The Future of Property Among most tribal societies private property does not exist, other than a few utensils and weapons. Everything belongs to the tribe or the group or the society to which the group belong. With the growth of civilisation and national identity much private property developed, with wars …
History…Today…And Human Destiny How much can one say in a few words? There are certain historical dates: 1914, 1917, 1939, 1945, 1989—and 2011 looks as if it will be another one—that has been fixed in historical memory. Recorded history, other than the mythical texts that try to explain the reason …
The last century could hardly have been more eventful, although we have become too accustomed to some of its better moments. 1911 was a high point for Edwardinian optimism, the hey-day of expressionism in painting and the European arts, especially music. Der Rosenkavallier, perhaps the most popular opera of the …
Dickens was referring to the depth of the French Revolution, but the words are very apposite to 2011, not only in Britain, but nearly everywhere. This will be a year of revolution in many places, to chaotic trouble in most other places and to decline, suffering and misery almost everywhere …
The President of the United States gave a major news conference yesterday. The same President who controls the fate of US and British forces in Afghanistan, as well as a large part of the world economy. The number of viewers online was just over 450. The US spin-machines of infotainment …
The Grumpy Chef: Cook Like a Kid! Mason Douglas Good god…being a chef can be boring at times… It’s not the hours or the getting changed 8 times a day or even the laborious meetings with officious officials from the FSA. (Damn killjoys banned unpasteurised foodstuffs and are proceeding to …
I love cities. Being in a place where my surroundings constantly buzz and I have little to no idea of what could happen next. So far, this drive took me from a small village in Scotland to its biggest city, Glasgow. And then to study in the city that they …
ONE 10 prison states of mind contributions from Polmont Young Offender’s Institution Writers
At the upscale New York City restaurant where I work as a waiter, the Rail consists of six tables with roomy armchairs across from six booths lined up along a wall of windows facing a side street near Central Park. New York Notes: Sirloin Senator — Watching Tables & Keeping …
Learn how to write a screenplay for the low price of only $299.99! — or at least that’s what the Hollywood establishment would like you to believe. As an aspiring screenwriter, my email overflows every single day with offers and claims from various ‘pros’ pitching their latest book or workshop: …
In the summer of 1978, a telephone call from Rosalie Gomes, an editor at the English-language Paris newspaper, Paris Metro, was to lead to an out of the blue bizarre correspondence with a young woman. The newspaper had received a letter from an American woman who was an inmate in …
It was utter coincidence that while the immigration debate began raging anew in the US media and tighter restrictions along the US-Mexican border were being called for, I visited Mexico in June for the first time. Mexico Notes –Geraldine Sweeney
Edinburgh Notes: Reflections on Gaza Flotilla Day, 31 May 2010 –Charlie Graham Remember the Boxes for Bosnia? When you were at school, or sending your kids to school during the recent times of war in the former Yugoslavia? You’d send the young ones off with a box and you’d think …
Peace in La Paz During the week I recently spent in El Salvador, the only time I felt truly clean was the day we went to the beach at La Paz (Spanish for peace). The poverty and violence of the city ebbed away as we watched a small fishing boat …
In 1811, by municipal decree, Manhattan Island, between 14th and 155th Streets, was cordoned off into a carefully plotted rectilinear street grid — avenues run north and south, streets east and west. The first New World city to adopt such a plan, New York was ripe for commercial expansion north …
On the eve of my public conversation with the Premier of New South Wales, Kristina Keneally, as part of a Sydney Writers Festival event on the topic of Forgiveness, I felt nervous but prepared. It would be my first time moderating panels at the Festival, now the third-largest in the …
The Sense of an Ending –MSP Christopher Harvie I. I have been grateful over the past few years for the hospitality of the Guardian’s ‘CommentisFree’, until its self-editing system was changed and new-style gatekeepers made it clear that freedom stopped around Watford Gap: not just my contributions but anything from …
This is Mine: ‘ME-2’ (moi aussi) –Martin Belk Glasgow, May 2010 I get frustrated, searching for ways to outwit, outsmart, outfox the ubiquitous ad campaigns for booze, drugs, soulless Pop music, computer games and mobile phones that too often possess the minds of the new ‘ME-2’ generation.
