Author Archives: Editor

Fans of Eighties TV will remember The Golden Girls, the hit US sitcom that was the first to put older people and their lives front and centre. At its heart was the mother and daughter duo Sophia and Dorothy and the acid repartee between them over Shady Pines, the decidedly basic care facility where DorothyContinue reading “Will Coronavirus finally change our toxic attitudes towards older people?”

Coronavirus is laying waste to whole industries. The spectre of mass unemployment looms. Economists forecast a slump to rival the Great Depression. Against this backdrop, the future of newspapers might seem a point of niche interest but the Covid-19 lockdown is edging our trade closer and closer to the wall. Journalists don’t expect to beContinue reading “Covid-19 could kill off newspapers. You’ll miss them more than you think”

Do you Zoom? You simply must. Everyone is Zooming these days. It’s the latest in video-conferencing techno-wizardry, allowing businesses to hold meetings with quarantined staff via webcams. At least now you can mute Dave from marketing when he starts on about onboarding diversification of core verticals.  Now Holyrood is Zooming too. Yesterday, Presiding Officer KenContinue reading “Zoom without zoomers: the first virtual FMQs”

Seldom has a public servant’s stock risen so sharply only to collapse so quickly. For several weeks, Dr Catherine Calderwood was the public face of the Scottish Government’s response to Covid-19. In television ads urging us to ‘stay at home’, her beefy Belfast-by-way-of-Cambridge tones reassured a nervous populace with cool expertise. Scotland’s chief medical officerContinue reading “Why the chief medical officer had to go”

Her resignation came eventually, late last night, but until then Dr Catherine Calderwood had intended to continue in post. On Sunday, as she arrived for the daily briefing on coronavirus, there was one question on everyone’s lips: Is there a doctor in the house, and which house is she in?  This was no routine check-up.Continue reading “How Sturgeon defended then dumped her chief medical officer”

Coronavirus is showing the best and worst of British business. We have all heard the stories: some firms are being responsible and decent while others are treating the deadly pandemic as business-as-usual or even a chance to lay off workers at short notice. I doubt I’m the only one who won’t be forgetting which firmsContinue reading “Businesses must distance themselves from coronavirus capitalism”

It is an iron law of Scottish politics: never write off Alex Salmond. The former First Minister’s acquittal by a jury on a series of sexual assault charges brings to an end what he described as a ‘nightmare’. The political fallout, however, is still to come. Joanna Cherry, a senior Nationalist at Westminster, said: ‘ItContinue reading “What next for Alex Salmond?”

It’s been ten days since I left the house. I developed a dry cough while visiting my parents and have been self-isolating in my teenage bedroom, surrounded by hand sanitiser and Backstreet Boys posters. I waited for the other dread symptoms to follow — fever, shallow breathing, loss of taste and smell — but soContinue reading “Hope and despair in the Age of Corona”

History turns as much by chance as by design. For every meticulously planned revolution, there is the daring shot that triggers a world war. The coronavirus pandemic is more than a medical emergency; it is a contagion that will spread to every cell and tissue of our lives. The way we live is going toContinue reading “How Coronavirus could change everything”

One of the biggest dangers for a political party is to get too fond of talking to itself. That might not be a problem for the SNP, since so many of them are barely on speaking terms these days. Scotland’s ruling party is having an ugly, public falling out over ‘gender identity’, of all things.Continue reading “SNP risks tearing itself apart over trans rights”