RITA DI SANTO draws attention to a new film that features Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, and their personal experience of media misrepresentation
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Marxist Notes on Music: January 2, 2023
Tone-deaf budget embarrasses and insults in equal measure
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: Scottish contemporary dance artist Charlotte Mclean presents her solo work And at Dance Base, Edinburgh, as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August
JULIA TOPPIN recommends Patti Smith’s eloquent memoir that wrestles with the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime
MARJORIE MAYO welcomes an account of family life after Oscar Wilde, a cathartic exercise, written by his grandson
KEN COCKBURN guides us through a survey of Chekov’s early short fiction, and the groundwork it laid for his later masterpieces
ANDY HEDGECOCK revels in a hugely enjoyable but deadly serious examination of the 1930s, that is an indictment of our own era
The bard distills our hellish times into fiery words
DECEMBER 15 2022 saw the Scottish government announce its budget for 2023-24 and though not as damning as what is on offer from the Tories in Westminster, as Roz Foyer of the STUC said “we needed strides, not steps.”
Despite the wonderful PR and public image — bold is not one of their strengths in this circumstance, and realistically the STUC proposed alternatives weren’t really radical either — it just demanded enough of a spine to carry them out.
However, as the Marxist Notes on Music columnist, I’ll focus primarily on yet another attack on culture. The main cultural body funded directly by the Scottish government, Creative Scotland, had their fund cut by £7 million, 10 per cent down on their 2022 funding. Depending on how you measure inflation, this means Creative Scotland would have been £4-10m short even if its budget remained unaltered.
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