Four-Year Stretch: Reflections of a 21st Century Graduate –Peter Simpson You may ask yourself, ‘How do I work this?’… You may ask yourself, ‘Where does that highway lead to?’… And you may ask yourself ‘My God, what have I done?’ —Talking Heads, 1981
On May 17, 2010, the justices of the US Supreme Court, in a miraculous decision, barred life terms for young offenders who haven’t committed murder. Miraculous because the current court leans decidedly to the right, and also because we in the US are very good at locking up and throwing …
Bebelplatz We huddle, peer through the pane of glass at our feet pebbled with raindrops as a large man crouches down with a folded tissue, gently wipes them away revealing more to us than bare shelves and missing books.
1. Where are you from? 2. Where are you now? 3. By way of? 4. Would you do it all again? 5. Describe your last memory of leaving what you consider ‘home’ or where you’re from. 6. What’s your profession? disclaimer: We wanted a quick survey not …
Someone in the West Coast of Scotland is reading the wrong web sites. As if a visit by the Pope might not be divisive enough, somebody, with the best of intentions, has invited none other than Ex-New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani to address the Scottish Council for Development and …
At last a little truth and reality is beginning to emerge from a long period where politicans have treated those who elect them as fools to be gulled with lies and impossible promises, while always careful to feather their own nests. For decades they have become increasingly ignorant and philistine, …
The UK election is over. The bombast is past. Now, not only Britain, but most of the world is facing a future that will become ever more difficult even in the richer countries, and catastrophic in the poorer. While politicians, most of whom are profoundly ignorant about the realities of …
Politics have always been corrupt, although there have been corrupt, although there have been historical periods when a few individuals have brought up the moral and intellectual tone. One think of Burke, Disraeli, Parnell, Nye Bevan and a few others, often defying their party to say what had to be …
Every so often a book comes along of such importance that everyone who cares about the world we live in, and the state of modern society as it affects our lives and well-being, should read. Such a one is ‘Freefall’ by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who prior …
I thought of Nora Jones tonight as I sat in the audience for Rufus Wainwright’s Glasgow show: a lot of people love her, flock to see her, but I’m not entirely sure why. That’s not to suggest the attention is not well-deserved, but to characterize — if Norah Jones …
The newspapers for several weeks now have been full of stories about the abuse of children. On the one hand there have been all the scandals about the Catholic church, paedophile priests and bishopal cover-ups, on the other of children killed or damaged by terrible parents, guardians or authorities that …
This is not a good time to be making prophecies. What will happen on the 6th of May is very uncertain, but it seems likely, given the general disgust with the greed, corruption, mismanagement and attempts to cover up bad behaviour, common to at least the two major parties, that …
Someone in the West Coast of Scotland is reading the wrong web sites. As if a visit by the Pope might not be divisive enough, somebody, with the best of intentions, has invited none other than Ex-New York City Mayor Rudolf Giuliani to address the Scottish Council for Development …
45 and a Half Miles by Edward Neville [excerpted and edited for ONE]
Twitter is one of the latest tech toys to take the world by storm. With its A-list celebrities, politicians, musicians, actors and writers comprising only a small part of its 30 million users, we come from all walks of life. Columns in the daily newspapers list celebrity tweets, and companies …
Kenny MacAskill, Orwell, arts funding and some fresh angles of an old question. “Poverty is what I’m writing about.” -G.O. — When George Orwell voluntarily submitted himself to a life on the low, he discovered two distinct stories in two major cities: Paris and London. In the former, while struggling …
The short reign of Gordon Brown will come to an end on the 6th of May, and looking back, there can be no question of it having been anything other than a disaster. Following in the misguided footsteps of Tony Blair, who simply continued the Thatcherite policy of deregulating as …
Notes from New York and Ireland Home (noun) 1. residence 2. native habitat 3. place of origin 4. safe place December 2009—Geraldine Sweeney
LEAVING NEW YORK By way of Havana, Miami, San Francisco & soon Barcelona –Jorgé Soccaras As a native New Yorker, leaving this place has been a marker for certain periods of my life. My first distinct memory of leaving New York was in1959 when I was seven years old.
–Cheryl Compton ONE Editor Martin Belk issued me a challenge for this edition of the Hollywood Notes: “I would love to know what’s really going on behind the scenes out there. It’s amazing that they throw zillions at bad movies while everyone else eats cake.”
