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Stephen Paton writes in The National about the abuse currently being thrown online at Mridul Wadhwa, who is a potential SNP candidate. You’d think that Wadhwa would be exactly the kind of person a supposedly progressive, forward-thinking country would want: she’s an advocate for Black and minority ethnic voices and has spent fifteen years working [more]
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Because I live in the central belt of scotland, I’m not going out anywhere right now. The pubs and venues are all closed, so there are no gigs to go to, no open mics to play, no comedy shows to cackle at. I can’t meet my friends in restaurants and I can’t cook for them [more]
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This, by Jared Misner for the NYT, is devastating. Now that I’m actually married (the legal kind), I can say I love my husband very much. He is pragmatic, kind and handsome. But he does not pull over for garage sales. He does not smuggle bags of dog costumes and treats out of press events [more]
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This, by Tom Whyman, should annoy the right people. If the image of the pundit-brained journalist has been crystallized anywhere, it is in the early satire of Chris Morris: shows like The Day Today and Brass Eye where his anchor character was constantly drawing wildly over-confident conclusions from nonsensical infographics, howling at unassuming guests that they [more]
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Are you feeling guilty about not maintaining all your friendships through COVID? Me too. Brandy Jensen takes the helm of Jezebel’s “Ask a fuck-up” and tries to explain. The problem, for me, is that it feels like there is simply nothing to catch these people up on anymore. Too many things are happening but also [more]
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One of the minor weird things about having a different name and pronouns to the ones you were assigned at birth is that they sometimes feel like an odd fit with other aspects of who you are. For example, I mentioned being my son’s dad in my last post; on the radio the other day [more]
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You might not think it from reading this blog, but one of the things I’m known for is laughing: as one of my friends put it the other night, “I don’t know ANYONE that laughs more than you”. I’m often reduced to tears by the silliest passing thought, and the more inappropriate it is to [more]
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In response to the news that US writer Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended from his job for masturbating during a video meeting, Dr Jennifer Gunter pointed out on Twitter that “masturbating while on a work zoom/call is a choice. If Toobin was on mute he was still listening/watching the other participants and that’s still disgusting [more]
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This is a great, and terrifying, piece of journalism: The 31-Day Campaign Against QAnon. It’s about what happened when a “nice guy” ran for Congress against a right-wing extremist. There was a time when Kevin Van Ausdal had not yet been called a “loser†and “a disgrace†and hustled out of Georgia. He had not [more]
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If you’ve been wondering why the far right is so keen on anti-masking and so against any measures to combat COVID other than letting the virus rip through the most vulnerable, the answer is simple: a core tenet of fascism is about casting out the weak. On the internet there’s a famous trope called Godwin’s [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.
