Drab Monday

Totally uninspiring weather here in the Western Isles of Scotland today, so drab that I'm not even going to merit it with a picture. It's raining intermittently. The early morning ferry got cancelled due to high winds, and a lot of ferries up and down the West Coast suffered the same fate. There is flooding in Stornoway, after the weekend's heavy rain, with Sandwick Road, which links the town to the airport, under water between the filling station and the industrial estate.

The Molly Campbell saga has moved into its next stage. Daddy has lodged an appeal, and pending the appeal hearing on Wednesday, Misbah / Molly will be allowed to stay with her father in Lahore. She wants to stay with an aunt and/or uncle in Glasgow, by the sound of it if she is forced to return to Scotland.

I was not sorry to hear that Augusto Pinochet, Chile's murderous dictator of the 1970s and 80s, suffered a severe heart attack on Sunday. He is now 91, and has been of frail health for a while. Pinochet came to power in an infamous coup in 1973, in which the sitting president, left-wing politician Salvador Allende, was murdered. Several dissident Chileans disappeared without trace under his rule, which was characterised by cruel suppression of dissent. I was disgusted to see Margaret Thatcher welcoming this monster for his support to Great Britain in the 1982 Falklands War.

The 'desapparacidos' [the disappeared] were a Latin American phenomenon of the various juntas in the 70s and 80s. In Argentina, there was until recently (and may still be on-going) a daily silent demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in the capital Buenos Aires by relatives of disappeared people. Nobody has ever been called to account for this. The Argentinian military government fell down after its defeat in the Falklands War.

North of the town of Lewes, Sussex (in southern England), a fireworks factory blew up in spectacular fashion on Sunday. Two firefighters were killed and 12 others injured. A few remain in hospital. Memories came back of an even more devastating explosion at a similar factory in the Netherlands in May 2000. An entire estate in the city of Enschede was severely damaged after an explosion ripped through a fireworks plant, which was situated in a built-up area.