The considered view is that Ed Miliband’s speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester last week was rather dull: a prosaic outline of the goals a Labour government will pursue if elected next year, and the concrete measures by which it will try to meet them.
Here’s a collection of images I took in Edinburgh while out and about during the Scottish independence referendum campaign.
The John Ruskin: Artist and Observer exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery includes many of his most famous illustrations of the city he idealised, Venice.
I understand the despair with conservative Britain that has been driving the movement for independence. But British conservatism only exists because of its shadow, British radicalism, a radicalism that runs throughout British history, and that has inspired the progressive thought and political institutions that we admire elsewhere in the world, and want to emulate here.
I’ve spoken to many people about the independence referendum in the course of knocking on doors on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party over the past few months, and I and fellow canvassers have noticed two interesting things about how the party is now widely perceived.
The Rules of Abstraction, a BBC4 documentary by the artist and writer Matthew Collings, shown last week and still available at the time of writing, was an accessible introduction to the enigmatic world of abstract art.
Gerry Hassan’s Caledonian Dreaming argues that the ills of Scottish society for which independence is proposed as the cure have as much to do with Scotland’s own failings as the interventions of unwanted British governments.