informed debate are the £2.5 billion defence budget envisioned for an independent Scotland, and an SNP assessment of what military hardware would be required to provide the necessary air and sea patrol capabilities.

Transitional arrangements were also addressed. In particular, the SNP ministers yesterday provided unequivocal backing for the party’s position on ridding an independent Scotland of the Trident nuclear deterrent currently based in Scottish waters at Faslane and in the high-security MoD weapons storage facility at Coulport .

Much of the debate about defence and independence has speculated that Trident could become a bargaining counter in the post-referendum negotiations with what remained of the UK (rUK). This has been repeated so many times it has become one of the orthodoxies of political discourse on the subject.

Ms Sturgeon has sought to draw a line under this. Trident would go from Scottish waters, and go as soon as safely possible. The move to England or another part of the rUK, she indicated, should take no more than a year or two. This was an assertion immediately challenged by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, who insisted it could take a decade or more to prepare a suitable alternative base.

The Deputy First Minister has called for negotiations with the UK government on this issue in advance of the referendum. This idea has merit. The more informed the Scottish public is about its possible future as a nation state, the better able they will be to make their minds up come September 2014.

But pre-negotiations carry a degree of political risk for the Yes campaign. If such talks were to take place and resulted in an impasse, with the MoD resolute in its position that Trident could not be safely moved so quickly, voters would be left with an impression of an independent Scotland immediately at loggerheads with its closest neighbour over the most basic aspect of statehood, namely defence.

On track for a Christmas present

WHEN Edinburgh folk are writing their Christmas lists for Santa this year, and enjoying the contemplation of gifts to come, it is unlikely that top of anyone’s list will be “a fully-functioning tram route, up and running in time for Christmas”. None the less, as we report today, that is what the citizens of Scotland’s capital city can apparently look forward to.

For years the Edinburgh tram project has been a punchline to a hundred jokes, a by-word for cost over-runs, strategic errors and political cack-handedness. It will come as a blessed relief for Edinburgh residents when the trams move from being the reason for endless traffic jams and blocked roads and begin to become a part of normal life in the city.

It will be a relief especially to the thousands of homes and businesses along the tram route who have had their lives and livelihoods disrupted – sometimes repeatedly (as work had needed to be re-done because of errors by the contractors) and sometimes unnecessarily (as on the preparatory work along the extended route to Leith, which was later cancelled).

For the sanity of everyone in Edinburgh, the city needs to move past the controversies that have dogged this project. If the trams run ahead of schedule, then this newspaper will lead the applause. The sooner this episode is in the past the better.

Whether Edinburgh can put this behind it so easily, however, remains to be seen. It is by no means clear if the sums add up on the business case for the trams’ profitability. It is to be hoped that the rumbling of trams along the city’s streets will not become a daily reminder to Edinburgh residents that they will still be paying for this for many years to come.

REGULATING ‘sexual entertainment’ may promote safety on some of our less salubrious streets but could it also be a cover for suppressing dissent and reducing levels of tolerance in society, asks Pete Martin

Last week, the Scottish Government published a consultation paper on the licensing of “sexual entertainment”. In my whole life, I don’t think I’d ever heard the phrase “sexual entertainment” before. Certainly, growing up in a typical Scottish house in the 60s and 70s, there wasn’t any.

At the first hint of hanky-panky on television, my dad would suddenly develop a loud cough and feel an overwhelming need to change the TV channel. Or mum would desperately need a cup of tea, and send me to make it.

My older brother did once bring a copy of Playboy home, which was almost instantly detected by our mother. When my brother misbehaved, my mum would try to knock sense into him, sometimes with a broom handle. For my sins, she merely admonished me, saying – I thought, somewhat sadly – “Not all women look like that.”

In my limited experience, I’ve found this to be untrue. Unlike most blokes, the female of the species tends to look pretty good in the buff.

So, when I first left home, perhaps as an act of rebellion or a sign of my newfound cosmopolitan self, I put up a big painting of a nude woman in my room at the university halls of residence. When my mum came to visit, she didn’t mention it. She simply hung her coat on the picture.

In truth, I guess I’ve led a fairly sheltered life since then. When we set up our creative agency in Leith, the area was considerably less chi-chi than it is now. With broken windows and grimy net curtains, Malmaison was a doss-house for down-and-out sailors; and Coburg Street was a destination for kerb-crawlers. We started our business there simply because the rents were low, and the Kings Wark became our habitual haunt on Fridays after work.

Early one evening in summer, my business partner and I were leaving the Wark. As we stepped into the warm air, a silver-haired gentleman in a nice grey suit and tie stopped us with, as Coleridge might have said, a glittering eye. “Excuse me lads,” he said. “Can you tell me where the hoors hang out?” The answer was obvious since the women waited in plain view round the corner by the bridge over the Water of Leith. But before we could reply, he added: “None of your young things, mind. I’m just an old ship’s cook”. We duly gave the ancient mariner the information he sought. Then he pointed at the Kings Wark. “See that,” he said. “That used to be a great pub. It used to be the hoors’ place. Now it’s just full of f***ing yuppies.” Standing in what we imagined were trend-setting suits with denim shirts and loud ties, it’s still unimaginable he mistook us for men of the world.

Indeed, the first time we stumbled into a strip joint it was by accident. That’s how worldly we were. After attending a creative awards show, we wanted to go for “one for the road” and found a small down-market bar that seemed to open late. Sat in the corner close by the pool table, we were halfway through our first pint when the tough-looking barmaid approached us. “If you want to stay in,” she said, “it’s £3.”

This seemed a small amount to pay for a “lock-in”. So we duly coughed up . Then a young lady in lingerie leaped on to the pool table and began gyrating. She was wiggling her derriere so close to our pints we were worried she might spill our drinks. As the old Double Diamond ad used to protest, “We’re only here for the beer”.

That seems true of any boozy blokey night out I’ve been on. About once every seven years, by my reckoning, at some ungodly hour you might find yourself propping up the bar in a strip joint. However, the most interesting jaunt was on a “stag do” to Berlin at a point in my life when I’d given up drinking. In tow with a bunch of pie-eyed guys when you’ve been on sparkling water all day, you get a clear-eyed view of the business of paid-for nudity.

The place is crowded and the atmosphere heady. But I’d say most punters are there for a laugh rather than a leer. And they’re not all men – there are fully-clothed women among the audience. Some things I guess you wouldn’t notice if you’d had a few drinks. The ratio of working women to drinking men is low – as is the standard of the fit-out and décor. Like a dark, sparkly fairground for grown-ups, it’s all façade, jaded and faded. And, despite the smiles and flirtation, the women really are working. Smart, tough and stone cold sober, they seem pretty good at parting men from their money.

Which isn’t to say that “sexual entertainment” doesn’t look like a difficult or potentially dangerous job. You could imagine the fine line between the need for tough guys for protection, and the risk of scary men for exploitation. You can imagine a conveyor belt of catastrophe that moves from exotic dancing to drugs to prostitution and violence. But maybe it is imagination. The Scottish Government’s 2005 Working Party on sexual entertainment “did not find significant specific evidence of criminality linked to adult entertainment venues in Scotland”.

Officially, stripping is linked with only one drug. The 2005 Working Party recommended that adult entertainment should still be controlled under alcohol licensing. In 2010, the SNP government tried to introduce a separate system – an idea rejected by the Scottish Parliament as too complicated. Now, with the aim of improving safety and working conditions – and tipping its hat to gender equality issues – the new consultation re-opens that debate. It also includes the consideration that local authorities could effectively ban such businesses in their areas.

