Atrocities by British forces in Castlereagh and Abu –Graib were invoked when Othello threatened to smother his officer with a plastic bag. Shakespeare’s enduring popularity is due in some measure to the universality of content in his work. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is the predominant emotion felt by the spurned Iago.
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I wrote this a year ago after Sorcha arrived on the fifteenth of June, a few days after her mother, Jen’s birthday. June is a busy month as my elder brother, James, as well as grandchildren, Leo and Lilly Ann were all born in that month. Neill,
Read more →Sorcha Óg You arrived Sorcha with the dawn on the fifteenth of June, another bairn for Scotland, a sister for Leo and Senan, a daughter for Jen and Neill , another grandchild, a burst of radiance in this gilded summer. Your Gaelic name means ‘light’ and you
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‘I want Scotland to be at the heart of Europe’, the young Mary Queen of Scots tells her courtiers in David Greig’s fine production of Linda Mclean ‘s play, ‘Glory on Earth’, at the Lyceum Theatre. Sharing the stage for most of the action is volatile preacher,
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‘Fxxx off back to your chapel’, Father, ‘where you belong’. Along with others, I was on the street in Derry in January 1969, trying to stop a group of youngsters from throwing stones at the RUC. A futile exercise but a social learning experience with the
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Margaret Thatcher came to Edinburgh in 1988 and delivered, what the Scottish Press branded, ‘The Sermon on the Mound’ to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. It was largely a para-theological justification for her views on capitalism and the free market. ‘Christianity is about spiritual
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Pupils seeking examples of irony for their Higher English prelims should forsake Shakespeare and read Tim Shipman’s book , ‘All Out War’; it is a Brexit tale that deftly describes the deals, betrayals and broken promises that laid low much of the recognisable, political class in Britain.
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‘ The Prime Minister should stop “obsessing” about grammar schools and order a massive expansion of vocational education to address skills shortages that will worsen after Brexit’; not my words but those of Michael Wilshaw, the Head of Ofsted, whose job is to advise the Government on standards
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Conflicted probably best summarises my thoughts in the aftermath of the Brexit Vote. Given the trajectory of my political and social development , I should be unspeakably delighted that GB jumped off a cliff into the mire on June 23rd; the very public humiliation of a British Prime
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The outcome of the EU Referendum has left many small savers worried about their future finances. Brexit has caused a sharp decline in the value of the pound, panic in the markets and it is widely believed that a further cut in interest rates would mean very
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