Left voices, unfiltered, unedited, Ungagged.
We may have been in various phases of lockdown across Europe over recent months, yet queer politics remains an ever present issue for we L.Q.B.T.Q.+ folk, but seemingly also for those who police and legislate our lives. Advancing the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland to protect and safeguard the lives of trans folk has been […]
“It is poverty that robs children of life chances be they health, education, unsafe communities, food insecurity and poor housing.” Schools have now been closed for the vast majority of children since 20th March. They won’t be re opening until August at the earliest. Coronavirus has dominated the headlines from a health point of view […]
Sounds odd to state something so obvious, yet I feel there are some out there in the world who may need reminding. Racism is lightyears more horrific than vandalism in every way imaginable. Smashed goods do not compare to the level of misery and pain inflicted upon those oppressed by a society built to favour […]
writes: Today (Sunday 7/6/2020) will see Black Lives matter demonstrations in Scotland. I have tried to convince Back Lives Matter activists to move away from doing physical protests and to go online. Although they all have listened and have taken on board what we’ve said – one of the events did move online – the […]
On April 9th, following months of wrangling and political machinations, the campaign for the Democratic nomination for U.S President ended when Senator Bernie Sanders made the surprising decision to drop out of the race. The decision came after the Supreme Court refused to suspend physical voting in the Wisconsin primary elections due to the Covid-19 […]
Browsing social media recently I came across one blogger who claimed that Covid-19 will be America’s Chernobyl. That seems a bit like hyperbole. Chernobyl, as history records, became a central part of Gorbachev’s Glasnost campaign which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union (helped of course by the industrial level of corruption among […]
These days it feels like every app on my phone has some Covid-19 related content. One of them has a list of all the rich and famous who’ve fallen victim to the virus – movie stars, sports people, politicians. I’ve seen the related conversations on social media, where people debate who the most famous victim […]
You hardly have to join many dots to understand that the policy of the British government was never not herd immunity. But the fact that it still is ‘targeted herd immunity’, despite and even including the lockdown measures, seems to be less understood. Rather than considering the lockdown as a complete u-turn from the British […]
It was January 2020 and I had travelled from China back to Scotland to spend a couple of weeks with my family. I’m a teacher so my time off coincides with Chinese festivals rather than Western holidays. We were having a belated Christmas and New Year, as has become normal for us in recent years. […]
The news that an unknown virus which caused breathing and respiratory problems was spreading rapidly in Wuhan at the end of last year caused little alarm at first, and people could be forgiven for paying it no attention. The other news stories of January and February 2020 included the assassination of one of Iran’s leading generals by the US and the horrific Australian bush fires. In the UK, Labour had suffered its worst […]