Latest news with #MhairiBlack
The National
28-06-2025
- The National
Are you a doomscroller? It's time for us to focus on hope instead
By which I mean 'the activity of spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories', as the Cambridge Dictionary defines it. It's funny to observe myself wrestling with this term, which renders me as just another techno-addict. Of course not! I'm the realist in the room, facing the world with honesty and without delusion! But I also have to check myself on my doomscrolling preferences – how much gratification I'm getting out of them. Why, for example, do I constantly seek out stories and interviews about AIs becoming conscious agents, running out of human control? The tech-bros talk about their 'p-doom' factor (probability of doom) when predicting whether superintelligent AIs will act in our favour or not – often expressed as a percentage (1% to 99%). READ MORE: Mhairi Black: Labour MPs swayed by Keir Starmer's U-turn are kidding themselves That feels crude to me. I prefer to think that I am acknowledging the evolutionary shift that self-improving AIs might represent. So what might seem to others as doomscrolling, obsessively informing myself about what will supersede humanity, I see as readying myself for a coming new era. My other apparent 'scroll of doom' is climate worsening. Again, I'm checking my gratifications here. What does it mean to fill your attention span with worse-than-ever indicators of summer heat, ocean acidification and plankton die-off, irreversible tipping points, on and on? Again, I don't feel lost in doom. It's more that I'm preparing myself for an oncoming future of greater difficulties – ones that will compel profound transformations in what counts as a 'normal lifestyle', our consumptions, productions and values. I'm getting myself ready for things dropping out of, and into, my life. Fewer shiny objects, more community relationships; less international flying, more local flying. For me, the doomscroll (so-called) of hard climate news sets the ground for all the upheavals, at micro and macro levels, that are to come. Could the AI doomscroll be an answer to the climate doomscroll? One paper that popped up recently in my feed was examining renewable energy futures in Finland. The writers concluded starkly that the country simply couldn't provide enough clean electricity to meet current demand. So demand has to drastically reduce. Can AI help us with that? To move away from duplicatory and wasteful market economies, matching goods and services to needs and desires in radically more efficient, parsimonious ways? And can this be the better story of AI in our lives – not just as a supplanter of humans in their current jobs, but as a system supporting a wholly new texture of society? Well, that's my 'hopescroll' mentality, on a good day. It's not too far from Antonio Gramsci's axiom, 'optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellect', though I could happily re-write it as 'generosity of the will, clarity of the intellect' (the original always seems way too exhausting and antithetical). Do I have my bad days, when the scroll of high p-doom stories does what we all fear to my head and heart – which is to enervate and induce despair? Undoubtedly. The current conflagrations in Israel and Gaza, and the possibility of seeing the worst things imaginable on one's feeds from that atrocity, have been too much for me. I confess that I unfollow and skip posts to avoid any possibility of encountering it. This is hardly because I seek to minimise the importance of this genocide, as a collective act of violence and cruelty. The very opposite, in fact. It viscerally confronts me, video clip by video clip, with the appalling levels of violence that are deeply sedimented into modern societies – currently and historically. My adult life has been haunted, ever since I learned about them, by the nuclear bomb and the concentration camp. Both are industrialised, technoscientific forms of mass killing, one towards a people – and one towards all people. The history of near-misses at nuclear catastrophe, either by strategic mistake or malfunction in the weaponry, is long and unnerving. Daily life, as it putters along under this terminally lethal umbrella, teeters at the edge of absurdity. The traumatised and vengeful disproportionality of the Israeli state and its military forces' response to the Gaza border massacre is appalling and criminal enough. However, this conflict, and others, are triggering a new wave of nations commissioning tactical nuclear weapons – labouring under the delusion that they are somehow deployable in a theatre of war. This just deepens the absurdity of our times. We live on a planetary powderkeg stuffed to overflowing, liberally drenched in petrol, waiting for enough matches to be sparked. This is a scroll with so much doom, generating so much nihilism about the human condition, that one can barely even think about it, let alone flip fingers up the screen. A deathscroll is not bearable, even for we numbed ones. How do we escape from being caught up in these loops of despair? There's plenty of practical advice