Quintin Jardine's blog

A thought for the day. Charity shops are admirable enterprises, until they become the enemy.

North Berwick is one of many towns that used to have a bookshop but doesn’t any more; instead it has more charity shops than I can list here. When they become so prevalent that they have a negative effect on commercial retailers, there is legitimate cause for concern.

I’d like to see their operation licensed, with local councils given the responsibility of deciding when enough is enough.

I have news for Skinner fans.

The publication date of Last Resort, Bob’s twenty-fifth journey of self-discovery, has been brought forward. It will now appear in what publishers these days call ‘first format’, on April 9.

Pablo Milanes — Definitive Collection. You’ve probably never heard of Pablo, unless you listen to Spanish radio, and even there he doesn’t get much air-time. That’s because he’s Cuban, and because his career has more or less coincided with the years of the revolution, of which he is a supporter. But, suppose ‘Yolanda’ is the only song of his you ever hear, it’ll be worth it.

I drove through Figueras the other day, behind the biggest bull-dozer cum excavator I have ever seen on any public highway. Overtaking was impossible; it took up a full lane and part of another, with its driver sitting on top, encased in a  perspex box.

It must have been bloody difficult to drive, even more so since the guy was on the phone all the way.

In Scotland, BT is my internet provider. I run my email though a separate Gmail account, but the BT package comes with a built in email address. I have never used it, and yet it has been hacked three times, and used to send spam mail. ‘How can this be?’ you ask. Well, it seems that the BT account automatically copies my Gmail contacts, and uses them.

After the first incident I deleted all contacts from the account, but the damn thing went and did it again.

Finally after the third hacking, I went into the BT system and closed the email account; I took the address out of play altogether. Or so I thought. This morning, that deleted account was hacked again. I don’t know what to do any more, and I’m stuck with the infuriating problem, since I’ve just renewed with them for another year.

So here’s my message. Be as entranced as you like by Simon and all the other twats in the BT tv ads. Be as sold as you like on the Superfast, To Infinity and Beyond service that they offer. But never forget this. BT Internet security is bloody useless.

My thanks to everyone on the staff of the the CAP in L’Escala, and the ER in Figueras Hospital who dealt so well and so swiftly with the consequences of Eileen’s accident yesterday. Now she has a plaster on her broken foot and will be on crutches until it’s time to go back to Scotland, but compared to last year it’s minor.

I’ve been following the Ched Evans case, and I can’t help feeling that somewhere the legal process has  got it wrong. There are some professions from which a rape conviction would mean an automatic life ban, but in most it’s left to society to sort out what is acceptable and what is not. The way things stand, Evans is free to pursue employment, but doors are being slammed in his face, largely by potential employers’ commercial sponsors.

That’s fair enough, but should it have been left to them? Couldn’t the sentencing judge have imposed a penalty that included a fixed term ban from working in any profession with or alongside any person under 21? That would have been devious but effective.

Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow – Counting Crows. I’m back in Spain for a few weeks, working, and at the stage where I have a lunch break, then start again. Today’s interval choice as I sat in the sun, (sorry) was the most recent live album by my favourite still-working American band, but here’s how disciplined I was. I only allowed myself the first three tracks.