“It would appear that Police Scotland are more frightened of belligerent football fans than nonviolent anti-racist protestors. That may be entirely rational – one does not need to be an expert in urban pacification to conclude that the latter can be kettled and bullied far more easily than the former. This does not make the double standard any less grating.”

Sean Bell: It is Police Scotland’s responsibility to answer to us, not vice versa


Capitalism, our system, is ageing, inept, bilious and barely able to rise from its sickbed. Economic news does not determine the constitution, but it does ask questions about what type of independence might be possible or desirable.

Source Direct: System Shock


Common Weal director Robin McAlpine looks at the broad sweep of the Programme for Government on Source here. There will also be a further, more detailed policy analysis published on the site later today. In short, the Programme was a bit of a pre-election teaser. There’s not a lot of heavy lifting going on in terms […]

What happened to elimination?


The stabbings in Park Inn hotel in Glasgow on Friday are an awful outcome of a system which breaks many of the people caught in its vice. Of course not everyone put through the savagery of the Home Office’s asylum seeker system and locked away in a hotel room for months goes on to commit […]

A terrible outcome of an awful system that leaves no one safe