Kids are safer in Scots ambulances

By Michael MacLeod

HUNDREDS of emergency crews are adapting their ambulances with a new system to stop tots falling off stretchers while racing to hospital.

In a UK-first, all 450 ambulances across Scotland are being kitted out with child booster beds.

The seat’s designers say they will make Scots youngsters the most securely transported in the country.

The safety precedent was set yesterday (Thursday) by the Scottish Ambulance Service, which became the first to adopt a new Ambulance Child Restraint (ACR) system.

Missing Tigger found 150 miles from home – two years later

By Oliver Farrimond

A WANDERING cat was re-united with its owner yesterday after going missing for more than two years.

The free-roaming feline, called Tigger, went missing from its Edinburgh home in May 2007, but was picked up just last week by the SSPCA more than 150 miles away in Inverness.

The hefty ginger tomcat was identified through a microchip in its fur, and was taken back down to the SSPCA headquarters in Dunfermline to be picked up by delighted owner Carole Tait.

Carole, 58, said: “I’m absolutely ecstatic, when I got a phone call from the SSPCA the other day I didn’t think for a second it would be about Tigger.

Ex-firefighter dies during cycling holiday

By ALEXANDER LAWRIE

TRIBUTES have been paid to a super-fit fire hero who has died after collapsing with a heart attack during a mammoth eight-month cycling tour of the US.

Former-Royal Marine John Body, 56, fell from his bike while cycling up a steep slope in front of his wife Linda in the southern US state of Georgia last week.

Devastated Linda, 55, from Dunfermline, Fife, frantically tried to save her husband by administering CPR, but the ex-firefighter was pronounced dead on arrival at the nearby Perry Hospital.

The couple’s cycling tour was described as a “lifetime’s ambition” by Mrs Body who revealed the pair were just seven days into their dream trip when her husband passed away on May 12.

Rabbits at war with bowlers

By ALEXANDER LAWRIE

A TURF war has erupted on the grounds of a Scots bowling green – as rampant rabbits run amok ruining the bowler’s surface.

Members at the Netherton Bowling Club, Dunfermline, are at the end of their tether as the 15 year problem continues to haunt them.

Bowlers are being forced to constantly repair the playing surface as the pesky creatures dig holes in the lawn and leave hundreds of small manure droplets strewn across their rink.

The members say they have tried everything to halt the march of the carrot-munchers including installing chicken wire fencing around the grounds.

And the club is now considering hiring a hawk to scare the cute mammals from their favoured patch.