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I went to see Richard Hawley at the Barrowland Ballroom last night. The Barras is rightly known for being one of the world’s best music venues, and I go there a lot. But until last night I’d never been as me because I’ve been scared of doing it. So that’s what I did last night.… [more]
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The latest Home Office figures show once again that hate crimes are soaring in England and Wales. The number of reported hate crimes has doubled since 2013. The majority of hate crimes are racial, and there were a shocking 78,991 such crimes in 2018 – an increase of 11%. And there are also worrying increases… [more]
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Update, 16 October: This is even worse than it looked. The Newsnight article says this: The results of the study are yet to be published, but a number of concerns were raised to BBC Newsnight and the British Medical Journal: Let”s spell this one out. The original BBC Newsnight item and article were put together… [more]
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I know what you’ve been thinking. “Carrie,” you’ve been thinking. “All this politics stuff is all very right-on, but where’s the #relateable #content? Why can’t you blog about interesting things, like how to find lipstick that doesn’t make you look like Robert Smith from The Cure’s granny?” This post’s for you. One of the things… [more]
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Guess which newspaper is making a false distinction between children with special needs and school pupils, and suggesting that the former are harming the latter? Here’s a clue: it rhymes with “fuelling hate crimes”. We’ve been here before: in June, the Times wrote an awful article implying that care experienced kids were going to damage… [more]
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To paraphrase Mrs Merton: what first atttracted the Conservative government to voter ID, a scheme that would stop many non-Tory voters from voting? After an unsuccessful attempt to introduce it in 2017, voter ID is back! Back! BACK! This version is slightly more sensible than Theresa May’s version from two years ago (unlike May’s proposals… [more]
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Another weekend, another bunch of anti-trans stories in the Sunday Times (following on from four stories in the Saturday edition). Today’s selection includes a 3/4 page tale of a deeply troubled man who transitioned and then de-transitioned, something that’s incredibly rare but that does happen, usually because some trans people face terrible hostility when they… [more]
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I took the kids to see Abominable yesterday. I didn’t have high hopes: the marketing made it look like another school-holiday by-the-numbers animation, and I already knew it made extensive use of one of Coldplay’s worst songs. But it turned out to be a wee gem of a film, and my two loved it. It… [more]
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What does hate look like? In many cases, it looks just like you. When we think of hateful bigotry, we tend to imagine stereotypes: the bomber-jacketed skinhead, the spittle-flecked preacher and so on. We don’t imagine nice people: our neighbours, our friends, the mums on the school run. But the stereotypes are often wrong. To… [more]
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It’s National Coming Out Day in the US today. It’s often pitched as a celebration, but National Coming Out Day began as activism. For LGBT+ people, the personal is political – so coming out is a political act. Life is different if you’re LGBT+. The US Supreme Court is not currently discussing whether it should be… [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.
