Everything changed in Scotland on May the third—and nothing changed. The squeaking home of the SNP into minority government was supposed to mark a tectonic shift in British politics, but when Alex Salmond last week unveiled his plan for a referendum on Scottish independence the polls were still showing a yes vote twenty percent behind a no—contrary to the impression given by the nationalistic reader comments on the site of The Scotsman. It’s a relief, I suppose, because the election results had made me wonder what the future held for my relationship with Scotland and Britain, mere weeks after finally getting a UK passport. Would I have to choose between the two? This has been my home for six years, but how could I justify casting my lot with five million over fifty-five when the whole point of taking on a second citizenship was to go beyond narrow nationalism?
Read More · 23 August 2007 ·
Headline for today’s Independent: TWO MEN, ONE TRAIL OF TERROR
Headline for today’s Times: ‘Those who cure you will kill you’
Headline for today’s Telegraph: Bomb suspects on MI5 files
Banner for today’s Daily Record: I KICKED BURNING TERRORIST IN THE BALLS
4 July 2007 ·
Ben “I don’t sign my dead cat up to bogus professional organisations for the good of my health, you know” Goldacre on Gillian McKeith and her ilk:
We don’t need any more stupid ideas about health in the world. We have a president of South Africa who has denied that HIV exists, we have mumps and measles on the rise, we have quackery in the ascendant like never before, and whatever Tony Blair might have to say about homoeopathy being a fight not worth fighting for scientists, we cannot indulge portions of pseudoscientific ludicrousness as if they don’t have wider ramifications for society, and for the public misunderstanding of science.
12 February 2007
It’s been the second-hottest January on record and the worst of the darkness is already over, so I’d better post this before winter is just a memory.
Read More · 31 January 2007
←UK Culture in 2006
