Vendetta

We are profiling new and upcoming writers in fiction, short stories and poetry, in Scots, English and Gaelic. This is an extract from Colin Burnett’s Vendetta, from his Medium. Colin Burnett has written two novels, A Working Class State of Mind and Who’s Aldo. He’s written extensively for newspapers and has been nominated for Scots […] Source

One Day to Go – Backing Bella Caledonia 2025

Your timeline is awash with propaganda. So are your newspapers, so is your broadcast media. Not everyone knows this, or has time to do anything about it. Corporate media in Scotland is bland and uniform. It represents the same politics over and over again. Occasionally, you get a voice, out of the blue, like Gary […] Source

Some Notes on Shopping, Socialism and Self-Efficacy, or Socialism or Barbyism

“We’ve become a nation measuring out our lives in shopping bags and nursing our psychic ills through retail therapy.” (Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune, Christmas, 1986) On returning home to Edinburgh, after my somewhat desultory wanderings afar for some years, I found some of its districts, historic and otherwise, crammed with charity shops. Most were squeezed […] Source

Reeves’s neo-liberal choice to punish the disabled

Just before the Chancellor Rachel Reeves made her Spring Budget statement this week, the Guardian newspaper published a story reporting on the new austerity cuts that she was set to announce, the headline ran: “Further benefits cuts planned as Rachel Reeves forced to find extra £1.6bn.” This headline is, to put…