Uncategorized
-
I am a journalist, writer, translator and media academic based in Edinburgh and currently working as Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at Queen Margaret University. Having worked in England, Scotland, Berlin, Stockholm, Denmark and the US,my diverse journalistic and communications work broadly covers Europe and the environment, with a particular emphasis on Northern Europe and…
-
Universities and the media future
There’s few Christmas presents quite as unwanted as delayed invoices, but that is the reality for a lot of people trying to make a living from journalism, and it seems to worsen year on year. It has been fairly widely documented that freelancing as part of a flexible labour force has severe impacts on your…
-
Locked out of utopia: How Sweden’s Roma became a political scapegoat
The snow is beginning to drift against the chain-link fence that separates the railway line from the woods in the Stockholm suburb of Flemingsberg. The thermometer is below zero and people gaze out from the centrally heated apartment blocks that dominate the valley onto the road and railway below. From the back entrance to the…
-
Sweden’s plan to relocate an Arctic city, with or without its citizens
Kiruna, Swedish Lapland – “If you want a cheap kitchen fan or some radiators get in there”, chuckles Kjell Törmä, editor of the local newspaper in the Swedish city of Kiruna. Sat behind the wheel of his well-heated car, he points at the red brick apartment blocks on the edge of his hometown, high above the…
-
“I’m the only Yes in the Village.” Talking to swing voters in the Scottish Borders
The damp air darkens the sandstone of Dumfries as a shower sweeps in from Cumbria over the Solway Firth. In the backroom of the First Base drop-in centre next to the River Nith, Mark Frankland sips a mug of instant coffee, a red Yes campaign badge on his jacket. The founder of this combined food…
-
Union busting Socialists? The SNP and the aesthetics of resistance
The summer rain is threatening to to turn into sunshine above the Thames as Natalie McGarry, MP for Glasgow East, opens the window on the balcony of her wood-panelled office opposite the Houses of Parliament. “I think the SNP victory has shown people around the UK that there can be alternative messages, and that with…
Dominic Hinde 