Rail Renationalisation: Edinburgh meeting with Christian Wolmar
While I was first becoming interested in a serious way in politics there were lots of interesting things happening. I was very interested in the peace process in the north…
My public school days and the building of upper class solidarity
To understand the British public school system, or certainly, the part of it in which I spent my teenage years, it is crucial to get your head around three things.…
After 160 years Central Scotland has had enough
The central belt’s fossil-fuel industrialists: James ‘Paraffin’ Young; John (Lord) Browne, BP; Mark Lappin, Dart Energy. When new technology offers us great promise – and the new gas boom certainly…
Illegal Evictions – Divide and rule
Since the start of the recession there has been a rise in illegal evictions, and with the changes to Housing Benefit coming in next year there could be an even…
Osborne’s wrong but we need to consider a Scottish currency
George Osborne is in Glasgow today to lecture us on how independence would be a bad idea. This is, he argues, because the rest of the UK wouldn’t allow Scotland…
Thatcher funeral: time to stop the travesty of funeral poverty
The cost of Thatcher's funeral is an outrage, but it comes at a time when state funerals are needed much more often. Of course there's a certain irony about someone…
Chris Hani died 20 years ago today: why he’s still a hero
Twenty years ago today Chris Hani was murdered while returning to his house in Boksburg outside Johannesburg having bought the paper. He is virtually unknown in this country, and as…
Community finance: Where’s our Cathy Come Home moment?
In 1966 the film Cathy Come Home depicted the struggle of a once happy family thrown into poverty and misery after father and husband Reg is injured and loses his…
This conference could establish the Greens as the party of the left
The Green Party of England and Wales’ Spring Conference looks set to be a radical one. In just a couple of weeks’ time – and on the Greens’ 40th ‘birthday’…
How we deny our bloody history – a review of the Imperial War Museum
The stories we tell ourselves define who we are. With this in mind, on Friday, I visited the Imperial War Museum. I am practically pacifist, and certainly anti-imperialist. So I…