Scottish Review

Sarah Smith and why inaction is not an option with the politics of hatred Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 23 February 2022 For many years now we have been witnessing a rising tide of intolerance, abuse and threats of intimidation in politics and public life – in Scotland and the UK - with sometimes violence occurring -witness the murder in recent times of the Labour MP Jo Cox and Tory MP David Amess. This is often just associated with social media, although it is more serious than that, and undoubtedly such platforms have released and amplified voices previously unheard, mediated

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Singing for Scotland at Hampden, Murrayfield and Beyond Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 9 February 2022 The songs that we sing individually and collectively in our hearts, homes and at public occasions tell us something - about who we are, our relationships with each other, and the society and nation we live in. There are numerous different layers to this. There are the songs we sing and hum along to on the radio or on streaming devices; the golden oldies that remind us of favourite or not so favourite past moments; and then there are the collective songs we sing together

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Ukraine, the Crisis of the West and Britain’s Decline Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 26 January 2022 The situation in the Ukraine is a high-level international crisis. It has not come out of the blue but been slowly escalating for years; Putin’s long track record of threats and aggression towards neighbours of Russia have been well documented. Yet the West has been caught again and again off-guard and unsure of how to deal with Putin and Russia. It has been consistently divided and indecisive about how best to collectively respond and oppose Russian aggression. There is the war weariness of the

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Time for a Genuine Tartan Tory Party! Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 19 January 2022 The Scottish Tories have had a shoogly past week. Douglas Ross, Scottish Tory leader, dared to put his head above the parapet and say the unthinkable - that Boris Johnson was long past his sell-by-date and should for once do the decent thing and resign. He was subsequently followed by the entire group of Tory MSPs at Holyrood; while former Scots Tory leader Ruth Davidson was even more indignant and incandescent with fury. This was met by Jacob Rees-Mogg calling Douglas Ross ‘a lightweight’ and even

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Novak Djokovic, the Celebrity Class and the End of News Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 12 January 2022 The start of the new year brings the prospect of fresh perspectives but not it seems in the world of mainstream news. Across nearly all news outlets, and in particular TV and radio broadcasters, the main story for the past week globally has not been the Trump insurrection anniversary and US democracy hanging in the balance, or the Russian invasion and violence in Kazakhstan. It has not even been the ongoing domestic scandal of UK PM Boris Johnson’s continued evasions and refusal to

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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 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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Imagine a Scotland where we won the FIFA World Cup ... And when we did Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 24 November 2021 Imagine a world where the Scotland men’s national team were not only occasionally very decent and even sometimes very good at football, but actually contested and succeeded at the top of the international game - and had the ability to win the FIFA World Cup. Think about it for a second. Not the practicalities or whether or how it could be attained. Or the fact that it involves an element of fantasy. But rather what effect such an

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Falling in love with the Scotland football team again Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 17 November 2021 Scotland are on the rise again. At least in terms of the men’s national football team who are on a roll. They have qualified for the World Cup play-offs next year after winning six World Cup qualifiers in a row: something no Scotland team has ever done. And they have done this by convincingly beating Denmark, one of the best teams in Europe, in a 2-0 victory at Hampden. A new spirit, sense of belief, camaraderie - and intelligent, skillful team football now infuses

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The British political crisis is deeper than Boris Johnson and the Tories Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 10 November 2021 The UK is undergoing one of its periodic spasms of concern about Tory sleaze and corruption. Two complacencies underpin much of this coverage. The first is about Boris Johnson’s unique slapdash version of morality, monies and government. The second is that the decline in trust and crisis in institutions is merely cyclical and can be tackled with a simple change of government and political renewal – as happened in the past with Tory troubles and degeneration in 1997. This is different

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