The rise and fall of civil society in Scotland
The rise and fall of civil society in Scotland Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, August 12th 2020 Last year in the US in the town of Williamstown, Massachusetts I got into a conversation with a complete stranger who followed politics avidly. I naturally asked him about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, to which he responded that even more important than defeating Trump was the vibrancy and health of civil society. It struck me as a perceptive remark in seeing past the debris of the Trump Presidency and looking at something deeper, more long-term and centred on the health of
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Letter from America: Civil society matters more than who wins elections in the UK, US and elsewhere
Letter from America: Civil society matters more than who wins elections in the UK, US and elsewhere Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 6th 2019 Britain from afar looks very unhappy and divided. This much is obvious from the USA - not exactly a benign, peaceful, harmonious world itself. But in its media coverage, and the people I have spoken to in the past week, there is a universal understanding that things are not going well in the USA or the UK. Everybody I have spoken to in America has heard of Brexit, knows that Boris Johnson is UK Prime Minister