ROBERT McNEIL concludes his sideways look at 2007 by considering the goings on of the last three months of the year.
ARE police officers really necessary? And, if so, how many do we need? These tough questions dominated the last quarter of the year.
The Faslane protest ended after 365 days, having cost taxpayers £5 million and resulting in 1,110 arrests. On t
he last day, 500 anti-Trident campaigners clashed again with police, after trying to blockade the gates of the base. Some glued themselves to the road or chained themselves to the gates. By the end of the day, Strathclyde Police had arrested 73 men and 98 women.
No wonder we need more cops. The SNP government got a slating for claiming that, when it had said in its party manifesto it would create "1,000 more police", only the zeros had been correct. What they had meant to say was "the equivalent" of 1,000 officers, which was 1,000 minus 1,000. The trick would be effected by redeploying backroom boys to front-line duties.
But do we really need more cops? Earlier this month, nine were dispatched to raid the home of former Socialist MSP, Tommy Sheridan, frightening his wife and two-year-old child.
The MSP himself was arrested as a police car screeched into the car park of Talk 107, where the tanned Trotskyist presents a weekly radio show. The People's Tommy was charged after a police inquiry into perjury allegations. The allegations followed his successful defamation case against the News of the World, which had accused him of cheating on his wife, taking part in orgies, and so forth.
Meanwhile, the wife of a canoeist who turned up in London five years after vanishing without trace, was charged with two counts of deception. Anne Darwin, 55, was accused of dishonestly obtaining £25,000 in life insurance and a further sum of £137,000.
Mrs Darwin was arrested after returning to the UK from Panama. Her husband, John Darwin, 57, had already been remanded in custody on charges that he fraudulently obtained £25,000 from an insurance company by deception and that he made false statements to obtain a passport.
Talking of false statements, Kelvin MacKenzie, a pie-faced poltroon who used to edit the Sun, put the boot into Scotia, land of his ancestors, by claiming on the BBC's Question Time that we were subsidy junkies who spend all the money made by the Arthur Daleys of Saff Inglin. Following previous references to "tartan tosspots", and a call for Hadrian's Wall to be built higher, Kelvin's new moderate tone was widely welcomed by viewers.
The English were whingeing again over the Scottish Government's decision to freeze council tax. Graham Stringer, MP for Manchester Blackley, said his constituents were irritated by this and by free care for the elderly. Were they really? How fascinating.
Here, support for Scottish independence rose to 40 per cent while panicking Unionist parties, led by Labour, set up a talking shop to rival the SNP Government's "national conversation". The publicly funded group would discuss how to give Holyrood greater powers without allowing the country control over its own affairs. "I believe that Scots seek a future that gives them the chance to walk taller," said 3ft 2in Labour leader, Wendy Alexander.
Wendy's brother, Douglas, the International Development Secretary, faced the usual calls to resign after an official report fingered him for the Holyrood voting fiasco, in which 140,000 votes ganged agley. The report did not name him but accused a "small buffoon" of indulging in "party self-interest" when designing the ballot paper.
Whitehall cock-ups continued when HM Revenue and Customs lost a copy of its entire child benefits database, containing details of 25 million people, who were urged to monitor their bank accounts "for unusual activity". Even Broon's details were included, though his bank account just contains a dead spider.
Broon's ludicrous premiership faced a new crisis after the comical Fifer admitted secret donations to Labour from a property tycoon were illegal. Broon promised to hand back the £650,000 given through intermediaries by David Abrahams. Meanwhile, with amusing synchronicity, Scottish Labour became embroiled in another funding row, as the Electoral Commission investigated a donation to Wendy's leadership campaign fund.
Paul Green, a Jersey-based retail developer, was not on the UK electoral register as the rules require, but still gave £995, after one of Wendy's fixers allegedly approached him. The pledge was just inside the £1,000 limit, above which donations must be registered. The cry went up for Wendy to resign, but she brassed it out while her transport spokesman, Charlie Gordon, fell on his pen after failing to check the donation's legality.
