Opinion
Politics can’t survive a bad information environment
If it feels like politics is becoming more and more detached from reality, there is a good reason for it. If we create an information environment where anything is true if you want it to be, we career dangerously towards ungovernability.
That’s Plenty! The church of Jack and Victor
Politics tries to hide it but the only morality it is interested in these days is greed and avarice. It is this which has done endless damage and only a moral campaign can challenge it.
100 days of nothing
You wouldn’t know it but it is 100 days since John Swinney finally won his own mandate – yet even he can articulate why this is a good thing. Scottish politics really has ground to a halt and looks set to stick there.
Is a change in the air on how Scotland is run?
It has been a slow process but the rise of debate and criticism of how Scotland is governed is unmistakable. It may not amount to anything tangible yet, but it’s a major step.
“Woke One” crazy? Perhaps. A wrong turn? Definitely.
On the left there is a backlash to a backlash to ‘woke’, and it just shows how self-obsessed we’ve become. It’s not about whether we liked ‘woke’ or not, it’s that key parts of our audience really didn’t.
Forget ‘opportunities’; what about lives?
Being young has never been easy but it used to be a transitionary stage towards a decent adult life. If that adult life is less and less available, what does our politics offer young people?
Paths to justice are closed and it is a moral hazard
People make mistakes and lots of societies problems are really complex and not easy to deal with. All that I ask is that when errors are made, they are treated with respect, reviewed and addressed – and that doesn’t happen in Scotland.
Fighting back against the ruling class’s reign of terror
Another milestone approaches in the battle against Scotland’s unelected ruling class, and this one is a landmark. A judicial review is going to examine whether they can do whatever they want all the time – or whether natural justice matters.
An elegy for Scotland’s Dark Age
The Scotland I grew up with is gone and with it has gone the hope and sense of national mission that was part of it. The best metaphor for the whole thing is the Macintosh Building, and anger is the only sensible response.
Despite the joy, this World Cup left a bad taste
It wasn’t just the crass, cringe-worthy half time show, it was the sense that the World Cup is now not even trying to hide its corruption. Is it really too much to ask that something in the world not be polluted by commerce?
The time for fairytales in Scottish independence movement is over
For ten years the independence movement has been too quick to believe promises which in our hearts we knew weren’t true. Until we can get over this desire to be told there is a shortcut, we’ll never knuckle down to the real work.
Perhaps Scotland should take the dirty road
What if Scotland is deluding itself about its current state of development and what if countries we consider below us are more realistic? Does it suggest that we should take a less formal approach to solving our problems?