Can the Greens Seize the Opportunity of Yes?
There are many stories about the referendum. Yet as journalists become ever more hooked on a daily diet of fanfares and milestones, too many quieter developments have been left to one side. One such...
View ArticleIt’s time to transform Scotland
Whatever had transpired on the 18th, Scotland was always destined to wake on the 19th of September as a land of massive contradictions. A land of stone built villas and crumbling social housing ghettos...
View ArticleHome Rule Now
For the millions who voted yes, the significance of involvement in the referendum campaign has yet to fade. Of this, there can be little doubt. That unprecedented display of public emotion: a plethora...
View ArticleScotland in Transition
As Alex Salmond stepped out of the political limelight last weekend, I was reminded of a rare encounter with a middle class, conservative, yes voter during the referendum. Our conversation was...
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It’s Time to Question a Declining Media
I didn’t make it through all of Thursday night’s instalment of Question Time, it seems I was not alone in this. I switched on to find talk of Nigel Farage’s plan to have ‘a grammar school in every...
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2014: From the Personal to the Universal
For many, 2014 will be remembered for little that is astonishing or newsworthy. Instead a year may or may not be recalled based on the standard meat of what is news for most of us. Break-ups, work,...
View ArticlePeripheral Visions
If Lord Ashcroft’s polling is correct, Labour faces an unprecedented defeat in Scotland at May’s general election. As the party struggles to maintain its heartlands north of the border it’s high time...
View ArticleWhy we need to address Scotland’s media deficit
Christopher Silver is currently writing a book, The Case for a Scottish Media, you can support this project here. Scotland’s media is in crisis. This crisis is taking place on a number of levels and...
View ArticleFear Itself: Geopolitics and the rise of the SNP
Christopher Silver is currently writing a book, The Case for a Scottish Media, you can support this project here. Our world is fragile and precarious. Markets tremble, alliances strain, leaders become...
View ArticleWhy Labour is Losing Britain
Booze for the terraces, pink vehicles for the ladies, tough love for the scroungers, pride for the white vans, nurses to attend ailing Scots by the thousand. All is catered for within the sweepingly...
View ArticleBroadcasting and the Union: Why we Need a Scottish Media
In modern Scotland, you’ll struggle to find a politician from any party who won’t concede two crucial points: that Scotland is a nation and that devolution has, on balance, been a positive experience....
View ArticleChanging Scotland’s State of Mind
Scottishness and Britishness are not the constitution. They are cultural ideas and they have meaning, positive or negative, today, just as they would under a different constitutional arrangement…One of...
View ArticleThe revolution (s) will be improvised
When I found myself, somewhat unexpectedly, in the midst of a referendum campaign for Scottish independence, the above phrase became a kind of mantra. I’d often repeat it to those I campaigned...
View ArticleWhich side are you on? Review of Bikes vs Cars
…the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what...
View ArticleThe Unsettled Will: Scotland in #GE15
Cameron has whipped British nationalists into a frenzy, Miliband has resorted to monument raising, the Independent is penning wartime-style editorials, Brown rallies the faithful, plurality is equated...
View ArticleWhat Next
I’m too young to remember the 1980s, though given the result of last week’s election that might not actually matter. What I want to talk about is perhaps a slightly awkward mix of left politics and...
View ArticleThe Case for a Scottish Media Podcast 1: The News Where You Are
In this series of podcasts to accompany The Case for a Scottish Media (out September 2015) Christopher Silver explores the key issues that Scotland will have to confront if wants a media worthy of a...
View ArticleAt Belgrade Pride
On stepping off the airport bus it was clear that central Belgrade was in lock down. A vast chunk of the city centre was off-limits. Armoured vehicles, water cannon, dogs, tear gas: all were deployed...
View ArticleDemocracy or deferral? The SNP’s Reluctant Radicalism
On Wednesday two front pages summed up the uncanny effect that the Scottish National Party, now gathering for its party conference in Aberdeen, has had on Scottish public life. The Spectator ran with a...
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