What about the train? Well ‘our’ high speed rail network ends at Birmingham. Tory-Liberal Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond inadvertantly spoke the truth when he told the Conservative conference last year: “We have committed to a high-speed rail network that will change the social and economic geography of Britain”. But it’s not just our infrastructure disenfranchisement. It’s about the continued control of society by private business.
It’s Burns Night tonight and many of us will be tucking into our haggis, neeps and perhaps a whisky or two (single malt of course). There may be speeches, toasts, poetry and song. … Read More
We kick off our Burns week (#bellasburns) with some great music from Michael Marra, Dick Gaughan’s favourite song of all time (which says everything it is possible to say about anything) and Karen… Read More
The idea that blogging was the new punk, that citizen journalism would help transform the Scottish news experience and political agenda, that the unionist grip on news coverage would be blasted away is overblown. Partly because politicians don’t believe in anything any more.
“Appalled by the rigged referendum of 1979 which in closing the door to home rule, opened the gates to Thatcher, Morgan insisted on Scotland’s imaginative viability, as a place being transformed by artists whose cultural exertions would in time produce a politics worthy of their talent and tenacity. “
“Last night Edurne was seized at their Pamplona home by the Spanish police and is currently being held ‘Incommunicado’ in a Spanish prison.”
“The way forward is not to rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic – it is to design a ship that won’t be sunk by an iceberg.”
Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP’s risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to… Read More
By Mike Small As of December 2010 there had been a total of 348 British Forces killed in Afghanistan, whilst 3,115 UK personnel were evacuated from Afghanistan on medical grounds. It’s estimated that… Read More
A TOWN TAKES DIRECT ACTION TO DEFEND ITS LOCAL LIBRARY Public libraries are a precious reminder of what can be achieved if market forces are excluded from the public sector. Books can be… Read More
As Labour the Tories and the Liberals line up to put the boot into the SNP remember it’s your local economy they are consigning to history.
Harry, Zara Kate and ‘Wills’ are just as much parasites on the public as the bankers vilified for the public excess that is just the norm behind the closed-doors of bloated finance. Hyper capitalism bankrupts us all…
It’s great to keep an international perspective with this the latest of our Hopes & Visions series which runs through January. See also Justin Kenrick here on a breakthrough for ecology and social… Read More
What scope is there for unity and collaboration between greens, nationalists, democrats and regionalists? This is the terrain explored by Philip Hosking of the Cornish Republican: Following some comments left on the blog… Read More
In homage (and ‘linkage‘) to the irrepresible Variant, and as Scotland apparently aims to base its economy on Pandas (‘Panda Bonanza’) and RBS boss Stephen Hester pockets £9 milllion (‘Tough talk on bankers comes to… Read More
“…a study of ‘moral hazard’ not as risk but as organising principle, was that non-transparency united the ‘overextended’ financiers, the regulation-flouters, the outright crooks, and (most intriguingly), the upholders of laws which were impossible to enforce. If elites are built on synergy, this lot were glued together by malfunction.”
The attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was a terrible and cowardly act of homegrown American terrorism which is rightly sending shockwaves throughout the civilised world. It brings to mind the high-profile assassinations of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King Jnr, Malcolm X and many others who opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
By KEVIN WILLIAMSON All over the world fans are mourning the death of Scottish singer-song writer Gerry Rafferty and I’d like to add a few words of appreciation and thanks. It’s not so… Read More
REPORT: KEVIN WILLIAMSON The recent emergence of The Edinburgh Party has made the established political parties sit up and take notice. Thus far The Edinburgh Party has steered clear of elections but observers… Read More
“Why have a Parliament if we don’t use it to make possible what would be impossible without it? “