According to the Scottish Government, there are about 20 sexual entertainment venues in Scotland. I suspect that the vast majority of us do not care about them. We are neither particularly turned on or off by the idea of strippers, female or male. Indeed, the popularity of TV shows such as Game of Thrones – with scenes that would have given your dad a coughing fit – suggests we’re much more broadminded than our parents’ generation. We think titillation has its place – after the watershed, on a hen night, in a “gentlemen’s club”. It’s just the in-your-face sexualisation of daytime life that gives us pause.

Nonetheless, it seems certain we are entering a period in which permissive attitudes will come under attack from pressure groups. Well-meaning liberals who don’t trust men will have genuine concerns about gender issues, exploitation and violence. Mean-minded reactionaries who don’t trust women will merely clamour for a clampdown on individual freedom.

In the UK, such “morality” seems political, if not hypocritical. Conformity is a form of social control, suppressing dissent around inequality, economic opportunity and democratic participation. The real difficulty is that one man’s morality is another woman’s stoning: too often repression and oppression go hand in hand.

As Freud suggested – and the Catholic Church has evidenced more recently – repressing sexuality isn’t the best idea. It just comes out in weirder ways. That’s why Victorian values don’t produce safer, more equal societies. Open, broad-minded, free-thinking cultures do. And they do better economically too.

The challenge for modern Scotland is how to create safety and social justice within a tolerant, shame-free culture where people can be confident in their own sexuality. I can’t imagine that this consultation on paid-for nudity will catch the public imagination. But it may say something about how broad-minded or buttoned-up Scotland really is, and the results could be revealing.

OH, TO be a Kardashian. With their diamonds and their tans and their poker straight hair and their insatiable love of publicising even the smallest passing of wind to the world.

It is easy for many of us to imagine what it must be like to be a Kardashian, because the Los Angeles family for whom fame is now so synonymous no one can quite remember why they got famous in the first place, are so hellbent on telling us about it. From childbirth to clothes shopping to arguments over one sister’s paternity, no incident is too intimate, too personal or too mundane to be packaged up with a reality TV bow, wrapped in Twitter endorsements and sent out to the masses for their perusal.

Kim Kardashian, arguably the most famous of the bunch because – and there is no getting around this – she is the prettiest one, recently had a baby. You may have read about this, not because it was the first baby ever born to anyone on the planet (although so relentless was the coverage, you could have been mistaken for thinking it were so), but because of the child’s chosen moniker. For this particular Kardashian is dating a rapper called Kanye West. And Kim and Kanye decided to call their child North.

Poor little North West. Barely a month old and her moniker is not only the laughing stock of every late night TV show host in America, but a bad joke conceived by parents using their child’s name to make what they clearly think to be a clever commentary on… what? The shocking state of intercardinal compass directions? The much lamented movies of Alfred Hitchock? It is a name that is as cruel as it is unusual. It would be like naming any child of mine Daisy.

But as if that weren’t enough, the poor little mite is now at the centre of a new dispute. North West has yet to be seen by the world at large and Kim and Kanye are reportedly mulling a $2 million offer from People Magazine for the first public pictures.

Now I quite like babies, but there’s no getting around the fact that unless you are related to it or close friends with its parents, a picture of one newborn baby is much like another. A picture of a baby is not in and of itself massively interesting. But perhaps this is why I shall never be the editor of People Magazine, and Kim Kardashian has far more money in the bank than I ever will.

At any rate, there is much excitement over these forthcoming pictures, so much so that it has reportedly caused a rift between Kim and her mother. Kim Kardashian’s mother is Kris Jenner, no shrinking violet herself with her regular appearances on the family shows and her “momager” tag. She is shortly to launch her own talk show, for reasons I’m unclear on, and is obviously looking to make a big splash with her debut. And what better way to do it than by parading pictures of her oddly named, famously parented grandchild? It’s what any self respecting granny would do.

According to US gossip sites, while Jenner is publicly saying she will not discuss the new addition on her talk show, behind the scenes she is apparently pressuring Kim to allow her to give the audience a sneak peek of the baby’s first magazine cover. If true, it’s a highly depressing insight into a mother and daughter relationship that has become so caught up in fame that reality, and for that matter dignity, has long since left the building. If untrue, it’s an even more depressing insight into how the family are perceived at large.

While the antics of the Kardashians are laughable and pitiable, they are also deeply worrying. Not for the Kardashians but for the millions of young women who adore them, follow them and copy everything that they do. Such is their influence on young markets, not just on TV and in magazines and gossip websites but in retail too – they recently launched a clothing line in UK high street store Dorothy Perkins – that they are hard to ignore. Their flashy, trashy, grab-as-much-cash-as-you-can-while-wearing-ten-inch-hair-extensions-and-designer-duds ethos is held up as a viable way to live.

Their message is that if you look good and flaunt every inch of your personal life you’ll become filthy rich. It may be true, but it’s hardly something to aspire to. If only Kim Kardashian would do something truly radical and inspirational, and keep those baby pictures to herself.

THE former Labour leader has a glowing future ahead of him in the number two position, writes Eddie Barnes

There’s a highly select association in mainstream politics open to a privileged few, known as the Respected Ex-Leaders Society. To join, there is a truly gruelling application process. Members are typically required to go through a humiliating political loss in which they are stripped of their leadership in the most brutal way possible. They must be forced to peer into the abyss.

Stage two of the application process then kicks in. Instead of curling up and giving in, they must dust themselves off, set themselves a fresh target and plough on. Membership soon follows and, with it, an assortment of exclusive benefits. Whereas a cynical public views most politicians as self-interested pole-climbers, members of the RELS, having climbed the pole and fallen off it, are accorded the benefit of the doubt.

Membership also makes things easier internally. They have had their chance and lost it and so are no longer deemed a threat by their successor. Their views are – usually rightly – perceived as holding a wisdom and perspective denied to most.

Which brings us to Iain Gray, the ex-leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Mr Gray, it will be recalled, was the unfortunate victim whose job it was to stand in front of the SNP steamroller in the 2011 Scottish elections. Instead of late-night victory parades, he had to spend election night nervously counting votes in his own seat, which he nearly lost too.

The magnitude of the defeat was hard to take. Mr Gray has spent the intervening time heading up one of the Scottish Parliament’s committees, out of the public eye, but ploughing on. Last week, he re-emerged to the front line, after his successor Johann Lamont appointed him as her shadow finance secretary – in effect, her Number Two.

He now has every chance of becoming a high-flying RELS member. He dealt with his 2011 experience with dignity, took his punishment and is now said by colleagues to be champing at the bit to get going. He does not want his political career to be remembered for an inopportune visit to a sandwich shop in Glasgow.

As other members of the RELS have done – think William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith – he now has the chance to pursue a successful political career on the rung one down from the top.

And what makes his appointment all the more intriguing is that the minister he is shadowing is, of course, another starring RELS member. John Swinney’s leadership of the SNP was fraught and sometimes – as the stress became all too visible – agonising to watch. Like Mr Gray, he went through the bleak experience of having to resign from his job, with little to show but electoral failure. But despite the acrimonious nature of his departure, Mr Swinney picked himself up, stayed loyal and as a respected finance secretary has now reaped the rewards.

These two intelligent, experienced and teak-hard politicians will now go toe to toe. It promises to be one to watch.

