'Country Roads take me home...'

Vocation and learning is alive and well in Maryland

I had a great day out last Wednesday.  I was invited to speak to a group of 16 to18 year olds at Frederick County Career and Technological Center This is a vocational college which local kids attend for half a day, every day and spend that time training for a career after school, usually one that doesn’t include college or university.  I think we used to have such places in the UK and called them technical colleges.  What a great place it was!  There were classes for everything from hairdressing to car mechanics; from computer engineering to cake making.  There was also a class on medical biosciences which is often taken by kids wanting to go to medical school and is something medical schools like to see on applications.  Over and above the subjects on offer, the students learned business skills.  They managed this through running businesses using the college facilities and making their skills and products available to the community at a reasonable rate.  I thought this was a brilliant place.  It was full and full of happy kids all of whom seemed to have a goal in mind as well as a skills to go with that goal.  Essentially they were being given the tools and support to achieve their goal.  In an era where so many people are being bounced into university through political pressure, it was refreshing to see this productive approach to vocational education.  The world needs mechanics, hairdressers and computer engineers.  This seems like a great way to ensure Maryland has the skills it, as a community, needs going forward.

I was there to talk to a couple of classes of prospective police officers.  These kids come in each day, they put on a police uniform complete with utility belt and epaulettes before learning about law and policing.  Some may become cops; many will not, but they certainly have the chance to learn about self discipline, leadership (they take turns in holding rank) and responsibility, all of which is essential to policing.  The questions were fantastic, including being asked to speak in Scottish and being asked if I could give them some Scottish money!  It was a privilege to have be invited and it was certainly a situation I feel we could learn from in within the Scottish context.

The really, very, Super Bowl

The big thing here this week was Super Bowl.  

First off, this was confusing for me.  The Americans give each Super Bowl a number.  They do this with Roman numerals.  This was probably a good idea for the first ten or so, but we are now at XLIX.  To me, thats right up there with fahrenheit.  Why do it?  There’s a reason the Romans don’t use these numbers anymore!  Thank goodness my 8 year old was around to explain to me it was Super Bowl 74!

Having never before taken much interest in this event it was fantastic to see it last Sunday.  It is a massive event, not like anything I’ve ever seen in Scotland. This was not like standard cup final where only the fans of the sport along with the fans of the teams involved get into it; this is a truly national event.  Old ladies in the queue at Safeways were speculating as to what Katy Perry would play and whether or not the Patriot’s balls would be blown up enough!  Many of the stores had their beer and sort drinks set out in Super Bowl formation and coverage was wall to wall on the TV and in the newspapers.  It was an event the whole nation got behind.  Its also fair to say that given the Patriots seemed not to have the firmest of balls in the semis, the Seahawks seemed to have the majority of the nation’s support.  It looked  to be going so well for them until, like so many Scottish teams, the managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Super Bowl has something for everyone, sport for the sports fans, music (well Katy Perry this year) for the music fans and really expensive adverts for people who like that kind of thing too.  There are some hard core fans who just don't like that kind of thing though, fans like Bill Burr, who is a grumpy guy comedian and NFL fan that I’ve discovered since coming here.  He’s not one for the social aspect of Super Bowl.

Talking of being sociable, Scotland was not for being left out on Super Bowl Sunday and had its own game going on.  This was, I think, the biggest soccer game (see I’m getting into the lingo) of the season on the same day.  It’s worth having a wee comparator…the Super Bowl attracted around 100,000 spectators whilst the Scottish game had a capacity of around 53,000.  As for violence at the Super Bowl - none was reported, albeit there was a bit at parties around the country, including a shooting.  There seems to have been several violent  incidents at the Scottish game.  This seems to have reflected in the number of arrests at the matches, which the Scottish game won with 19 arrests to the Super Bowls nil!  

Of course, culture and history and the game itself are very different, but really?

Country Roads

I had a couple of days in Roanoke County this week.  This is a city about 4 hours drive away from DC and the first big journey I’ve done in Virginia.  Once I was in the country this really was rural America, it really was the land of Bonanza and John Wayne.  I passed the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (you’re all singing it now…so here it is) and passed towns and villages called, Dumfries, Buchanan, Glasgow and Edinburg.  The didn’t have an ‘h’ at the end of Edinburg which is perhaps partially responsible for the way our city’s name is pronounced here. There was also a Bristol, but I’m guessing the captain of the boat the Bristol folk were on got a bit lost if they ended up with the Scots!  It was a great drive and I quickly found myself humming Country Roads…you’re singing that one to yourself now too!  I stopped, downloaded it then sung along with it like a lintie.  The last time I had done that was swinging from a bar stool at Pete Wilson’s wedding when this was, for no apparent reason, adopted as the wedding song!  The hotel, wedding guests and my visa are still in recovery over that one!