out there. Summarised: you should create deliberate friction and boundaries around your digital consumption. That means turning off notifications, deleting problematic apps, physically isolating your phone in another room or a bedroom drawer, using time limits within the phone. We should also realise that our brains have a defensive bias towards negativity, and consciously seek out positive or solutions-focused content which counteracts all that. But I can't help thinking that the ultimate solution is for us to raise our collective ambitions for how our societies function. I've always had hopes that Scottish independence would be part of that solution. Tom Nairn's theory of nationalism is that it's Janus-faced. One face looks back to the past, selecting resources from history to cope with the future to be faced; a future shaped by global developments, arriving at your doorstep. The main question is: who are we, in the face of these challenges? SO, independence is how we handle the future. And whereas imperial capitalism was the challenge of 19th and 20th centuries, now it's a combination of unlimited (and wonderful/dangerous) potential in computation and biotech, and the hard horizons of planetary ecological boundaries. There are defensive, or hedonist, responses to this turbulent vista. Faragists appeal to the status quo ante. Netflix (and lifestyle consumerism) sends you on escapist journeys. Independence has to be an answer and alternative to both responses – something beyond fearful and angry reaction, or seeking compensation from our entertainment bubbles. The Brazilian philosopher Roberto Unger often talks about the importance of 'institutional innovation' in a 'high-energy democracy'. By which he means a healthy nation has an appetite for building structures, organisations and enterprises. It knows the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Independence should be that very 'spirit to build'. But this means small-i indy has as much, if not more importance than large-I Indy. Community-owned renewable energy schemes are enthusing many at the moment because they are precisely that grip on the future that communities need. (Image: Submitted) A dynamic of confidence/competence is required to sustain a group through all the stages of such projects. And psychologically, when you're absorbed in this kind of community development – real, tangible, socio-economic – it banishes the attraction of siren calls towards gloom or boom. A national independence that can be a partner and enabler to these kinds of autonomy, exactly where and when they bubble up, would be a powerful and attractive vision. And, suffice it to say, this prospectus demands at minimum a 'hopescroll'– a digital feed of locally and globally sourced exemplars of community power, full of stories and tools that provide scripts for action. Beyond our wits to devise such a technology and service? I think not. The doomscroll is an inevitable expression of our digital modernity, both creative and destructive. But in Scotland, it could be otherwise.
The National
27-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
What comes next after Supreme Court hands down gender ruling
Former MP Mhairi Black weighs in to say we need to change the 'binary boxes' society is organised around, even though it is now clear that sex is in fact binary, as the majority knew all along. Black appears to equate the legal protection of women with the actions of fascists in the 1930s, calling those objecting to sharing a changing room with someone of the opposite sex 'weirdos'. That's without the aggressive trans lobby saying they will still use the toilets they want to, posting selfies and boasting that if they are banned from doing so, they will 'pee on the floor' of public buildings. This is not the reaction you would expect of the 'marginalised', 'terrified' group they claim to be. Since the ruling, a lot has been made of the fact that trans people comprise only 0.44% of the population, but few mention the hugely disproportionate effect it would have had on the 52% of the population (women) if anyone could become a woman on a whim, access women-only spaces and effectively erase women. In Scotland, John Swinney and Police Scotland have over the last week gone out of their way to reassure the allegedly victimised trans community. What a shame they never reassured gender-critical women and men when they were gaslighting us, telling us we were transphobes, and threatening women's hard-won legal rights. At least the Scottish Government has said it has 'no plans' to revive the disastrous gender reform legislation. I suppose even they could see there is no point. Self-ID is off the cards and Gender Recognition Certificates mean as much as they always did. Tim Hopkins of the Equality Network says self-ID has not caused any problems elsewhere it has been implemented. Really? What about Ireland, which sleep-walked into self-ID by tagging it on to a referendum about abortion rights and now has violent male Barbie Kardashian housed in the women's wing of Limerick Prison, causing considerable problems for the prison authorities? Or Canada, where most