In the summer of 1982, while visiting my son, Jesper, in New York City, I decided to call my friend, Betty Dodson, to see how she was doing and to plug into her amazing energy and intellect. She answered the phone and reported she was writing her autobiography, that I …
Kansas City, Missouri is uniquely American. This is the place that gave us aviatrix Amelia Earhart, saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, outlaw Jesse James and artist Thomas Hart Benton. While standing on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River, seriously dwarfing in size its more famous cousin, the Mississippi, one can readily …
It has been nearly a half-century since American film critic Pauline Kael wrote that celebrity in the modern world provided its own raison d’etre. It didn’t matter why you were famous or if you deserved to be famous, she said, but just that you were famous. American Notes: confessional …
STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT In response to the ‘Digital Economy Bill’ announced by the UK Government on the 20th Nov, 2009.
Vestibul med perspektiv Swedish Cecelia Johanna Kopra inte här, snälla akuten är runt hörnet nej, inte här piccolo på röda mattan, två bagagevagnar i mässing
Samaritan by Lisa del Rosso
During the Crimean war, the first—and greatest—war correspondent, W.H. Russell, revealed the scandal of under-equipped troops serving at the front to readers of The Times. Such was the outcry following his article that a special debate was held in parliament, and new equipment dispatched to the troops in theatre within …
In a contemporary world of political and social cycles, with the same mistakes made time and time again, the one area of our lives where repetition is not only welcomed but encouraged is pop culture.
Prologue ‘1992. Winter.’ It was a celebration; it was a mourning. The rain spat down on the frowning tartan umbrellas and ill-fitting trench coats gathered at the graveside. Adam had to strain to release his hand, a tiny bug locked in his father’s fist. He knew he should have been …
Kirsty Gunn is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Dundee. Her novel ‘The Boy and the Sea’ was awarded the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award.
ONE: What is the background to Joseph’s Box? How long did you spend writing it? SH: I got the idea around 2000, and started doing research, then started physically writing it in the early part of 2002 when I received a bursary from the Scottish Arts Council, and blasted through …
“I could not have gone on living in Israel without writing this book. I don’t think books can change the world- but when the world begins to change, it searches for different books.” — Schlomo Sand
Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian Lacanian Marxist and provocateur of the Left, shows no sign of abating in his quest for the revival and return to the Communist spirit in his latest offering, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce. In this compelling work, Žižek performs his own particular analysis of the …
We all have vices and habits, they’re human nature. They get us through our day and make us happy. Unfortunately now, one too many of my happy habits have been ruined by the ever expanding universe of food marketing which has become flooded with jumped up, opinionated oinks dictating what …
Postcard Records, with just 13 singles released over a period of 3 years, helped forge the sound of indie pop and radically changed the musical landscape of Scotland. Dubbed ‘The Sound of Young Scotland’ by label head Alan Horne, the music remains vital and exciting to modern ears. Run from …
Early 2010 is packing a theatre scene punch in, unlike the fall of 2009, which promised a bang and delivered a whimper. The best of the best right now is off-Broadway, and will leave you thinking and turning questions over in your mind long after the actors have taken their …
Anyone with a serious interest in history knows that there is no such thing as steady progress. There are times when things go forward and life improves, but always there is a counter-force that comes along, stops the advance and pushes human progress back. The golden age of fifth century …
Yes, there are revolutions, one after another, and February has only just ended. I was touring Ireland with a theatre production when the election took place, wondering why they even bothered to go through the motions when the polls already knew the result and could declarer the new government without …
Adam smith in The Wealth of Nations described capitalism as a method of creating wealth through the use of innovation and invention, which in practise became mass production replacing handicraft and home industry. It also led to driving whole populations off the land and into factories and led to mass …
Ever since the human mind began to ask itself the kind of question that animals never ask, such as ‘where do we come from?’, ‘why are we here?’, or ‘where are we going?’ there have been some willing to provide answers, usually to get an advantage. So a priesthood developed …
Although the newspapers are not short of pundits, everyone is looking at the present, while the politicians and their friends who own the media, the bans and the big commercial and industrial enterprises, while looking to the past with nostalgia, and against all the evidence predicting that the recession is …
There are three basic types of elected politicians. First, there are those who are hungry for power, not that much unlike those who seize it somehow, either by leading a revolution, a coup d’etat if they are in a position to affect one, or by turning a successful election into …