IF Morsi does go, it is unlikely to deliver to a quick fix for the country’s economic and social ills, writes Allan Massie

Predicting what is going to happen in Egypt over the next few days, let alone weeks and months, is rash and probably futile. At present it looks as if the army’s 48-hour ultimatum has been rejected by the elected president Mohammed Morsi and his Freedom & Justice party, which is the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But Morsi has evidently been weakened. The huge crowds demonstrating against him and calling for him to go haven’t dispersed. They seem to be backed by the army – to some extent anyway – if only because the generals are alarmed and apprehensive. Most of the government ministers who do not belong to the Brotherhood have resigned. Egypt’s first experiment in representative democracy since the coup which overthrew the monarchy in 1952 seems to be stalling.

It wasn’t meant to be like this in the heady days of the Arab Spring which saw the collapse of the old regime when many of the young secular people who occupied Tahrir Square calling for the departure of the dictator Hosni Mubarak might have echoed the feeling which the news of the French Revolution of 1789 inspired in William Wordsworth: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/ And to be young was very Heaven”. That feeling soon withered in him as the expression of the ideal of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity was followed by the Terror and General Bonaparte’s coup of 1799.

The young protesters in Tahrir Square have experienced a similar disillusionment. They didn’t demonstrate against Mubarak and bring down his regime to see it replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the Brothers had stayed in the background in the first phase of the revolution. But, as the best organised party, the Brotherhood took advantage of the collapse of the Mubarak regime. It won elections, took the lead in devising a new constitution, and then its leader Morsi, who had been imprisoned more than once by Mubarak, was elected president. The poll was generally held to be fair and Morsi has had the authority, unusual in the Arab world, that derives from a genuine democratic election.

However, things are not quite as simple as that. Nobody should doubt that Morsi and the Brotherhood have a lot of support. Nevertheless, they won these elections in part, perhaps principally, because they were the best organised party and the opposition parties were divided, unable to agree on a common agenda and a single leader. In contrast, the Brotherhood knows just what it wants: the establishment of an Islamist state. Moves towards this have distressed and angered the young secularly minded liberals and have created alarm among the religious minorities: Shia Muslims and Coptic Christians.

Most of the other grievances articulated by the protesters are unreasonable. Nobody could realistically have expected that Morsi would have been able, in a mere 12 months, to do much to solve Egypt’s deep-rooted social and economic difficulties. Even ameliorating these conditions will take years. That things are perceived as having got worse rather than better is not surprising; the desired fruits of revolution ripen slowly, if they ripen at all.

But the complaint that Morsi has been governing in the interests of his party rather than the nation is probably justified. The Brotherhood wants Egypt to be an Islamist state, and millions of Egyptians are fiercely opposed to this. If the protesters now appear to have the army on their side, this is because the generals retain Mubarak’s fear and distrust of Islamism. For many in Egypt, as in Turkey which has been engulfed by comparable protests against Erdogan’s Islamist government, Islamism – which is only one political strand of Islam, regarded with suspicion and distaste by many Muslims – is a narrow and intolerant ideology opposed to modernity. You can be a good Muslim and reject Islamism, just as you can be a good Christian and reject Biblical fundamentalism.

There are many examples of revolutions being taken over by extremists who want to go further than others engaged in the early stages of the revolution, or even to take it in a different direction. The logic of revolution often favours the extremists. That is what seemed to be happening in Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood came to power – even though it did so by means of an election.

There is very little we can be sure of, except that there is very little we can be sure of. Most of the protests have been peaceful and even good-humoured. But nobody can doubt that disaffection runs deep, even though the claim made by the organisers of the Tamarod (Rebel) movement to have obtained 22 million signatures to a petition calling for the president to step down is hard to credit. But there has been some violence: eight deaths recorded and the burning of the Brotherhood’s offices in Cairo. The army is apparently reluctant to seize power itself, partly because of the opposition this would provoke, partly perhaps because the generals have no clear idea what they would do if they assumed control. How much control, indeed, would they have?

It would be foolish for the United States or the European Union even to think of intervention, but we can’t rule out acts of folly. Today it looks doubtful that Morsi can hang on but, if he doesn’t, his departure might merely see one set of protestors replaced by another. Egypt needs social peace, a period of tranquillity, and perhaps the best hope is that the generals can knock a few heads together and set up some sort of national government sufficiently representative of the different parties and groupings to embark on a policy of reconciliation.

The fear is that while such a government might achieve a degree of political stability for a time, it would be too weak and divided to address the country’s social and economic problems. In which case it would be unlikely to last – and what then? Egyptians are experiencing the reality of the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times!

THE party does what it believes is the right thing and that will form an electoral platform on which to build , writes Christine Jardine

They told me the Lib Dems would lose their deposit in Aberdeen Donside and come fifth behind a Ukip candidate who had floated in on a cloud of controversy. They were wrong. In fact as the Lib Dem candidate I came third, beat the Tories into fourth place and increased both our vote and vote share in a reduced turnout. In some parts of the constituency we did better than third.

Both our campaign and the result was positive. For me it was an important opportunity to reacquaint myself with a city that used to be home and where my family still play an important part in its civic and community life. For the party there was encouragement on the doorsteps where voters had no time for Labour or SNP.

But for me the one disappointment is that so many of the Scottish political establishment still don’t understand that politics in Aberdeen is different from the central belt. And it’s not just Aberdeen. The Highlands, Borders, Northern and Western Isles all have different issues and a different political make-up.

Scotland’s political establishment – and many of its commentariat – see all contests through the prism of the central belt power struggle between the SNP and Labour. That just doesn’t cut it in Aberdeen. Voters in the Granite City are fed up being expected to accept a diet of central belt policies.

In Aberdeen this summer that manifested itself in demands for attention to local issues, many of which are part of a bigger dissatisfaction with Holyrood’s approach to the North-east. Anger over the Haudagain roundabout and the constant hold-ups at this clashing of two major trunk roads, in the heart of the city, dominated much of the campaign.

But more than just straightforward frustration at a traffic jam it is about the perceived neglect of the city’s infrastructure in favour of bigger vote winners around Glasgow and Edinburgh. One elderly voter told me with a laugh that he was enjoying the opportunity to tell Labour and SNP canvassers what he thought and added: “I even had Alex Salmond’s deputy here yesterday and I made sure she knew exactly what I thought.” If what he told me was anything to go by I felt quite sorry for Nicola Sturgeon.

People are fed up with what they are being offered from Holyrood. Who can blame them? I took part in one radio programme that was an embarrassment – not for the production team but for us, the politicians. In more than two decades of broadcasting I have never heard such a rabble. Brian Taylor’s Big Debate was petty, it was noisy, it was horrible listening and it was enough to provoke any reasonable voter into staying at home. At one stage the Labour and SNP candidates seemed to think it was a private argument at their end of the table.

The irony for me was that it was frustration with this kind of playground bickering and blind adherence to party lines that encouraged me into politics. I had to agree with voters on the doorsteps when they expressed their disappointment in so many of those who are paid to look after their interests. Not all hustings were that bad though. By the time we did STV’s Scotland Tonight programme we had all learned how to behave ourselves.

Over the course of the five weeks, however, I became increasingly encouraged by the response to our campaign and that people were beginning to see that perhaps Lib Dems going into the coalition was paying off for them in lower taxes or higher pensions. People mostly were also not convinced about the idea of a separate Scotland.

So when it came to the count that third place, and the low turnout, were no surprise to those of us who had paid attention to what was going on. Liberal Democrats were delighted, but not entirely surprised that the percentage change in our actual votes was up 20.8. Labour was up only 2.2 while SNP was down 34.6 and the Tories 18.

But it’s what created that swing which will be the important thing for Liberal Democrats going forward. Two years ago voters were confused, sometimes angry, about how we could join a UK coalition with the Conservatives – a party in which we have little politically in common.

