WITHIN THESE WALLS

He may be the most dangerous man in Scotland. He’s certainly the most dangerous prisoner. Arguably he is a violent psychopath, although prison authorities have classed him sane.

In July 2016 22-year-old Ewen MacDonald was jailed for nine years for attempted murder, having attacked another man with a knife in an Aberdeen flat and stabbed him repeatedly. Since being imprisoned he has carried out several attacks on prison officers, having apparently been able to extract blades from the disposable razors prisoners are issued with each day. He has been moved from prison to prison across Scotland, including Barlinnie, Kilmarnock and lately Low Moss outside Bishopbriggs. He is likely to serve much longer than his original tariff because of the repeated offences.

MacDonald has told prison staff that his ambition is to kill a warder and also his mother. In at least one jail he has been kept in isolation, not mixing with other prisoners, fed separately, taken out to exercise on his own by officers wearing full riot gear, helmets and stab-proof body armour. He does not receive visits.

This one extreme example illustrates what warders potentially face. One will be attacked today. Or if not today tomorrow, if the pattern of the past is repeated. In 2016/17, 190 staff were attacked by prisoners.

It also brings home one consequence of following the “lock them up and throw away the key” policy some call for. MacDonald’s case also raises questions about the welfare of prisoners as well as their human rights.

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said they were unable to comment on individual prisoners.

DON’T SAY BROWN SAY HOPELESS

Steven Brown is by far the most successful artist is Scotland, although some would query the job description. He’s just opened a gallery in Newmarket Street in Ayr, which is the third of his properties in the atmospheric, pedestrianised boulevard. Before long he’ll be populating the whole street. Art critics are dismissive of his oeuvre and incredibly sniffy about his work and so I set out to visit his gallery and judge first hand. All I can say is pass the jumbo box of tissues please.

It’s a bit like observing the aftermath of a direct hit on a paint factory, featuring garish cows – coos as he puts it along with dreadful puns – with the occasional dog, dug rather, giraffe or dead pop star thrown in. And the works are incredibly expensive. Most are limited edition prints, with prices of £1000 and more not untypical, and if you want a one-off, such as the barely-recognisable Oor Wullie in the background to an inevitable coo (Oor Wullie and Big Tam McCoo), you’ll have a fiver change out of forty grand. If Brown has captured the Scottish cultural zeitgeist, which he may well have done, then we’re in some kind of communal acid flashback.

He is no painter but what he has done is to industrialise his product – and tartan bunnet off to him here – allied to being an incredibly capable marketer and shrewd businessman. He advertises widely, particularly on commercial radio station West FM, and has a whole production line of spin-offs, from key rings at £5.95, to mugs and table mats, featuring the multi-coloured coos. I came away admiring his gallusness, although it’s probably called chutzpah in artistic circles.

NATIONAL APATHY DAY

It was Abraham Lincoln who said that what kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself and although he was talking long before the PRs and spin doctors began to bombard us with their flatulence Abe knew the score. If journalism should be about putting out what someone else doesn’t want seen or heard then public relations is about covering it up, or concocting a wheeze – usually a desperately limp one – to convince the public it’s important. One of the most hackneyed ways is to invent a week of celebration and focus. Like today – bet you didn’t know – it’s the start of British Sandwich Week and tomorrow British Tomato Week. Couldn’t they just have got together, saved time and effort, and had British Tomato Sandwich Week?

Tomorrow is also the start of British Retail Week which, in the words of the PR, is an “awareness campaign focussing on retail therapy as a tool to relieve stress and wellbeing.” No, it isn’t. It’s a tool to relieve your purse of hard-earned cash and add to your anxieties when the average debt per person in Britain is over £8,000, excluding mortgage.

The calendar is packed with these non-event weeks, most of which, fortunately, escape the attention of the public. So I’ve decided to come up with my own. It will be called National Apathy Week and it will be held… if I can be bothered to fix a date. Its success will be measured by all of those who don’t take part so I’m predicting a major coup. It is a follow-on from my National Apathy Project, or Nap, which I am thrilled to reveal has no members.

SACRE BLEUE FROMAGE

I wouldn’t know a Dunsyre Blue cheese from a Dairylea triangle, except that the former is made from unpasteurised milk and in 2016 health authorities blamed it for an E.Coli outbreak which the makers strenuously denied. Well now a major stushie has erupted on the other side of the Channel which Dunsyre cheese maker Humphrey Errington will appreciate and support. Twenty-nine top French chefs, many of them Michelin-starred, have published a manifesto in defence of camembert which they claim is in danger of becoming a vulgar, tasteless imitation of the real thing, because pasteurised milk is to be allowed in its manufacture rather than the raw stuff. If that happens, they say, the unpasteurised variety will become a luxury eaten only by the rich.

“Shame, scandal. There are no words strong enough to denounce the dereliction of duty….” cry the chefs, rounding off with, “Liberte´, ´egalité, camembert.” Gordon Ramsay where are you in the hour of need?