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I wrote the other day that many bigots are stupid. So it was just a matter of time before they combined multiple flavours of stupid, as they do here. Is a new trend that isn’t a new trend caused by something that doesn’t exist? Hoo boy, we’re gonna have to get our thinkin’ caps on… [more]
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The thing about bigots is that often, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Sometimes that’s because they’re stupid. But all too often it’s wilful stupidity, where the information is widely and easily available but they either don’t look for it or refuse to believe it. Here’s an example from this morning. Over on… [more]
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All good things must end, and that includes me blogging about our Christmas EP. I hope you’ve found it interesting; I like reading other people’s explanations of how they come up with stuff because we’re all so different in how we work, how we approach things and how we end up with a finished product.… [more]
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Let’s compare two numbers. In a typical year, the UK Gender Recognition Panel will grant around 320 gender recognition certificates to trans people. Over the last year, the UK press printed more than 6,000 articles about trans people, most of them negative, many of them scaremongering about the imagined dangers of letting trans people get those… [more]
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Today’s Christmas EP song started in two very different places: the title came from an in-joke, and the lyrics came from remembering a conversation in a Partick nail bar. Christmas in Calton was originally the name of a playlist I made to amuse a Glasgow pal. The title was a riff on Christmas In Hollis,… [more]
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According to a new YouGov poll, a quarter of UK adults would not feel proud of their child if their child came out as LGBT+. The poll is full of saddening figures, of which this is the saddest: 11% would feel uncomfortable living at home with a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender child. That perhaps… [more]
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When you’re going through tough times or big changes, it can be hard to see the bigger picture. You may be in a better place than you were in the past, you may be ending things that have had a negative effect on you, but you don’t necessarily feel like bouncing around in a joyful… [more]
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I love Christmas songs. Not cheesy ones or po-faced ones like Cliff or dirges like Lennon’s yuletide atrocity. I love the joyous ones, whether it’s Noddy Holder’s roar of “It’s CHRISTMAAAAAAAS!”, Mariah’s infectious glitter or U2’s wonderful cover of Darlene Love’s transcendent Baby Please Come Home, which I genuinely believe is one of the greatest… [more]
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Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and Rape Crisis Scotland needs your money. Please donate if you can: it’s an essential and desperately underfunded service. The stories being shared by the @rapecrisisscot Twitter account are heartbreaking. On a typical day across Scotland this year over one thousand survivors of sexual violence… [more]
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This is the fourth song from our Bring The Good Times Back EP that I’m blogging about, and it’s called Battlecry. It’s one of the first songs I wrote with the band, and it began life with Kenny’s brilliantly propulsive bass line. Although it’s a serious song IÂ had an old Bill Hicks routine in my… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
