Are the Days of Scottish Labour Over?
Are the Days of Scottish Labour Over? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 8th 2015 The official general election campaign kicked off last week. But in reality it has been running since the turn of the year, with all parties and observers knowing in advance that polling day would be May 7th. Scotland has witnessed a palpable air of perma-campaigning for the last two or three years with the experience of the referendum. But there has been an air of excitement and expectation for some about the coming general election, since the aftermath of the indyref, and when the first polls
The World We Knew: My Father and Frank Sinatra
The World We Knew: My Father and Frank Sinatra Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 10th 2015 Dads matter. They give us many things, including many reference points – like what it is to be a man, potentially a love of a football or rugby team, perhaps even some political views. I gained all of that from my father but one of the biggest, most evocative connections I have with him is through the music and voice of Frank Sinatra. My dad, Edwin, was born in 1933 and was a young man in the late 1940s and early 1950s when
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Glasgow is not Scotland so let’s stop pretending it is
Glasgow is not Scotland so let's stop pretending it is Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, February 10th 2015 Someone observing Scotland from afar could easily fall under the apprehension that all there is to the nation is Glasgow. A Martian, or alien from another world, who had the misfortune to only follow and comprehend our country through the transmissions of BBC Reporting Scotland or STV News at Six would think that we were a strange land. They would imagine that all there was to this country was a few streets, only inhabited by men, where football and crime were the
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Reflections on Turning Fifty in the Scotland of 2014
Reflections on Turning Fifty in the Scotland of 2014 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 26th 2014 I knew from an early age I would turn 50 in 2014. It was simple maths. At age eight, reading the ‘Tell Me Why’ encyclopedias of facts and figures, I became aware of a sense of time. Apparently the sun would explode in around five billion years wiping out all life on planet earth and any chance I had of immortality. And at around the same time, confronted with this reality, I worked out that I would be 36 in 2000, 50 in 2014
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What kind of Scotland does Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP want?
What kind of Scotland does Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP want? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, November 12th 2014 Scotland and Scottish politics are in unchartered waters. The post-indyref has shaken and rearranged the normal reference points: SNP membership has gone through the roof, while the Labour ‘winners’ have laid claim to putting on a paltry 1,000 members. Amid all the noise and debate, there is in the confusion, an eerie lack of substantive discussion, as people try to find their way. In the Labour Party a clutch of left-wingers believe that their core problem is the party’s embrace north
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Time Travel: the Parallel Universe of Post-ref Scotland and the Voice of Doubt
Time Travel: the Parallel Universe of Post-ref Scotland and the Voice of Doubt Gerry Hassan Twenty five years ago this coming Sunday an event occurred which changed our lives and is still shaping much of the modern world: the fall of the Berlin Wall. This brought about the demise of the Soviet bloc, the end of the Yalta settlement which had divided Europe from 1945, the unification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it, its monolithic variant of Communism and any aspirations it had to making and being the future. Much of the last 25
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Scottish Labour: The Never-ending Soap Opera That Matters
Scottish Labour: The Never-ending Soap Opera That Matters Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 29th 2014 Scottish Labour loves talking about itself. The evidence for this is everywhere in the last few days, in print media, TV and radio studios, and social media. Organisations which have lost their way, which are in decline and crisis, often do this as a displacement activity. Think of the Tories ‘banging on’ about Europe, or the BBC post-Savile. Such behaviour is never a good sign. It makes people think their internal obsessions are important, and that the minutiae of such debates matter to the
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When Britannia Ruled the Waves
When Britannia Ruled the Waves Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 22nd 2014 The act of sailing has long been one of the ways humans have tested themselves, measuring their endurance, reflecting on life and its meaning, from Ernest Hemingway to Jonathan Raban’s ‘Coasting’, an account of sailing round Britain at the time of the Falklands war. The experience of cruising in pleasure boats, ocean liners and luxury ships is a very different world. One filled with images of a mix of ‘Casino Royale’ and Monte Carlo stereotypes, rich playboys, people gambling and endless hedonism. The reality is a bit different
Is Social Justice Really What Defines Modern Scotland?
Is Social Justice Really What Defines Modern Scotland? Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 8th 2014 There are many Scotlands and there are many realities, lives and experiences which do not find favour or voice in prevailing public descriptions. Many of our dominant versions give centrestage to politics, which isn’t all there is to life anywhere. Think of Yes and No, unionism and nationalism, left and right, Labour and SNP, Tory and anti-Tory. These are all politically restrictive labels in which some see themselves, and that define others who are different to them. How much of Scotland do these terms capture
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After the Spirit of 2014
After the Spirit of 2014 Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, October 1st 2014 It is now coming up for two weeks tomorrow since Scotland’s independence referendum. The world moves on. The UK media’s attention has switched back to its usual tropes: Westminster parlour games and internal Tory and Labour machinations. The UK Parliament was recalled, not as some expected it would be, to deal with the backwater of a Scottish Yes vote to independence, but the predictable act of the UK providing cover for US lead action, yet again, in Iraq. There was dignity and solemnity in the Commons debate, showing
