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Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay

Herald Scotland

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Neil Mackay: Sarwar should take over Yes movement, he’s doing the SNP’s job for them The Yes movement has been in need of fresh blood for quite some time, so maybe the independence campaign should put Anas Sarwar in charge.

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...

21.12.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Humiliate them. Ruin them. Stamp on feral Old Firm ultras, hard

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...

20.12.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Dear religious folk: Sorry, but Santa is just as real as your ‘god'

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...

18.12.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The stink of Reform is all over the Scottish Tories, they dread Farage It’s quite something to come off as more unpleasant than Kemi Badenoch, but Russell Findlay has managed it. While Badenoch opted for absurdity, Findlay chose cruelty as his means of narcissistic attention-seeking.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It’s quite something to come off as more unpleasant than Kemi...

14.12.2024 3

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The New Dark Age, an era of sex and horror ruled by billionaires

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...

13.12.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Unionists will never understand the secret of SNP’s success … here it is

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...

11.12.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: SNP has given up on independence … who will be the torch-bearers now? Got it Neil!

Independence is a project much better suited to opposition than government. It is, after all, quintessentially anti-establishment. That’s its...

06.12.2024 8

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Wolf Hall is everything that’s wrong with English cultural domination

The gatekeepers of culture in London are wearyingly dull - as pedestrian, derivative and unimaginative as Hollywood executives with their interminable...

05.12.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Scotland’s future: either PM Farage or left-wing populist independence

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...

03.12.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Farage is using Trump to stab Britain in the back as he sniffs power It appears that while Nigel Farage knows he won’t become the UK’s ambassador to the court of Donald Trump, he’s quite happy to be MAGA’s voice in Britain.

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...

29.11.2024 6

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Things are so bad the SNP should ask Sturgeon back as leader

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,...

28.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Calling kids who bought the Band Aid record ‘racist’ is a disgrace

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...

26.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: How much for the Coronation?! Royals aren’t parasites – they’re vampires It’s common to hear those of a republican persuasion refer to the Royal family as ‘parasites’ on the body of Britain. The comparison is apt but not perfect.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It’s common to hear those of a republican persuasion refer to the...

22.11.2024 30

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: John Swinney has made a total ass of himself over Donald Trump

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...

21.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: I know what fighting for free speech means. This isn't it

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...

19.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Stephen Flynn – the SNP’s Macbeth, a man of ambition unfit to lead Stephen Flynn should brush up his Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth. Though he’d be well-advised attending to his reading around the true history of the ill-fated and loathed Scottish king as well.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Stephen Flynn should brush up his Shakespeare, specifically Macbeth....

15.11.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: I’m with the Free Presbyterians: just say no to Sunday opening

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...

14.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Just how many concentration camps will you need, Mr President?

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...

12.11.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: SNP zombie government now on collision course with its own angry base SNP leaders are already pretty much unloved by the party’s base. The hardline and fundamentalist wing seethes about how silent the Scottish Government has become on independence.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. SNP leaders are already pretty much unloved by the party’s base. The...

01.11.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: It’s starting to feel like humanity is one giant suicide cult

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...

31.10.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Should I dump Nazi Bob, my racist Glasgow hairdresser?

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...

29.10.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Scotland should apologise for slavery if Keir Starmer won't Despite the fact that most humans in the real world are relatively sane and can engage in an informed conversation where even if they vehemently disagree with you they do so without blood coming out of their eyes and their lips turning to foam, the online realm is not so chilled.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Despite the fact that most humans in the real world are relatively sane...

25.10.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Why Glasgow grannies, not politicians, should be running the country

DO you consider yourself more stupid than an MP? More morally corrupt than an MSP? Are you less diligent, trustworthy, experienced, honest,...

24.10.2024 6

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Millions now glorify Hitler. What has gone wrong with humanity?

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...

22.10.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Will Greens bring down Swinney or grovel to the SNP in budget vote? One way or another John Swinney is going to have to eat a pie baked by the Scottish Greens and decorated with the word ‘humble’ in large pastry lettering.