schools teach that a child can be born in the wrong body? And countries with self-ID will find out to the cost of women that measures to counter unequal pay and treatment will become meaningless if men can claim them too. Tim even claims that everyone down the line will now get to interpret the Supreme Court decision any way they please, from the EHRC and regulators down to employers and providers. Don't think so. One commentator took it a step further, saying that as males are not now allowed in hospital wards, women will not be able to get female visitors and men will not be present in 'birthing rooms' (it's 'maternity units'). This is where you see how ludicrous the arguments have become. The Scottish Government has never supported gender-critical women, refusing to engage with us meaningfully prior to enacting its daft legislation, which it only got through by forcing MSPs to support it or lose the blessing of their then leader. Even now, they imply the Government will have to undergo some drastically difficult contortions to implement the law. It shouldn't be that difficult. The law is now clear. What is less obvious is that the Scottish Government even effectively gaslit trans people by making them believe they could change sex when they cannot. The Scottish Government now faces a major financial headache in changing its guidance to public bodies to ensure single-sex provision. Some definitely seem more concerned at the fate of trans people than they ever were about women's safety being compromised and women self-excluding from public toilets for religious reasons. They fret about where trans people will now go to the toilet. How about all those gender-neutral toilets which were installed up and down the country (or changed from being male and female) as the Scottish Government decided the law would change in its favour? Just don't take the easy way out and disadvantage disabled people by saying trans people should use their facilities, as was Shirley-Anne Somerville's suggestion in the trans schools guidance. The law is now clear. Let the Scottish Government's response to it also be clear and its support for the women of Scotland be unequivocal. Better late than never. Julia Pannell Tayside THERE was only ever going to be one topic for my letter this week. An issue that I feel very strongly about and which makes my blood boil. Women are now well and truly safe from marauding guys in skirts barging intae their toilets and sexually assaulting them. Hallelujah! (I was always partial to the lowest form of wit!) Seriously, I was always taught that a proper civilised society treats its minority groups and vulnerable folk with the utmost respect. Well, right now, I can't think of a more vulnerable, put-upon minority group within Scotland and the whole of the UK than the trans community (less than 1% of the population). Given the recent Supreme Court judgment, they are most certainly about to be put upon even more! For aw us men and women (the 'proper' type as deemed by the Supreme Court), imagine innocently going into a bar or restaurant for a drink or a meal, then it comes to the point we need a pee, or maybe something a bit more! There are two toilets – one is totally out of bounds, and the other is full o' folk that we find, given our appearance, totally intimidating. What the hell happens now! Depends on the strength of yer ain bladder or bowels, I guess! Time for a desperate rush out of said establishment to find another establishment outside, hopefully nearby, that has a disabled loo or a unisex one! Hopefully we can keep it in that long! This is the predicament trans folk now face. Before deciding where to drink or eat, a recce of potential bars and restaurants will need to take place beforehand to assess if they have a disabled or unisex loo. Hang on though, disabled toilets are for disabled folk. Why should trans folk be forced to utilise toilets specially adapted for disabled folk, another minority group in society whose needs are also often overlooked? That just leaves unisex toilets, which loads of bars and restaurants don't currently have. Returning to the 'threat' posed by said men in skirts against the female population. Am I missing something? The last time I checked the statistics for women and girls being assaulted by men posing as trans women or even genuine trans women themselves were so miniscule as to be insignificant. It's all about what MIGHT happen! What aboot us guys though! Statistics definitely reflect that women and girls are a million times more likely to be murdered, seriously assaulted, the victims of assault generally, rape, serious sexual assault, other sexual assaults, verbal sexual abuse, unwanted sexual comments, misogyny, etc, etc, by whom? Us 'proper' guys! Dae ye want me tae gaun on! For god's sake why can't folk gie the trans community a bloody break! Giving Rabbie Burns's famous song a bit of a twist, I reckon – 'a human being is a human being for aw that!' Ivor Telfer Dalgety Bay, Fife
Scotsman
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Analysis: Are politicians' book festival appearances just a disguised party political broadcast?