Perhaps their opinion was also influenced by what seemed to be less than unequivocal support for the agreement from some sections of the party. Our policies for Scotland were drowned out by the argument over Westminster. Three years on from that coalition agreement the public is beginning to see that Liberal Democrats did what they believed to be the right thing for the country.

Perhaps it is after all better than the Tories in government on their own, and Lib Dems are succeeding in getting fundamental policies on creating a fairer society enshrined in legislation over raising the tax threshold for ordinary families and increasing the state pension.

And we are campaigning hard against independence. At least one senior Cabinet minister I know likes quoting the late Russell Johnston who used to say you should always do what you believe to be the right thing. If you do that the public will recognise it and respect your decision. On the doorsteps and streets of Aberdeen that’s the feeling that was beginning to emerge.

In the melee of claim and counter-claim that politics has become, Liberal Democrats did what they believed to be the right thing. Not everyone agreed with it, or ever will, but increasingly they respect it. For Lib Dems preparing for the next round of EU, UK and Scottish elections that will be the foundation on which we build.

• Christine Jardine was the Lib Dem candidate in the recent Aberdeen Donside by-election.

London’s leading share index pulled back from its session lows yesterday as growing optimism over the health of the United States economy helped to offset concerns about the winding down of central bank stimulus.

The benchmark FTSE 100 index closed down just
3.84 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 6,303.94, having been down as much as 0.7 per cent before the start of play on Wall Street.

Michael Hewson, senior analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: “It would appear that, for now, investors seem content to sit on the sidelines ahead of some key economic data, central bank meetings and the US independence day holiday due this week.

“The continued uncertainty with respect to Fed tapering intentions is likely to continue to temper investor enthusiasm until we get this week’s US payrolls report out of the way.”

Financials bore the brunt amid the possibility that the US Federal Reserve will slow its unprecedented stimulus programme.

Aberdeen Asset Management was down 2.4 per cent or 9.2p to 382.4p, taking its fall since Fed chairman Ben Bernanke first hinted that the central bank may reduce its purchases later this year to 22 per cent.

However, luxury goods firm Burberry was 3 per cent higher, up 40p to 1,405p, after an upgrade from broker HSBC on the back of recent strategic initiatives, such as the integration of its beauty range.

Outsourcing firm Serco surged more than 6 per cent after it confirmed a major support contract for the US Medicare and Medicaid health plans.

The deal is thought to be worth as much as $1.25 billion (£958 million) over the next five years for the operator of prisons and the Docklands Light Railway. Serco’s shares are now at a level not seen since the end of 2000 after rising by 40.5p to 665.5p.

NEW YORK: US stocks edged lower as stocks erased gains in late session after the benchmark S&P 500 index found resistance at its 50-day moving average.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 42.70 points to 14,932.26.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index shed 0.98 points to 1,613.98. The Nasdaq Composite index dipped 1.09 points to 3,433.40.

Premium food oil production will become increasingly important for UK oilseed rape growers in a future European vegetable oil market set to be driven far less by biodiesel demand, according to David Neale, head of agronomy specialist Agrii.

Speaking in Stafford, he stressed that the fundamentals of the rapeseed market remained strong, but he believed that growers had to prepare themselves for European bio-diesel demand peaking, leading to progressively more food-
focused requirements.

“The writing is clearly on the wall. Our market will be depending far less on the biodiesel which has given it such stability in recent years and very much more on food oil for both domestic use and export.”

His advice to growers wanting to maintain the best and most stable returns was to develop their positions in premium quality food oil production.

He claimed food industry demand for stable, high-health frying oils was increasingly steadily across Europe.

“At the same time, advanced hybrid breeding is producing a steady stream of speciality oil varieties, with all yield potential and agronomic strengths of today’s commodity ‘double lows’ and higher oil qualities better able to deliver the required premium specification even in the face of some volunteer or weed contamination.”

Crop scientists are an optimistic bunch. That much became clear at a major cereal trials demonstration yesterday.

On both the national, short-term front, where Scottish grain farmers have been facing one of the most challenging years in living memory and on the 
longer-term global scene, where crop yields appeared to have reached an upper plateau, there is, they claimed, still everything to play for.

Commenting on the Scottish situation at the annual Cereal in Practice event held near Perth, Dr Steve Hoad, of the SRUC, said that although both winter and spring plantings had taken place in less than ideal conditions and the cold spring had hampered early growth, the weather over the next month would be the decisive factor:

“Sunshine in July is absolutely critical for grain fill and, despite crops being on the back foot, a bright warm month could still see both yields – and just as crucially quality – reaching reasonable levels.”

SRUC crop pathologist Dr Fiona Burnett added: “What happens in July sets the scene for ear diseases – and last year we saw shrivelled grains and half-filled heads as a result of this month being both cool and wet. That hit both the quality and quantity of the national harvest hard.”

Dr Burnett said that should the weather be less than ideal again this year, some lessons had been learnt from 2012: “Certainly, we found that there really wasn’t too much point in chasing ear disease complexes late into the season. A better bet would seem to be to go in harder with closer to the full rates of fungicide earlier in the season to stop them developing in the early stages.”

And she added that the widespread use of seed dressings had done a fantastic job of controlling seedling blight diseases – another carry-over from last year’s wet summer, remarking that the few incidents where these treatments had not been used had shown just how poor the baseline establishment might have been.

Commenting on the apparent plateau that had been reached on crop yields and the need to feed many more mouths in the future, Dr Bill Thomas of the Hutton Research Institute said that although there was no one single answer to the problem there was still a host of utensils in the breeder’s tool box that could be used to unlock the potential of higher yields.

Among these he listed recent developments in synthetic hexaploid wheats , the use of wild crop relatives as a means of extending the conventional gene pool, methods of improving crop architecture, biomass production and harvest indices and the use of genetic profiling as all playing their part.

He said that genetic modification might also play a role, but he indicated that on the cereal front, in most cases enough was not yet known to give the ideal package. However, it was also pointed out that farmers should not forget that the “back to basics” approach that made greater use of crop rotations also had an important role to play.

There’s no better way to experience the Inner Hebrides than in the company of whales and dolphins, writes Kirsty McLuckie

There are many ways to tour the west coast of Scotland, but on a converted fishing boat, with luxurious en suite cabins, a top-class chef and among convivial company must surely be among the most relaxing. The Majestic Line has two vessels capable of providing such an experience, the Glen Tarsan and the Glen Massan, operating out of Oban and Dunoon, which offer a range of three or six-day cruises around the Clyde islands or the Inner Hebrides.

The Majestic Line’s name comes from a fictitious shipping company mentioned in Para Handy; a boat with a golden funnel that was the last word in luxury. It may be a figment of a sacked crew member’s imagination, but it is a good description of this beautiful vessel.

The enjoyment of some cruises must depend on your fellow passengers. With a group of around ten on The Majestic Line, this consideration could be more acute, but perhaps people who choose such a holiday are self selectingly friendly; certainly our fellow passengers were active, interesting and jolly good company, not to mention being expert bird spotters and demon Scrabble players. The layout of the boat means there are places to be sociable or not; there are quiet decks to sit out of the wind and take in the scenery or you can chat with the captain and enjoy panoramic views from the wheelhouse.