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...

18.10.2024 6

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Why the 1990s revival celebrates a dark decade where it all went wrong

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...

17.10.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Starmer lays the ground for SNP domination, Reform in power and indy

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...

15.10.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Sturgeon and Johnson, the divorced couple who can’t help falling in hate You have to wonder if Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon sit up late at night listening to sad old country and western tunes and thinking dark thoughts about each other through the tears.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. ‘Here you come again, Just when I’ve begun to get myself together,...

11.10.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Flynn’s £30k ‘cash-for-access’ lobbying donation stinks to high heaven

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...

10.10.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Our schools are in crisis over violence, but does the SNP even care?

I spent Saturday hanging out with old friends. Aside from me - the journalist - there was a civil servant, advertising executive, teacher, police...

08.10.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: No, Russell, it’s not indy that’s dead - it’s your joke of a party

Unlike his absurd predecessor, Douglas Ross, I have great respect for the new Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay. He was an exemplary journalist....

04.10.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: SNP, Labour, Tories: politicians have no idea about our lives

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...

03.10.2024 3

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Why at 50, the Texas Chain Saw Massacre is still one of the greatest films ever

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...

01.10.2024 6

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Let Janey Godley die in peace, you monsters, show some humanity After they have spent their lives, at their computers, alone, hating the world so much that they’d attack a dying woman, who – once it is all over for them – will come to mourn?

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. As a writer I’m always reluctant to deploy words like ‘evil’ or...

27.09.2024 20

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The death of the great Scottish pint? Aye, ok then, barkeep

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....

26.09.2024 30

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The best thing for Scotland? A Labour-SNP coalition, with rotating FMs

SCOTLAND’S political class should read the works of Professor Irvin Yalom, the world’s greatest living psychiatrist. The recommendation comes...

24.09.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Keir Scrounger has lost Scotland as his greed plays into SNP hands A well placed insult can be politically fatal, as Keir Starmer, and his wife Victoria, are finding out.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The old adage that ‘sticks and stones will break your bones, but names...

20.09.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Grangemouth and the Games … a Scottish tale of bread and circuses

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...

19.09.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: I couldn't watch the Salmond-Sturgeon documentary. It turned my stomach

IT could have been so different. Independence could have real significance and purpose today. Indeed, the way politics has unfolded, independence...

17.09.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: We must allow Ukraine to use our weapons to hit Russia

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...

12.09.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: If multimillionaires leave over tax, strip them of their citizenship

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...

10.09.2024 20

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Scotland faces the prospect of ungovernable political chaos There’s an awful lot of manifesting going on around the prospect of a snap Scottish election. The cause is the upcoming Scottish budget. If the SNP can’t get it through Holyrood, then we may well be on the road to an early election.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The hip word for it is ‘manifesting’: the notion that if you dream...

06.09.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The SNP is brutalising the most vulnerable in society: the mentally ill

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...

05.09.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Yes, Scottish and British nationalism are two very different things

My journey towards Scottish independence was psychologically fraught. I arrived here from Northern Ireland in 1995, fleeing both British and Irish...

03.09.2024 8

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Sarwar cannot be trusted with free tuition and prescriptions if he is FM 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 untrustworthy politicians in Holyrood.

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...

30.08.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The SNP has one last hope for survival … here's what it is

People need hope. Labour promised hope with its mantra of "change". Anas Sarwar told us: “Read my lips: no austerity under Labour.” Well, that...

29.08.2024 8

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: Our society is sacrificing the elderly. This evil must be opposed

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...

27.08.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: The SNP has trashed devolution, so why should Labour care? The SNP finds itself on very tricky ground right now, trying to attack the new Labour government for ‘disrespecting’ devolution.

This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. The SNP finds itself on very tricky ground right now, trying to attack...

23.08.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay: I see the curse of loneliness and I'm determined to help in the fight

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,...

22.08.2024 6

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

Scotland feels intellectually dead. We’re a nation treading water

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,...

20.08.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Neil Mackay

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