Tommy Ball has been involved in progressive politics for over a decade. From Scottish National Party activist to Executive Committee member of the Scottish Socialist Party, he has pounded the streets and tenements of Glasgow and beyond delivering leaflets, speaking at pro-Independence events, and standing – generally unsuccessfully – for election in the Socialist interest. His writing has been featured in newspapers such as The National and periodicals like the Scottish Socialist Voice.
Educated at Portsmouth, which is not called the Sorbonne of the South Coast, he is an uncompromising Socialist. His main interest is in foreign affairs, and he has travelled widely in the former Eastern Bloc, including many of the post-Soviet republics and all of the former Yugoslav republics, where he hopes he has learned much about the right and wrong ways to do Socialism and the wrong way to do independence.
He does not understand why a border on a small island is a bad thing when it means Britain holding onto Scotland, but a good thing when it means Britain holding onto northern Ireland.
He has lived in Ireland, Scotland and England, is a biologist by training and a chemist to trade. He tweets at T_Socialist and blogs – angrily and infrequently – at www.tommyballgovan.blogspot.com.
Far away in Oriental Europe, there was a castle and in that castle I was born. Confiscated by the communists at gun point, left to rot and turned into “social housing”. Hello, Romania. The glory of the event was unmatched by the land, as a black and white reality welcomed me–a tyranny that feared not […]
Fuad Alakbarov is an Azerbaijani-Scottish political activist and human rights defender. He is known mainly for human rights advocacy for refugees, anti-racism and anti-poverty campaigns. Alakbarov is a columnist for the Mind Waves, a NHS-funded project which raises public awareness about mental health issues. He also covers refugee crisis, geopolitics and conflict worldwide for openDemocracy […]