MAgazine
Three things you might have missed in the UK Budget
Craig dips below the headlines surrounding the UK Budget to pull out three policies that you might have missed.
Because we forgot how to fight
A 40 year campaign to make you believe that monopolies are just an aspect of nature has led us to believe that you can’t do anything about them. This is total nonsense and all we have to do is remember.
Scottish Child Payment policy must always follow the evidence
Eighteen months after Common Weal discovered that John Swinney’s claim that the Scottish Child Payment would discourage parents from working, new research shows that the opposite is true.
Our economy is literally criminal
Why are convicted criminals at the heart of the financing and roll-out of AI? Because the global economy is based on practices which in any other realm would be a complex criminal conspiracy.
WE must stop the Dark Triad or we’re Done for
There is a cluster of behaviours which have come to be known as the Dark Triad and they have overtaken the world. If we are to save ourselves we need to find ways to fight back.
Burnham’s National Care Service plans are a warning to the Scottish Government
The Scottish Government should adopt Andy Burnham’s approach to policy-making: to build up the detail of a proposal for change before setting the timeline to launching it.
Finally, Local Government Reform - But it must be done right!
The Scottish Government’s sudden push for local government reform should be welcomed but their proposal as it stands needs a lot of work to make sure that it’s not a chaotic mess or a recipe for corruption and centralisation.
To save us all, invest in meat space
There is a youth loneliness crisis but it hides itself so we must look for its signs strewn across our culture. IF we don’t acknowledge this, behave like it matters and do something about it, we’re in trouble.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Drawing willies and stopping the far right
We have seen our information ecosystems transformed over the last 20 years and the consequences have been appalling. We are capable of fighting back with a better system of information, but there are lessons we must learn first.
Bad economics lead to bad decisions…
Yet again we are being told that there are special economic laws which mean that there are perfect and imperfect tax rates. The theory concerned is highly flawed and it isn’t even showing the thing that it is claimed it is showing.