MARKET FORCES .sx Carl MacDougall looks back on 1990 - a year which saved its biggest sting of all for delivery in the calendar's tail .sx It is one of life's more interesting ironies that maxims which trip easily off the tongue have a habit of taking on hard - edged coinage - and simply trip up .sx So it was that Mrs Thatcher's insistent advocacy on behalf of market forces saw that particular sword end eleven-and-a-half years of her occupancy of Number Ten .sx Just two remarkable weeks in British political life witnessed the inexorable , if clumsy and distasteful , removal from office of a Prime Minister .sx The British public - honed to new horizons of employment realism in the Thatcher era of privatisation and market forces - seemed perplexed by the swiftness of it all .sx The miners , the Scottish steel workers and the redundancy victims of takeovers , company insolvencies and the short-term mechanics of the City understood the process only too well .sx Not your average redundancy , though .sx Still , market forces had prevailed - and turned a government on its head .sx Britain has a new Prime Minister in John Major , a new Cabinet , a new set of promises to go with it - and a new respect for dead sheep .sx This time last year The Wall was coming down and now the Germans have been reunited with reports of anti-Semitism returning and the crime rate rising .sx What we called Eastern Europe is now no more and it looks as if the Soviet Union itself is disintegrating into food shortages , riots and nationalist uprisings .sx President Gorbachev has been given the Nobel Peace Prize for his international achievements ; commentators weekly predict his demise because of failures on the home front .sx This time last year it took the Rumanians ten days to rid themselves of their president .sx War in the Gulf is expected , indeed seems inevitable ; only the timing is in doubt .sx The deposed Kuwaiti ruler is without doubts .sx He has been quoted as saying he would like his kingdom back now , not tomorrow .sx At the time of writing , we live with the hope that his wishes will not be the only considerations , though both sides are digging in .sx This time last year some things were very evident and these , indeed , have come to pass .sx The Poll Tax , or Community Charge , was unpopular in Scotland .sx It is now unpopular throughout the United Kingdom .sx And the fate of the present administration may rest with the solutions mooted by the man who almost talked himself on to this particular bed of nails - Michael Heseltine .sx Some things , however , do not change .sx The senseless killing and maiming in Northern Ireland still goes on .sx Twenty-one years of guerilla warfare in one part of the United Kingdom seems to have been accepted as an inevitable fact of life .sx Public opinion has become inured to the monstrous circumstances which prevail in Ulster .sx Twenty-one years of bigotry transcribed into violence .sx Twenty-one years - and no prospect of peace in the foreseeable future .sx Nor Saddam Hussein to blame .sx The environment continued to deteriorate .sx The Government produced a set of promises which impressed few and it was left to primary schoolchildren , their sense of fairness and love of animals , to shame us into sharing their concern .sx They also provided an interesting role model , where media output was motivated by consumer concern , rather than forming opinion .sx A book written by the editorial team of The Ecologist , reasonably argued there were 5,000 days left to save the planet from certain destruction .sx Their warning was largely unnoticed .sx The four Guinness affair defendants were found guilty of commercial criminality and sent to prison - but not banished from boardrooms in the future .sx And British Rail still couldn't get the Glasgow to Edinburgh service to run on time .sx Scotland lost Norman Buchan .sx Britain lost the Sunday Correspondent .sx The world lost Leonard Bernstein - but not his wonderful music .sx And the Clyde became a time machine , in a way , when the QE2 made her memorable visit to Greenock during last summer .sx The SNP elected a new leader - with , it seems , a remarkable absence of fuss .sx The Forth Bridge celebrated its centenary in a style some Glaswegians may have envied .sx Their year as Europe's citizens of culture gave the word a new interpretation .sx I should , in fairness , declare a minimal interest in these events and break silence long enough to say I have no intention of commenting .sx Scotland & Sport .sx This time last year it was evident that the Scottish football team would get gubbed in the World Cup , having qualified and been gubbed in the first round of the finals many times before .sx Where is history's place for the Costa Rican president who , commenting on his country's defeat of Scotland in the first game , said , " This is extraordinary .sx It is driving us crazy with satisfaction .sx " .sx The national team's performance was equalled only by the new level of football reporting on the Scottish television networks , where we were made aware of how badly it was being done , because it used to be done moderately well .sx The BBC brought tabloid standards to the fray where more meant worse .sx Not that radio commentators had much to be complacent about .sx Derek Johnstone was heard to comment on " Maurice Johnston and his namesake Ally McCoist .sx " This is symptomatic of the ailment .sx We have people who cannot communicate telling us what is going on - or speculating about what is likely to go on .sx Can normal viewing or listening be resumed as soon as possible ?sx Football enthusiasts across the country promise to forget it ever happened .sx Here , it is worth remembering , most Scots do not go to football matches ; in fact , more people go to the theatre every year than stand on the terraces .sx Scotland's Grand Slam victory was more than a compensation for our Italian outing , certainly in terms of book sales .sx Publishers whose Italia 90 books were remaindered could redress the balance with pictures of the lads in the shower and of the Princess Royal singing Flower of Scotland .sx Roy Williamson , the anthem's composer , died last year .sx Interestingly enough , as we struggle to survive another year where bacteria left the laboratory and entered the food chain , where even the humble cling