A date has been set for an inquiry into the death of serial killer Peter Tobin. The murderer died on October 8, 2022, while serving a full life order and an inquest will begin on September 17, 2024. Peter Tobin  died in agony at an Edinburgh hospital following a fall in his prison cell.

The 76-year-old had been an inmate at HMP Edinburgh when he was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on September 9, 2022 following a fall in his cell the previous night. Tobin was serving the sentence for the murders of Angelika Kluk, 23, Vicky Hamilton, 15, and Dinah McNicol, 18.

The Kluk murder had a number of Dumbarton connections in that the parish priest of St Patrick’s Anderston at the time was the late Father Gerry Nugent, who had been a curate at St Peter’s, Bellsmyre, and the current parish priest is Canon Paul Gargaro, a native  of Dumbarton.

Father Nugent’s Samaritan-like gesture of giving a home to a poor student turned into a disaster.

St Patrick’s Anderston is one of the poorest parishes in the Archdiocese of Glasgow and it is where Archbishop William Nolan, who succeeded the late Archbishop Philip Tartaglia chose to take up residence rather than move into a a plush, many-roomed mansion in the south side of the city.

The church, pictured right, is earmarked for closure and probably demolition after receiving an estimate of £2 million to restore it.

Peter Tobin has long been suspected by police of murdering several women other than the three named above as he lived under more than 40 aliases and had over 150 cars in his life, but he walked free for years.

The inquiry, mandatory by law, will look into the cause of death, the circumstances in which it occurred and will establish whether any reasonable precautions could have been taken to prevent the death. It aims to minimise the risk of deaths in the future.

Procurator fiscal Andrew Shanks, who leads on fatalities investigations for Scotland’s prosecution service, said Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain considers that the death of Peter Tobin occurred while in legal custody and as such a fatal accident inquiry is mandatory.

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The Labour leaders going for election, Anas Sarwar and Sir Keir Starmer.

The General Election campaign for Labour has got off to a somewhat sticky start with both Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the UK party, and Anas Sarwar pushing their working class credentials while trying to consign their connections with Jeremy Corbyn to the dim and distant past.

Sir Keir in what was reported to be his most important speech of the campaign pushed the working class line, telling the assembled press corps he was genuinely working class and not one of those lefty left wing London lawyers as some of the right wing media would have it.

So, how was that then? His parents, he said, like all working class people were afraid of getting into debt which they might not be able to afford. They made hard decisions about the things they had in their household and didn’t keep them if they couldn’t afford to pay the bills for them.

Top for the chop in the Starmer house was the telephone bill which didn’t get paid and the phone had to be dispensed with.

A switched on adviser would have told Sir Keir that he had chosen a poor example to illustrate his working class point.

Telephones were something working class households in the housing schemes and tenements never had. If you had a a telephone, you were considered to be posh.

As for Anas Sarwar, for whom the words “working class” are frequently written into his speeches, everybody know he’s minted as are so many of the leading figures in the Labour Party.

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Jane Grant, John Brown and Dame Jackie Baillie.

Jane Grant, the Chief Executive of the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, is retiring, after having held off calls from prominent politicians, including our own MSP Dame Jackie Baillie, that she should resign in the wake of of the many scandals that have attached themselves to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, which serves West Dunbartonshire, under her stewardship.

I am told there has been another crisis at the “showpiece hospital” which cost almost £1 billion of taxpayers’ money to build.

And that it involves the heating system, which had (has) broken down and, like other faults at hospital, has taken (took) some time to repair, causing considerable inconvenience and discomfort to patients who are complaining that they are too warm in their beds.

So much so that, in typical Glasgow fashion, patients have given it a nickname — Sweaty Betty’s no less!

Mrs Grant and the former Board chairperson, John Brown, won’t be missed from their headquarters offices at the Gartnavel campus in Glasgow.

Their names are likely to be prominent on the list of highly paid public officials who leave their post under a cloud with commutation and pension packages beyond the dreams of avarice.

The golden parachute brigade becomes ever larger – and costlier – in 21st century Scotland.