MAgazine
We’ve been invaded - stop the bits!
There is a sudden, alarming rise in experts warning of an apocalyptic ending for our AI adventure in only a few years. It is only onerous example of why we literally can’t let tech sociopaths control our society, and why Scotland must act now
We must not treat patients as accounting units
Nick Kempe discusses the Scottish Governments proposals for health and care reform, raising concerns that the focus on “delayed discharge” risks seeing patients as lines on a spreadsheet rather than people.
Britain Has Sanctioned the Settlements. But Is It Enough?
What happened to Older People in the PfG 2026?
This year’s Programme for Government promised to be “ambitious for Scotland”, but managed to almost completely ignore older people again and forget about the ambitions it laid out in previous Parliaments.
Burnham hasn’t changed the game, but he has taken to the field
Andy Burnham appears to have set a new and achievable target for Scotland to win independence but in reality the goal remains the same: convince the people of Scotland.
Pay attention Scotland - we’re cutting our own throat
There are major developments in the global economy that ought to be influencing policy in Scotland. Instead we appear to be about to do precisely the opposite of what we should be learning, and we’ll pay a price for it.
When aid becomes a tool for migration control
The Programme for Government 2026
The first Programme for a newly elected government is a good time large ambitions. The ones included in this year’s PfG certainly are large, but not necessarily good.
Scotland has a population problem
Scotland needs to start rewiring its own state
That’s Plenty! The church of Jack and Victor
Politics tries to hide it but the only morality it is interested in these days is greed and avarice. It is this which has done endless damage and only a moral campaign can challenge it.
How we should regulate Data Centres
In this week’s article in In Common in The National, Craig alerts folk to data centres lobbying the Scottish Government to write their own environmental regulations and lays out what we should be calling for instead.
How to break an investment bank
Losses continue to mount at the Scottish National Investment Bank. This would not have been an existential problem had the Scottish Government followed our blueprint for the bank.
A simple proposal
Our world is becoming more complicated by design and it’s being done to exploit us. It is a time we fought back in favour of simplicity and systems we can actually understand - and trust.
Britain NEEDS A NEW IDEA OF PUNISHMENT
Scotland needs a parliament with something to say
Giving to those who already have
Why is the Scottish Government creating a housing subsidy it knows will mostly go to the wrong people? In Common this week argues strongly against another help to buy scheme.
Forget ‘opportunities’; what about lives?
Being young has never been easy but it used to be a transitionary stage towards a decent adult life. If that adult life is less and less available, what does our politics offer young people?
We cannot police our way out of the channel crisis
Reimagining Scottish Independence as Deliberative Democracy
In Part Four of his series on deliberative democracy, Bill Johnston looks at what lessons can be learned for the campaign for independence.