Page 36 - Tom Devine News Today

Exclusive Professor Andrew Sanders said the challenge could benefit the Yes campaign by building on strategies used in the US A POLITICAL expert in the United States has given the thumbs up to The National and Believe in Scotland’s innovative Yes Challenge. Professor Andrew Sanders said it could benefit the Yes campaign by building on strategies used in the US which saw Bernie Sanders (no relation) propelled from an outsider to within touching distance of the presidential candidacy. The...

This week, The Herald on Sunday invited the nation’s leading historian Sir Tom Devine and the nation’s first black professor Sir Geoff Palmer to debate Scotland’s legacy of slavery. Their explosive exchange shows just how far we have to go as a country before we truly come to terms with our past. Writer at Large Neil Mackay reports IF evidence were needed of Scotland’s bitter, unresolved legacy of slavery, then proof is to be found in the tense and at times acrimonious relationshi...

FOR many years I lived abroad and visited Scotland only irregularly. On one of these visits I became aware of a new statue of a reclining man outside the old Sheriff Court on Edinburgh’s High Street. When I returned to live in Scotland I discovered that this was supposed to represent David Hume. Readers will no doubt know the statue. The figure is loosely draped in some sort of toga, he is clutching a weighty tome and is stretched out in a rather uncomfortable looking pose with his head t...

BORIS Johnson came to Scotland last week: much trailed and talked about but certain to have no lasting effect. This was the week where a once-revered Scottish institution announced it had fallen on hard times. Once popular with Edinburgh ladies of a certain age and the middle-classes who believed that they had a refined taste and lifestyle; the similarities between Jenners department store on Princes Street, Edinburgh and the Scottish Tories, are many. This illustrates the long-term ­colla...

Readers Letters: Scotland should close borders to beat Covid Scotsman Letters © Is Scotland missing a trick by allowing travel into the country? Over 100,000 coronavirus deaths have now been recorded. The UK has a death rate of 1471 per million of population. Only Belgium and Slovenia have higher rates and even the US with its much-criticised handling of the epidemic has a lower rate than the UK. Regrettably the UK government’s approach to controlling the virus is not workin...

BBC News By John Murphy image captionLondons Spitalfields, where Irish labourers were accused of under-cutting English men Ever since the word Brexit was first coined in 2012, issues of migration, integration and independence have dominated public debate across the UK and Ireland. Now we have reached the centenary year of the partition of Ireland, BBC journalist Fergal Keane has looked back at the profound influence, over many centuries, of the Irish in Britain in a new BBC Radio 4 podcast. Ho...

AGE should not matter, but when it comes to some cultural criticism there is such a thing as appearing over the hill. I still recall with a slight shudder of embarrassment a review of hip hop artist Childish Gambino/Donald Glover’s video, This is America, by a middle-aged critic who really should have known better. The piece was perfectly informative and well written, and it would have introduced a lot of people to something that might not have been on their radar. But it was like Mar...

Two academics have accused each other of “racialising history” after a university debate about the “racist legacy” of David Hume descended into a slanging match.Tommy Curry, an African American

By Simon Allin @SimonAllin3 Local Democracy Reporter, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Some fear they could catch the virus while travelling for a jab (Image: Pixabay) Elderly people have raised concerns that travelling long distances for a coronavirus jab could put them at risk of catching the virus. The vaccine to provide immunity against Covid-19 is currently being offered to peop...

Democracy Won. Now Whistleblowers Will be Critical to Maintaining Good Government. Democracy Won. Now Whistleblowers Will be Critical to Maintaining Good Government. During the Trump presidency, whistleblowers took center stage. Brave individuals stood up against the administration’s wrongdoing – sometimes at great professional and personal cost – for what was right. While this should have been celebrated, whistleblowers were repeatedly attacked by the president. Now, as a new administrat...