Once upon a time, pollsters would phone you up and ask how satisfied you were with the railways on a scale of one to ten, or how you intended to vote in the next general election. These days — as …
Sturgeon will lose Scotland’s trans war
In her eight years as Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon has revealed herself to be addicted to, and adept at, Manichaean practices: the use, developed by the devotees of the prophet Mani in the later Roman empire, of a cosmology …
JK Rowling works her magic again
The launch of a sexual assault support centre for women is always good news but, when it is the brainchild of J.K. Rowling, it is very big news. Especially given the feminist philanthropist and world famous author has smartly taken …
The forgotten genius of Compton Mackenzie
It was a most fortuitous shipwreck. The S.S. Politician floundered on rocks near the island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides in February 1941, cutting short its journey from Liverpool to the USA. The hull was breached and the ship …
Can you read in Scottish?
However indifferent we might have been to our school days, most of us will remember at least one moment of significant connection to a teacher, or a lesson, or a book. I recall my high school teachers as a mixed …
Scottish nationalism is fuelled by resentment
Forget the Hogwarts Express. Three times a year, I get on a train at London Kings Cross and make a physics-defying journey towards Montrose in Angus, the Scottish town where I lived for the first 17 years of my life. …
How Britain haunts America
The rhetoric of modern America is dominated by the paradigm of a biracial nation, but history is never black and white. Fissures between national and ethnic traditions have always been at the heart of its political conflict.
Their significance is …
How Outlander resurrected Culross
If you stumbled across Culross on a summer’s day, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a Dutch master’s painting. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The charismatic, curiously foreign-looking Fife village could be the lost cousin of …
Why Scotland sacrificed its wilderness
When my aunt met my uncle, he was a pipe-smoking deerstalker, employed by a Highland estate to manage a herd of reds across some 20,000 acres. He had a team of terriers for fox control, he often rehabilitated injured birds …
Why pit villages turned to rave
Certain dance tunes never fail to take me back to the area I grew up in. Stirlingshire, in Central Scotland, is a county whose gloomy beauty and dramatic ruins have made it enduringly popular with tourists and retirees alike. In …
Scotland has never been so divided
The SNP’s triumph in last week’s Scottish elections came as no surprise: it was the party’s 11th election victory in a row. Instead, it was the downfall of the Scottish Tories and resurgence of Scottish Labour in second place that …
The heroic failure of Cumbernauld
Cumbernauld is the kind of town you pass through but never stop at. In my youth, I glimpsed the strange concrete structure at its heart from the window of the Glasgow bus many times. But I had no idea that …
Thread by Todd Kenyon @TTBikeFit Feb 19, 2022
Something's rotten in Scotland, and it's not the haggis. PHS (Public Health Scotland) has now decided that it's CRUCIAL to adhere to best practices in data presentation and analysis. As such, they will stop reporting data by vaccination status. And …
The SNP won’t silence women
There are inflatable dinosaurs leafletting shoppers in Aberdeen city centre. Grassroots feminists in Forth Valley are organising a conference for International Women’s Day. “Weegie Witches” dance out their defiance in Glasgow, while “Sole Sisters” create street art out of shoes …
Scotland has lost its sense of humour
Growing up in pre-devolution Scotland, I found that deference towards authority was in short supply. The loathing directed at those in power was visceral, the tone caustic and funny. I knew that pursed-lipped, finger-wagging Calvinists were supposed to exist, but …