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On Monday, after four weeks in North America, I returned to my native land with my customary yearning for a quality British newspaper. In the first one I read, I saw to my dismay, that my birthplace had been named the ‘Worst Town in Scotland’. A book published in London has bestowed the title on the basis of ‘statistics and public nominations’. My heart sank. Just three years ago a ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ documentary which featured the housing scheme in which I grew up, had revealed it to be a seething jungle of drug dealing and felony. There was never a mention that this town produced a Lord Mayor of London, published the first edition of Burns’ poetry, and educated the man who discovered penicillin as well as two of Scotland’s currently celebrated living authors. Nor was it noted that until the 1970s it had six substantial export industries, each of which was taken over by a multi-national company which eventually closed the factories. The ‘Worst Town in Scotland’. What does that say for the vast majority of its decent inhabitants? It’s not just a dog that a bad name sticks to; it also happens to people and places. One negative rumour can sully a reputation for ages. People still associate the Gorbals with razor gangs, Toxteth with riots, Birmingham with inner city desertification, Belfast with bombing - all of which at one time were true, but are by no means permanent. There is something in us - perhaps theologians might call it evidence of ‘The Fall’ - which is more prone to remember the negative associations of a place or a person’s past, than to celebrate their positive potentials for the future. It interests me that on different occasions, Jesus reprimands people who are keen to identify alleged generic or genetic flaws. He has no truck with those who say that a disaster in a particular town must have been the result of moral aberration in its citizens, and he excoriates those who presume that illness or disfigurement is evidence of sin. Justice and fairness require us to struggle internally with our fascination for what has gone wrong versus the more difficult enthusiasm for what could go right. This is what is currently happening in Derry/Londonderry - a place once riddled with sectarianism, but more recently given the accolade of the City of Culture. I hope that positive rumours will soon be spread about my hometown which - for reasons of loyalty - I haven’t named. But it’s in Ayrshire. Oh, and the runners up for the alleged Worst Town in Scotland are in West Lothian and Galloway.