From our archives

5 years ago

Glasgow Lord Provost Sadie Docherty has launched an appeal to raise funds to celebrate a

Scottish working class heroine. She is promoting a campaign, launched by former MP Maria Fyfe, to raise money for a statue to Mary Barbour, who was the city’s first female Labour councillor.

Mary Barbour led the Rent Strikes in Glasgow at the height of the First World War, which forced a change in the law with the introduction of the Rent Restrictions Act.

10 years ago

Organisers of the Scottish Census have sent out 10,000 “fake” forms in a bizarre attempt to test whether the public can post letters and assess how effectively their office deals with incoming post. Residents in Midlothian and East Renfrewshire have been bemused by letters from Duncan Macniven, the Registrar General for Scotland, that ask them to take a dummy census form marked “Sample - Do Not Complete”, place it in a prepaid envelope and put it in the post.

25 years ago

The future production of a rare Scottish cheese appeared doomed last night after a justice of the peace ordered that 528 kilos, worth £27,000, should be destroyed. Mr Humphrey Errington, the Lanark farmer who makes Lanark Blue cheese, said the decision was likely to bankrupt him. He said he would like to fight the matter in the Court of Session, but claimed he did not have the money to do so. He warned: ‘’This decision means no specialist cheesemaker in Britain can feel safe from the threat of closure.’’