School's Out for Summer as the song goes. Tomorrow sees the start of the school holidays for Glasgow pupils. Hurrah!  Some other regions kick off on Friday. The last few days have been taken up with postponed sports days, fun days, proms and end-of-term assemblies. Excitement is at fever pitch, and that’s just the teachers.

I think we can all remember that wonderful prospect of the long summer holidays. Of course the chance of weather to match was at least a possibility then. For the last few days I’ve been on those weather predictions sites in the vain hope that the sun will shine for all these wee souls who are eager to shove on their shorts and just run around or jump in and out of their inflatable padding pools. God help them, they’re not asking for much. Just a few consecutive weeks of warm sunny weather. Not a few days here and a few days there. So fingers crossed and happy holidays.

Glasgow Times:

 

Cuba leads the way in medicine

Many Scots will be heading off abroad in search of the perfect destination. There are so many popular destinations nowadays from the old favourites like Spain and Portugal to the newer Bulgaria and Florida. Flying, as I did for 25 years, I was able to visit the newer places before most.

Some destinations would change for the better and others would be almost spoiled by commercialisation. Cuba and Dubai come to mind with the former improving as the tourists moved in and Dubai somewhat losing its mystique since I first started going there in the 80s.

With Cuba, the tourist influx has improved their economy which has been strangled as a result of the many years of US embargos. President Obama though, seems to be easing slightly on the Cuba situation.

Last week, I attended a Scottish Cuba Solidarity seminar at the Scottish Trade Union headquarters. The expert speaker on Cuba told of changing times ahead in the Caribbean island. A new President will be elected as Raoul Castro (Fidel’s brother) is to step down. It was encouraging to hear about the breakthroughs in medical science that been pioneered for years in socialist Cuba and the new ones about to be released. Like the meningitis vaccine which will save the lives of millions of children and cost poor countries only 16 cents a vaccine compared to the 16 dollars a vaccine being charged by the private pharmaceutical giants.

And a drug that repairs the damage caused by diabetes by regenerating tissue and avoiding the debilitating amputations which aggressive diabetes causes. According to Professor Steve Wilkinson, who addressed the meeting, it was Fidel Castro’s dream from the early 1960s to create a health and medicine nirvana in Cuba which would then assist poor people’s across the planet. That is exactly what they have done, despite illegal and immoral economic blockades by the West, over the last five decades. Well done Cuba. Keep up all the good work. Medicine should be about health and wellbeing not profits.


Greece on the brink

Still on the holidays theme Greece, an old favourite in the travel brochure, is awaiting news on its destiny with the big guns at the European parliament. It got a loan of money from them and other bodies like the International Monetary Fund and is looking for more time to pay it back.

As I write this, negotiations to avoid Greece defaulting are on-going. It appears the big countries like Germany and the UK, as well as the banking system, want Greece to cut back even more on welfare, wages, pensions and public sector jobs. This despite a collapse of living standards for millions across Greece. The reason the left wing Syriza government were elected was to protect the people not bend the knee to the bankers and big countries. I hope they refuse to buckle and tell the money folk, who have ripped them off for years with unfair loan terms, to get lost.