‘This deep, dark watery grave is the only symbol of the city’s sharp industrial decline that we can’t privatise, close down or demolish. It’s the only thing we can’t wash our hands of or blame on the Tories’. Loki on suicide, work, masculinity – and feeling terrified.
Politics
Red Queen policymaking
The Programme for Government is full of detailed initiatives to support and encourage everything from manufacturing in the West Highlands to tourism in Ayrshire. Mostly it is a description of what is already being done, but where’s the evidence for what works, asks a former government adviser.
Brexit may mean internalised border control
The UK Government has published plans to maintain a border-free zone with Ireland once it has left the EU. Analysing the long-awaited paper, Professor Christina Boswell, finds it knocks out one of the main arguments for refusing Scotland more autonomy over its immigration policy
GERS: location, location, location…
‘Of course, it is possible to close this (budget) gap by explicitly reducing certain expenditures or by assuming higher tax revenues – either through increased rates or faster growth. Others will argue though, that in the context of independence, there may be additional costs. The debates will no doubt continue.’ And indeed they do…
GERS: Murphy’s Flawed Method
‘…he seems to believe that GERS are unrealiable simply because the results sound ‘improbable’ to him and ‘the last thing they should do is trust that from London’. With a belief in his own infallible ‘intuition’, he then goes looking for reasons to confirm it’.
Culture
Who cares for young carers?
One in eight secondary school-age pupils in Glasgow provides care for someone at home. Not only do these pupils care for someone with a disability, long-term illness, mental health or substance issue, they also have poorer outcomes for their own health and future expectations.
Breaking the silence around asbestos
‘My dad lost his voice a few days before he died, caused ultimately by this illness. We became his voice. It is my hope that in writing this I can help in some small way the people who are struggling to have their voices heard.’ Dianne McKay speaks up for women and men suffering from asbestos related diseases.
Eggs Benelux
Poisoned eggs? Dominic Duckett considers the culture of risk and blame surrounding the latest food scare and suggests our systematic finger-pointing at foreigners may well tell us something about who we think we are.
The moral certainty trap
There is every chance that the strident, morally certain progressives of the future will look at us in much the same way we look at the slave owners. And much the same way the slave owners looked at the slaves; less than, unevolved inferiors…Sub-human’.