I HAD the pleasure of interviewing the Scottish poet Jenny Lindsay last week. She is one of the bravest and most inspiring people I’ve ever encountered in my journalistic career.
Kevin McKenna was in Strichen, Aberdeenshire, where locals united to pay tribute to the former First Minister of Scotland as a friend, neighbour and the politician who fought for their community.
What gender identity activists ask of us is to say that the category ‘woman’ isn’t legislatively and culturally important on the basis that women are a definable category.
One thing has become clear in the Scottish Government’s conduct throughout all of it. It speaks to something rotten at the heart of this administration that travels well beyond the Salmond affair
The Scottish Government’s tendency to spend millions of our cash on fripperies and whims shows no signs of abating. A few years ago, it was reported that the annual bill for press officers had reached an eye-watering one million pounds. Last week it was reported that this has now risen to more than £3m covering the salary packages of 50 press officers.
In the course of my ten-year exile in Edinburgh I grew slowly to love its quiet majesty. Only rarely having visited the city, I’d pitched up a bedraggled and querulous Glaswegian laden with clichés: that whereas Glasgow was gregarious and friendly, Edinburgh was cautious and distant. We Glaswegians radiated warmth and generosity; Edinburgh punters were chilly in their parsimony.
Having listened to both sides of the Assisted Dying debate, it may be that there’s absolutely nothing to worry about after all. In these straitened times when there is unbearable pressure on the NHS don’t we have a moral responsibility to add a commitment to sustainable death to our commitment to sustainable living?
Kevin interviews Sarah Corbett about her work and doing protests in a different way
I’m distressed to learn that my dear friend, Murray Foote, has decided to step away from his role as chief executive of the SNP. Mr Foote and I go back a long way to the days when he starred for the Daily Record’s first XI football team competing in the informal Scottish newspaper league.
Herald writer Kevin McKenna was with the family and friends of Alex Salmond at Aberdeen Airport as the body of the former First Minister arrived home.
