This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Only a fool has an all-consuming belief in the future and a need to worship the past.

The past should be learned from, and viewed as we view our youth: full of mistakes we won’t repeat.

The future should be approached like a tightrope walker: slowly inching forward in case haste tips us to our death.

Nowhere is this more true than in the field of technology and science. In years gone by, should we not have been much more cautious in what we did with the power of the atom?

Would we still give free rein to the internet as we did in the 1990s? Would we claim today that social media is the saviour of democracy as we did in the 2010s?

If caution should have been engaged then, should caution not be engaged now? The notion that technology always means progress is a mere lie.

We should shiver at the Labour government’s embrace of biology as a means not only to deal with seemingly intractable problems, but as a way of refashioning humanity in all its ugly reality.

Labour intends to use chemical castration on sexual offenders. Keir Starmer’s government has already said it wants to use ‘fat jabs’ to get unemployed people into work. This biological extremism is deeply troubling.

After nearly 35 years as a reporter covering violent crime – including violent sexual crime against women and children – giving consideration to what happens to sexual offenders, rapists and paedophiles is quite a reach for me.

I confess that the only time murder crossed my mind was in the company of a paedophile. I was........

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