Burns Night – A Toast To Myth And Truth
You can ascribe the writings of Robert Burns to virtually any subject. You can read his sense of delicacy and melancholy in any number of poems, just as you can deride his infidelity when you take into account his love life. But his universal appeal is no accident, his talent is no invention. Tonight is…
Trumping The Mothers
It wasn’t until Donald Trump was elected president of the US in November 2016 that a little more attention in that country was paid to his mother, Mary Trump. His attacks on immigrants had attracted many who had pointed out his own family’s immigration history: his paternal grandfather, Friedrich Trump, who came to the US…
GRA
Vic Valentine What is the Gender Recognition Act? In Scotland, the gender on your birth certificate is your ‘legal gender’. For the vast majority of people, the gender recorded on your birth certificate when you were born will match your sense of who you are when you grow up. But for trans people, this isn’t…
Mebbes Aye, Mebbes Naw
Tammas Clark Hou it aw ends. In 7th century Egypt, wi Caliph Abd al-Malik taxin the Coptic language intae oblivion. In modren Sri Lanka, wi a hunner an fifty fowk killed in riots sparked bi anti-Tamil language legislation. An in Russia an Ukraine an Cameroon, an ony place whaur there are tongues tae speak an…
My Mackintosh
Four years ago I was in the Cairngorms blissfully incommunicado with the world when a text appeared from a London friend asking ‘what’s happening with the Mackintosh?’. I was totally unaware of the fire which had caused enormous damage to a building that has been such a part of my life, as a student in…
Hubble Bubble: Scotland’s Witchcraft
Scotland is a witch-ridden country. James VI knew this, when he wrote Daemonologie, his treatise on witchcraft and its evils in 1597. Six years prior, they had burned the North Berwick witches, who were tortured into confessing their part in a plot to drown King James and his Danish bride, Princess Anne, at sea. These…
A Tribute To Denis Goldberg
I was hoping that I would not have to write this for some time yet. Denis, however, recognised that his death was inevitable and that is why he worked so hard in his last years to create the House of Hope in Hout Bay as his legacy to his community and to his nation….