Craig Meighan

Glasgow City Council Leader has denied accusations that equal pay negotiations have collapsed, saying they are still underway and on time. In a tweet , Susan Aitken rebuked accusations from Labour that thousands of women had chosen to strike after negotiations with Glasgow City Council had failed. Aitken said: “Equal pay negotiations have not ‘collapsed’; they are continuing” and that the timescale of when payments are to be made is well on track. This was in response to a tweet by Labour’s communities and equalities spokeswoman, Monica Lennon. Lennon said: "[These women] deserve pay justice and they deserve it now. It should never have reached this point and on behalf of Scottish Labour I apologise that the legacy of pay inequality wasn’t resolved when our party led Glasgow City Council. "An apology, however, doesn’t pay the bills. The SNP came into power having promised to settle but women are still being failed.” Aitken hit back at Labour, sa...

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Amazon made international headlines this year by becoming the 2 nd US company to reach the milestone of a $1Tn market value. Founded in Jeff Bezos’ basement in 1994 Amazon started off as an online bookstore and since then has seen rapid growth to become the largest online retailer in the world, making over $170B in 2017 alone. Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO This boom has made its founder the richest person alive, with over $160B in net worth; 56% more wealth than the 2 nd richest person, Bill Gates. But how does Amazon make such a profit? How did it make Bezos the richest person on Earth? The answer lies, in part, to what plagues so many successful companies throughout history: the exploitation of workers and the evasion of tax. Sleeping under bridges. Urinating in bottles. Timed toilet breaks. These are just some of the accusations made against Amazon and they tell a story of a company so determined to maximise eff...

Comedians say the things we all think but never say. They point out the absurdity of life in ways we would never think to. And they express what we thought were personal anomalies but are actually widely experienced. Good comedians even make us laugh. Louis CK was a perfect example of this. Famed for his brutal honesty, wit and insight his comedy struck a chord with millions of people to become one of the most popular comedians of his generation. His TV show Louie was unlike any I had seen before. Less plot-driven and more character focused than most shows it filled viewers with an insight into the mind of a lonely, middle-aged, newly-single father in New York City. Interlaced with pieces of stand-up the show felt less like a work of fiction and more an autobiographical documentary about CK’s life. And CK was doing well. With sell-out tours and two critically acclaimed TV shows under his belt, he was on top. And then came the accusations. In late 2017 the  New...

Prime Minister Theresa May eating a cone of chips Identity over policy. Where you come from over what you believe. Your image over your ideas. These are battles all parties must face – and the Tories are no different. They’ve claimed again and again they are the real party of the working-class but spoken from the voices of privately educated aristocrats this claim fell flat with most. But Scotland is different: they have Ruth Davidson. She’s the young, working-class woman leading the Scottish Tories. Something never seen in England. So, maybe when she says the Tories are the party of the working-class, people will believe her. That’s the hope anyway. In 2017 The Telegraph ran the headline: “Ruth Davidson: A gay, working class, bull riding, outspoken Scot...and the Tories' secret weapon”. She certainly is popular. But does this mean the Tories are the party of the working-class? Annie Wells thinks so. Like Davidson, Wells is from a working-class background, working in M...

The Tories are back in Scotland. Craig Meighan  explores why In 2016 the Scottish Conservatives bloomed like a flower, winning 32 seats in the Scottish Parliament, shoving Labour aside to become Scotland’s second largest party. To many, this was less a flower, but more of a weed or a thorn; an unprecedented locust spreading pervasively throughout a garden rarely seen so blue. In 2017 they continued to grow, returning 13 Scottish MPs in the UK general election in their best performance since 1983. The party previously had only one Scottish MP since 1997. But with the Scottish political tides turning the Tories in Scotland are in the best shape  they’ve been in for decades. In the 2016 Scottish Parliament election the Tories accepted that the SNP would be the next party of government, so they ran on being a strong opposition and being the party that would prevent the SNP’s goal of a 2 nd independence referendum – what the Tories described as unwanted and unnecessar...

If another person says something that offends me I do one of two things: ignore it or engage in a conversation. This, however, is not part and parcel of the laws surrounding free speech in Scotland. In Scotland, hate speech laws mean saying certain things could land someone a criminal record – if considered too offensive. But therein lies the issue: who deems what offensive? To me the idea that there are people who drink plain black coffee, without sugar and enjoy it is deeply offensive. Yet I do not wish for these people to be imprisoned, nor do I feel it necessary that the law takes my side in condemning these people. Recently a YouTuber was convicted  over an “offensive” video he posted on the sight which shows his dog watching a Hitler video and doing a Nazi-esque salute. Mark Meechan, who goes by his YouTube name “Count Dankula” says he wanted to turn the dog into "the least cute thing that I could think of" to annoy his girlfriend. The judge considered his act...

Shettleston Councillor, Thomas Kerr Thomas Kerr is not your stereotypical Tory: no private education, no nanny growing up, no connections to Eton and no silver spoon wedged firmly wedged between his teeth. In fact, he is the exact opposite. He grew up in a high rise in Cranhill and attended Eastbank Academy, a school in Shettleston. From a young age he’s had to deal with parents addicted to drugs. Kerr was disadvantaged from the start but didn’t let that stop him from achieving the impossible (or at least implausible): a seat in the East-End of Glasgow’s Shettleston ward. A ward that only a few years ago was reported to have a life expectancy lower than that of war-torn Iraq. Kerr explains he is a Tory, not despite growing up poor, but because he grew up poor. “To me the only party that offered somebody from a working-class background, like myself, opportunity was the Conservatives. “To me, the SNP and Labour’s ideology is to try to keep people in their b...