The atmosphere on board is relaxed, informal and very friendly. The boat has a crew of four, each with a multitude of talents, from the captain’s wealth of knowledge and his ability to follow the best weather to the Canadian chef’s gentle humour and delicious food prepared in a galley kitchen. Alastair the engineer has a capacity to manage on shore visits so no one else got their feet wet, an exhaustive knowledge of the nightly cheese board and fine handling of a guitar. The boatswain, Jacqueline, kept us topped up with food and drinks and the cabins immaculate. When coaxed she revealed a fabulous voice for traditional Scottish songs.

We boarded in Oban and that first afternoon, after a safety briefing, we set off smartly as bad weather was forecast and the captain wanted to get us into the harbour of Tobermory on Mull. The trip we joined, The Heritage and Wildlife of Mull and Glencoe, crosses and recrosses the sound of Mull, Lochs Sunart, Linnhe, Leven, and the Firth of Lorne with stops at islands in between. The captain consults with the passengers as to their wishes each day and heads for the best place so there is no set itinerary, but the chance to see the best of what is on offer at the time. If whales and dolphins are around, he will head for them, pointing out seabirds along the way. There are plenty of opportunities to explore on shore too, with excursions ranging from visits to pretty coastal villages, ruined castles, historic houses, famous gardens and hill walking.

On our first night, anchored off Tobermory, it struck me that many of Scotland’s west coast towns, like sheep, are at their best seen at a distance and not just because from our position on the boat we were out of the range of the midge. Being 200 metres from a beautiful town like Tobermory, with its colourful houses and dramatic backdrop laid out before you is surely the best vantage point. We dined on seafood, looking out on to the twinkling lights of the boats and houses in the harbour.

We got closer the next morning. After a breakfast of porridge, smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, those who were feeling energetic were dropped off for a two-mile walk on a pretty woodland path past waterfalls, nesting birds and budding trees. The others were taken to town directly to browse the gift shops until we joined them and headed back on board to set off to have lunch in Loch Sunart which splits Ardnamurchan from Morven. A wall-mounted satellite map in the main saloon shows where you are at any given point so you can get a real feel for the topograghy.

On shore in Strontian later that day, we were caught out by the weather which for the most part had been kind with sunshine and light showers. Sheltering beside a tree at the side of the road as hailstones came at us horizontally, wearing life jackets, must have looked odd to the locals, but they waved cheerfully as we walked on. It was the same the next day as we walkers made our way down the length of the beautiful island of Lismore. No one batted an eye as we knocked on doors to ask for directions; they must be used to boaty folk turning up out of the blue. We found the path eventually and didn’t have to take the farmer’s advice to just stop any car at all if we needed a lift.

The last night was spent in shelter offshore the town of Glen Coe. It had been a bit of a dreich evening, so awaking in the morning to brilliant blue skies and bright sunshine, feeling right at the centre of the thrilling range of mountains rising precipitously out of the sea was breathtaking. As we sat on deck in the sun to motor to our drop-off point, I was genuinely disappointed to be leaving life on board, the total relaxation of every whim catered for, ever-changing scenery and days peppered with the minor excitements of the excursions. It is a totally stress-free holiday. As one of my fellow passengers joked on being asked to post his wife’s postcards during a walk: “Oh no. Not more pressure.”

THE FACTS

The Majestic Line offers a choice of seven six-night cruise itineraries and one three-night itinerary sailing out of Oban from April to October to the Isles of Skye, Mull, Colonsay and Gigha. Cruises also go inland to Glencoe, Loch Ness and the Caledonian Canal.

The cost of a six-night cruise is £1,830 per person including all meals and wine with dinner. The cost of a three-night cruise is £965. Two double cabins are reserved on each cruise for solo travellers at no supplement; this is also ideal for groups of three or five people.

For further information visit www.themajesticline.co.uk

Those of a romantic frame of mind will fall in love with the food, art and shopping of Paris, says Kate Wickers

Paris is of course synonymous with amour and you might find yourself muttering, “Get a room for goodness’ sake”, as you try to navigate your way around snogging couples on every street corner, but it’s perfect for a girls’ weekend too, especially if you’re flexing un carte de credit. Galeries Lafayette has a whole floor that just sells shoes. Imagine how tedious it would be dragging your lover round there?

We were staying at L’Hotel, once frequented by the likes of Salvador Dali and Frank Sinatra and the last home of Oscar Wilde, now a boutique hotel with the renowned Michelin-star Le Restaurant. It’s a wonderfully atmospheric place with belle époque lights, marble columns and red velvet armchairs, into which we sank cosily to sip pink champagne while we waited for lunch, giggling at the peculiar mix of music from sultry French jazz to Soft Cell.

Le Restaurant is every MasterChef devotee’s dream and I savoured my cod and beetroot in a raspberry jus sprinkled with delicate violet nasturtiums, remarking to my friend, in the style of Gregg Wallace, that if my main course were single I’d marry it. But the highlight was my blinged-up rice pudding with coconut sorbet, pineapple coulis and confetti of gold leaf. Mr Wilde, the king of one-liners, wrote in 1893 that “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.” Auntie Mary, you’re forgiven.

I wondered too if it was here that he muttered, “Either I or the wallpaper have to go.” He wouldn’t have cause to fault the décor today as the hotel has been beautifully designed yet remains faithful to its opulent past. We were in the decadent Pierre Loti suite. “Oooooo it’s like a boudoir,” squealed my friend excitedly running her fingers over the plush velvet wallpaper. And it is. All the 22 rooms are individually designed. Some are distinctly male, reminiscent of a gentleman’s club, but ours was lavish and tactile from the soft walls studded with brass buttons to the velvet chaise to the peacock blue paint work and yellow roll-top bath. We loved it.

L’Hotel is located in the heart of arty, bohemian St Germain de Pres, packed with galleries where you can gaze upon such crazy delights as a life-size Marie Antoinette carved from oak, or human skulls covered with owl feathers. It’s fun to muse on who might may buy such whimsies. Thanks to city planner Haussmann’s network of boulevards, which transformed Medieval Paris in the 1860s, it’s easy to get lost (all those diminishing angles and squares at every junction that look the same) but that’s fine as you never know what gem of a boutique or patisserie you’re going to happen upon next. We gave up trying to find our way back to L’Hotel and sat outside La Palette, one of the oldest cafés in St Germain and once a favourite haunt of Cezanne and Picasso and still popular with fine arts students and gallery owners today, so a perfect people-watching spot.

A visit to Le Musée D’Orsay is a must (Manet’s Déjeuner Sur l’herbe, Renoir’s Dance at le Moulin de la Galette and Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles are all highlights) but we made a beeline for the temporary exhibition: The Marlene and Spencer Hays Collection, which runs until mid August. This is a rare chance to see works by Degas, Bonnard, Matisse and Rodin (to name just a few) that normally hang in the Hays’ private residences and it is a simply stunning, envy-inducing, collection.

Our second day was dedicated to Le Shopping. Galeries Lafayette is my favourite of the department stores. Here you’ll find something chic to suit everyone’s budget and their own range of well-priced stylish accessories hobnob with the big guns of fashion. I challenge any woman not to get an adrenalin rush when they set eyes on the shoe department. Our shoes were on and off more times in an hour than a bra at the Moulin Rouge, before I settled for some acid yellow pumps from Paris brand Mellow Yellow. We got excited too over French designer Barbara Rihl’s quirky handbags embellished with lobsters and tins of sardines (“Excellent choice Madam. She is one of the most exciting designers in France today. Votre carte de credit sil-vous-plait!”). We stocked up too on macarons at the seriously posh patisserie Laudrée, who have been making these small cakes (crispy on the outside, wonderfully soft in the middle) since 1862.

