Taggart

The last of my small pedals; my HM-2. Bought in 1984 because Robin Guthrie had one, and at the time it was my ambition to to sound like him when I played the guitar (going out with Elizabeth Fraser would just have been a chore to be endured). Still makes an excellent sound, particularly in tandem with a more weedy guitar (a borrrowed Fender Bullet worked particularly well with it), but not over the top.

I spent today at a conference about sharing information in Justice; the final speaker was by far and away the most engaging I have ever seen, and really shook up the complacency in the room. I was prepared for his presentation but many weren't; one part of it that many would have missed, because the footage was only 15 seconds long, was a murder, captured on CCTV, from a gang fight in Glasgow. Shocking for the ease with which a life can be gone, for the 'get in there' gesture when he realises he has blood on his hands, for the other guy stabbed too. Yet you hear his story, before and afterwards, and you understand, not only that society failed him, but that we go on failing young men like that when we equip them for nothing, give them easy access to alcohol, knives, gangs, and fail to undo the damage done by poor parenting, a lack of positive male role models, surround them with violence, and then when they don't learn that there are other ways to resolve disputes, punish them.

The murder rate, per capita, in Scotland is 3.9 times what it is in England. No wonder Partick police station always had an investigation on the go,