Comment Utopia, Spike Lee’s breathtaking film of the former Talking Head frontman’s recent, highly stylised live show I blame David Byrne. It was midway into watching some excerpts from Utopia, Spike Lee’s breathtaking film of the former Talking Head frontman’s recent, highly stylised live show that I felt the tears come. Now, I’m happy to admit to feeling a little emosh right now, even if there’s a certain amount of guilt accompanying that admission. I haven’t lost any close friends or family to Covid-19. I haven’t been thrown into poverty. I’d like to see more of my children and grandchildren and I’d like to see more of my sisters in Edinburgh, but we’re all in regular touch. I live with people I love and who love me.
IT’S been just a year since the General Election in which Alexander Boris Johnson gained a crushing majority in the House of Commons, a majority which he has used to skive off while people died, to completely screw up those Brexit negotiations which he promised he had an oven-ready deal for and most recently to threaten the French with gunboats. It’s all a very far cry from a global Britain that allows Scotland to punch above its weight. When Scotland was promised it would be Better Together, it was with the Rolls-Royce of statecraft. No-one told us that what we’d end up being allegedly Better Together with was a broken shopping trolley stuck in the mud at the bottom of an abandoned canal.
THE Brexit deadline has been extended, with both sides agreeing to “go the extra mile” in a bid to avoid the UK crashing out of the EU without a trade agreement in place in just 18 days. But while European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen sounded cautiously upbeat after the agreement to push back Sunday’s deadline, Boris Johnson was notably dour, saying the two sides remained “very far apart”. He said a No-Deal Brexit was “the most likely thing now”. Johnson and von der Leyen spoke for around 20 minutes yesterday, following intense negotiations between their teams on Saturday night.
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Paul Kavanagh, aka Wee Ginger Dug, made a return at the Big Indy Night In hosted by Elaine C Smith (photograph from 2018) WE were blown away by the positivity that we saw last night at the Big Indy Night In. It wasn’t just that performers like Eddi Reader and Alan Bissett were so captivating and inspiring, it was all the comments of everyone who came. There was a real sense that the Big Indy Night In was what people needed to end this year and to give a wee bit of hope for us all as we head into 2021.