Kevin McKenna

1 week ago | heraldscotland.com | Kevin McKenna

John Swinney has sanctioned a pay rise for Scottish Government ministers (Image: PA) The civic Scotland gravy train has finally made it to Bute House. If you listen very carefully, you can hear it rumble over the tracks as it moves on to the next stop on its Tamany Hall tour. “We’re taking the piss; we’re taking the piss; we’re taking the piss.

1 week ago | heraldscotland.com | Kevin McKenna

Artist couple Molly Jack and Craig McCorquodale's work during their 24 hour Things to Tell You art project promoting Sauchiehall Street (Image: Gordon Terris) At the point where Sauchiehall Street begins to get jaggy and intense some 30 of us have gathered outside the Glasgow Dental Hospital. We’re here to listen to the author, Chitra Ramaswamy read from her book, Homelands: History of a Friendship.

1 week ago | heraldscotland.com | Kevin McKenna

John Swinney speaks to journalists following First Minister’s Questions at the Scottish Parliament earlier this month (Image: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty) NORMALLY, when there is news of an impending Cabinet reshuffle, even the most politically disengaged of the voting public will pause at least to cup an ear. They’ll have heard of some of these political heavyweights and may even know what some of them are all about.

1 week ago | heraldscotland.com | Kevin McKenna

Diners at a 'British Restaurant' during the Second World War (Image: Nourish Scotland.) On Wednesday evening in the Pleasance underneath Arthur’s Seat where Edinburgh is so intensely Edinburgh, we gathered to discuss a beguilingly radical concept: state-funded restaurants. I’d written about this last year when I chanced upon a stall belonging to Nourish Scotland at the SNP national conference.

2 weeks ago | archive.is | Kevin McKenna |Kevin Mckenna

In time, a class of serious men and women making serious decisions in the best interests of the Scottish people would emerge. They would then set about working mainly for the benefit of those neighbourhoods left twisting in the wind by two decades of Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes waging a class war against them. Full autonomy in health, education, transport and policing provided sufficient scope to unstitch the Tories’ social pogroms against working-class communities.