The Queen’s Jubilee is the time to have a debate about Britain’s atrophied democracy Gerry Hassan The National, 4 January 2022 The monarchy goes to the heart of what the UK is and what it is to be British. It is strange then that most discussions try to avoid the implications and consequences that flow from the power, influence, status and role in public life of the monarchy. All of this will come to a head in 2022 with the Platinum Jubilee – marking the 70^th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth on the throne – on 6 February; then celebrated in

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Scotland needs to learn the lessons of how we defeated Margaret Thatcher Gerry Hassan The National, 28 December 2021 Margaret Thatcher looms large in the history of modern Scotland. Her minority rule of Scotland, her dogma and indifference to hardship and suffering, her English nationalism wrapped in the flag of the Union Jack: all this and more irritated an overwhelming majority of Scots. She did change history here, although not in ways she intended. She underlined that the old union of compromise was broken; she weakened the strength of the unionist case; and she was a handmaiden in creating the

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Life after Boris Johnson: The Tories, “Freedom” and the rise of authoritarianism Gerry Hassan The National, 21 December 2021 For many on the left and pro-independence describing Toryism is simple - it is callous, lacks compassion and is about a brutal class politics looking after its own and shafting others. Yet understanding your opponents is key to successful politics, a point that Kennedy and LBJ’s Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara observed in The Fog of War documentary saying you should “never dehumanise your opponents.” That said British Toryism is in an advance stage of degeneration, distortion and bitter division. This

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My Musical Highlights of the Year Gerry Hassan Bella Caledonia, 17 December 2021 This year in music does seem to have been incredibly long, with what I was grooving to at the start of the year seems eons ago. Part due to COVID and the lack of live music, and part it being a year of two halves - one in Glasgow, one in Kirkcudbright – with the resulting upheaval of moving a lifetime’s worth of music. Without further ado, here are my best new albums of the year, best reissues and older albums that I have turned to for

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My Favourite Books of the Year 2021 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 15 December 2021 2021 has been a dramatic year - defined by COVID and the incompetence and deceit of Boris Johnson’s Tory administration. For myself, the year was divided between the first eight months on Glasgow’s Southside followed by moving to Kirkcudbright for the rest of the year and beyond. That entailed packing eighty plus boxes of books, then unpacking them and putting them on newly built shelves – as well as thinning them out. Unconnected to all this (so it is claimed!), within two months of moving

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Scottish independence needs to offer “a shining city on a hill” Gerry Hassan The National, 14 December 2021 Scottish politics feels once again stuck in a Groundhog Day. We are only seven months from the endorsement of the SNP in the May elections, and only weeks from the English political commentariat being convinced that Boris Johnson was a sure-fire winner who would continue to carry all before him. Things that seem secure can suddenly change and crumble. Yet there is currently low-level trench warfare in Scottish politics as the forces of the union and independence psyche each other out, waiting

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‘No Sex Please we are Scottish’: The rise of the Scottish miserabilists Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 8 December 2021 These are times of huge challenge – globally, in the UK and Scotland – and an age where we need to get serious, mobilise and prioritise given the scale of problems humanity and the planet faces. Too often the big problems of our age struggle to get time and attention. These include the climate emergency and the urgent need to rethink economic growth. There is the march of AI and how work and employment will change in the near-future. There is

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The union case needs to deal with the return of the British Empire State Gerry Hassan The National, 7 December 2021 The UK may have been around a fair amount of time but it has never been static; always changing, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. While many UK supporters repeat the great thread of British history, the current UK borders only date from 1922 and the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (its centenary on Monday) while the current name - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland –became legally adopted in 1927. Despite this,

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The Beatles, ‘Get Back’ and the Britain of 1969 and the Present Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 1 December 2021 The Beatles still fascinate, mesmerise and speak to us – a timeless phenomenon from post-war British society and another age and world. Peter Jackson’s opus ‘The Beatles: Get Back’ - released last week on Disney+, an eight-hour extravaganza of the band in three parts – shows their work and different personalities up close in an unprecedented fly in the wall film that drew from 56 hours of footage and 150 hours of audio tape. The result is spell-binding and transfixing, inviting

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Scotland’s progressive politics needs some championing Gerry Hassan The National, 30 November 2021 Scotland’s progressive values have defined much of our politics - the first 20 years of devolution, majority opposition to Thatcherism, and the independence debate. And yet for all their wide support they need attention, nurturing, and championing. On Saturday Plaid Cymru voted to endorse a deal with Welsh Labour for a co-operation agreement in government covering 46 areas including free school meals for primary children, free childcare, and tackling the second homes crisis. Adam Price, Plaid leader, said that this renewed “trust in a new democracy with

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