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Carlos Greaves, writing for McSweeney’s: Hello, Peter Ludlow here, CEO of InGen, the company behind the wildly successful dinosaur-themed amusement park, Jurassic Park. As you’re all aware, after an unprecedented storm hit the park, we lost power and the velociraptors escaped their enclosure and killed hundreds of park visitors, prompting a two-month shutdown of the… [more]
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When you’re trying to keep people at home over what’s likely to be a hot and sunny bank holiday weekend, it’s hard to imagine a worse headline than this. It’s from today’s Daily Mail (in England; the Scottish edition has Nicola Sturgeon saying the lockdown can’t be lifted yet). The Mail of all papers should… [more]
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I’m careful when I shop. I wash my hands thoroughly before I go out, I use liberal amounts of hand sanitiser before I go in, I wear a mask at all times, I try not to touch anything I’m not sure I’ll buy and I go crazy with the hand sanitiser again when I come… [more]
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Media Matters: Right-wing groups are using the same playbook against COVID-19 measures they’ve used to fight LGBTQ rights. …Influential right-wing and anti-LGBTQ groups have responded to stay-at-home orders put in place to protect Americans from the coronavirus by pushing for exemptions for churches and pastors, including by filing lawsuits, pressuring local and state governments, and… [more]
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Many people believe that the Conservative MP Liz Truss is stupid. She may have said many stupid things in her career, but she isn’t thick. She’s much worse than that. Truss was previously the UK’s Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, where she was responsible for defending the independence of the judiciary and… [more]
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Ruby Lott-Lavigna in Vice: Journalism is not supposed to be a fluffy PR machine for the government (unless you’re working in North Korea, or, I don’t know, the Sunday Telegraph news desk), ready to boost your mood on a less than jolly day with an uplifting story of a dog who saved a duck from… [more]
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Yet more evidence that we really aren’t in this together: the Office for National Statistics reports that the Covid-19 death rate in England is more than double in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived. In the most deprived areas the death rate is 55.1 deaths per 100,000 population; in the least deprived,… [more]
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It’s May Day, the day when we celebrate international workers’ day. But in England many workers have nothing to celebrate: what the papers call a lockdown isn’t stopping employers from forcing people to come in to work non-essential jobs. Caroline Molloy, in OpenDemocracy: we don’t actually have a lockdown. The government has allowed people to… [more]
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To paraphrase The Onion: I can’t believe this is happening in the only city where this regularly happens. Glasgow is set to lose another iconic building, the ABC in Sauchiehall Street. The music venue – one of my very favourite places – was badly damaged by the second Art School fire and has effectively been… [more]
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PinkNews: The anti-trans lobby group LGB Alliance has had not one but two fundraising pages taken down, following an abusive campaign against gay MP John Nicolson and “violent and abusive†language from its supporters. Fundraising platforms JustGiving and GoFundMe have both permanently removed pages set up by the pressure group. This follows weeks of targeted… [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.
