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The National
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
‘The British media undermines anything Scottish and assimilates it'
One of the main reasons is the more recent work of Bobby Bluebell, one of the best-known and certainly best-connected songwriters and performers we have. Bluebell – real name Robert Hodgens – certainly knows what he's talking about when it comes to writing hits. For a start he co-wrote the solid gold classic Young At Heart, a staple of almost every 1980s collection on the market, which has proven as good for his reputation as for his bank balance. What is perhaps less widely known is the number of successful songs he has written, or helped to write, for artists including Texas, Shakespears Sister, Altered Images, Sinead O'Connor, B*witched, Brian Wilson and others. READ MORE: BBC Debate Night branded 'farce' as formal complaint made over 'bias' More recently, he has reimagined and recorded some of the best Scottish songs ever written with The Golden Tree, the band he formed with his mate, Hipsway singer Grahame Skinner. 'Me and Grahame were talking about how to make money from music these days,' Bluebell tells me during a break from recording The Bluebells' third and, he says, final album in Glasgow. 'One of the most successful records in the world was Rod Stewart's Great American Songbook series. I suggested we try and do a Scottish songbook because you won't believe how many great Scottish songs are out there. 'We decided to do it just ourselves, at the back end of Covid as I had a lot of time in my house. The first one I did was the Marmalade song, Reflections Of My Life, which I really love. I was singing and it was not bad, but I knew Grahame could sing it much better. He's a great singer and it was amazing. 'I spoke to the record company Last Night From Glasgow and asked if we could do the record. Originally, we wanted to call it Golden Hour after those old Golden Hour records [in the 1960s]. Then my daughter, who was in Japan at the time, said there was a golden tree there and I thought that was a good name. Later, I was playing golf at Pollok and there was a golden tree there. I took a picture of it and that became the cover of the album. 'We picked all these Scottish songs, and they just worked out really, really well.' Their two albums reworked some classic songs, some of which listeners might never have regarded as Scottish. It proved to be a real eye-opener. The songs on that first Golden Tree album range from the traditional Wild Mountain Thyme to pop classics such as I Should Have Known Better (Jim Diamond, 1985), Gallagher and Lyle's 1976 hit Breakaway and the Sutherland Brothers' Arms Of Mary (recorded with Quiver in 1975). It also includes early Simple Minds' Chelsea Girl and Talking Heads' beguiling hymn to boredom and ennui, Heaven. Most were stripped of their more expected instrumentations and presented in a more stripped-down form which allowed the strength of the songwriting itself to shine through. READ MORE: 'New low': SNP slam Labour over MP lobbying trip to Israel amid Gaza genocide The only one of the songs Bluebell had a hand in writing to appear on the first album was a very different performance of the Texas banger Black Eyed Boy. The second album extended the range to include the Bay City Rollers' Shang-A-Lang, Primal Scream's Movin' On Up and Coldplay's Yellow. Bluebell argues that many of the songs featured on the albums have always been under-appreciated, on two counts. First because some haven't even been recognised as being Scottish. Indeed, even a cursory glance at the track listings sent me scurrying to google to work out a Scottish connection. Coldplay? Yellow co-writer, bassist Guy Berryman, is Scottish. Second because many have been dismissed as insubstantial pop. 'I always thought that Young at Heart itself was underappreciated and put in the Agadoo section,' says Bluebell, referring to the cheesy Black Lace hit which spent 30 weeks in the British singles chart in 1984. 'Pop music stands for popular music, but a lot of artists dismiss popular appeal. They want to attract an elite crowd. 'I genuinely love pop music. The Beatles wanted to appeal to everyone. I've got a lot of respect for songs like Billy Don't Be a Hero [the Paper Lace 1974 hit], Black Lace, Marmalade, Pickettywitch [whose biggest hit was That Same Old Feeling in 1970] … songs that really become big hits. They're fucking hard to write. People who dismiss them are doing them a great injustice. People like Marc Bolan [of T. Rex] and John Lennon, people I really admired, wanted to have songs like these, that were hits.' Bluebell also believes the fact that some of the songs on the album are not known to be Scottish is no accident. 'The British media undermines anything Scottish – and Welsh and Irish – and assimilates it,' he says. 'I was trying to make the point that you don't know these songs are Scottish because you're not told they're Scottish. But you are told constantly that Andy Murray is British. Chris Hoy is British. England won the war in Argentina.' When Bluebell was growing up he began to notice that being involved with music gave you a particular status with your peers, and particularly with girls. You didn't even have to play music. He noticed it when he started a fanzine called The Ten Commandments with writer Kirsty McNeil and photographer Robert Scott. 'When I left school I'd got off with one girl in the whole time. I was the goofy guy in spectacles. I was the sort of guy who liked Deep Purple. But the minute I said I played in a band, or that I had a fanzine … all of a sudden you had a status.' He gravitated to making his own music when he started inventing bands to write about in the fanzine and felt he needed to show they actually existed. The Ten Commandments was steeped in the Scottish post-punk indie scene. Bluebell became part of a community that included Orange Juice and Postcard Records, Lloyd Cole, Simple Minds, Hipsway, Clare Grogan and Altered Images. He would go on to play in his own bands, including the Oxfam Warriors and later – and more successfully – with The Bluebells, formed in 1981 after he met brothers David and Ken McCluskey. They notched up three top 40 singles – all of which Bluebell wrote or had a hand in writing. 'Oxfam Warriors ended when Alan Horne [founder of Postcard Records] told me the band were dead neddy and I should sack them,' Bluebell recalls. 'But he said the songs were pretty good. 'The Bluebells garnered a lot of interest quite quickly. 'Glasgow was such a hotbed and we looked cool enough. We were coming along at the right time for the zeitgeist. We learned very quickly to say yes to everything. 