The Nats had nothing to sleaze at when the Trump breezed in from America with his plans for a £1 billion golf resort on a spectacular stretch of Aberdeenshire coastline. One billion pounds? That's a lot of niblicks and, soon, Scottish people up and down the land were fighting about it. Donald Trump's people then warned our people that turning down the evil plan would send a negative message about inward investment in Scotland. Aw, as it were, naw.
The Donald was accused of bullying his mother's homeland and, consequently, his plan was bunged oot on the casting vote of Aberdeenshire Council's planning chairman, Martin Ford. The committed environmentalist said of the application: "This is a form of moral blackmail." Subsequently, he was forced out by a vote of no confidence.
To be fair, the Donald planned to stabilise fragile sand dunes and protect local birds currently killed by sadists. However, taking the hump, Trump threatened to plonk his resort down in Northern Ireland. So the Scottish Government called in the application, saying it was of national importance and not evil at all. However, it then transpired that shortly before this decision, Eck Salmond, leader of Scotia, had met Trumpite representatives at a five-star hotel on the outskirts of Aberdeen.
As First Minister, he was supposed to keep his neb out of it. But Eck is also the area's MSP, and claimed he was there legitimately in that capacity. That said, Eck had always supported the project and had met the Trump on various occasions. He'd had dinner with him in New York, hypnotised by the billionaire's bouffant barnet glistening in the candlelight. Eck is to be summoned before a Holyrood committee in the new year to explain this sort of thing.
After suffering months of wrinklie-style jibes and with his party's poll ratings plummeting, Sir Menzies Campbell put in his teeth and resigned as Liberal Democrat leader. Broon's wimping out of a snap election forced Ming's decision: had he stayed in post he'd have been 103 by the next poll. Waving a walking stick wildly, he said the fixation with his age irritated him. Why irritated, old man? "Irritated because of a quite extraordinary concentration on trivia which seems to surround leadership. People write articles about what kind of socks I wear."
After Sir Ming was sedated, Nick "Calamity" Clegg stepped into his socks and said his leadership would be about "renewed ambition for the Lib Dems, renewed ambition to…" Aw, shurrup.
Meanwhile, Werther's Originals were snorted with gusto as Led Zeppelin staged a one-off comeback concert before 18,000 rockers in London. More than 20 million had applied for tickets to the charity gig. When it was over, the band, once famed for hedonistic excess, asked for tea but turned down the offer of strong mints.
After nine years in the celebrity wilderness, the Spice Girls also embarked on a comeback tour. Despite a rapturous welcome from 15,000 fans in Vancouver, critics said they were mince.
Top loony Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi toured France at the invitation of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was criticised by leading existentialists for betraying the country's commitment to human rights. However, Sarkozy said Gaddafi had stopped sponsoring terrorism and that folk should encourage him to be normal. Coincidentally, he revealed the visit would result in massive contracts for military aeroplanes. Gaddafi brought a tent, a camel and some virgins to make him feel at home during his visit.
France and America became pals again, after Sarkozy schmoozed his way round Washington, telling Congress: "Whenever an American soldier falls somewhere in the world, I think of what the American army did for France. I think of them, and I am sad, as one is sad to lose a member of one's family." However, international observers thought he'd taken that a bit too far.
Britain all but ended its active combat role in Iraq with the handover of Basra, the last province under UK military control. Major-General Graham Binns praised the bravery of the troops who lost 174 of their number while, inside the city, Iraqis celebrated an "historic day" with a reading from the Koran.
Meanwhile, a British teacher faced 40 lashes in Sudan after naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Police arrived to arrest Gillian Gibbons, 54, at an exclusive British school.
The school was closed, and children were sent home for fear of reprisals from top Islamic thinkers. The teddy had been brought in by a pupil as part of a controversial project to study bears.
The children suggested three names for it: Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammad. Twenty out of 23 pupils voted for Muhammad, the name of a popular boy .
