Elizabeth Maginnis had a dinner date with the General Teaching Council last week. Both have this column to thank. Readers will recall that the proposal to invite Maginnis back in March prompted opposition from former Educational Institute of Scotland president Wolseley Brown who said he was “surprised and disgusted”.
The local authorities’ leader commented: “For anyone who knows me, this was exactly the kind of encouragement I needed.” Such is the history of cordiality between Maginnis and the unions that this endorsement will surely be worth a couple of hundred votes to Brown in the forthcoming GTC elections.
A more forcible objection came later from Michael Hannah, head of Hamnavoe primary in Shetland who stormed out declaring that Maginnis was talking “bollocks” (clearly a Shetland term of disputation). At least by then, as they say in Edinburgh, he had had his tea.
They also say in Edinburgh, according to GTC member and Jordanhill vice-dean George Livingstone, that “breeding is everything - in Glasgow it’s merely good fun”.
