As the Soviet Union was about to collapse, Gorbachev’s glasnost gave my mother Tracy Chapman. So too did she gift her to me, tucked in CD collections stacked high in our living room, played on mixtapes during car journeys in my childhood. Chapman has been in my musical consciousness for as long as I can […]
The Student has learned that the University of Edinburgh has banned Robyn Woof, Trans and Non-Binary Liberation Officer at Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) from attending or being within 200 feet of any protest on any subject on the university’s campus. The ban is a precautionary action put in place by the Deputy Secretary and […]
On Saturday, February 18, a group of protestors gathered outside McEwan Hall to demand Peter Mathieson’s resignation. Mathieson, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, has come under scrutiny for a variety of issues during his five-year tenure. It was timed to coincide with the university’s biannual General Council meeting, where Mathieson delivered […]
One of my English Literature role models is a Cambridge academic named Dr Jason Scott-Warren. I have met him twice (once by fluke coincidence when we happened to be interrailing simultaneously in Madrid), and he is phenomenal. He is known in the headlines for his Extinction Rebellion activism. On May 1 2021, he sat in the […]
At every COP meeting, the UK government has not missed the opportunity to commit to new climate targets; however, it’s actions suggest it was just for show. Since COP26, the UK government has been going in completely in the wrong direction: giving new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, opening a new coal […]
Another divide between the Scottish parliament and the UK government has slammed the rights of the trans community across the UK. A protest was sparked after a rift formed between the Scottish parliament, which passed the Gender Reform Bill in December, making it easier for young people to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, and the […]
2023 will likely be the year Green MSP Gillian Mackay’s “Buffer Zones” Bill comes into effect in Scotland. The law would establish a 150m radius “safe access zone” around Scottish abortion clinics, protecting a legal right extant since 1967. The impetus for this law lies in a US-based “charity” — 40 Days for Life — […]
The government’s new public order bill has passed through the commons – that illustrious ‘mother of parliaments’ which has given us such hits as The clown’s nightmare before Christmas and How to tank an economy in 80 minutes. It is now at the committee stage in the House of Lords. Quite how it has managed […]