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Neil MackayHerald Scotland |
It didn’t take me long as a young journalist to realise all was not well with my profession. I became a reporter long ago, in 1991. Margaret...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. I still recall the first time I saw someone sleeping rough. It was during a...
THERE’S a distinct whiff of barbarism in the way Scotland’s elected officials in the Highlands are behaving today. The matter centres on the bust...
The tragedy of my generation is that we were raised in a period when news and analysis moved slowly enough for even those who didn’t stay across...
It should revolt the entire nation that a Scottish academic is scared to speak about her work because of the colour of her skin. I met with Melanie...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. All eyes are currently on the strange, whacky and cowardly behaviour of...
I had a moment of intense middle-aged horror just before I went on my summer holiday. I was packing my suitcase and reached for my lovely...
Scotland seems divided into three distinct groups. There’s the 10% who obsessively hate Nicola Sturgeon. Hate is a strong word, but these folk...
First, a brief review. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is magnificent. I’ve a few gripes, which drop it from an A to a mere A, but none are to do...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. We were so close, yet so far. So close you could almost taste it - like poor...
I sometimes wonder whether much of the rage which swirls around these days is down to a collective sense of shame at our own suicidal stupidity as a...
I detest the type of person who is my age – mid-50s – and forever sneering at young folk. They forget we were once young – albeit in the last...
As matters stand today, Nicola Sturgeon will never get out from under the scandals that are plaguing her. Most political leaders leave office carrying...
It's impossible to be certain about how our ancestors lived in the ancient past. There’s no recorded history, after all. However, scholars are...
In Northern Ireland, where I’m from, there’s a weird, disturbing cultural quirk found in a minority of folk which, I’m afraid, gives me the...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Only the psychopathic or sadistic could remain untroubled by the depths to...
I’ve a healthy distrust of tradition. Ironically, my suspicion was bred deep, from my formative years. It’s hard to respect tradition when...
I imagine one day in the not-so-distant future sitting with my grandchildren on my knee and telling them wild fairy tales so unbelievable that the...
Politics has always been about rich people and their money. Once it was courtiers fashioning themselves into camps to ensure they had the king’s...
Thomas Weber, professor of history at Aberdeen University, is recognised as one of the world’s leading authorities on Adolf Hitler and the Nazis....
If you’ve been wondering whether Andy Burnham is simply a Labour version of Boris Johnson, then you’re pretty much bang on the money. About to be...
It wasn’t just the 35° heat melting my brain in London this weekend. My wife had sprung a surprise on me: front row tickets for the ABBA Voyage...
One of literature’s most famous opening lines comes in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is...
Kurt Cobain once sang that ‘weather changes mood’. Always one for self-deprecating understatement, he pulled his punches in that line. Weather...
How could anyone have the arrogant audacity to remake Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? Who would dare believe they had the power to improve...
It astonishes me that anyone other than politicians would wish to associate with politicians. They’re an abysmal subsection of society. The...
Andy Burnham has certainly left plenty of folk shivering in their shoes. His win at Makerfield goes way beyond simply setting him on course to take...
Some years ago, I was developing a slightly high-falutin documentary about masks and the weird role they’ve played in human society. The mask is a...
Even if Elon Musk wasn’t Elon Musk, even if Elon Musk was a good and noble man, even if Elon Musk was a planetary exemplar of decency and morality,...
The allegations only emerged on Thursday evening, so calm and logic are required. This isn’t an issue which should be subject to the distortions of...
We're descending into ever tightening, ever more rapid, cycles of savagery. In Belfast, unspeakable violence is met with pogroms. We see this...
In the most troubling way, the timing of Tip Toe couldn’t have been more horribly perfect. On the day the final gruelling episode aired on Channel...
I spent a chunk of last week talking to the folk behind the UK Right to Food Commission. There are 14 million people going hungry in Britain today,...
Most people, even many SNP stalwarts, agree that there should be an inquiry into the Peter Murrell embezzlement case. I accord with Noel Dolan, once...
Desecration piles upon desecration. The reputation of Henry Nowak: desecrated with lies that he was racist. His life: desecrated by the bestial...
One of my most important formative experiences happened in April 1982 during the Falklands War. I was 12 and in first year at my Northern Ireland...
Like many, I initially responded to news that Nicola Sturgeon’s former husband was guilty of embezzling £400,000 from the SNP with the thought:...
I hope my grandad forgives me, but he was the first person who came to mind when I saw Tony Blair had crept out of his crypt to pontificate about the...
It's quite a mouthful for a book’s title, but I recommend A Psychiatric Study of Myths and Fairytales: Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness by...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. You may have missed it, as the news has been very poorly reported in the...
If we don our surgical gloves, reach for the handsaw, and pop the Scottish and UK governments onto the anatomy table for a spot of dissection, it...
A Scottish referee is given police protection because of a penalty. A trans MSP is escorted through Holyrood by security guards due to fears for their...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. If you’ve been watching a lot of TV news these last few days, you may have...
I confess my bias from the get-go: I hate technology. Not all technology, I hasten to add. I don’t hate heart machines and radios, or satnavs and...
The Labour/Tory duopoly is collapsing and with it the political system. The future is a battle of nationalisms between Reform, SNP, Sinn Fein and...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. There’s something deeply absurd and offensive about the way democracy in...
I almost burned down my mother-in-law’s house when I learned I was about to become a dad for the first time. And she was a brand new mother-in-law,...
Where once there were adverts for real physical books, today there’s only adverts for celebrity audiobooks. This reveals something very troubling,...
Stephen Boyd heads the influential think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research Scotland. As the election looms, writer-at-large Neil Mackay...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. You'd be hard pushed to claim this Scottish election has been anything...
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