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Last August, First Minister John Swinney was speaking at an event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, when a protester cut short his appearance. The pro-Palestinian woman attacked the Scottish Government for its engagement with Israel, after a Scottish Government minister had been forced to apologise for his meeting with the country's deputy ambassador amid its war in Gaza. The event, a discussion about 25 years of devolution, was cut short five minutes early with no more questions. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Undeterred, Mr Swinney has jumped back on the horse with the announcement of an appearance at the Borders Book Festival in June, when he will be crossing his fingers that his government has not done anything controversial in the preceding weeks. He will not be alone. Also taking to the stage in Melrose are two former UK Government cabinet ministers, Conservatives Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt. Mr Swinney's appearance is the latest event in an indisputable trend on the rise in book - and other - festivals in recent years: the tenuous cultural links of politicians. Arguably, in Scotland, the trend for MSPs' appearances at book festivals was led by one of Mr Swinney's predecessors, Nicola Sturgeon. Ms Sturgeon's name began creeping into the book festival calendar during her leadership, partly due to her public perception as a bookworm: the reading person's First Minister, who published an annual list of her favourite books. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Separately, former SNP MP Mhairi Black is doing a circuit of her own, presenting her politics-themed stand up routine at comedy festivals across the country. This is of course, not new. Politicians have spoken at book festivals for years, but in a trawl of older festival programmes, they have more often appeared as part of wider panel discussions on a specific issue, or in a politically balanced debate. Mhairi Black on stage at her comedy show. | GICF Meanwhile, Mr Swinney's experience last year is where the problem with politicians speaking at cultural events arguably lies: entertainment and politics are not easy bedfellows. And increasingly, the line between the two is becoming blurred. It emerged last month that US Government funding for the Edinburgh International Book Festival was to be axed by President Donald Trump amid concerns that the event was promoting discussion on 'gender identity and racial equality'. While Mr Trump's reasoning for making the cuts is typically abhorrent, it did raise questions over why a foreign government was funding any discussion events at all in Scotland. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the Borders, Mr Swinney will be interviewed by a former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister, which is undoubtedly a nod towards attempts at mitigating the issue of party politics. The pair will also stick to the neutral topic of the books which have shaped the First Minister's thinking - but it is hard to imagine how he can talk about his thinking about his political thinking. In September, however, an appearance at Wigtown Book Festival by deputy first minister Kate Forbes did not try to disguise itself as anything other than a live Party Political Broadcast. Instead, in a lengthy speech, Ms Forbes discussed issues including her party's need to rebuild trust and the likelihood of getting her Budget through parliament.
The Guardian
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mhairi Black: Being Me Again review – the former MP is a force of nature in this excellent documentary
Mhairi Black's maiden speech in the House of Commons 10 years ago remains a thing of beauty. We are only treated to a snippet of it in this excellent documentary about the former Scottish National party politician – the youngest MP elected to parliament since 1832 – but I recommend finding the whole thing on YouTube. Black, then just 20 years old, has the Commons in the palm of her hand, simultaneously charming her fellow MPs with her dry wit and laying bare the deprivation in her Paisley and Renfrewshire South constituency (among the horrors: a man who starved himself in order to afford his bus fare to the jobcentre, only to collapse on the way there). The documentary does, however, retain some of her best one-liners from that address. Among them, the fact that her MP status and changes to housing benefit meant that she was 'the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK' that would be getting any government help with their housing. Black – if it wasn't clear already – is a force of nature, and someone we surely need in politics. And yet, her exit from Westminster is what this one-off film is all about. We zip between archive clips from her younger years as an IndyRef campaigner; the last days of her career as an MP (Black announced her intention to stand down at the next election in 2023, following through on that promise in 2024); and her post-politics life. There's also footage from last year's Edinburgh fringe show, Politics Isn't for Me, which saw her turn her tumultuous time in parliament into something approaching comedy, commanding the stage with what she calls her 'Britney mic' jutting out in front of her mouth (the Guardian described it as 'comedy therapy'). Being a young, gay woman in the Commons, we learn, took a profound toll on Black's mental health. She tells us as much – describing it as having had 'anxiety all the time' – but we can see it, too, the colour slowly draining from her face as her 20s march on. When we cut back to the present, she is calmer, happier; there is talk of regaining