The Scotsman

Do we want to tell a story of Scotland’s ‘Good Society’? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 9th 2013 ‘We are all social democrats now’, Scots politicians might say – Salmond, Lamont, Rennie, even the occasional Tory seeking redemption. Scotland is a land imbued and shaped by social democracy, but which has spent little time or energy in defining this in terms of its philosophy, values and practice. And increasingly this matters. To Labour, social democracy has always been what it says it does from the local Labour council to Labour in government. To the SNP a catch-all populist party, social

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Lessons from Anzio: Scots do not need to cling to the wreckage of Britain Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 2nd 2013 Today is the 70^th anniversary of the final surrender of the last German forces at Stalingrad, the battle which militarily and psychologically dealt an irreversible blow to Hitler’s plans for world domination. Last week I was in Rome on holiday and went to commemorate the 69^th anniversary of the Anglo-American landings at Anzio, just south of the capital, the summation of which occurred a year and a half after Stalingrad. This was the week of Cameron’s big European intervention,

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What do we do with lives and dreams after shopping? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 19th 2012 Another tottering titan fell this week with HMV going into administration. It is the latest in a long line of retail closures: Jessops, Blockbusters, Comet, JJB Sports. This is part of a powerful challenge to the high street, to Britain’s sense of itself and its town centres, and in the case of HMV, the music industry, coming after the closure of Virgin, Zavvi and Tower Records. These stories are usually imbued with a golden sense of nostalgia, people fondly remembering their youth and

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Talking about the Elephant in the Room: The British State Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, January 12th 2012 ‘The Great Debate’ is away to begin. More than a year and a half of sound and fury and already tanks and troops are being mobilised and on maneouvres on both sides. There is one massive elephant in the room which nearly always goes unstated and unacknowledged, namely, the reality of the British state. For different reasons, both pro-independence and anti-independence supporters refuse to engage with the complexities and challenges of this. Pro-independence supporters do this continuously. Irvine Welsh in a piece this

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Scotland as an Idea and Place of Substance Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 29th 2012 It has been a tumultuous year, across Europe, the world, and in its own way for Scotland. It was the year that the independence referendum was agreed, of the collapse and rebirth of Rangers FC, and the continued decline of the British establishment and public trust in it. At the year’s end, the Radical Independence Conference brought together a new generation of twentysomething activists, Creative Scotland parted company with much of the arts world (and lost as a result two of its senior figures), and

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Does Scotland really want to do something about inequality? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 22nd 2012 Scotland thinks and acts left. The complexity of evidence on values and policies shows that Scotland isn’t that much different from the rest of the UK. But the dominant account of Scotland is centre-left, or even left, in how it sees and positions itself, and how it votes. Such a political culture not surprisingly spends a large amount of time articulating its concerns on social justice. We see ourselves as more egalitarian and less hierarchical than our Southern neighbours and maybe even more Nordic

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Time to have an equality for all citizens Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 15th 2012 The issue of same sex marriage has become a major political controversy both sides of the border. Both the Scottish and UK Governments are planning to legislate and at the same time try to balance freedom and equality of sexual orientation with freedom of religious expression. There are huge differences between Scotland and England and Wales. The Cameron Government once viewed same sex marriage as an easy way of proving its liberal modernising credentials, but now finds itself enmeshed in bitter Tory wars. They

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Growing Up with the Idea of Independence Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 8th 2012 The Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s intervention this week on the case for Scottish independence attracted significant attention and comment. It has been rightly seen as a maturing moment and evolution of the debate both in content and tone, recognised by the responses of Brian Wilson in ‘The Scotsman’ and Alex Massie in ‘The Spectator’ online. Sturgeon’s intervention caused Wilson to call on politicians to ‘listen rather than talk. Listen and understand. Listen and be inspired’. Massie wrote that, ‘Almost every unionist in Scotland

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Michael Forbes, Donald Trump and the Unpredictable Scotland Emerging Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, December 1st 2012 The Scots have a strange and often perplexing relationship with those in authority and power. Sometimes we damn them and at other times we choose to believe their official story. More often than we show a lack of curiosity in scrutinising and challenging authority. Instead, there is a deafening silence of the Scots across large acres of public life, in conferences, gatherings and fora which represent ‘civic Scotland’. Michael Forbes has been a huge exception to this general rule. The Aberdeenshire farmer who stood

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Time for a Different BBC Scotland (and STV Too!) Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, November 24th 2012 The BBC is in crisis. BBC Scotland faces significant job cuts, a strike ballot of staff, and the prospect of industrial action. At a UK level, the BBC has hardly been out of the news in the last few weeks. There has been the Jimmy Savile scandal, a substantial payout to Lord McAlpine, and George Entwistle having to resign as Director General. The BBC’s problems go much deeper than these immediate problems north and south of the border, and touch on what it is

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