In the end, a Sudanese court – the equivalent of a British pub – just gave Gillian the jail, prompting thoughtful citizens in the heat-ravaged country to demonstrate outside, calling for her heid to be cut off and so forth. After eight days, the mother of two from Liverpool was released. Back in Britain, she said: "I never imagined this would happen. I am just an ordinary, middle-aged primary school teacher." However, she added: "The Sudanese people I found to be extremely kind." Except when they were wanting to cut off her heid.
Mad things happened at home too. Employees of Glasgow Housing Association were forced to attend seminars by a "mood guru" flown in at taxpayers' expense from South Africa.
One employee described the seminars thus: "One minute we were writing limericks about how good GHA was, the next she was blasting out the song Elevation by U2. Throughout, there was a video loop of SpongeBob SquarePants, and at one point we had to listen to the song Our House, by Madness."
Glasgow won the 2014 Commonwealth Games, prompting fears that the east end of the city could lose its traditional poverty in the accompanying "regeneration". The city beat the Nigerian capital, Abuja, which had promised "free first-class return plane tickets to Abuja for two officials (per country] to be taken at any time – starting tomorrow."
At footer, meanwhile, Scotland went out of the Euro 2008 qualifiers, beaten 2-1 by Italy, thanks to linesman Juan Carlos Jimenez forgetting to bring his guide-dog. Jimenez flagged for an Italian free-kick after a Scottish player was pushed off the ball. After the game, referee Manuel Gonzalez's airport bag was found to be full of Italian mementoes. The discovery led to calls for all Scotland's matches to be refereed by Scots in future. But what of the manager's future? "I have no plans to vacate my present position," said Alex McLeish, shortly before vacating his position.
After Steve McLaren vacated his position at England, Fabio Capello, the former Real Madrid coach, was appointed manager. Although Snr Capello spoke no English, he insisted through an interpreter that he was right brainy.
Scotland's right brainy finance minister, John Swinney, announced a new bridge would be built across the Forth at a cost of up to £4.22 billion. Mr Swinney said the bridge – due to open in nine years – would become an iconic structure, probably like the parliament, which is due to fall down at about the same time.
Respected landowner the Duke of Buccleuch died aged 83, while the Queen became Britainshire's oldest monarch – like, ever – beating the previous contestant, Victoria of that ilk, who lived for 81 years, seven months, and 29 days. Buck Hoose said the Queen had no plans to celebrate, and would spend the day reading official papers, smoothing doilies and signing stuff.
The Queen was crowned on 2 June, 1953, when people were poor but unhappy. I am happy to say it is 21 December, 2007, as I sign off.
You can fill in the blanks of the last week yourself. As for next year, I predict war, disaster, reality television and so forth. But I'm sure we'll muddle through.
1 OCTOBER: Hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators marked the final day of Faslane 365, a year-long protest at the Clyde naval base.
At least 15 people are killed and 19 injured in a suspected suicide-bomb blast in Bannu in Pakistan.
2 OCTOBER: Thomas "Hologram Tam" McAnea, a Glaswegian forger who was so good at producing fake £20 notes that they threatened the stability of the British economy, is jailed for more than six years.
The inquest into the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales and her lover, Dodi Fayed, begins in London.
Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, makes his first visit to Iraq, where he announces the withdrawal of 1,000 troops.
3 OCTOBER: The United States and Russia sign a pact to use the latter's technology on NASA missions to hunt for water on the Moon and Mars.
4 OCTOBER: Four arrested after a stolen Leonardo da Vinci painting worth £30 million is recovered during a raid on the offices of a Glasgow law firm.
5 OCTOBER: Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC 1, resigns over a doctored documentary trailer that misrepresented the Queen.
Marion Jones, America's premier Olympic athlete, admits to having used banned substances.
6 OCTOBER: Gordon Brown confirms there will be no snap election, leading to claims of him "bottling it".
7 OCTOBER: Vandals punch a 4in tear in the Claude Monet painting Le Pont d'Argenteuil at a Paris Museum during an all-night cultural festival.
