Iain Macwhirter
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“On the Record”, by David Cameron. A study in privilege (review)
HOW do you review a book that has already been filleted by extracts in the press, every morsel of news extracted? We all know about David Cameron’s pot smoking at Eton. We know how he felt about the treachery of Michael Gove, the many faces of Boris Johnson, his adoration of Tony Blair. The former … Continue reading
Want to know what real fascism looks like? Take a look at Spain’s repression of Catalan nationalists.
The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has landed in Dublin seeking political asylum, along with her deputy, John Swinney, and the party’s constitutional affairs minister, Mike Russell. Their hasty departure follows the conviction of 13 Scottish “separatists” who helped organise the illegal 2022 independence referendum. Prominent nationalist politicians including the Scottish Justice Secretary, Humza Yousaf, the … Continue reading
Reforming the Gender Recognition Act must not abolish the biological meaning of sex.
MOST people reading this column will surely agree that people who wish to change their gender should have the freedom to do so. We’ve come a long way since the days when people with non-heterosexual lifestyles were discriminated against or vilified. Live and let live.If some people who were born as men wish to live their … Continue reading
The Class Ceiling: it’s not just the glass, but the ceiling that we should be questioning.
WE’VE all heard of the “glass ceiling”: the invisible barriers to advancement that face women and people from ethnic minorities. But what has been given a lot less attention in the past couple of decades is the enduring “class ceiling” – the barriers preventing working-class people from rising up the career ladder. It’s been convenient … Continue reading
It’s make-your-mind-up-time on Brexit. But is Labour capable of it?
After nearly three years of Brexit, and on the even of the meaningful vote, we still don’t know what Labour opposition’s policy is on the most important issue facing the UK in half a century. Is Labour a pro-Brexit party, as it’s leadership clearly believe, and its conference resolutions confirm. Or is it a Remain … Continue reading
Dear Politicians: stop using hate crime to outlaw offensive behaviour.
‘DEAR Misandrists. If you spread hatred against men, you should be worried. If we hear you, you’ll be reported. Yours, Police Scotland”. Could we start seeing posters like that appearing in bus shelters across Scotland. The UK and Scottish governments are planning to make misogyny a hate crime and, in England at least, the Law … Continue reading
Project Fear? They were right all along. (Only it’s worse)
It is an extraordinary story: a kind of reverse Fake News. Instead of people being led to believe something false, the public appear not to believe something that is actually true. Perhaps the Russians have been fiddling with out brains again. Or maybe we just have a higher tolerance for hardship when it’s self-inflicted. At … Continue reading
“The People Versus Tech” by Jamie Bartlett. Review.
Jamie Bartlett is a former digital evangelist who proselytised all things web for the left-leaning think-tank Demos since the early noughties. We all drank the digital Kool Aid and thought that this new technology would hand power to the people and improve the quality of public debate. That was until the Arab Spring started to … Continue reading
The media may have lost interest in the chemical attacks in Salisbury and Douma, but social media hasn’t.
THE mainstream media has a notoriously short attention span, but it seems to have largely lost interest in the chemical warfare attacks allegedly made with Russian connivance in Salisbury and Douma. The UK victims, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, have made what is officially described as a miraculous recovery and been spirited away, furnished, we are told, … Continue reading
Brexit isn’t even working for racists – so why can no one stop it?
It was a fitting if sombre irony that the Windrush generation scandal broke on the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. Public attitudes have moved on and modern Britain is not the racially torn dystopia that Powell predicted. Far from it – most voters agree that migration and open borders benefit … Continue reading
