Journalist, author, broadcaster
GLASGOW — At 6:30 a.m. on September 19 last year, Natalie McGarry sat alone on the pavement outside the glass-fronted Emirates Arena in this city’s East End. Inside, the counting of votes in Scotland’s independence referendum had ended a couple of hours earlier — Yes had won Glasgow but lost overall, by just over 10 […]
Shetlanders are fond of saying that their nearest train station is the Norwegian city of Bergen, such is the islands’ distance from the British mainland. Perched on a rocky outcrop surrounded by the wild, oil-rich North Sea, the U.K.’s most northerly archipelago has a very distinctive history and identity. But windswept Shetland — population circa […]
Coatbridge has voted Labour en masse for decades TOM Clarke is angry with the media. Last week, The Guardian followed the Labour MP as he canvassed Coatbridge and its environs, the North Lanarkshire patch he has represented since 1982. The resulting video – entitled “the strange death of Labour Scotland” – painted a less than […]
Ian Murray, ‘a good local MP’ THIS is supposed to be the social media election. But nobody seems to have told the good people of leafy Morningside. On a blustery weekday afternoon in the land of Miss Jean Brodie few voters seem particularly au fait with the latest Twitter stramash. “I’ve not heard anything about […]
Despite having more than a 16,000 majority, Douglas Alexander lags behind SNP challenger Mhairi Black, above, in Paisley Paisley has more than its fair share of attractions. There’s the medieval Abbey, cradle of the Royal House of Stewart. The art deco Russell Institute and the recently renovated Victorian town hall. But it’s not architectural history […]
Inverness was above the national average in its Yes vote ‘WE didn’t obtain the result we wanted but sooner or later we will get the result we want,” says Norman Will, leaning back on a comfy armchair in the Yes shop in the centre of Inverness. Saltires, Basque and Catalan flags compete for space on […]
Gordon Brown addresses an audience at Loanhead Miners Welfare and Social Club in Midlothian last September ‘WHICH way will you be voting in May?” I ask a table laden with lunchtime half pints and nips in the members’ bar at Loanhead Miners Welfare and Social Club. “We’re all Labour,” says one man with a broad […]
the banner-carrying Principal of the Common Riding, who has ‘aye been’ a man ON the last Friday of every July, Langholm hosts the Common Riding. In a throwback to the days of vicious Reiver battles with the English across the Border, the neat streets of brick houses and busy shops selling artisan chocolates and colourful […]
INVERNESS, Scotland — Last September, Scotland held a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. The campaign was lively, colorful and, it seemed, decisive: Scots voted by a 10-point margin to stay a part of Britain. But just seven months later, another nationalist earthquake looks set to hit Scotland, shaking the foundations of British politics […]
Scotland’s Labour party leader Jim Murphy [Reuters] Glasgow, Scotland – There is an old adage that in Glasgow, Labour votes are weighed not counted, such is the party’s historical dominance of Scotland’s largest city. Labour has controlled Glasgow city council for all but five of the last 63 years. All seven Glasgow MPs were elected […]