film which protects our food from diseases is itself a cancer-bearing threat , the morality of food production remained a debate .sx Pausing to reflect upon the voice of the pundits , who tell us we are on the brink of a second Ice Age , a possible nuclear war and ecological disaster , religious fundamentalism is also on the increase .sx C'est la vie .sx .sx Or , to paraphrase a political aside , it's been a particularly unfunny old world in 1990 - hasn't it ?sx DUNDEE 800 .sx As Dundee reaches her 800th birthday , Rob Adams , a Dundonian now living in Edinburgh , offers an objective - and occasionally subjective - assessment of Scotland's 'largest village' :sx the City of Discovery .sx City of Discovery , Geneva of the North , The Radical Toun , The Largest Village in Scotland ; during the past 800 years Dundee has had almost as many appellations as there are theories on the derivation of the name Dundee itself .sx Among these , the pragmatic Don Daig , meaning 'hill of fire' ( the city nestles round a long-dormant volcano ) , suggests that a settlement existed here long before the town became Donumdei , the 'gift of God' which saved from shipwreck the returning Crusader , David , Earl of Huntingdon .sx Romantic though this latter notion may seem in the cold light of the late 20th century , it was in gratitude for his brother's rescue that King William the Lion conferred royal burgh status on Dundee in 1191 .sx Dundee craftsmen were quick to take advantage of the trading rights of a royal burgh ; woodcarvers and silversmiths and , later , pistol makers and shipbuilders , all thrived , their far-flung markets apparently contradictory to the received impression of Dundonians as insular .sx Coincidental to Dundee's importance as a port came whaling which peaked in the 1890s , leaving a legacy of street names ( for example , Baffin Street ) and folk songs by the score , as well as the enormous Dundee Whale skeleton in the local museum which , as a small boy familiar with the fate of Jonah , used to give me the willies .sx The Three Js .sx At school we learned about jute , jam and journalism , an industrial triumvirate which flourished into the 1960s .sx While Keillor's marmalade factory ( established 1797 ) had helped spread Dundee's name and produce worldwide , it was jute which came to form the backbone of the city's economy .sx Ironically the product of another shipwreck , which brought Belgian flax spinners to the town , the clack-clacking , musty-smelling jutemills provided sufficient wealth to give Dundee more millionaires per square mile than Hollywood , and bought the jute barons a major stake in ranches across America's Wild West .sx But as more and more man-made fibres emerged jute fell into a slow decline .sx Jam followed suit .sx Journalism , in the shape of the D. C. Thomson empire , remains buoyant .sx The company which gave the world The Dandy and The Beano is an enigma - respected within the industry for its high training standards yet mocked from all sides for the parochial , and ultimately dispiriting , nature of its reporting .sx The Thomson influence on Dundee is immeasurable .sx Not only is the company the city's largest employer ; it also holds a vice-like grip on the citizen's reading habits .sx Over the years there have been several attempts to establish an alternative editorial voice .sx All have failed , the most recent amid allegations that , should they stock the newcomer , newsagents faced forfeiting supplies of the ubiquitous dailies , The Dundee Courier and The Evening Telegraph .sx Thomson's long-running wrangle with the local council is one of their more interesting campaigns .sx However , the city fathers' reputation for graft and corruption , brought startlingly to prominence in the late 70s , goes back even further than The Courier , most notably to the tyrannical Provost Riddoch of the late 17th century .sx Historically , Dundee's role has been that of a punchbag , having been sacked and laid siege by everyone from William Wallace to Oliver Cromwell .sx Small wonder , then , that Dundonians' attitudes to national heroes has fluctuated greatly .sx The scene of Robert the Bruce's proclamation as King in 1309 became the site of Winston Churchill's nadir six centuries later as he lost heavily to an opponent running on a temperance ticket - a bit cheeky from a town which has consistently topped the licensed-premises-per-capita league .sx But the damage done by Cromwell et al was as sic !sx nothing compared to the civic vandalism which deprived Dundee of its essential character in the 1960s .sx Wholesale demolition and an implausibly prodigious car park programme robbed Dundee of such gems as the old Overgate , a thoroughfare , easily comparable to Edinburgh's Royal Mile , which gave way to a dreary - and not very popular - shopping precinct .sx Vast chunks of tenement housing also were pulled down , and the dispossessed shunted further and further out of town to housing schemes which make concentration camps look attractive .sx In more recent years the process has been arrested , but the results of this programme of renovation only underline the original loss of quality property .sx The 'largest village' tag is a double - edged sword .sx It suggests that Dundee is cliquish , which it can be .sx Or friendly , which it definitely is .sx It was President Ulysses S. Grant , an apparently difficult man to impress , who , on crossing the newly - completed railway bridge over the River Tay , remarked :sx " That's a mighty big bridge for a mighty small town .sx " A year later , during a freak storm on 29th December 1879 , Thomas Bouch's rather spindly - looking construction tumbled into the seething waters , taking with it a train and 75 passengers .sx One man who wasn't surprised by this tragedy was William Topaz McGonagall .sx An Edinburgh man by birth but a Dundonian by conviction , McGonagall was the living embodiment of the 'never a prophet ( or indeed profit ) in your home town' adage .sx During his lifetime , his poetry was publicly ridiculed and he was physically assaulted in the streets .sx Nowadays , of course , he is accepted as a genuine Dundee worthy .sx The two bridges which carry you across the Tay today afford a view looking north which , despite the internal spoliation , still lives up impressively to the name , Bonnie Dundee .sx