independence and control. The message here is clear: Black may have been allowed to roam the corridors of power, but it was never somewhere she had any real chance of thriving. From the start, the tabloids were digging up old social media posts about her love of alcopops and why 'maths is shite'. These were posted, unsurprisingly, when she was still at school. In any case, it was an 'archaic' place where she didn't fit in, and somewhere she felt isolated and even scared at points. She was left alone to deal with 'visceral' hate – trolls calling her a 'dyke', a 'dirty bitch', and telling her that she was too ugly to get raped – and even death threats, including one which she says the police described as 'imminent'. She drank too much, and lost weight from all the vomiting; her dad, Alan, says 'her spark' was missing. Her wife, Katie, explains that people began to brand Black as lazy when she was signed off work for three months between 2017 and 2018. While the couple don't go into too much detail about those critics here, it wasn't just the media any more: Black has previously gone on the record to say that her fellow MPs also cast aspersions on her character. Away from those tough times, we also see how determined, fierce and funny Black is, but not, ironically, during her onstage segments. It's in her Commons performances that these qualities shine through. When she describes the government as having been largely 'pished' during lockdown, then deputy speaker Dame Rosie Winterton asks her to mind her language. Without missing a beat, Black fires back a host of other options, complete with theatrical hand gestures: 'Inebriated? Intoxicated? Paralytic?' There's also a hilarious episode, where a tabloid claims that Black has called Rishi Sunak a 'dickhead' during PMQs. Black lip-reads back her own mutterings before deciding that wasn't what she said, but that it wouldn't exactly have been wrong if she had done. On top of this, we also see how she is managing her mental health and neurodiversity (she was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in 2018, and is being tested for autism). Allowing yourself to be filmed reflecting on your enviable political career is one thing. That Black also let the cameras roll during moments of struggle and mental exhaustion is far more impressive. I'm not entirely sure that her future lies in standup, but then neither is Black. Instead, she's just really, really glad to be out of parliament, a new lightness radiating off her as the film ends. Her exit really is a loss to British politics. But my God, I've never seen someone look so happy to be walking the dog. Mhairi Black: Being Me Again aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer
The Guardian
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
TV tonight: why Mhairi Black swapped parliament for standup comedy
7pm, BBC Two'This place is a farce. Absolute farce.' Last year, the SNP's Mhairi Black – the youngest elected MP since 1832 – stood down as an MP, and swapped parliament for standup comedy (she was describing the former there). In this candid film, she talks about rising to prominence after the Scottish referendum, the anxiety she constantly felt as a young, gay, neurodivergent woman in politics, and her first show at the Edinburgh festival fringe. Hollie Richardson 8pm, Channel 4Nick Grimshaw – who is dog daddy to bull terrier Pig and jack russell Puppy – is back to train naughty pooches with his team of experts. First up, cane corso Ghost is a giant guard dog adjusting to family life, while cavapoochon Mr Bollinger is testing his owners' relationship. HR 8pm, Sky ArtsIs there a through-line from Frankenstein's monster, dreamed up by Mary Shelley in Regency England, to the robotic visions of 20th-century American author Isaac Asimov? If there is, then this thorough, four-part series will uncover it. Along the way, there are reflections on how Oppenheimer's bomb influenced other works of science fiction. Ellen E Jones 9pm, U&DramaThis weirdly bleak and creepy reimagining of the 80s detective series reaches its climax. The villainous John Blakely is homing in on Kim, while Bergerac is beginning to panic as he's sidelined from the case. Finally, our hero has a gamechanging realisation – but has it come too late to save his daughter? Phil Harrison 10pm, Sky AtlanticAs Wendy returns to Drumbán for the I Am Celt premiere ('Is it supposed to be funny?'), Séamus, Pubba and the gang confront their pasts ('Dad, I can't believe I'm actually going to say this: were you abducted by aliens?'), and there's a final interspecies confrontation, in the concluding part of Chris O'Dowd's comedy drama. Ali Catterall 10pm, Channel 4There's a lot of secrecy around this new hour-long Dispatches investigation, which suggests it's one to definitely keep an eye on – as, over the past couple of years, the strand has launched headline-making exposés on accusations against Russell Brand, an NHS emergency ward in crisis and the royal family's 'secret millions'. HR Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (Anna Hints, 2023), 2.10am, Film4The smoke sauna tradition in Estonia is recognised by Unesco, and Anna Hints' season-traversing documentary pays due homage to its rituals and idyllic woodland setting. But the female visitors to the isolated cabin are the film's real focus. In this safe space, they sit and talk – about body image, sex, relationships, family. While naked physically, they're also exposing themselves emotionally. Viewed in a beautiful play of light and steam, it's a moving insight into troubled individuals given succour through a collective endeavour. Simon Wardell Racing, Grand National Festival, 1.30pm, ITV1. Day one from Aintree.