8 OCTOBER: Marion Jones returns the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics and accepts a two-year ban.
9 OCTOBER: A political row breaks out over the near- £30 billion the Scottish Government will be able to spend by 2011.
10 OCTOBER: The International Monetary Fund warns of a slowdown of the global economy in 2008.
11 OCTOBER: Doris Lessing wins the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.
12 OCTOBER: Al Gore, a former US vice-president, and the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climate change share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
13 OCTOBER: Flooding after several days of torrential rain kills at least 23 in Haiti.
At least 20 people die following a landslide at an open-pit gold mine near Suarez in Colombia.
14 OCTOBER: After 25 centuries, the marbles of the Acropolis of Athens are cautiously moved to the New Acropolis Museum.
15 OCTOBER: Sir Menzies Campbell resigns as leader of the Liberal Democrats.
Richard Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales Police, calls for all classified drugs to be legalised in Britain.
16 OCTOBER: Anne Enright, author of The Gathering, wins the Man Booker prize.
17 OCTOBER: Scotland lose away to Georgia during the qualifying campaign for football's European Championship.
French public transport workers hold a 24-hour strike over pensions.
18 OCTOBER: Oil prices reach a record $90 a barrel.
The BBC announces 1,800 job cuts as part of restructuring to fill a £2 billion shortfall in government funding.
Nearly nine million people will be eligible for refunds after ITV reveals a new spate of phone-in scandals.
19 OCTOBER: The author JK Rowling reveals that Albus Dumbledore, below, Harry Potter's headmaster, is gay.
Thailand arrests Christopher Paul Neil, a Canadian suspected of sexually abusing children, after an international manhunt.
20 OCTOBER: South Africa beat England to win the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
21 OCTOBER: A fire in an illegal shoe factory kills at least 34 in China.
Wildfires burn out of control in California, leading to the death of a San Diego man.
Kimi Räikkönen wins the 2007 Formula One World Championship by a point from Britain's Lewis Hamilton.
22 OCTOBER: Three Britons and a German drown off the Algarve coast in Portugal while trying to rescue children.
Al-Jazeera broadcasts an audiotape purporting to be from Osama bin Laden calling on al-Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni militants to unite.
23 OCTOBER: Thousands of Venezuelan students clash with riot police and supporters of Hugo Chávez, the president, over proposals to remove term limits from the presidency.
Californian wildfires force the evacuation of more than one million people.
24 OCTOBER: The UK announces a unilateral end to the Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland from 2009, meaning passports will be required for the first time between the two countries.
25 OCTOBER: The death toll from California wildfires rises to 12.
The Airbus A380 takes off on its inaugural passenger flight from Singapore to Sydney.
26 OCTOBER: An explosion shakes the Mexican consulate in New York City.
27 OCTOBER: At least 30 people are killed and 100 injured in flooding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
28 OCTOBER: It emerges that a minor member of the Royal Family has been the target of blackmail attempts.
The Roman Catholic Church beatifies 498 people executed during the Spanish civil war.
29 OCTOBER: King Abdullah makes the first state visit to Britain by a Saudi monarch for 20 years, amid angry protests.
30 OCTOBER: Tropical Storm Noel weakens after causing up to 25 deaths in the Dominican Republic.
31 OCTOBER: Police question Prince Harry over the shooting of endangered hen harriers at the Sandringham House estate.
1 NOVEMBER: The Metropolitan Police are found guilty of violations of health and safety laws over the fatal shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground in July 2005.
2 NOVEMBER: Four firefighters die after a blaze at a vegetable packing plant near Stratford-upon-Avon – the worst loss of life in a single incident for the fire service in over three decades.
3 NOVEMBER: The Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, declares emergency rule amid rising militant violence.
4 NOVEMBER: Nigel Hastilow, a Conservative Party candidate in the Midlands, resigns after claiming Enoch Powell was right about immigration in his "rivers of blood" speech.
Paula Radcliffe, who gave birth to her daughter Isla in January, wins the New York City Marathon.
