Fay Young
Testing times for Scottish Parliament
Why is Scottish Parliament a largely unreported world? Watch these important debates on testing, business support – and then listen to FAI podcast on what business really thinks
Bandit capitalism: a very British oligarchy
Why didn’t the auditors flag this up? Where are the regulators? How did such jaw dropping debts happen? Why don’t we ever learn – starting a new ‘best of’ podcast series. First up, Bob Wylie
Love and light: poetry and prose in the time of coronavirus
It’s abut humanity. Vision is the theme of #NationalPoetryDay 20-20 and our co-editor Fay finds solace and joy and sadness in poetry and prose written in the time of coronavirus
Hyperlocal: reinventing cities
Has September 2020 snuffed out the last flicker of a struggling economy? Or are we seeing the first signs of hyperlocal revival? Fay Young looks and thinks local
It hurts us all: who can heal Scotland’s health inequality?
“I knew about inequality. Of course I did. As journalist and editor I read and write about people whose daily lives are very different to mine. I did not feel the difference in my guts…
We must pay to view the action online and onstage
Theatre and all performing arts are in crisis. We can, and must, get into the habit of paying for online culture, just as we would if we were attending the event in real life.
If you didn’t laugh
“I wanted to upset everybody, including myself. Half the problem with the world is that half the people take themselves too seriously. The other half don’t take themselves seriously enough.”
Schools ahead of their time – and ours too
What might we learn from the progressive thinking which gave power to local public health officers who understood local lives and deaths.
We’re all islanders in a pandemic
In retrospect it seems eerily prophetic. Those faces framed in small screens, distant voices interconnecting in the ether. Yet that’s not really it. What interests Giles Perring is something simpler, but more profound than a…
Strictly street dancing: a poem for a pandemic
Coronavirus brings powerful new poignancy to a remarkable poetry collection gathered by Edinburgh’s former Makar, Christine De Luca to celebrate “those who daily undertake some of the lesser-seen jobs in our city…night bus drivers, lollipop…
Being 90: a poem for a pandemic
‘Perversely, in the wars evoked by politicians it was the flaming of youth untimely snuffed out. Such thoughts emerge from a new poem, written before the pandemic, the reflections of a man in his tenth…
Rapid response: social enterprise shows the way
Government could learn from local community enterprises responding with astonishing speed and efficiency to get help and food where it is needed most – including NHS staff on the frontline