Back at L’Hotel I couldn’t pass up the chance of trying a “Born to be Wilde” cocktail, a tastebud tickler of Bacardi, honey, lime, basil and tabasco while my friend chose the suitably camp Dorian Gray, for lovers of gin and exotic fruits. We dined in Café de Paris on the Rue Buci opting for traditional French fare – white asparagus in a buerre blanc sauce followed by coq au vin – clinking our glasses to friendship and laughing over Oscar Wilde’s saying that, “True friends always stab you in the front.”

• easyJet (www.easyjet.com) fly direct from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Prices in June start at around £110 return; doubles at L’Hotel start from e295 per room including breakfast, www.l-hotel.com; a set lunch in Le Restaurant costs e55 for three courses.

You’d think Hollywood and surfing would be a match made in heaven – surfing, after all, is one of the most cinematic sports there is. But no. Every time a mass market surf drama gets the green light it always seems to end in farce.

Remember Point Break? The film that gave us such intelligently crafted lines as “Surfing’s the source, man” and “Speak into the microphone, squid brain”? Or what about Surf Ninjas? The 1993 idiot-fest in which three young surfers growing up in LA return to their Pacific island homeland, do chop-socky battle with an evil mastermind wearing a comedy mask and – to quote the toe-curling, dude-speak trailer – “basically kick some ass”? Blue Crush? The less said about that one the better. Surf Nazis Must Die? Deliberately, almost heroically rubbish. No, the only surf film marketed at non-surfers that could be described as anything like an artistic success is Big Wednesday, and although it’s developed something of a cult following in recent years, when it was first released in 1978 it was a box office flop of catastrophic proportions. The critics were harsh, too. Reviewing the film for the New York Times, Janet Maslin gleefully shredded the acting with the immortal line: “Barbara Hale... is quite unconvincing as Mr Katt’s mother. This is a faux pas of no mean eminence; after all, Miss Hale actually is Mr Katt’s mother.”

Under the circumstances, then, it’s a minor miracle that Chasing Mavericks – the latest surf film to roll off the Hollywood production line – ever made it past the pitching stage. Bravely ignoring the form book, however, 20th Century Fox saw fit to pump an estimated $20 million into it and as of next Friday it’s coming to a multiplex near you.

Set in California in the early 90s and starring our own Gerry Butler, the film tells the true story of the late, great Jay Moriarity (Jonny Weston), a 16-year-old determined to surf the monster waves breaking at a spot called Mavericks just outside Half Moon Bay. Butler plays Frosty Hesson, one of only a handful of surfers with the skills necessary to ride the place, who eventually agrees to take the youngster under his wing.

Chasing Mavericks was released in the US last autumn, and the reviews on the other side of the pond have been less than glowing. According to one, although the action sequences are “gorgeous,” whenever the film goes ashore “it becomes a half-baked coming-of-age cheesefest – think The Karate Kid with wetsuits.” Certainly Butler’s character has to spout some horrendous, hippy-dippy dialogue. One of his pearls of wisdom is as follows: “We all come from the sea, but we are not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it again and again, until the day we don’t come back leaving only that which was touched along the way.” Master Yoda could hardly have it put better.

Trouble is, deep down I really want this film to be good. Partly this is because Butler nearly drowned during filming on location at Mavericks, and anyone who’s prepared to take method acting to those kinds of extremes deserves to be in a decent movie. Mostly, though, it’s because Moriarity was an inspirational surfer, and he shouldn’t have his life story presented to the world in a second-rate film.

Like a lot of surfers, I first became aware of Moriarity in the spring of 1994, thanks to a heart-stopping photo on the cover of Surfer magazine. Riding a red, yellow and green board, he was pictured at the frothy summit of a heaving, dark-green, 30-foot death-wave at Mavericks, and it was clear that he was in trouble. Rather than pointing down towards the bottom of the wave, the nose of his board had been caught by the howling offshore wind, and was pointing alarmingly towards the sky. His outstretched arms suggested that he was already in freefall, and that in a couple of seconds he would be deep underwater, being rolled like an ant in a washing machine. The really striking thing about the picture, though, was the caption: “Sixteen year-old Jay Moriarity drops into history at Mavericks”. Sixteen? Sixteen? What on Earth had driven someone so young to surf waves like that? Chances are Chasing Mavericks will be yet another awful surf flick, but still – I’m going to reserve judgement until I’ve seen it for myself.

• Chasing Mavericks (PG) is released on Friday

Scotland isn’t known for its hip-hop cred, but Hector Bizerk believe they have something to say in the genre, discovers David Pollock

In the popular consciousness rappers come with a lazy American drawl or a tough East London sneer, and anyone trying to upset that balance with their own accent is guilty of a provincial affectation. That’s why, although Scottish hip-hop has seen a groundswell of underground support in recent years, it’s only in the last year or so that wider recognition has come.

Two groups in particular are lighting the way forward through a combination of original musicianship, socially conscious lyricism and the sense that they have something to say and a uniquely skilful way of saying it. One is 2013 Scottish Album of the Year nominee Stanley Odd, profiled recently in these pages; the other is Glasgow’s Hector Bizerk, a duo comprising rapper Louie (real name John Lowis) and drummer Audrey Tait, whose hard-working touring schedule this summer includes some of Scotland’s most notable festivals.

“With ourselves and Stanley Odd I think having a live element makes it more accessible to people who, let’s face it, might turn their nose up at the thought of Scottish hip-hop to begin with,” says Louie, a 25-year-old raised in the north Glasgow estates of Blackhill and Robroyston.

Louie remembers when the mainstream small venues in Glasgow wouldn’t be so keen to book a Scottish hip-hop artist, and that’s part of the reason this band are together. He started his own club night called Resonance in 2007, first at Maggie May’s in the Merchant City and then at the larger Stereo near Central Station, with a wide remit that focussed on rap but reached out to other genres. One of the bands booked was all-female acoustic group The Miss’s, for whom Tait still plays guitar.

“Joining a hip-hop group came out of the blue,” says Tait, also 25, a multi-instrumentalist raised in Rutherglen. “We were both just looking to do something different. I wasn’t aware of there being a hip-hop scene in Glasgow, and Resonance opened my eyes to that.” Louie and Audrey’s collaboration started while they were leading an Impact Arts summer music workshop in Drumchapel and they would use their lunch hours to play together, developing a distinctive drums-and-voice style that combines a strong beat with Louie’s often lightning-fast vocals.

“In many creative collaborations it just doesn’t work,” says Louie. “You can be two great players or great in your own particular field, but for whatever reason your personalities clash or you’re aiming for different things or whatever. But with Audrey and I it clicked right away.”

Louie remembers his formative rap-listening years at school and says they were inspired as much by the cultural changes going on around him as the international sense of the music. “There was an influx of refugees and asylum-seekers into the Sighthill area of the city, so over summer our school had a multi-lingual unit and there were 40 nationalities there, guys from Kenya, Ghana, Eastern Europe, Serbia. So you make friends with people through football first, then they’d join our boys clubs and we’d hit it off through music, all the clichéd gangster rap like Tupac and Biggie Smalls that I was listening to at the time.”

Louie now expresses mild embarrassment at his youthful obsession with such macho staples of the genre. Instead it was hearing rapper Nas’ seminal 1994 debut album Illmatic, a classic of rap as social commentary, which inspired him to write his own rhymes. “He was talking about the area he was brought up in Queensbridge, New York,” says Louie, “but a lot of what he was saying was relevant to where I lived in Blackhill. I drew inspiration from that right away, socially conscious rap about people taking drugs at an early age, gangsters running whole communities, the corrupt establishment. It all sounds quite morbid but that kind of thing really spoke to me at the time.”

