If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
I don't say this often, but it's high time that British politics take a page out of Hollywood's playbook: if you don't like something, make a brief - but scathing - offering of condemnation, and then never speak of it again.
Aaron spent two happy years at the school and settled in well. He thrived in its challenging environment, made lots of new friends and formed bonds with his teachers. Then, in the middle of 2012, the Council told me that they wanted to take Aaron out of his school.
I helped sell a 64-year-old Trinitas from The Dalmore in 2010 for £100,000 and in 2011 The Dalmore Sinclair was bought in Singapore Changi Airport for a cool £135,000. I'm told that the buyer went on to drink it there and then.
Last month, Scotland's police made a radical policy shift, announcing they would no longer seek to prosecute people brought to the UK to work against their will. This shift is crucial: a "victim focused" approach is needed, if we want to achieve better results in the fight against human trafficking.
'Whisky Galore!' the wartime film and story of the people of Eriskay seizing upon the whisky cargo of a nearby shipwreck, has forged headlines and cultural associations of the drink, since it hit our screens almost 65 years ago. And the associations continue to this day. Last week, one lucky buyer paid £12,050 for two bottles of that now infamous cargo.
I had begun writing the song, Death Row, in September 2011. The week that I had started to write it, Troy Davis was executed in Georgia after almost 20 years on death row. I was struck by the horrific nature of his sentencing. I believe that the death penalty is wrong in all circumstances, but Troy Davis's case was particularly chilling. After his initial trial, witnesses had admitted that they had lied in their evidence against him.
Scottish politics has not, thus far, swung towards the scapegoating UKIP and BNP politics of hatred. We should be asking why Murray, Smart and even McConnell and Murphy seem to wish it to do so?
As I sit typing on my laptop, I'm aware of an irresistible urge: to check my emails; check social networking sites; check whether there's been any update since I last checked five minutes ago! The thing is, I'm not crazy about technology, but if you're anything like me, you'll know it's easier said than done escaping it.
Independence is a simple thing really. The ability to do as one pleases without outside interference. True, no country is truly independent in today's globalized world. But it is fallacious for Salmond is lead a vanguard suggesting independence would bring radical change to Scotland.
Now is the time for the Labour party to create a new discourse and move away from "the Reagan and Thatcher settlement" Ed Miliband knows that he cannot sit back and watch the Coalition unravel, but if he is to win the next election, he has to set out moral and ideological terms for the future of the party.
The truth is that a new national currency would be an entirely unappealing prospect, but the options outside of that scenario are hardly appealing either. It's going to be one of the key issues that the people of Scotland will have to think hard about, before the big vote in 2014.
Bringing adventure to the Scottish Borders, the Muckle Toon Adventure Festival is aiming to help revive the small town of Langholm. View image Ment...
Just over a week on from the triumphant foray on George Square, Glasgow's anti-'bedroom tax' armada finds itself in uncharted waters and surrounded by an impenetrable fog through which lies the possibility of evictions, legal and physical challenges to the law and drastic socio-industrial action in the community.
So we must learn the lessons from her time, not just eulogize or damn her. There are right ways and wrong ways of conducting affairs which can only be discovered through discipline, rigorous thought, honest competition and hard work.
She was horribly, horribly right wing and I find it difficult to forgive her that. Despite believing in the policies she implemented (the woman really thought she was doing good) I look at the society we have today and I can see the scars her policies left behind. Enormous social immobility and a lack of political empathy.
With protest marches against the 'bedroom tax' just a day away, the Glasgow campaign has gained seemingly inexorable focus and momentum.
