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Neil MackayHerald Scotland |
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The Yes movement has been in need of fresh blood for quite some time, so...
I know it’s like asking some folk to moonwalk on a unicycle while doing handstands at an ice rink, but let’s try, just for a moment, to imagine...
Some folk believe I hate religion. Not true. Whoever wrote my Wikipedia entry (what a strange job that must be) might be nearer to the mark. They say...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It’s quite something to come off as more unpleasant than Kemi...
I WAS chopping carrots in desultory fashion the other day when Radio 4’s PM programme gave me what the author William Burrough’s called a ‘naked...
Sir Keir Starmer's Christmas present to John Swinney is the pervading sense of hopelessness among the centre ground of Scottish voters. The new Labour...
Independence is a project much better suited to opposition than government. It is, after all, quintessentially anti-establishment. That’s its...
The gatekeepers of culture in London are wearyingly dull - as pedestrian, derivative and unimaginative as Hollywood executives with their interminable...
The future is here and it’s up for grabs. The protocols and ideas which dominated the West from 1945 now exist only in the minds of centrist...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It appears that while Nigel Farage knows he won’t become the UK’s...
The SNP is on its way to becoming the Ozymandias party. If you know Percy Shelley’s eponymous poem, you’ll get the similarities. In Ozymandias,...
I WANT to say "I get it", which I do. But I also want to say "this is unfair, in fact, it’s even cruel." I understand - partially - why some are...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It’s common to hear those of a republican persuasion refer to the...
In an age when the cult of youth has never mattered more or swept more away, I remain an unrepentant and unfashionable believer in the wisdom of...
A belief still clings stubbornly to the calloused underbelly of debate that social media is somehow unrelated to the real world and shouldn’t be...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Stephen Flynn should brush up his Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth....
DO you remember going for the ‘big shop’ with your mum on Saturday afternoons? I’ve only limited and partial nostalgia for the 1970s. I recall...
THE richest man on Earth bought the global town square and swung the world’s most important election for a billionaire, using lie after lie. Now...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. SNP leaders are already pretty much unloved by the party’s base. The...
I DON’T much believe the theories of Freud and Jung, those grandaddies of psychoanalysis. Do all men want to murder their father and have sex with...
We call him Nazi Bob. Once a month, I get my haircut at Bob’s salon. "Short back and sides, but long at the front, Bob, so I can do a Morrissey...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Despite the fact that most humans in the real world are relatively sane...
DO you consider yourself more stupid than an MP? More morally corrupt than an MSP? Are you less diligent, trustworthy, experienced, honest,...
IF you’ve been smitten with the dreadful sense that history now acts as some reverse time-machine, relentlessly dragging us back into the past, 100...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. One way or another John Swinney is going to have to eat a pie baked by...
Just like the 1960s, the cliché runs that if you can remember the 1990s, you weren’t there. It’s true. It was the party decade. Just as...
IT must be the shortest honeymoon since the silent-movie star Rudolph Valentino split up with his first wife on their wedding night. Labour no...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. ‘Here you come again, Just when I’ve begun to get myself together,...
LET’S say I do you a favour. I help secure a business deal or set up a key meeting. Things go according to plan: your business deal succeeds; your...
I spent Saturday hanging out with old friends. Aside from me - the journalist - there was a civil servant, advertising executive, teacher, police...
Unlike his absurd predecessor, Douglas Ross, I have great respect for the new Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay. He was an exemplary journalist....
Despite detesting the digital age with every cell in my body, I do have a fondness for a finely-used emoji. I’d genuinely cheer if some...
Unlikely as it sounds, I send thanks to the ghosts of Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher. Without them, I might never have become a lover of...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. As a writer I’m always reluctant to deploy words like ‘evil’ or...
Imagine being the neolithic lad who discovered beer. Though I bet it was a lass, and he just claimed the bragging rights. She was probably starving....
SCOTLAND’S political class should read the works of Professor Irvin Yalom, the world’s greatest living psychiatrist. The recommendation comes...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The old adage that ‘sticks and stones will break your bones, but names...
IN Grangemouth, there must be a cold sting to the sight of Scotland looking forward to hosting the Commonwealth Games. Their jobs are going, but the...
IT could have been so different. Independence could have real significance and purpose today. Indeed, the way politics has unfolded, independence...
A door is shutting fast, and if it closes Ukraine will be trapped in a locked room with a monster and dismembered. The world has until November to...
THE rich are at it again, whining that they aren’t allowed to be rich enough. Sometimes it’s hard to suppress an inner Robespierre - an implacable...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The hip word for it is ‘manifesting’: the notion that if you dream...
First, let’s get the SNP’s big lie out of the way. The destruction being wrought on Scotland is not the fault of Westminster alone. The Scottish...
My journey towards Scottish independence was psychologically fraught. I arrived here from Northern Ireland in 1995, fleeing both British and Irish...
Would you buy a used car from Anas Sarwar? After his “read my lips, no austerity under Labour” pledge, Sarwar has rendered himself one of the most...
People need hope. Labour promised hope with its mantra of "change". Anas Sarwar told us: “Read my lips: no austerity under Labour.” Well, that...
It seems that somewhere along the line we decided as a society to forget about the elderly. When I was a child in the 1970s, the welfare of old age...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The SNP finds itself on very tricky ground right now, trying to attack...
I’ve come to count myself very lucky for the family and friends in my life. If you too are fortunate enough to have good people who sustain you,...
Can you feel it? The sense of emptiness, the intellectual deadness hanging in the air over Scotland? We’re a nation treading water. Every person,...