Category: Uncategorised

This, by Patrick Benjamin, is superb: Dear White People, If You Have Ever Said Any Of These Things Then You Are Part Of The Problem. These riots are happening because no matter how black people have said it: taking a knee, marching the streets, bumper stickers, banners, signs, or chants, you still don’t get it.…

Here’s an interesting thought, which someone (I’ve lost the link, sorry) posted on social media earlier. What if 2020 isn’t the most awful year we’ve experienced, but the most important? That’s not to say it isn’t awful. Of course it is. But history is full of awful times that, with the benefit of hindsight, turned…

Like everyone, I’ve been watching the US police brutality with horror. US racism is hardly new, but this – these vicious attacks on peaceful protestors, and the deliberate targeting of press photographers and cameramen and women – feels like the culmination of so many recent trends: the deliberate infiltration of the police by white supremacists,…

There’s a blistering editorial in the New York Times about Amy Cooper, the white woman who was asked by a black birdwatcher to put her dog on a lead in the park. She responded by threatening to call the police and tell them that an African-American man was threatening her life – a potentially lethal…

This is the sound of a nail being hit squarely on the head (video in the pic.twitter.com link). It’s not about “reopening the economy.” People aren’t protesting for the right to BE waitresses and hairdressers, they’re fighting for the right to HAVE them. This is about white people demanding service. pic.twitter.com/KMupBTuAha — jess mcintosh (@jess_mc)…

Neil Mackay in The Herald writes about SNP factionalism: The SNP has always had a fractious, bitter, conspiratorial base, which some politicians have pandered to in the past. Now, it seems as if the base is coming overground, as if the base is set on taking the party over. …will I ever vote SNP again?…

Carlos Greaves, writing for McSweeney’s: Hello, Peter Ludlow here, CEO of InGen, the company behind the wildly successful dinosaur-themed amusement park, Jurassic Park. As you’re all aware, after an unprecedented storm hit the park, we lost power and the velociraptors escaped their enclosure and killed hundreds of park visitors, prompting a two-month shutdown of the…

A thought-provoking piece by Dr Fiona Jenkins: Although many employers are certainly being supportive, let’s not forget that those who until recently took their homes for private space are not gaining a privilege right now, but losing a set of prerogatives …so “working from home” at present means something like this: employers have requisitioned the…

You don’t have to feed your mind during lockdown, of course. But if you’re looking for something to interest, enrage and enthuse you Strathclyde University has a free course on gender representation in the media. I’m on week 3 and I’m finding it fascinating and thought-provoking. The course is here. It’s hosted by Futurelearn, which…

Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of stuff to laugh at. This, from the Mirror, had me in tears. Man had sex with a dolphin called Dolly for a year – and claimed she seduced him Almost every paragraph has a killer line, such as: “At first I…