The drive was great and Roanoke was fantastic.  I met with a number of cops who all spoke to me about what they thought policing was about which was ‘keeping people safe’!  All the sergeants spoke about the need to be empowered and how that makes for a better service.  From what I saw of the officers and their leaders, that seems to be happening there, which is a great thing.

I mentioned to the groups I had spoken with that I’d been away shooting last week and that had been the first time I’d ever fired a handgun.  The cops were simply amazed as they have been every time I’ve mentioned that.  Most cops just can’t get their heads around the fact that we have so few firearms incidents in Scotland and have not shot anybody in anger in many years.  I guess that’s not surprising.  Cops here often fire as many as 1,000 rounds a month in practice, in addition to accreditation and during the journey to lunch, there were a couple of calls on the radio relating to firearms incidents.  We would have sat up and put a non-routine response in place; in Roanoke that style of response was the routine.

Lunch was interesting too.  My colleague, who was in full uniform, which included gun, baton, taser and CS, whipped me off for a good wee lunch in a place called Frankies.  We were joined by another couple of uniformed cops and together we sat down to eat lunch, in the public restaurant where the sold food and alcohol and which was chock full of non-police diners.  This is something we would simply not do in Scotland.  My host asked why?  I explained about the offence committed, in Scotland, by an officer being on a licensed premises unnecessarily and of the concerns we might have about cops and free food.  Much like our lack of guns, my explanation caused a bit of consternation and simply did not fit with the culture of policing and society found here.  

News anchor misremembers!  

One of the stories making the headlines here is the claim by an fairly prominent news anchor called Brian Williams that he was in a US military helicopter that was struck by an RPG during the Iraq war.  This is a claim he seems to have been making since 1994, which was this week revealed as being utter rubbish but, rather than come clean, Brian remembered that he was in the helicopter behind the one that was shot down…strike two - he wasn’t on that one either!  His helicopter arrived an hour later and landed next to the damaged one.  To be fair, when quizzed by Mrs A as to whether I had been to Safeway’s or Walgreens for a some toothpaste I mistakenly said Walgreens when in fact I’d bough it from the other place.  So, its an easy mistake to make, unless of course it involves rocket propelled grenades and emergency landings then its just self aggrandising lies.  Brian appears, for the moment, to have kept his job.  Policing is always held account by the media, and that is broadly correct.  As a result we often use the phrase, ‘better cock up than cover up’; this guy could certainly not be described as a cover! 

Williams called that one very wrong, in my view.  Would he have kept his job in any of the UK news outlets?  I don’t know but I hope not.  

Rubbish films and resignations

Talking of society in general here, the head of Sony Pictures resigned earlier this week in response to the North Korean hacking episode.  The film at the heart of it all ‘The Interview’ was stuck on US Netflix this week, I started watching it, got 20 minutes and hit the stop button.  I have never seen such rubbish since GI Jane, but at least that had Demi Moore in it!  Was that what caused an international incident between nuclear powers? Seriously?

You say tomato…

Well, I had a bit of a moment during one of my presentations this week.  Without going into all the details,  I was discussing an individual who was a chain smoker and who drank Martinis throughout the day.  I described him as ‘having a fag in one hand and a Martini in the other’.  As soon as I said it, the atmosphere changed and people started looking at me funny…then the penny dropped: a ‘fag’ in America is certainly not a cigarette!  It was a case of hitting reverse and trying to explain and offering profuse apologies. It was certainly not one of those ‘nobody noticed, I think I got away with it’ moments!

What I’ve learned this week…

Vocational training is a great idea.

The Romans clearly had too much time on their hands.

Its not good to win the ‘how many arrests did you make’? contest.

Cops everywhere just want to protect their citizens.

Laurel and Hardy still make me laugh and John Denver brings back great memories.

The bigger the lie you tell, the more stupid you look.

There is another, very good, reason not to smoke.

Any thought or comments are greatly received.

Very best

Richie