Louie speaks proudly of the pair’s independence as artists (they have no management or label) and of the strong following they’ve managed to pick up across Scotland regardless. Last year’s debut album Drums. Rap. Yes. sold out its original 250-copy print run and an equal number of represses, a wild word-of-mouth success amidst today’s industry, with a follow-up due this September.

“We don’t just jump about to Eminem,” says Tait. “First and foremost we want to push ourselves to do something different. It’s a common misconception about the hip-hop crowd, that they’re just neds or whatever, but when you meet them, the rappers, they’re so nice and really appreciative of music.”

“I don’t think you could adopt a different persona for hip-hop,” affirms Louie. “You need to discuss what you know, and we can touch on issues that are relevant to us here in Glasgow or in Scotland as a nation or Britain as a wider nation. I think it’s important to really nail your colours to the mast of who you actually are. For me the writing’s always been exploring myself as much as anything else.”

• Hector Bizerk play Kelburn Garden Party near Largs, Sunday 7 July; T in the Park, Friday 12 July; Doune the Rabbit Hole, Cardross Estate, Friday 23 August. hectorbizerk.com

CLAIMS made on the Society of Homeopaths website that controversial therapies could treat conditions such as arthritis and hayfever have been banned in a landmark ruling by advertising watchdogs.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has had a remit since 2011 to investigate claims made online, and the organisation said it had a large number of complaints relating to claims on homeopathy websites.

It chose to investigate the website of industry body the Society of Homeopaths as a test case “to establish our lead position on claims for homeopathy”.

The authority also looked at the body’s Twitter page, which included the tweet: “Antidepressant prescriptions up by 43 per cent. For more holistic healthcare which doesn’t rely on drugs try #homeopathy”, with a link to the home page.

The ASA found that all of the claims investigated were misleading and breached guidelines on health advertising.

The society’s homepage states: “There is a growing body of research evidence suggesting that treatment by a homeopath is clinically effective, cost-effective and safe.

“Currently, there is sufficient research evidence to support the use of homeopathic treatment for the following medical conditions: allergies and upper respiratory tract infections, ankle sprain, bronchitis, childhood diarrhoea, chronic fatigue, ear infections, fibromyalgia, hay- fever, influenza, osteoarthritis, premenstrual syndrome, rheumatic diseases, sinusitis, vertigo.

“Your local homeopath would be happy to discuss any health problems with you and offer advice about whether they might be able to help.”

The ASA asked whether the site could discourage essential treatment for conditions for which medical supervision should be sought, and whether the claims that homeopathy could treat the medical conditions could be substantiated.

In relation to the tweet, it investigated whether it could discourage essential treatment for depression, a medical condition for which medical supervision should be sought, and misleadingly implied that homeopathic remedies could alleviate symptoms of depression.

The Society of Homeopaths said it did not believe there was anything on the web page in question, or their website as a whole, which discouraged patients from seeking medical treatment.

Its site recommended maintaining a relationship with a GP or specialist and said homepathy could be used “alongside conventional medicine”, it pointed out.

But the ASA found that the claims were in breach of advertising rules.

A spokesman said: “We considered that the reference to these specific medical conditions meant the ad was targeted at consumers with a pre-existing diagnosis of these conditions or who were suffering from those symptoms.

“We considered the average consumer targeted by the ad was therefore particularly vulnerable.”

All medical claims “must be backed by evidence”, he said.

A CAPE Verde lizard, a fish from Arizona and a freshwater shrimp from Indonesia have been declared extinct and 21,000 species are in danger of dying out, according to a scientific ­survey.

The new Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) prompted fresh calls to step up conservation efforts when it was published yesterday.

As well as the three species now extinct, the report reveals “worrying declines” in populations of a Chinese porpoise, tropical cone snails and conifers around the globe, with a total of 20,934 species now listed as threatened with extinction out of the 70,294 assessed – almost one in three.

Jane Smart, global director of the IUCN’s biodiversity conservation group, said: “We now have more information on the world’s biodiversity than ever before, but the overall picture is alarming. “We must use this knowledge to its fullest – making our conservation efforts well-targeted and efficient – if we are serious about stopping the extinction crisis that continues to threaten life on earth.”

The Santa Cruz pupfish, once found in the Santa Cruz river basin in Arizona, has been wiped out by water depletion, while the Cape Verde giant skink, a lizard that lived only on one island and two smaller islets, has been hunted to death by introduced rats and cats.

A freshwater shrimp found in Java, Indonesia, has died out due to habitat degradation and urban development.

One of the world’s few remaining freshwater cetaceans, the Yangtze finless porpoise, is considered critically endangered. Populations of the creature, which is found only in China’s Yangtze River and two adjoining lakes, were estimated to number 1,800 in 2006 but have been declining by more than 5 per cent a year since the 1980s. Illegal fishing, high boat traffic, sand mining and pollution are hampering the animal’s struggle for survival.

The first global assessment of freshwater shrimps was carried out as part of the latest research for the Red List and shows nearly a third are now facing extinction from threats including pollution, the aquarium trade and modification of habitat.

Cone snails, which are important predators in their tropical marine environments, have also been included in the study for the first time and results have revealed that many are facing extinction. The first worldwide ­assessment of conifers, the planet’s largest and oldest organisms, is included in the new list, which reveals a third of cedars, cypresses, firs and other cone-bearing plants are now at risk of extinction – an increase of 4 per cent since 1998.

California’s Monterey pine has also been upgraded to endangered.

Detail of the species

Monterey Pine

California’s Pinus radiata is generally confined to promontories and strips of rocky coast as well as two offshore islands, and it is rarely found more than six or seven miles from the sea. Threats include logging, feral goats, an introduced alien pathogen (pitch canker fungus) and competition from other trees. It is now classed as endangered. Of three subpopulations on the mainland coast of California and two to three on two islands off the coast of Mexico, only one is healthy and regenerating well.

White–lipped peccary

FOUND in the Amazon, the Tayassu pecari, is considered vulnerable due to a decrease in its population – estimated to be close to 30 per cent in the past three generations (about 18 years). Habitat loss, illegal hunting, competition with livestock and epidemics are blamed for the decline, although new evidence suggests several cases of mysterious disappearances. It is already regionally extinct in El Salvador and is assessed as having a low probability of long-term survival.

Yangtze finless porpoise

IT IS predicted that about 94 per cent of the current population of Neophocaena asiaorientalis, a subspecies of the narrow-ridged finless porpoise, will be lost in the next three generations (about ten years) and the probability of its complete extinction is extremely high. Its conservation status has been raised to critically endangered.

Cone snails

SPECIES such as Conus belairensis, Conus bruguieresi and Conus ateralbus, found in tropical seas, have been categorised as endangered as their habitat comes under increasing attack from development for tourism and through industrial and marine pollution from sewage, chemical discharges and other toxins. Their spectacular shells also mean that many cone snails are also hunted to be sold to collectors, with particularly prized varieties fetching high prices.

Costa Rica brook frog

The outlook is improving for Duellmanohyla uranochroa, which has had its critically endangered listing downgraded after recent surveys discovered several subpopulations across its historical range. But the species remains on the endangered list, with fewer than 250 mature individuals estimated to live across all the currently known sites at Monteverde, Tuis and Fila Matama in Costa Rica. Tadpoles and two adults were found in Panama in 2008-9.

Cape Verde giant skink

Last seen alive in 1912, Macroscincus coctei is now officially listed as extinct on the basis that this species has not been found in recent surveys of the only Cape Verde islands where it was known to survive.

