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I fear that this extraordinary photo will become a tragedy in hindsight. It’s of protesters in Michigan, many of them armed, demanding the government lifts lockdown because “we’re tired of not being able to buy the things that we need, go to the hairdressers.” Some protesters’ cars blocked the entrances to a hospital, preventing ambulances… [more]
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The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have appeared in a video about mental health during the coronavirus crisis. “We’re in this together,” they say. I’ve deliberately chosen an extreme example of the sentiment, but it’s everywhere in mainstream and social media right now. Coronavirus is the great leveller, we’re told. We’re in this together. It… [more]
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Laura Waddell has written a typically incisive and witty column about the mindset that sees police officers hassling people for sitting down and social media influencers shaming people for not doing 13 million sit-ups and writing a novel every day. Going into lockdown, and especially for the furloughed, many of us thought we would use… [more]
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Ed Yong is one of our best science writers, and this piece for The Atlantic is a clear-eyed look on where we all go from here. Whenever the lockdown is lifted – and lifting it too soon will have lethal consequences – we will not just go back to business as usual. The pandemic is not… [more]
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Something that you might not be aware of is how much newspaper, magazine and website publishers rely on affiliate marketing: if they link to a shop selling product X and you buy product X via that link, they get a small fee. Those revenues are particularly important during this coronavirus lockdown: the other big revenue… [more]
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The Conservatives are working on their exit strategy. Not how we’ll exit the lockdown; how they’ll shift the blame for their failures onto others, such as the NHS. For example: Care homes are not run by the NHS. Care homes used to be run by councils, but years of funding cuts have seen that provision… [more]
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The official UK coronavirus death toll will crack 10,000 today. The real death toll, which unlike the official figures includes those who died in care homes, those who died at home and those who had not already been tested positive for COVID-19, is much higher. The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine has published a good… [more]
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At the time of writing: 101,000 – total global deaths from Covid-19 8,958 – total UK deaths from the same virus, excluding hundreds more in care homes The UK has nearly one in ten of the global deaths from this virus despite being one of the most recent countries to get it. Today’s daily death… [more]
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Here’s Cambridge Police on Twitter this morning. Let’s play a little game. It’s called “show us which specific part of the emergency coronavirus legislation details which supermarket aisles are essential and which ones are non-essential”. There isn’t one, of course. Shops are allowed to sell anything they have in stock, and you are allowed to… [more]
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This is doing the rounds on social media right now. It’s funny, but like the best political jokes it has sharp teeth. How many of the people standing outside clapping for the NHS on a Thursday evening voted for a party that’s stripped the NHS bare, refused to pay staff properly, refused to consider its… [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.
