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FT.com: A long-running boycott of The Sun newspaper on Merseyside reduced Euroscepticism in the area and had a positive influence on its Remain vote in the Brexit referendum, university researchers have concluded. It’s a single study and isn’t peer-reviewed, but it’s worth considering alongside the fact that Northern Ireland and Scotland, where The Sun has… [more]
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There’s a bleak joke here in Glasgow about old buildings: they have a strange tendency to set themselves on fire. I live just across the road from one such example, the historic Scotway House building (pictured). It was a drawing office for the shipyards and when developers wanted to knock it down to make room… [more]
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I’ve just been to see the documentary Hail Satan? at Glasgow’s Film City, formerly Govan Town Hall. It’s a fascinating place, and Hail Satan? is a fascinating film. The film is about The Satanic Temple, a group of merry pranksters with a very serious purpose: they draw attention to and sometimes battle the US religious right’s… [more]
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On a dull autumn day in 1964, two NHS doctors strapped a 17-year-old boy into a wooden chair in a dark, windowless room and covered him in electrodes. During hours of so-called therapy, they repeatedly electrocuted him while showing him images of women’s clothing. That’s the start of a BBC profile of Carolyn Mercer, a… [more]
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The UK has lost its measles-free status, which is deeply worrying. In response the BBC asks, “why are some children not being vaccinated?” Dr David Robert Grimes may have part of the answer. On Twitter this morning he posted this: Asked by regional BBC station to discuss falling vaccination rates – grand, except they wanted… [more]
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I read this in a single sitting last night and cried through the whole thing. What would you do if your child came out as trans, or if your spouse did? What if both of those things happened? You may know Amanda Jetté Knox from Twitter, where she’s @mavenofmayhem. In this book she writes about… [more]
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A few days ago, a thread about radicalisation went viral. In it, Joanna Shroeder spoke about the way in which far-right activists recruit boys and young men by weaponising shame. The process goes something like this: Boys are encouraged to transgress social norms by posting racist, homophobic, misogynist or anti-semitic jokes The boys are then called… [more]
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The New York Times has put together a comprehensive series of reports on Gamergate, the poisonous movement that’s transformed politics for the worse. What began as misogyny would soon incorporate white nationalism; what began in video gaming circles would become a mass movement affecting everything. It’s impressive, powerful and frightening stuff, and the reverberations continue… [more]
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Buzzfeed news: Two Transgender Employees Of The Guardian Have Quit Over Its “Transphobic” Reporting …Her resignation marks a flashpoint in what multiple sources at the Guardian have described to BuzzFeed News as a deepening internal war over the rights of transgender people – and how the organisation reports on them. Staff members across several departments… [more]
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This, the result of a months-long investigation by the New York Times, is terrifying: How YouTube radicalised Brazil. A New York Times investigation in Brazil found that, time and again, videos promoted by the site have upended central elements of daily life. Teachers describe classrooms made unruly by students who quote from YouTube conspiracy videos… [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.
