Iain Macwhirter
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Gord Bless you Dime. Meghan and the politics of royal reinvention.
Say what you like about the royal family, and as a republican I often do, but their capacity for reinvention is truly remarkable. The Windsors rebranded themselves for the era of Britpop with the Diana cult and her bling entourage. When that ended badly they refreshed it with the fairytale match of modest, middle-class Kate … Continue reading
The longest pay freeze in history. And how to end it.
We may be in the middle of the longest wages freeze since records began, but the silver lining – according to the Chancellor, Philip Hammond – is that Britain has a record number of people in work. Unemployment fell last month to 4.3 percent in the UK and in Scotland it’s even lower an … Continue reading
Punk Brexit means anarchy in the UK.
Those of us old enough to remember the punk era have always had a soft spot for anarchy in the UK. “We wanna destroy the passerby” as the Sex Pistols eloquently put it in 1977. But most of us grew out of childish destructivism. The true descendants of punk are to be found in the … Continue reading
Universal Credit is beginning to look like the Child Support Agency on steroids.
THE firebrand SNP MP, Mhairi Black, has made a name for herself condemning the UK government’s benefit reforms. So it came as some surprise recently when she began her speech in the Universal Credit debate by praising it. She said that replacing the cumbersome system of multiple benefits – jobseeker’s allowance, housing benefit, working tax credit, … Continue reading
Yes iCAN – the stigmatisation of nuclear weapons is the surest route to abolition.
STANLEY Kubrick’s brilliant Cold War satire, Dr Strangelove, was also one of the wisest meditations on nuclear deterrence. The US President, played in the film by Peter Sellers, was the only sane man in the room and tried his best, unsuccessfully, to prevent atomic war, after a deranged US Air Force general launched a first … Continue reading
Iain Macwhirter 