From the archives

25 YEARS AGO Scottish Health Minister, Mr Michael Forsyth was under mounting pressure from MPs and health unions last night to withdraw the attack he made in the House of Commons on Wednesday on the integrity of Glasgow Herald reporter Auslan Cramb. Mr Forsyth had described as scurrilous and inaccurate an account by Mr Cramb of how he had turned up at Glasgow’s Western Infirmary with a broken foot at 5pm on Monday and been unable to get it plastered because there was no plaster technician available. Mr Cramb, who sustained the injury playing football, denies Mr Forsyth’s allegation that he opted not to have a plaster so that he could drive his car home to Dollar, nearly forty miles away. He was in considerable pain when two fellow Herald journalists carried him into the Western casualty department. 50 YEARS AGO Town councillors in Cumnock were in a quandary last night about the noise made by square manhole covers. They were told by the burgh surveyor, Mr R. Forret, that in his opinion the square covers rattle and bang when they become worn and vehicles pass over them. He believed, however, that round manhole covers do not share this fault. The council’s dilemma arose because they wish to buy as much as possible from Ayrshire firms to stimulate trade in the county. Mr Forret said:“Unfortunately, no Ayrshire factories make round manhole covers. A firm at Kilwinning make square covers, but we have to buy the round ones from Falkirk.” Mr John Weir, a former provost, stating that if they didn’t help themselves as a county nobody else would, added:-“If Ayrshire firms really want to sell manhole covers, perhaps they should consider them round instead of square. 100 YEARS AGO As an etcher Mr Muirhead Bone is known the collectors’ world over. On the other hand he has painted very few pictures. Perhaps the most important of them has just been bought by the Contemporary Art Society, and soon or late will pass into the Tate Gallery. It is a study on a moderately large scale of a winter landscape in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, and was painted about 1899, the year before the date of his earliest etchings.