“What we have is smoke in mirrors designed to weaken the BBC’s independence, cow its journalists, and ripen it up for dismemberment and eventual sale to the highest bidder. It’s short-term electoral politics and strategic long-term weakening of a once great British institution.”
Culture
Poor Things movie: Alasdair Gray revisited – and revised
“Lanthimos’s film and Gray’s text are independent but related works. It is worth remembering that adaptations are under no obligation to be faithful to source materials. There is no governing body adjudicating and no code of laws to apply. Traces remain, however. Look out for the interrogation of authority, the imagination of an alternative future, and the indomitable spirit of Bella Baxter. Then read some Alasdair Gray.”
Alarming death toll in the Scottish wilds
“Scotland could lead the way in pioneering legislation that protects all animals, domestic and free-living. This legislation should begin with the recognition of sentience and enshrine in law the value and dignity of wild animals such that their right to live unmolested is respected.”
Patagonia 2023
Our colleague Jackie Kemp posts a guest blog by her partner, Rob Bruce, whose images often grace our pages on a trip to Patagonia…and more.
Cut to the bone. Is this what Scotland’s culture is worth?
“At the end of a year of confusing cuts, un-cuts and renewed cuts, the Scottish Government’s latest pledge is to invest £100m in the cultural sector over the next five years. How widely and how quickly that will be shared is not yet known.” We report on how successive governments starve a sector that’s key to the Scottish economy – and identity.
Remote? The Highlands? Get awa’
“Remote” seems to me to have a useful meaning in the IT sense of performing an activity when you are not there in person – eg a surgeon might operate remotely, or a teacher give lessons remotely. I don’t think it is useful to class whole communities as “remote”.
Back to the National Gallery of Scotland after 30 years
Jackie Kemp revisits a once favourite haunt: ” I felt that what would be better was just to hang Scottish paintings among the European and world artists who influenced them. They should be enjoyed for themselves, I felt, instead of being forced into the template of a national story.”
Climate change at the Edinburgh festivals
“Governments working together to regulate the production of greenhouse gases is our planet’s best, perhaps only, only hope. To get there, we need these issues to be in the spotlight. More power to your elbow, Greta.”
What’s the Orange Order’s future?
“I was at a talk the other week by the Orange Order Historian Dr David Hume. It is a measure of how far we have come as a society that there was a talk about the Orange Order in the James Connolly Centre on the Falls Road.
Declaration of Arbroath: no political cherry-picking!
“…the declaration’s authors had little desire to see an Anglo-Scottish union centuries later, nor had a high opinion of popular sovereignty. Democracy too was an alien concept at this time. This was a document written for the elites, by the elites.”