Calgacus, the first recorded leader of the early Scottish Picts, who resisted the first Roman invasions, is quoted by Tacitus as saying: ‘They Make a Desert and they call it Peace.’ How true that is today. We with the Americans are among the worst offender in our futile and ultimately …
Yes, yes you should, along with all the filmmakers involved in this project. Along with me for paying to sit through this nonsense. Daniel Day Lewis as an Italian? Please. Somehow tieing this into Fellini? A travesty. With this, and the goose-choking release of ‘Avatar’, I have a lingering question: …
As 2009 approaches its dismal end and the next British General election looms ever nearer, the political parties are groping desperately for some new ideas and failing to find any. Even Vince Cable, the most articulate and believable member of the House of Commons, and one of the few certain …
As the depression deepens daily, it becomes ever more evident that no politician has any idea of what the situation really is, or what to do about it. Vince Cable’s book ‘The Storm’, published early this year, gave an accurate picture of what has led to the present crisis, but …
On the opening day of he great international conference in Copenhagen, over fifty of the world’s leading newspapers jointly published a single editorial, emphasizing that this important event must not be allowed to fail. Interestingly, only one American newspaper, in Miami, Florida, was among them: New York, Chicago, L.A. etc. …
There are few countries where democracy really works, and usually it is because of a high level education, a unified general culture, and a high level of affluence, with little or no real poverty. Switzerland, with its four official languages, relatively high number of immigrants, many of them refugees from …
This is not advertorial. This is a blatant CALL TO ACTION on behalf of Border’s Books, Buchanan Street, Glasgow. I was saddened by the news of administration, I was sickened to walk by and see bargain-basement ‘CLOSING DOWN’ signs just now. If Border’s Buchanan Street is allowed to close, Glasgow …
The new century is nearing the end of its first decade, but everyone looks back with nostalgia to the last one, forgetting the terrible wars, the holocaust, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, the suffering that went with the end of colonialism, the tyranny of Hitler, Stalin and many lesser dictators, …
ONE Magazine photographer and editorial liaise Thomas Haywood gets caught while catching a falling man at the Union Gallery, in joint collaboration with The Edinburgh Filmhouse: MLB
So goes the song (Where have all the flowers gone?). Politicians will never learn because they don’t want to, because they will never admit that they are wrong, because they care little if at all about human life unless it concerns them personally, and above all because being in office …
I, for one, am very fatigued to keep hearing about the sad state of Western economies, particularly in the US and UK. Frankly, ‘SHUT UP ALREADY’, is my current sentiment. Every single bit of this so-called financial crisis is your fault, our fault, and now it’s high time to take …
At One Magazine’s public day on ‘Lying’, based on Oscar Wilde’s amusing little book on its decay, I pointed out my definition of what a society based on greater equality and fair distribution of wealth might be like, one lady, assuming that I was describing socialism, said that she had …
A simple gesture can speak for the feelings of millions of people, and I would like to thank Peter Brierley, father of the soldier killed in Iraq, for refusing to shake Tony Blair’s hand because it was ‘covered in blood’. Indeed, his hands have the blood not of just of …
It is difficult to think of any week in which so much has been overturned as the one that has just passed. Members of parliament are in a dilemma. For years they have been making the taxpayers, who are their real employers, pay for personal laundry, house-cleaning and gardening work, …
I’m going to break with my normal postings here for a film review of Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT.
It is time to say no to a great many things. First of all to the ridiculous notion that Tony Blair, an ignorant and simplistic chancer if there ever were one, should ever be considered for the new presidency of President of Europe, when it is not difficult to think …
Although politicians cannot see, do not realise it is happening, and are too pre-occupied with their own careers and well being, a radical change is taking place in society. We are constantly told that we will soon return to things as they were, that is to the period of concern …
Celebrating the Life of the Original Miss Thing You been dancin’ all night long with so many different guys. I waited patiently for you to notice me but you never caught my eye. Make some room cuz I’m coming through…. The feelings getting stronger I’m not waiting any longer for …
Even in the Great Depression of the thirties, a time we are having to relive today, a sense of responsibility was generally cultivated in most families and classes. This consisted of not spending on what you did not need, not wanting what you could not honestly have, not letting yourself …
The real causes of the long-expected depression (by a few thinking observers anyway) are seldom mentioned. It is not just the greed of a few – bankers, CEOs etc. – but a historical phenomenon that has been growing ever since the beginnings of modern capitalism in the period that followed …
That which we call monomania by any other name would still be as dangerous… Our Man for Monday, John Calder, discusses where terrorism and patriotism converge and the consequences of governments, the press and militants – to paraphrase George Santayana – redoubling their efforts when they have forgotten their aim. …
