Scottishness is not about the blood in my veins. There is nothing genetic about being Scottish. No matter how soggy the turf, no matter how refreshing the water, or glorious the scenery, there is nothing in Scotland’s fields and brooks that makes us Scots. Scotland is a beautiful relationship; a long and intimate conversation with the people we love most and count as our own. It is a friendship that continues to be new and alive no matter how long the parting or wide the distance between us. My Scotland is home – where I started and where I am going.
Voyage from one Baby to Another
Zuka, their other son who is in the throes of that developmental crisis known to every parent as the terrible twos, got a selection box. He tore this open immediately and sent Maltesers flying all over the room – exactly what I would have done if there were no rules.
Identity Politics: A Narcissistic Intellectual Disease
Identity politics – the fragile and needy positioning of the self, the subjective, and the individual experience at the heart of all public and political thinking – to quote Brendan O’Neill, has become “the only game in town,” and we all have to play it.
Thinking a Just Society
A truly just society is a society in which the social and the procedural are reunited in common purpose, where the law serves the demands of social justice. Justice in this sense is where people, both as individuals and as communities, take priority over claims to wealth, property, and power.
Way to go for Community Policing
Well done to Dublin City Council and the Gardai for turning up to the bonfire at Teresa’s Gardens to demolish the bonfire and dampen what has been a long-standing inner city tradition.
‘I, Daniel Blake’ Left me Bawling
Loach has rammed a wedge into the great divide of the cinema-going public; with the right writing the film off as an exaggeration, and the left gushing like loved-up teenagers.
Cup of Tea with a Refugee
You can imagine my delight then when the words “Cup of Tea with a Refugee” appeared on my Twitter feed. The Scottish Refugee Council has launched a project to help people see refugees not as statistics or news stories, but as real people – just like us.
Scotland’s Resistance to the “Right-Turn”
Hidden behind the cloak of state power the Conservative establishment has successfully built a political-corporate marriage, enabling its architects to hoard vast sums of wealth in morally damnable off-shore accounts.
Random Public Journal 