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Neil MackayHerald Scotland |
If you’ve been wondering whether Andy Burnham is simply a Labour version of Boris Johnson, then you’re pretty much bang on the money. About to be...
It wasn’t just the 35° heat melting my brain in London this weekend. My wife had sprung a surprise on me: front row tickets for the ABBA Voyage...
One of literature’s most famous opening lines comes in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is...
Kurt Cobain once sang that ‘weather changes mood’. Always one for self-deprecating understatement, he pulled his punches in that line. Weather...
How could anyone have the arrogant audacity to remake Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Who would dare believe they had the power to improve...
It astonishes me that anyone other than politicians would wish to associate with politicians. They’re an abysmal subsection of society. The...
Andy Burnham has certainly left plenty of folk shivering in their shoes. His win at Makerfield goes way beyond simply setting him on course to take...
Some years ago, I was developing a slightly high-falutin documentary about masks and the weird role they’ve played in human society. The mask is a...
Even if Elon Musk wasn’t Elon Musk, even if Elon Musk was a good and noble man, even if Elon Musk was a planetary exemplar of decency and morality,...
The allegations only emerged on Thursday evening, so calm and logic are required. This isn’t an issue which should be subject to the distortions of...
We're descending into ever tightening, ever more rapid, cycles of savagery. In Belfast, unspeakable violence is met with pogroms. We see this...
In the most troubling way, the timing of Tip Toe couldn’t have been more horribly perfect. On the day the final gruelling episode aired on Channel...
I spent a chunk of last week talking to the folk behind the UK Right to Food Commission. There are 14 million people going hungry in Britain today,...
Most people, even many SNP stalwarts, agree that there should be an inquiry into the Peter Murrell embezzlement case. I accord with Noel Dolan, once...
Desecration piles upon desecration. The reputation of Henry Nowak: desecrated with lies that he was racist. His life: desecrated by the bestial...
One of my most important formative experiences happened in April 1982 during the Falklands War. I was 12 and in first year at my Northern Ireland...
Like many, I initially responded to news that Nicola Sturgeon’s former husband was guilty of embezzling £400,000 from the SNP with the thought:...
I hope my grandad forgives me, but he was the first person who came to mind when I saw Tony Blair had crept out of his crypt to pontificate about the...
It's quite a mouthful for a book’s title, but I recommend A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairytales: Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness by...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. You may have missed it, as the news has been very poorly reported in the...
If we don our surgical gloves, reach for the handsaw, and pop the Scottish and UK governments onto the anatomy table for a spot of dissection, it...
A Scottish referee is given police protection because of a penalty. A trans MSP is escorted through Holyrood by security guards due to fears for their...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. If you’ve been watching a lot of TV news these last few days, you may have...
I confess my bias from the get-go: I hate technology. Not all technology, I hasten to add. I don’t hate heart machines and radios, or satnavs and...
The Labour/Tory duopoly is collapsing and with it the political system. The future is a battle of nationalisms between Reform, SNP, Sinn Fein and...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. There’s something deeply absurd and offensive about the way democracy in...
I almost burned down my mother-in-law’s house when I learned I was about to become a dad for the first time. And she was a brand new mother-in-law,...
Where once there were adverts for real physical books, today there’s only adverts for celebrity audiobooks. This reveals something very troubling,...
Stephen Boyd heads the influential think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland. As the election looms, writer-at-large Neil Mackay...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. You'd be hard pushed to claim this Scottish election has been anything...
I saw an advert for the grandly-named ‘prediction market platform’ Kalshi recently which summed up where we are as a civilisation in 2026. ...
The King may have been dispatched to heal the UK-US relationship, but as the Falklands shows, Donald Trump will use anything to wound Britain if he...
Unionists have reacted with outrage to John Swinney saying he’ll cooperate with Sinn Fein to boost Scottish independence. Why is anyone surprised,...
I had the pleasure of spending time again with Professor Mary Beard last week, enjoying one of those slow, intelligent conversations which seem so...
Our Writer at Large Neil Mackay explains how after a life chasing extreme experiences and emotions, he has learned that it is the simplest things that...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. We have already entered a new era of ‘Guns or Butter’. Scotland’s own...
The words politicians use matters. Today, they’re incapable of speaking without employing the cliched, impenetrable and divisive jargon of the...
Labour’s Health Secretary says there will be no independence referendum regardless of what the Scottish people say. Wes Streeting is doing the work...
The US comedy franchise is just the latest staging post in American cultural and political domination of Britain. We need to get off our knees right...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. It's a long-standing staple in first year university philosophy class:...
Boys and young men are being radicalised en masse by a pandemic of brutal online misogyny. Raising a son in such a world has never been harder, our...
The Greens want to make social media platforms subject to laws of defamation and libel just like publishers, newspapers and broadcasters. About time,...
The Chief Constable of Police Scotland did the country a service when she pointed the finger of blame clearly at Rangers and Celtic over disorder,...
Timothée Chalamet has attacked ballet and opera. How can anyone in the arts behave like this, Neil Mackay asks. He’s a symbol of the collapse of...
The Iran attack has no clear motive or end game, and atrocities are happening. Our Writer at Large asks: how can anyone who says they are a British...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. For those who like their news weird, unpleasant and with a twist of...
With the broadcaster under attack on all sides and accusations flying of falling standards, our Writer at Large Neil Mackay looks at what’s gone...
Alan Carr has paid £3.5million for a baronial pile in the borders. Neil Mackay says it smacks of the Gilded Age when the rich played and the poor...
The UK Government says it will not hold talks with the SNP on the issue of what triggers another referendum. Our Writer at Large believes that plays...
Our Writer at Large, Neil Mackay, looks at the astonishing success of the Green Party in Manchester and what it means for both UK and Scottish...
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