GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Why I'm Voting Labour: Ruth Aylett, poet, professor, activist
A Labour government led by Corbyn represents hope for the future
Ruth Aylett
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
I LIVE in Edinburgh, the city of festivals, and am both a poet and a teacher of computing.
As a poet, I see young colleagues with great artistic talent ground down by the impossibility of living on their poetry, combined with precarious employment in dead-end warehouse or call-centre jobs that suck out their creativity.
And how many people really understand that the Edinburgh Fringe runs on an army of super-exploited young people on zero-hours contracts or, worse still, are hired as interns on expenses only? Or that the only substantial housing going up in this city is student flats, while the tenements students move out of are becoming AirBnB rentals?
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