A collective howl of despair could be heard throughout the unionist community of Scotland last Friday at the prospect of five more years of SNP rule following the Holyrood elections. I can’t have been alone in feeling a bit like a prisoner, incarcerated for a crime I don’t remember committing, having looked forward with faint […]
At the top of Glasgow’s Buchanan Street there is a statue of Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first First Minister, the so-called ‘Father of the Nation’ and ‘Architect of Devolution’. It hasn’t fared well, frequently vandalised or traffic coned, Dewar’s glasses were damaged so often they increased the size of the plinth to put the eyewear out […]
‘How are you, Phil?’ asked a colleague on the morning of November 6, as I made my way into work at the English department of my university in Tokyo. I was a little taken aback, as it was someone I didn’t normally interact with, especially on first name terms, and had been said with what […]
How happy are the Japanese? This question appears to be at the heart of the new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s plans for his administration. So concerned is Ishiba with his countrymen’s mental well-being that he plans to quantify it scientifically through a ‘happiness index’. Ishiba’s new policy was considered important enough to be trailed ahead […]
