Jenny Hjul : These mothers need more dress sense

Published on Wednesday 8 September 2010 13:22

TO UNDERSTAND the minefield of school skirt lengths, you don't need to have your own daughters - but it helps. A teenage girl's reputation can hinge on the difference between nine centimetres above the knee and six, and parents must approach the subject with extreme caution.

When handled clumsily all hell can break loose, as Borders headmaster David Kelly discovered when he decided to tackle the ever-ascending hemlines of his female pupils. In a girls-only assembly at Berwickshire High, he warned that skimpy outfits not only flouted uniform policy but "sent out the wrong messages" and distracted boys.

Instead of being congratulated for broaching a problem that plagues headteachers, Kelly has been condemned by mothers for distressing their children and has been reported to the local council for his "deeply offensive" remarks. Now there are calls for him to be sacked.

His chief crime, it seems, was suggesting that the girls were in some way to blame for the attention they attracted, an assertion that has apparently undermined his students' self-confidence. It is probably reasonably safe to assume that in this school, as in others, the wearers of the shortest skirts and the least buttoned blouses are not the most seriously afflicted by confidence issues.

Besides, Kelly did not say the girls were asking for trouble. He did describe their outfits as provocative, though, and he cited a television advert made by Rape Crisis Scotland, which shows a young woman buying a microscopic skirt before a night out. He probably wishes he hadn't.

Rape Crisis Scotland professes to be disturbed that Kelly has misinterpreted its campaign: "We think it is clear that the advert is saying exactly the opposite: that no matter what a woman wears, she is never responsible for rape."

Of course she isn't. But that doesn't mean anything goes with clothes. Surely it is a head's duty to safeguard the decorum of his young charges and guide them towards appropriate dress codes before they are sent out into the world. That's all Kelly was trying to do.

TRAM bosses have decided to ignore Edinburgh residents' latest protests over road closures. One of the reasons given is that the objections, particularly from the New Town, are based on "unreliable" figures about increased pollution levels.

City of Edinburgh Council and Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE) know a thing or two about unreliable figures. They told us the trams were going to cost no more than 500 million, but the final bill is creeping closer to 700m.

TIE originally said the tram lines would be open by 2009. Now, as we know, they are unlikely to be "live" before 2013 at the earliest.

The "slippage" is connected to "on-street sections impacting the critical path" and calculated on "estimates of projected work patterns going forward".We could be forgiven for thinking this is a poorly translated statement from the German contractor Bilfinger Berger.

This may explain why relatively few people (around 400) have complained about the unpopular traffic measures being forced on them. Local businesses and residents used to do nothing but complain about the trams, about the disruption, the loss of revenue, the burden on the taxpayer, the sheer pointlessness of the whole exercise. But that got us nowhere and nor, come to think of it, will the trams.

WHEN Scotland's former first minister Jack McConnell said he was regularly embarrassed by Labour colleagues at Westminster, he was talking about Tony Blair and not the current leadership favourite, David Miliband. He likes the older Miliband brother and says he is backing him because he "got" devolution.

But one wonders if Miliband even knows who McConnell is. During his tenure of Bute House, the Wishaw MSP was variously referred to as Jack McDonnell, Josh McConnell and plain Jock, if he was referred to at all, by baffled Labour MPs in London.