5 NOVEMBER: The Writers Guild of America asks 12,000 members to join a Hollywood screenwriters' strike.
6 NOVEMBER: Belgium sets a national record for the longest period without a new government – 149 days.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia visits the Vatican in what is the first audience by the head of the Roman Catholic Church with a Saudi monarch.
7 NOVEMBER: A coroner rules that a failure to fit a bomb-jamming device to Fusilier Gordon Gentle's Land Rover had contributed to his unlawful killing in Iraq.
8 NOVEMBER: At least seven construction workers are killed and 15 injured when a bridge under construction collapses in Dubai.
9 NOVEMBER: Glasgow wins the race to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
The People's Republic of China suspends the export of toys covered in a toxic chemical after they have been recalled worldwide.
Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who recently returned after self-imposed exile, is placed under house arrest.
10 NOVEMBER: More than 70 people die and over 200 are wounded in battles in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu.
11 NOVEMBER: Gabriele Sandri, 26, a supporter of the football club Lazio is killed by Italian police.
12 NOVEMBER: IBM announces it will buy Cognos, the business intelligence firm, for £2.5 billion.
13 NOVEMBER: Alex Salmond says Scotland will become independent within ten years.
14 NOVEMBER: A body found in the gardens of a Kent house is identified as that of Vicky Hamilton, left, the teenager who disappeared in 1991 aged 15.
15 NOVEMBER: Barry Bonds, a player in America's Major League Baseball, is indicted by a federal grand jury for perjury and obstruction of justice, having allegedly lied under oath about his use of steroids.
16 NOVEMBER: The remains of Dinah McNicol are found at a house in Kent.
Eduard Koltsov, a Russian, claims he killed the British diver Lionel Crabb while he was spying on a Soviet warship in 1956.
17 NOVEMBER: Scotland lose 2-1 at home to Italy, ending their chances of qualifying for Euro 2008.
Two NATO Canadian soldiers and an interpreter are killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.
18 NOVEMBER: Steve House, Strathclyde Police's new chief constable, says another terrorist attack in Scotland is almost inevitable.
19 NOVEMBER: The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrate 60 years of marriage with a special service at Westminster Abbey the day before their anniversary.
20 NOVEMBER: It emerges that two computer discs containing child benefit data relating to 25 million people have gone missing.
21 NOVEMBER: England fail to qualify for Euro 2008 after losing to Croatia.
22 NOVEMBER: Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen leaves Kolkata after riots against her in which at least 43 people were hurt.
England football manager Steve McClaren and his deputy Terry Venables are sacked.
23 NOVEMBER: Louise Christian, the lawyer for Alexander Litvinenko's wife, reveals that the polonium-210 that killed him probably came from a Russian nuclear plant.
24 NOVEMBER: HM Revenue and Customs confirms that a further six data discs have gone missing in transit between its offices in Preston and London.
25 NOVEMBER: Garry Kasparov is jailed for five days after a protest rally in Moscow and opposition leaders are detained.
26 NOVEMBER: Labour's general secretary, Peter Watt, resigns, after it emerged David Abrahams had donated almost £600,000 to the party.
27 NOVEMBER: Alex McLeish resigns as manager of Scotland to take over the helm of English side, Birmingham City.
Nearly 80 French police officers are injured during a second night of riots by youths in the suburbs of Paris.
28 NOVEMBER: Harry Redknapp, the manager of Portsmouth, is one of five men arrested as part of an ongoing investigation of alleged corruption in British football.
29 NOVEMBER: Gillian Gibbons, a teacher from Liverpool, is jailed in Sudan after allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Pervez Musharraf is sworn in as the president of Pakistan for a second term, this time as a civilian.
30 NOVEMBER: The body of Vicky Hamilton is laid to rest.
The pantomime star Christopher Biggins wins the seventh series of I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here.
A man takes hostages at the campaign office of Hillary Clinton, the former first lady who is running for the Democrat's nomination as US president.
1 DECEMBER: John Darwin, presumed dead after a canoe accident in 2002, walks into a London police station.
2 DECEMBER: The United Russia party, headed by Vladimir Putin, the president, wins 62.8 per cent of the votes in parliamentary elections.
