Sunday National, 21st June 2020. The punishment the Greek gods devised for Sisyphus was devilishly simple. Every day, he would roll a boulder up to the top of a high hill in Hades. Every day, the pitiless rock would roll back to where it started. Every day, he’d repeat this task, never making any real … Continue reading Glimmers of hope a life more ordinary is possible →

Sunday National, 14th of June 2020. Yes, it’s the B word. Covid or no Covid, I’m sorry, but the B word is back. Brexit may have seemed singularly inconsequential over the last three months, as the old polarities it engendered were superseded by the global pandemic – but there’s no avoiding it now. The uncertain … Continue reading Brexit is back, with all its old issues →

Sunday National, 7th June 2020. I find myself wondering whether they may – just – be beginning to panic. We’re not dealing with a case of the full Kermits. Not yet. For now, the reaction is limited to just a little flailing. But like a spider’s web trembling in a gentle morning breeze, the tremors … Continue reading The union is crumbling →

Sunday National, 24th May 2020. At times during this crisis, we’ve felt like a lost tribe. “Stay home.” “Don’t meet people outside your household.” “Exercise only with your household.” Clear though these messages have been, they’ve bustled with a sense of homely intimacy which – for a very substantial percentage of Scots – simply doesn’t … Continue reading Coping with a lonesome lockdown in a household of just one soul →

Sunday National, 10th May 2020. I never really knew my grandpa Jimmy. My father’s father – Thomas James Tickell – died when I was very young. I have only one concrete memory of him, and given the treachery and inventiveness of the human mind, even this could well be a phantom I’ve conjured from nothing. … Continue reading Celebrations of VE day let ‘Blitz spirit’ obscure the story’s moral →

Sunday National, 15th March 2020. It all comes back to Tony Gauci. The eyewitness evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper may seem like the unlikely lynchpin of an international terrorism trial, but Abdulbaset Al-Megrahi could not have been convicted of the Lockerbie bombing without it. This week, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided to refer … Continue reading The Lockerbie trial may yet embarrass the Scottish legal system →

Sunday National, 19th January 2020. Thirty years ago, five London Greenpeace activists found themselves slapped with a libel writ. It wasthe beginning of what would become one of the biggest, longest and most notorious UK defamationtrials of the 1990s. You’ve probably heard its name before. It came to be known as the “McLibel”case. Since 1986, … Continue reading New Holyrood defamation bill a step forward →

Sunday National, 5th January 2020. “Of course, it is a Scottish classic,” she gushed, holding the lukewarm pinot grigio to her lips, perched against one of the pink elephants pillared around Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre bar. “Live as if you’re working in the early days of a better nation,” her friend chipped in, gargling down a … Continue reading I have my doubts about Alasdair Gray tributes →

Sunday National, 29th December 2019. It is one of George Orwell’s most famous lines. “To see what is in front of one's nose”, he said, “needs a constant struggle”. It’s still true. We live in forgetful times, perhaps even more so than the first half of the 20th century when he produced Animal Farm and … Continue reading The failure of the People’s Vote has hard lessons for us all →

Sunday National, 22nd September 2019. This week has left me in a Jacobinical mood. The first Article of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen reads as follows. “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good,” it says. A … Continue reading Independence must mean ending the monarchy →