An alert viewer noticed this evening that after being broadcast twice in two days, “The Trial Of Alex Salmond” has tonight disappeared from BBC iPlayer. We have no information as to why, although we do know it committed contempt of court by providing so-called “jigsaw identification” of one of the complainers in the case. If that’s the […]

FM outlines path forward amid ‘broken status quo’. 

All of you that follow this blog know I am an uber loyal SNP and YES Supporter. While some of my fellow bloggers and YES supporting friends have chosen to attack the Party, AUOB Marches, individual MPs, MSPs, or certain words used on social media I have preferred to keep my own counsel. That changes Read more about New Year, New Rules Of Engagement.[…]The post New Year, New Rules Of...

Stephen Bush is the political Editor of the New Statesman. Here he puts our Prime Minister’s dilemma very well: “If Boris Johnson kids himself that it’s sustainable for the Anglo-Scottish union just to say we’ll lock Scotland in the cupboard… I just think that’s crazy. If your partner says they’re going to leave you and […]

Scotland and England-as-Britain have diverged in ways and to an extent evident from everything except the way we are governed. Two separate nations with increasingly distinctive and incompatible political cultures, but with one forced to accept the political choices of the other.

The campaigning for the general election, like the ongoing Brexit debacle of which it effectively a part of, while compelling for political commentators, is for many just another disorientating episode in a saga that seems never ending. A farce, a tragedy and an impenetrable art-house film combined. Like ‘Carry on Politics’ co-written by Franz Kafka […]

The Earth system comprises a host of dynamic, interwoven components or subsystems.

This is a time when the outworn old world prejudices are being recast and made young again. Those who wrestle to gain position to represent us, the people, in the immediate future in truth belong to the distant past. It is why they appear so familiar, palpable, frightening and ugly. Their story is the same […]

Last night the BBC was reporting on the Conservative manifesto. This is a document whose most striking pledge is to fill in some of the potholes in roads that have proliferated due to massive cuts in local authority funding, and to give free hospital car parking to those visiting a terminally ill relative. Just think […]The post Interfering with Laura Kuenssberg appeared first on Craig...

Last Sunday a homeless man died in a car park in Glasgow. It was minus eight out. The tragedy spoke to the multiple social crisis we face: of poverty, mental health, disfiguring inequality and lack of affordable housing which ranges from rough-sleeping at one end to a bonanza for private landlords at the other. * […]

Liberals, libertarians and the Left have long sought rational explanations for the loud-and-proud irrationalism of fascism, and its appeal to the masses where (what we think are) our appeals to their rational self-interests as working people or indeed as human beings have failed. For a very long time, the go-to text to explain this has […]The post The psychology of fascism appeared first on...

Channel 4 is generally the best of the broadcasters when it comes to coverage of Scotland’s independence movement, although it needs to be stressed that we’re talking about a very low bar here. However last night they let themselves down with a report on “the union” which was billed as giving Scotland’s perspective. A significant […]

Alex Niven [author of New Model Island] has sparked some debate with his excellent extended essay on the nature of English identity and the prospects for the Union (‘Englishness’ was never enough to build a nation on). While Boris Johnson postures as a fervent Unionist and regularly declares this “the most successful Union in three […]

Last night BBC 2’s Newsnight programme concluded its four part look at how Brexit and this election is affecting the unitary state which it pleases opponents of independence to call the Union. Last night it was England’s turn, and the reporter went to Grantham in Lincolnshire, a strongly pro-Brexit constituency in the East of England […]

Modern austerity – entirely designed by the British government – does not have the workhouse, but in many other respects it is the same. Austerity was implemented to exploit the effects of an economic collapse – again, entirely caused by the British state – to make the poorest pay for the excesses of the wealthy, to further reduce the working class, and to hammer a once mighty population...

These extended comments posted under Coming to terms with the end by Ludo deserve a wider audience so I’ve used my ruthless editorial powers to trim them into a free-standing post. From reader, Contrary: First, Professor Danny Dorling (Oxford) – on Brexit and the End of the British Empire: In his lecture he takes InterestingContinue reading "Brexit and the End of the British empire"

We are now under election broadcasting rules. Ian Austin left the Labour Party nine months ago. He was then appointed by the Tories as Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy to Israel. As of yesterday, he is neither a MP nor a candidate for election. He is a minor politician who achieved only the most junior ministerial […]The post Mainstream Media Pro-Johnson Propaganda Gets Into Full Swing...

In On Living in the Old Country (1985) Patrick Wright argues that Britain is a place where the past and the voices of the dead are crowding out those of the living and the present. We can see this being lived-out in the archaic elite malfunctions of the Conservative Party election campaign, which somehow, miraculously, […]

Sending a message to the Westminster establishment will have no effect at all. If Mhairi Black and others want to shake things up, they should be addressing their speeches to Nicola Sturgeon. They should be urging her to take a more assertive approach to the constitutional issue. They should be telling her the time has come to challenge the power of the Westminster establishment. They should be...

Five years ago, in the aftermath of the 2014 referendum, this is not what I envisaged. I anticipated that lessons would be learned from the first referendum campaign. Following the EU referendum in 2016, my expectation was that there would be a marked change of mindset in the SNP and the Yes movement. Instead, it's as if nothing that's happened since 2012 has been taken on board.