Let’s Talk about Tax if we don’t want to be Safety First Scotland Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, December 20th 2015 This was a significant week for the Scottish Government and Scottish politics. John Swinney presented his first ever budget since Scotland had been given limited income tax powers which allowed variety up or down by up to 10p. That he choose not to do so is significant. Swinney’s ninth budget came against the backdrop of a decade of real terms cuts by the Tories which we are only half way through. Against this backdrop and a Scottish election next year

Continue Reading Let’s Talk about Tax if we don’t want to be Safety First Scotland

The Day that Scotland Changed Gerry Hassan Prospect, December 18th 2015 May 7^th 2015 stands out as the day Scotland changed. The House of Cards that was Labour dominance collapsed: a domino effect which witnessed 40 out of 41 Labour seats being won by the SNP. Scotland has seamlessly switched from a nation of Labour supremacy to one of SNP ascendancy, and no one is quite sure why and what it means. The standard explanation is that Labour tied itself to the Tories in the independence referendum, but that is one small part. Much more pronounced is the decline of

Continue Reading The Day that Scotland Changed

MY FAVOURITE MUSIC OF THE YEAR: 2015 December 16th 2015 NEW ALBUMS 1 C Duncan, Architect One man’s vision – part classical, ambient, other worldly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbJS3YVae0 2 Kamasi Washington, The Epic Jazz is rarely like this: mixing big band, soul & funk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIAMO3Al1A 3 Floating Points, Elaenia Stunning harmonies, spaces and silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfYP7uTZX8Y 4 Tame Impala, Currents Real departure for guitar sound into dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFptt7Cargc 5 D’Angelo, Black Messiah Rarely has political funk/R&Bsounded so good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2r5yqjlVrI (more…)

Continue Reading My Favourite Music of the Year: 2015

Donald Trump’s appeal tells us that something is wrong with America and the West Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, December 13th 2015 Only a generation ago, just after the Berlin Wall fell, liberal democratic opinion across the West was confident about the future. This was the era of the long boom across the West, the Clinton era of ‘Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow’ in the US, and the Blair’s ‘Dreams Can Only Get Better’ in the UK. All of this hubris and hype was brought down to earth by the banker’s crash of 2008, but this was only the start of

Continue Reading Donald Trump’s appeal tells us that something is wrong with America and the West

The Wider Syria Debate: Challenging Britain’s ‘Empire of the Mind’ Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, December 6th 2015 Britain is off to war again. The parliamentary debate did not live up to the billing. Cameron and Corbyn underperformed. Hilary Benn stole the show and headlines. Great rhetorical moment this was not. This wasn’t of the quality of 1939 and the outbreak of World War Two, 1940 and the resignation of Chamberlain as PM, Suez and Anthony Eden comparing the Egyptian leader Nasser to Hitler and Mussolini, or even more recently, the Falklands war, when at the outset Margaret Thatcher’s political

Continue Reading The Wider Syria Debate: Challenging Britain’s ‘Empire of the Mind’

The Tories are shrinking the state while Labour go back to the 1980s Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 29th 2015 These are tumultuous times. Chaos in Syria. Complex and shifting alliances. The Turks shooting down a Russian plane. There is disarray in the Labour Party on Syria and Trident. And all in the week of George Osborne’s Autumn Statement on public spending. The Tories appear dominant in British politics only six months after they won their surprising majority: based on 24.3% of electors and a narrow parliamentary majority of 12 seats. Osborne cleverly positioned himself retreating from his own unpopular

Continue Reading The Tories are shrinking the state while Labour go back to the 1980s

The SNP need to get back to governing – and being bold and honest with us Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 22nd 2015 Nicola Sturgeon this week marked her first year as First Minister. The SNP is hugely popular, Labour flatlining, the Tories marginalised and the Lib Dems irrelevant. The SNP-Labour relationship now seems a reverse of the 1980s. Then Labour sat for most of the decade on 50% in the polls with the SNP on 20% or less. Labour then was Scotland’s party; that mantle has now fallen to the SNP. No one is quite sure how we

Continue Reading The SNP need to get back to governing – and being bold and honest with us

The European Debate has only just begun for Scotland and the UK Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 15th 2015 Europe has returned to the centre of British politics. The phony war within the Tories is over as David Cameron revealed his want list from European leaders. It wasn’t exactly long or substantial. He wants change in four areas - exempting the UK from ‘ever closer union’, boosting economic competitiveness, protection of the non-euro countries from further integration, and restrictions on EU migrants drawing UK benefits. These requests are not far-reaching, leading Tory MP Bernard Jenkin to ask ‘is that it?’

Continue Reading The European Debate has only just begun for Scotland and the UK

If Independence is a State of Mind then we have to fundamentally change Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 8th 2015 Years ago the dream was that the Scottish Parliament would usher in a new politics. It was going to be different from adversarial Westminster – consensual, caring, thoughtful, leading to better debates and laws. Much of this was wish-fulfillment. There has always been mutual scorn between Labour and SNP – aided by the fetishisation of tiny differences, given they agree on so much. But in recent years all of this seems to have got worse. And the last week in

Continue Reading If Independence is a State of Mind then we have to fundamentally change

Will the Real Scottish Labour Party Finally Stand Up? Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, November 1st 2015 Scottish Labour met this weekend. This used to be the key political gathering in Scotland. No longer. But the party is in better spirits than many would think after the May 2015 wipeout. It is a party changing. It has a new leader. Lots of new members. And more autonomy after a ‘concordat’ was signed last Monday with British leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party hopes that the tide is turning against the SNP and that its Teflon quality and Sturgeonmania have finally

Continue Reading Will the Real Scottish Labour Party Finally Stand Up?