Features

What can Scotland learn from Canada about conflicts over trans rights?
Herald Magazine, January 19 2019
“Those who challenge the idea that men can become women (and vice-versa) have been called many things – “TERFs” (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), transphobes, bigots and even Nazis but in Canada “coloniser” is added to the mix, with the implication that such individuals are also anti-indigenous people.”

 

Self-help talk is just a warm-up for Jordan Peterson’s diatribe
The National, October 29 2018
“Social justice is an ‘abysmal ideology’ and a ‘bloody mess’, he rails. ‘Real scientists think it’s absurd’. He adds: ‘If you like bridges that don’t fall over … you should let your political types know you are unimpressed by this.’ Quite how acknowledging discrimination and striving for equality leads to wobbly bridges is left unexplained.”

 

I finally watched Braveheart … here’s why I rolled my eyes
The National, September 15 2018
“I’m no history buff, to put it mildly, but even I can smell a rat when some conveniently helmeted fighters appear on the English side at Falkirk and Robert The Bruce fails to show up for battle. And lo, here’s the Scooby-Doo moment! He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for pesky William being so … um … ruggedly handsome? Either way, Bruce is now a goodie and all the treacherous baddies need to be killed in creative fashion.”

 

Why machine gunning is just another day out for trigger-happy Americans
Herald Magazine, April 28 2018
“No questions were asked about my firearms experience before I signed up to fire 75 bullets from three different guns, and my UK driving licence sufficed as ID. Had I brought children aged 10 and over with me, they could have joined in too.”

 

Seen but not heard: Glasgow’s anti-abortion protesters are impossible to ignore
Sunday Herald, February 14 2016
“There are no shock tactics here, just silent judgment from two men and two women standing in the cold. One wears a hi-vis vest, as if anyone was likely to miss her.”