3 DECEMBER: Mark Wallinger wins the arts Turner Prize.
David Leggat escapes from his bowling club in Aberdeen after being trapped in its lavatory for four days.
Muttiah Muralitharan of Sri Lanka breaks Shane Warne's record to become Test cricket's leading wicket-taker.
4 DECEMBER: The Scottish Government calls in plans for Donald Trump's £1 billion golf resort.
Wendy Alexander emphasises she will be cleared over an illegal donation to her Labour leadership campaign.
5 DECEMBER: The country and western singer Dolly Parton opens a branch of her Imagination Library project in Rotherham.
A man opens fire at a shopping mall in Omaha in the United States, killing eight people before committing suicide.
6 DECEMBER: A new report claiming that the 1994 Chinook crash on the Mull of Kintyre, in which 29 people died, was the result of equipment failure is to be considered by the government.
7 DECEMBER: Big-name retailers, including Asda and Sainsbury's, are fined a total of £116 million by the Office of Fair Trading after being found to have colluded over the prices of dairy products.
8 DECEMBER: A second human case of the H5N1 strain of bird flu is confirmed in eastern China.
9 DECEMBER: Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, cuts up his dog collar on live television in protest against the regime of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe.
Joe Calzaghe, the boxer, is named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Two people are killed and four people are injured during a shooting at a church in Colorado Springs.
10 DECEMBER: Conrad Black is sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail in Chicago after being found guilty of stealing more than £3 million from the newspaper empire he founded.
Michael Vick, a former quarterback for the American football side Atlanta Falcons quarterback, is jailed for 23 months over his involvement in a dog-fighting ring.
11 DECEMBER: Robert Pickton, a Canadian serial killer, is sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 25 years before being considered for parole.
12 DECEMBER: The British Council is ordered to close its offices in Russia by the beginning of 2008.
13 DECEMBER: An archaeological expedition from Indiana University finds the remains of the Quedah Merchant, a ship belonging to the Scottish sailor William Kidd who was executed for being a pirate. The ship is believed to have sunk in 1699, near Catalina Island in the Dominican Republic.
14 DECEMBER: King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invites Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, to visit Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage.
15 DECEMBER: Pervez Musharraf lifts the state of emergency in Pakistan that he declared on 3 November.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference concludes with an agreement for a two-year process to develop a new treaty on climate change.
16 DECEMBER: AC Milan wins the FIFA Club World Cup after defeating Boca Juniors 4-2 in the final.
Tommy Sheridan claims he is "the victim of a political witch hunt" after being charged with committing perjury during a defamation action, which saw him win £200,000 in damages from a tabloid newspaper.
17 DECEMBER: John Smeaton, a baggage handler, is to be honoured by the Queen for his bravery during the terrorist attack at Glasgow Airport.
Vladimir Putin agrees to become prime minister after his term as president of Russia ends.
18 DECEMBER: There is anger after it emerges that the Crown Office has refused to hand over a secret document considered vital to unearthing the truth about the Lockerbie bombing.
Jacob Zuma is elected president of South Africa's ANC party.
19 DECEMBER: An explosion and fire at a chemical plant in Jacksonville, Florida, results in at least four deaths and 14 injuries.
Vladimir Putin is named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
Guy Verhofstadt, the prime minister of Belgium, forms a temporary, coalition government comprising five members of the Socialist and Christian Democrat parties, who come from both of the main language communities.
20 DECEMBER: At 81 years, seven months, and 29 days, Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest-lived British monarch, surpassing the record held by Queen Victoria.
Sean Hoey is found not guilty of all 56 charges against him relating to the 1998 Omagh bombing.
21 DECEMBER: At least 50 people are killed by an explosion at a mosque in Pakistan.
22 DECEMBER: Turkish Air Force aircraft strike Kurdistan Workers Party targets in Iraq.
25 DECEMBER: The Doctor Who Christmas television special features Kylie Minogue.
