Berwickshire News August 24th

ANTHRAX is the word on many peoples' lips across the Borders this week after the revelation that a man from Stobs, near Hawick was the first person to die from anthrax exposure in the UK in 30 years - he worked with raw animal skins in making drums which is viewed as the most likely cause. 74 people are being offered precautionary antibiotics although the incubation time for anthrax is about a week and it took NHS Borders 6 weeks to confirm that he was suffering from anthrax. Local MP Michael Moore and MSP Euan Robson are of course up in arms about it. SBC are under fire once more, this time for their spending on hospitality - over £6500 over a four year period on sandwiches, wines and beer, including £402 on 12 bottles of wine at the Peeble Silver Arrow competition and only £15 for 3 bottles at a press reception. SNP MSP not happy about the disparity between the price of the wine either or the profligacy of SBC at a time when services and jobs are being cut. Drink driving offences in Scotland as a whole are increasing much to the sadness of ACPOS who have noted a 100% increase in speeding motorists and 22% rise in drink/drug drivers - including a Dunbar man who was banned at Haddington Sheriff Court and was then caught the same day behind the wheel and unfit through drink once more.

A pedigree cat has gone missing in Coldstream - the owner is distraught, but wasn't actually bothered enough about the cat to keep it under watch so it could have been stolen, flattened on the main road or shot by the phantom airgunner of Duke Street mentioned previously in this column. The large rodent seen on the A1 near Eyemouth last week is most likely a coypu according to experts although those that saw it insist it looks more like the photo of the capybara they were shown rather than the coypu - so that's that sorted.

A young lady who formerly attended Berwickshire High in Duns is off to Cambodia as a volunteer - she's pictured pointing at a map of the world, to a point off the Indian coast where normally one expects to find Sri Lanka so hopefully she's not navigating on the trip to Cambodia - whilst there she will be working with orphans. It turns out that she was supposed to be going to Sri Lanka but the organisation for whom she is working has changed plans and is now sending her to Cambodia. Harbour Notes informs us that it wasn't a very good month for the harbour as only 3633 tonnes of cargo were handled against 4708 in June. August doesn't look promising but apparently summer never is in the port business. Then there is a bit about actual movements although at no time is the name of the mystery port mentioned. One can only assume it's Berwick though.

Only a single story from DSC this week - a Coldstream man who's long term girlfriend "transferred her affections to another" fined £100 and ordered to pay £500 compensation for damaging her car.

On the letters page,no mention of dog do for a change, but a reprint of a letter recently sent to Andy Kerr MSP, Scottish Health Minister by the Coldstream Parish Minister (a minister of religion rather than an executive minister) where the minister (of religion) outlines what most people already thought - the deal to shut Coldstream Cottage Hospital was a done deal before the consultation was carried out. Amongst many other things he points out that Coldstream Cottage Hospital no longer appears in the phone book - a phone book compiled before the decision was actually formally taken. Make of that what you will.

The gull problem in Berwick is visited in the "Birds on your doorstep" column that I've not previously spotted - doing nothing is not an option - shooting the birds is not an option either with safety concerns about marksmen wandering the streets and taking potshots - nor is poisoning because the dead birds might fall in the road and cause a health hazard (or put someone off their pastie that they were about to throw down for the gulls of course) - a cull was useless in South Shields anyway as the culled gulls were simply replaced by other gulls in the area. The cited compromise would involve two approaches - to disturb the birds constantly in the hope that they clear off elsewhere, this is time consuming and costly - and to make sure littering, especially of food waste is eradicated by fining those that do it. The Paper Boy sees great merit in this approach, even using the revenue from the food-droppers' fines to pay for the gull-disturbers - it might even be revenue neutral at the end of the day.

Picture of Duns Sheriff Court courtesy of the Scottish Courts website