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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]
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There is a campaign just now asking people to save newspapers. The gist: many are threatened by coronavirus-related advertising collapse; without them, especially plucky local ones, democracy will be under threat. The first stage is to ask the public to support them; the second, to demand government help. Byline Times isn’t entirely sold on the [more]
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There’s an interesting article in The Scientist, the magazine for life science professionals, that includes a good round-up of the current research into trans people’s brains. There are lots of fascinating questions: for people who transition to identifying as a binary gender different from that assigned at birth, “we still also don’t know whether male-to-female [more]
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Eleanor Penny, for Novara Media, on “bathroom bills” and anti-trans scaremongering: It seems to matter little that all this has been repeatedly debunked as statistical nonsense or swivel-eyed conspiracism. They aren’t really propositions to be proved true or false – they are ways of telegraphing disgust. Of signalling to those who fall outside normative conceptions [more]
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Net magazine, originally know as .net, is closing after 25 years. I cried at the news. Not just because it’s putting some lovely, talented people out of a job, but also because .net has a special place in my heart. It’s the magazine that gave me my break into journalism nearly 22 years ago, the [more]
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If you can afford it, this would be a very good time to subscribe to your favourite magazines. If you don’t, they might not be around when this crisis is over. One of the publishers I work for has already closed three titles. They won’t be coming back, and the industry as a whole is [more]
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The mainstream media has been quick to point the finger at social media for the conspiracy theory that 5G mobile phone signals spread Coronavirus. But the mainstream media played its part too. Here’s the Daily Star, just before people started arson attacks on mobile phone masts. Coronavirus: Fears 5G wifi networks could be acting as [more]
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The chorus of anger at people supposedly risking everybody’s lives by going to the park is growing louder, especially in the right-wing press; the government is now floating the idea that going outside at all may be banned “if people continue to flout the rules”. Don’t fall for it: it’s a deliberate attempt to bury [more]
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America’s The Daily Show has put together a video it’s dubbed “Heroes of the pandumbic”. It’s a compilation of US broadcasters (and the President who loves them) pooh-poohing the dangers of coronavirus; no prizes for guessing which media mogul’s network they’re all from. I’m sure you can think of some UK examples too. [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.