It had been recorded on the islets Branco and Raso, in a combined area of under seven square miles. Partial remains of a juvenile skink were reportedly discovered in cat faeces on Santa Luzia in 2005, but a survey of the island in 2006 failed to turn up any of the creatures.

AN EMINENT breast cancer surgeon from the United States collapsed and died just hours after arriving to start work at a Scottish hospital.

The tragedy happened as Keith Amos, widely recognised as one of the leading figures in his field, became unwell shortly after beginning his first day as a visiting surgeon.

The 42-year-old physician had earlier won a prestigious scholarship from the American College of Surgeons to study at the world-renowned breast unit at Edinburgh’s Western General Hospital. He had turned up as expected early on Monday morning last week, having flown into Scotland with his wife Ahaji and their three daughters, aged ten, eight and six, the previous Sunday night.

Within a matter of hours, the assistant professor of surgery at the University of North Carolina complained of abdominal pains, but put it down to a pizza he had eaten.

He was later convinced by his new colleagues to go back and rest at the flat he was renting nearby for his family during their time in the capital. But within a short time he returned to the hospital’s accident and emergency department, where his condition quickly deteriorated and he became disorientated.

Despite attempts by medical staff to revive him, he lost his fight for life with his wife and daughters nearby.

Mike Dixon, professor of surgery and consultant surgeon at the Edinburgh Breast Unit at the Western General, said Mr Amos had developed an acute aortic dissection – a rupture of one of the body’s major arteries – that caused his sudden and unexpected death.

He said: “It all happened so quickly and there would appear to be no history of illness before.

“Naturally everybody is deeply upset by what has happened, but the response from the hospital staff in helping his family throughout and afterwards has been quite staggering.”

Senior officials from the American Embassy in London assisted his colleagues, who had flown to Scotland immediately on learning of the death, to organise funeral arrangements.

A post-mortem was carried out on Wednesday and a death certificate issued to allow a cremation to take place on Friday before the Amos family returned to their home in Houston, Texas.

A series of tributes have been paid to Mr Amos, who chose to specialise in breast cancer research following the death of his mother from the disease while he was at an early age.

One of his colleagues, Sean McLean, described him as being positive and dedicated, adding: “Mr Amos was a person who first and foremost enjoyed life.”

A TREATY designed to remove radical cleric Abu Qatada from the UK has moved another step toward to full ratification.

The agreement, which aims to allay fears that evidence extracted through torture will be used against the terror suspect at a retrial, has now been published in the Jordanian government’s official gazette – leaving just a handful of legal moves remaining before the deportation process can begin.

In May, Qatada unexpectedly volunteered to leave the country as soon as the treaty is ratified.

Security minister James Brokenshire said: “The publication of the treaty in the Jordanian 
Official Gazette is welcome. While further steps remain, our focus is on seeing Abu Qatada on a plane to Jordan at the earliest opportunity.”

The publication of the treaty in the gazette comes after both houses of the Jordanian parliament and the country’s king approved the treaty, while the UK parliamentary scrutiny process has also completed.

However, Home Secretary Theresa May previously warned that, even when the treaty is fully ratified, it will not necessarily mean that Qatada will be on a plane to Jordan within days.

The case remains open to legal challenge.

For the past eight years, the government has been attempting to deport Qatada to Jordan, where he was convicted of terror charges in his absence in 1999.

The legal battle to remove him from the UK has cost the taxpayer more than £1.7 million since 2005.

Royal Bank of Scotland’s troubled Ulster Bank arm has announced up to another 1,800 job cuts and around 40 branch closures under plans to return it to profit within the next three years.

Ulster will slash its branch network from 214 to between 175 and 185 by the end of 2014, mainly impacting rural branches as it looks to focus on towns and cities.

In a presentation to investors, it said the turnaround plans would “significantly” reduce its workforce, from around 5,800 full-time staff to between 4,000 and 4,500 by 2016.

The job losses come on top of 950 redundancies announced at the start of last year, while its branch network has also reduced by 24 over the past 18 months.

Ulster Bank, which has branches across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, said it was too early to confirm where the job cuts will have an impact.

There has been speculation that Chancellor George Osborne was considering jettisoning loss-making Ulster Bank from RBS to help ready the 81 per cent state-owned group for a return to the private sector.

Ulster Bank has suffered hefty losses as it counts the cost of loans turned sour since the financial crisis.

THE UK’s ban on couples selecting the sex of their children has no ethical justification, an influential report has concluded.

A team of Britain’s leading ethicists said it would be ethical to allow people to use fertility techniques to choose whether they have a boy or a girl.

There is anecdotal evidence that some couples are opting to go abroad for treatment which involves screening embryos to determine the sex before they are implanted using normal IVF techniques.

But the ethicists, from Keele University in Staffordshire, said this posed risks to the patients and any child born as result.

The publication – Eugenics and the Ethics of Selective Reproduction – comes ahead of a conference of fertility specialists from across Europe meeting in London this weekend.

At present in the UK, sex- selection techniques are only permitted for medical reasons, for example to help at-risk couples avoid having a child with a genetic disorder linked to one sex or the other. But some have called for the techniques to be used by those with a preference for a boy or a girl.

The ethicists said they did not believe that allowing this would lead to a population imbalance if allowed within a strong regulatory framework.

They said other requests may stem from sexism or gender stereotyping, but these attitudes in themselves did not pose such risks to children that sex selection should be prohibited.

The authors concluded that in the UK it would not be right for “social” sex-selection treatments to be funded by the taxpayer.

The ban on sex selection is not only based on ethical concerns but also the risks posed by both fertility treatment to the women and potential damage to embryos during the sex-selection screening. The ethicists said that proper regulation would be needed to minimise any harmful effects of treatments carried out for non-medical reasons.

Lead author Professor Stephen Wilkinson, professor of bioethics at Lancaster University and previously based at Keele, said: “We examined the ethics of gender preference and sex- selection techniques in the British context and found no reason to expect harm to future children or wider society if these techniques were made available for ‘social’ reasons within our regulated fertility treatment sector.

“People who would prefer their new baby to be of a particular sex often have their own very personal reasons for this, to do with their family’s particular circumstances or history.

“We didn’t find any ethical arguments sufficient to justify a blanket ban on these people seeking sex selection.”

Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, said he had concerns about allowing sex selection for social reasons: “The difference between two children is a genetic difference. So what you are saying is we want certain types of children with certain types of genes and we don’t want other children with other genes. This is the beginning of eugenics, when a parent, community or society decide to only make sure that certain types of people are born.”

• CARE of expectant mothers could be revolutionised after British doctors discovered a gene which can lead to post-natal depression and an early test that can detect a woman’s likelihood of suffering from the illness.

A simple blood test, which is thought would cost around £10, carried out before babies are born could identify and even prevent the condition in mothers who have the genetic variation.

A team at University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust (UHCW) and Warwick Medical School uncovered evidence of a predisposition to post-natal depression (PND) due to variants in genes of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis – traditionally seen as the body’s “stress system”.

Professor Dimitris Grammatopoulos, professor of molecular medicine and consultant in clinical biochemistry and molecular diagnostics at UHCW and Warwick Medical School, who led the research, said: “PND is a complex condition influenced by everything from a woman’s financial situation to the level of support she is given.

“However, our research shows there is more to the ‘baby blues’ than environmental factors alone and has a strong genetic component.

“This discovery has the potential to revolutionise our care for expectant mothers by screening them before the devastating symptoms of PND set in.”

His paper, which has been published by the Journal of Psychiatric Research, was based on his recent study of 200 pregnant women.