Is democracy a good thing? According to Plato who was able to observe it in its early days in Athens, which first invented it, definitely not. It is too open to corruption, either by those who use it through demagogy or whipped-up prejudice or bribery to take advantage of the …
I had high hopes for this recession. The clearing of yuppies and trust-fund brats from Manhattan, the bust of mediocre record companies, film houses and television studios which, for the past 13 or so years have kept us swimming in beige. The clearing of yuppies and trust-fund brats from the …
Time for a little much-needed levity on these pages. Last week I dug out my mix tapes from twenty years ago. Some of you might remember these things – you bought the singles (or the albums), or borrowed them from friends and then recorded them onto cassette tapes so you …
Looking at the last two-hundred years or so, one can see how the growth of capitalism, starting in a small way with industries perceiving a need or possible opportunity to create one, where some new invention had come along, often taking the willingness of people to believe in the value …
In December 1962, Kingsley Amis and his then wife, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, were separately approached by The Observer newspaper and asked to name their favourite novel of the last ten years. Their response raised a few eyebrows in London’s literary community, since both chose a moderately successful paperback, …
It always pays to look back over old books, especially if they are only partly read. Recently, I came across a book I’d forgotten (I had all but forgotten the author) and while re-reading Power Without Principles, published in Edinburgh ten years ago, I was struck by how little the …
“A week is a long time in politics,” said Harold Wilson, and equally often quoted is Harold MacMillan’s reply to being asked why carefully planned policies so often go wrong: “Events, dear boy, events!” Well, recent weeks have proved both statements not only relevant, but significant, in that a revolution …
ONE readers used to reading the unvarnished truth on this site will hardly welcome my first comment this week – namely, that the worst of this financial crisis is yet to come, probably in the autumn of this year or early next year at the latest. However, I’ll also argue …
Many topics, but all interrelated! Information fed to the press by whistle-blowers about the extravagent expenses of M.P.s and others is leading to a political showdown that is generally welcomed, except by those involved. Other press revelations about the phone-tapping of mobile telephones to get spicy details about private matters …
“There is nothing we can do about globalisation,” said Tony Blair some years ago. Then the great easy-to-foresee disasters began. There was Enron, there was Lehman Brothers, there was Nothern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland… and round the world enterprises failing, sometimes being rescued reluctantly by their national governments, sometimes …
You don’t ‘go see’ Grace Jones. You lounge with Grace Jones. Glasgow. 22 January 09 Somehow, although spending much of my young adulthood in New York City (well before HBO and Giuliani), 10 years of it as a club producer (before we had titles like ‘producer’) I missed Grace …
You don’t ‘go see’ Grace Jones. You lounge with Grace Jones. Glasgow. 22 January 09 Somehow, although spending much of my young adulthood in New York City (well before HBO and Giuliani), 10 years of it as a club producer (before we had titles like ‘producer’) I missed Grace Jones…at …
There has probably never been a good time. We quote Cicero, Wordsworth, Dickens and countless others, who mostly decried the time when they were condemned to be alive, and now that our own long period of apparent contentment is over, at least in the more fortunate parts of the planet, …
The laws of the Medes and the Persians, so the old saying goes, were unchangeable. It seems to be a feature of all animal life, including that of most of our human race, that we live in a situation, good or bad, that we expect will stay the same.
The dissatisfaction with politics and politicians is pretty near universal just now, expecially in Europe. While Obama stands out as an emblem of hope, there is much pessimism about the problems ahead of him and a feeling that they are far too large for even his abilities, given the deepening …
Towards the end of his life, Karl Marx admitted that he had underestimated the capacity of capitalism to adapt to changing social and economic circumstances. In making this admission, Marx was acknowledging the truth that the capacity to analyse and recognise features of a problem doesn’t necessarily mean that one …
Judge Deborah A Batts, of Manhattan may be the first in a revival of a once-popular trend: reading. In short, she sent Swedish writer Fredrik Colting packing. While I haven’t read Mr Colting’s book (and don’t plan to), I am elated that a judge took the time and effort to …
We have a government that does not know what to do and an electorate anxious to vote, but not sure what it wants to vote for. It certainly knows what it wants to vote against. We have an international crisis that is mainly economic, but also a clash of cultures, …
editors’ note: If you know anything about John Calder, one of the UK’s most notorious publishers — who has brought us Alleg, Beckett, Duras, Hiss and Selby. Typed in London on a manual, mailed to and re-keyed in Glasgow, ONE Magazine is pleased to present the second article from the …