Journalist, author, broadcaster
Before the discovery of North Sea oil in the 1970s, Aberdeen was a regional town and nationalism a marginal concern. With weeks to go until Scotland’s historic vote on independence, Aberdeen is a city transformed. It’s Scotland’s oil capital and the city’s resulting wealth is apparent. But not everyone has benefitted from those riches. As […]
Last Tuesday night, I watched, along with most of Scotland, two besuited, middle-aged men argue with each other on national television for the best part of two hours. In the main it was pretty unedifying stuff. Alastair Darling refused to accept that Scotland could function as an independent country; Alex Salmond made the frankly bizarre […]
What a difference a century makes. In 1912 Ireland’s constitutional future seemed irrevocably bound up with that of Scotland. That year the Government of Ireland Bill was introduced by Liberal prime minister HH Asquith, shortly to be followed by a similar home rule measure for the Scots. The rest, of course, is history. The first […]
The longer any online discussion goes on, the greater the probabilitythat someone will make a comparison involving Hitler or the Nazis.This maxim – known as ‘Godwin’s Law’ – is so widely accepted that ithas even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary. So today I wouldlike to propose an #indyref equivalent (but please don’t call […]
Scotland’s Alex Salmond (L) and Alistair Darling (R) engage in a TV debate over independence [Getty Images] Coatbridge, Scotland – “Independence is forever. You can’t take it back if you don’t like it,” the lean, wiry-framed Jim Murphy proclaims on Main Street. About 60 people are congregated in a semi-circle in front of the Labour MP, who […]
Twenty years after the war, mass graves containing the bodies of Bosniaks continue to be found [AP] Carakovo, Bosnia – Sudbin Music has a problem: He needs to bury 50 bodies. “Where can we put them?” Music, 40, wondered aloud as he stood on the edge of a graveyard in the northwestern Bosnian village of Carakovo. […]
Belfast – On Sunday morning, prominent Irish politician Gerry Adams woke alone in a cell in Antrim police station. By the following evening, the Sinn Fein president was stepping onto a podium at an election rally at the Devenish Centre, West Belfast as an 800-strong crowd chanted his name. Adams, who smiled widely, did not look […]
The majority of the 5,000 children in Irish-language education hail from nationalist areas [Reuters] Belfast, Northern Ireland – Seomra ranga – “classroom”, in Ireland’s indigenous language – reads a cardboard sign tacked onto a door. A little further down the hall, a leabharlann is filled with books. It is a very Irish scene, but in a very unlikely place: East Belfast Mission on […]