The idea that collusion with News International was entirely acceptable right up until the Milly Dowler phone hacking scandal is perhaps the weakest piece of self-justification in recent political memory
Read More »The ‘Wilson Defence’ of collusion with Murdoch shames him
Politics – an society – has got into an awful habit of ranking people according to their functional usefulness. And unfortunately young people aren’t all that functional useful, so we tend to see then in terms of problem. This can’t be how we relate to our own citizens.
Read More »It’s not young people that are the problem, its us
The Hague argument about the need to maintain British influence on international security issues doesn’t really stand up to the ‘six-year-old’ test. But then, six-year-0lds are much less gullible than us adults.
Read More »Secured, but as in ‘tied down’ and not as in ‘kept safe’
As interest in local democracy falters while the position of the powerful in society becomes more powerful again, all set against a backdrop of powerful and influential millionaires, the rest of us need a signal from Scotland’s politicians that we still matter.
Read More »Please, send us a signal that we don’t need to be on the Rich List to matter
The First Minister thinks he has a responsibility to corporate profit that extends beyond his responsibility to the Scottish people? If we don’t remove this infection of money from Scottish politics we will have no democracy left.
The defence and security establishment functions exactly like one of the oldest confidence tricks. But to make the game work we have to believe that Only They can save us from All Of Them out to get us. If only that submarine had crashed somewhere a bit more private.
We’re all nationalists now – such seems the evidence of a new poll on national identity. It seems that ‘Britain’ as an identity is in rapid decline in comparison to Englishness, Welshness and Scottishness. So what could Britain mean if it survives?
It is time the Scottish public sector considered a much more robust and comprehensive challenge to the PFI landscape, putting real effort into finding legal ways to rip up unjustified contracts. Claiming we can’t do anything about it is not a good enough response.
Read More »PFI – are we really powerless in the face of this scandal?
That business leaders and right-wing economists are celebrating a minuscule shift in deeply flawed economic statistics without considering what lies beneath the statistics is just a continuation of what got us here. Meanwhile, the rest of us are supposed to celebrate getting a job as a housemaid.
Read More »Economic recovery: either have a servant – or be a servant
If the right of the SNP is allowed to simply disregard Party discipline and kidnap the agenda in an attempt to create a New SNP, then New SNP will pay a price. It is the left of the party which has shown loyalty and discipline that needs to stop this – by speaking out now.
Read More »Loyalty never seems to get in the way of the voracious right