STRANGE things you never thought would come to pass. Queueing to enter a supermarket. Being thrilled by the sight of the bin lorry arriving. Making your own surgical mask. These days. But the oddest thing of all? Being glad to see politicians.
WHILE watching the daily Downing Street press conferences it is possible to feel a range of emotions. Frustration, for instance, as one inquiry after another goes unanswered, or disappointment at the quality of the questioning.
HOW does an opposition oppose without appearing to oppose for opposition’s sake? That is the tricky situation in which Labour now finds itself as the death toll from coronavirus reaches a horrific new high.
OKAY, the tale that follows is not exactly up there with the yarns spun by those Florentines fleeing the plague in The Decameron, but bear with me. It is hard to be a Ustinov-standard raconteur when that big wide world you took for granted has shrunk to the size of an egg.
EVERY crime fiction fan will be familiar with the good cop-bad cop routine. One officer is friendly with a suspect to secure their cooperation, the other plays hard ball; one cop is a stickler for the rules, the other is a maverick.
ONE of the few benefits of living in the Unprecedented Era is having the chance to experience life at another time and in a different place.
AN item for the “there’s always one” file. Only days into the great lockdown and some people are just not coping. Take the holidaymaker – British, of course – who decided she would flout the rules and have a dip at Paradise Park in Tenerife.
A SUNDAY shift on The Herald’s Politics Watch tends to begin the same way, with an early trip to buy the papers. Usually it is just myself, a couple of other larks, and the woman who keeps an eye on the self-checkout area. All quiet on the supermarket front.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster
Saroj Lal
An appreciation by Maxwell Macleod
George Forfar: An appreciation
Jill Gascoine, actress and novelist
Born: July 9, 1938;
Hamish Wilson, radio producer and actor
Lynn Faulds Wood, Journalist and TV presenter
“It's not the end; it's not even the beginning of the end; but it is perhaps the end of the beginning”. Churchill's famous wartime speech after the battle of El Alamein in November 1942 was an ambiguous rallying cry. After all, by saying it was only the beginning, he was suggesting that there could be worse to come.
Nicola Sturgeon won plaudits from some unlikely quarters this week for her “grown-up conversation” on lifting the lockdown.
Next week, Nicola Sturgeon is promising to outline her proposals for lifting the lockdown. Good luck with that. She is unlikely to open the schools because she can't rely on parents to send their children.
Writers have been ransacking the Brainy Quotes website looking for inspiration for their coronavirus think pieces. But there is really only one that matters: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Franklin D Roosevelt’s epigram is appropriate because it is as disingenuous as it is paradoxical.
The Meadowbank Stadium was one of the shabbier landmarks in east Edinburgh until it was knocked down last year. A new one is rising from the ashes, looking like one of those massive cruise liners that appear in the Forth.
The Scottish political world is holding its breath this weekend.
Mardi Gras in New Orleans has always had a gothic element. The voodoo culture dates from the African American diaspora, though it’s now mostly for tourists. But this year there was an authentically macabre dimension to Fat Tuesday.
It was a normal Friday night in the Red Lion pub in Whitehall, where journalists gather to gossip about the week. Charlie Whelan, former chancellor Gordon Brown’s personal spin doctor, was holding court as usual, white wine spritzer in hand.
I’m not sure it was wise for Nicola Sturgeon to invoke Nelson Mandela in her speech on the next steps (sic) to independence. He was a revolutionary who pursued a campaign of non-violent direct action, including strikes, boycotts and other acts of civil disobedience. That’s what many ardent Yessers were hoping against hope she might authorise.
The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill got the Royal Assent this week. It was then solemnly signed, sealed and ratified by Ursula von der Leyen, the new President of the European Commission. We’re finally out.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended an “in conversation” event with the American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild at Harvard University.
Today in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister will explain her decision to authorise airstrikes against Syria alongside France and the United States.
The sight of Scottish ministers boarding flights to far-flung destinations in order to “sell Scotland to the world” has been a familiar one for more than half a century.
In his new book, “The End of British Party Politics?”, the political scientist Roger Awan-Scully captures the paradox of last year’s general election in Scotland.
“Scotland”, declared a young Alex Salmond in May 1975, “knows from bitter experience what treatment is in store for a powerless region of a common market.”
The Scottish Labour Party, I think it’s fair to say, hasn’t had a good decade.
A few days after a majority of Britons backed Brexit in June 2016, this newspaper reported that Nicola Sturgeon had been in talks with London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo.
Shortly before the second general election of 1974, the late John P Mackintosh attempted to explain the rise of the Scottish National Party to a predominantly left-wing (and English) audience in an essay for the New Statesman.
In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.
The American politician John Nance Garner is better remembered for something he said rather than anything he did as Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-president.
WHAT a difference a Prime Minister makes. There used to be a time, back before it wasn’t an obstacle to promotion, that Jackson Carlaw was aghast at the idea of a no-deal Brexit.
WELL that didn’t take long. Scotland’s latest experiment in direct democracy was all but killed off this week, barely two months after Nicola Sturgeon announced it.
THE last day of term before recess saw MSPs attempt more jokes than usual at FMQs, some of them even bordering on approaching the mildly funny. Heady days.
LIKE Nicola Sturgeon, I blame the Tories. Not, like her, for everything everywhere, but for an off-key outing at FMQs.
IT’S strange the different things people took away from Theresa May’s teary goodbye in Downing Street yesterday.
Sunday, April 19, 2020.
There is little to like about the present predicament, but one thing I don’t miss is checking my diary every evening for a reminder of what tomorrow will bring. Our social life is not what you’d call a whirl, so usually memory can be relied on for the occasional gatherings. Here in Hoolet, socialising is often impromptu, a random encounter leading to a casual evening drink a few hours later, or a last-minute supper in a kitchen, so soon after the invite that nobody could possibly forget.