‘The Queen will have been used to make a Conservative party political broadcast….” Why a Queen’s Speech now is an unnecessary sham.
Putin’s complaisant middle class
‘Members of both (public/private) sectors currently prioritise stability and economic security over liberal values, and both express high levels of trust in the Putin regime.’
Winners and losers on #MoultriesHill Part 3
Having won a battle that they should have lost (over the hotel), the bosses of Edinburgh St James are now engaged in one they should lose.
The tangled history of Edinburgh St James
‘So St. James Square remained the province of a handful of small businesses and workshops and 3,700 or so of Edinburgh’s lower orders and their exploitative, ever-neglectful landlords. The long decline of James Craig’s tenement buildings continued. Rack followed ruin and ruin begat rack.’
Aspects of Edinburgh (and Dundee)
‘Makar: Stewart Conn prefers “that term’s more egalitarian ring than ‘laureate’, with its whiff of Parnassus.” Down on the ground, a poet among people not stuck up, high on the Mountain of Muses.’
Once more with feeling: rediscovering local history ‘from the ground up’
Change is a constant fact of city life but Fay Young finds a sense of place endures in a digital archive of local history, told by local people. ‘These Leithers – born or made – sound connected to a place that matters.’
People O’ Oor Ain
‘Recall the teeth-gnashing of unionists that people were being sold a false prospectus, that ‘real politics’ are what mattered. Indeed so, but people see constitutional matters as the means to better social and economic policy.’
What are we stumbling into?
The Far Right made some big gains in the euro elections as angry voters backed anti-EU/nativist parties. Back to the 1930s? Amsterdam holds lessons
Four Welsh women poets
Then I’ll do the lights, fill the lamp with oil,Get coal from the shed, water from the well;Pluck and draw pigeon, with crop of green foilThis your good supper from the lime-tree fell. Lynette Roberts Poetry has played an important role in the history of Wales. From the medieval courts, to the ongoing National Eisteddfod […]
George Square 1919: no real revolutionary threat?
‘Yet while many continue to play up the revolutionary aspect today, there is no evidence it was anything more than a legitimate demonstration.’