'Once you say no you are out of the game.' Before the band, Bluebell's lack of success with girls and his annual trips to Italy, his mother's home country, hadn't done much for his self-confidence. That was to change. 'I wouldn't say I was ugly, but I'd go to Italy every year and go to the beach … with my glasses on. All the Italian guys would look amazing and I'd feel like a geek. 'I later learned that guys considered some girls too beautiful to be asked out. I asked one beautiful girl why she was going out with her boyfriend and she replied 'because he asked me'. That realisation made my head explode. I've had a lot of gorgeous girlfriends since then.' It was while he was living in London with one of those girlfriends – Siobhan Fahey of Bananarama – that they collaborated on writing Young At Heart. It was an infectious, feel-good celebration of a song but with a sadness at its heart when they both realised how much they were missing their parents. The song first appeared on Bananarama's debut album in 1983 and the Bluebells released their own, very different, version the following year. Young at Heart became the band's biggest hit when it was used in a Volkswagen TV advert in 1993, and it has since come to be regarded as one of the defining hits of the 1980s and 90s. The band originally split up in 1986 but has since regularly reformed for a number of performances. Bluebell has established a reputation as a songwriter and collaborator on hit songs for a wide range of other artists. The wider public might not know about his contribution to those hits, but he seems unworried. 'It's still exciting,' he says 'It should be about the artist. It's their thing. They contribute a lot to it; I'm just a bit of it. 'I can get involved in different ways. For example, I wrote a song about abuse for a film and I asked Sinead O'Connor to sing it, which she did and it was great. She loved the song and didn't want it in the film but wanted to put it on her album. I went to the film company and offered them the money back. 'Songwriting is a very personal thing and that song was very personal to me. But I was happy she took it on and she made it into a fantastic song. We're collaborators ... that's what we do. It's normal.' He's frank when he's asked how he feels about giving the power of how the song is performed to the artist. 'I just want to make money and have an outlet.' However, he's not keen when writing music for others becomes too much like hard work. 'I did a lot of films and TV and I gave up on it. The money was OK but every minute of the fucking day you'd get a guy wanting to make some changes to it. It was quite laborious and hard work. I got into this to avoid hard work so I made a call to stop.' He's now entered the company of artists who can make good money from their back catalogue and he's very aware that the industry focuses on a plethora of heritage acts can now make it harder for younger acts to make money in the early stage of their career. 'Record companies won't sign bands any more. No-one pays six wages. They'll just sign single artists. It's all about economies. Artists like Paul McCartney are still huge. 'Primal Scream … bigger than ever. Texas … bigger than ever. People who love Deacon Blue and Texas are teaching their children about them in the same way as happened with The Beatles and the Stones. The economics that made the Beatles and the Stones and Texas big aren't there anymore. Or at least, they are there for them but a young band coming up will find it hard to get a company to support them, to promote them. 'When is the last time you went to a concert and everyone in the place was 13? Alice Cooper for me. Now they are all 50 and 60. I'm not knocking it but 13 and 16-year-old kids don't go to gigs any more. They can't get in. 'Young people listen to these acts but don't know the context. I heard my daughter playing The Doors the other day and I told her I had visited his grave in Paris. She said 'What … he's dead?'' When Bluebell was young there was no internet to feed him a diet of music, old or otherwise, so he concentrated on the music he heard in Scotland. 'It wasn't until I went to London that I realised there were very few Scottish bands that make it. When I was at school I had a jotter and I'd write down every Scottish band that was in the charts. I wanted to feel part of something. 'My mum and dad taught us to be independent, not dependent. Independent is the opposite of dependent. I don't understand why anyone would want to be dependent. 'To be mocked for that is really irritating. 'Scotland is a strange country. We've been trained – like the Irish – that some people are superior to us. They're better than us because they're upper class. But we're better than some others. We've been taught our place. 'Our parents, who worked in heavy industry, were striving to get their children into the middle class. Your Thatchers and your Starmers exploit that aspiration to be middle class, but they hate any aspiration to go from the middle class into their class, the ruling class. That's where you become a fucking problem. You can be middle class, but don't you dare assume that you're going to be their equal. The minute you do that is when you are considered a communist, nationalist, socialist … disruptive. 'I am very pro-independence but I'm not particularly into any political party. People should be licensed to be politicians. It's amazing that we give power to these people who are not at all qualified in any way. Imagine if Celtic and Rangers just picked a random person to be manager. It's not going to work, is it? Why don't we just pick the person who is best qualified to run a country? And that's not going to be Trump, Keir Starmer or Putin is it?' On that last point at least it's fair to say we can expect the country to provide a chorus of approval …
The National
3 days ago
- Politics
- The National
Increased UK defence spending only makes war more likely
For any country, reviewing defence in the modern age is a valuable exercise. The UK's new strategic defence review fails to get to grips with those challenges, and perpetuates a view of security as being solely about the aggressive projection of military power. We do face direct threats that we need to acknowledge, not least from the brutal Putin regime. A military-only response risks seeing the whole world 'tooling up' for conflict, creating a tinderbox situation, and also misses the other action we can take which we know improves human security and makes conflict less likely. READ MORE: BBC Debate Night branded 'farce' as formal complaint made over 'bias' Strong international cooperation and a commitment to the international rule of law are critical to improving security, yet the UK continues to arm war criminal regimes instead of pursuing justice against them. Alliances must be fostered with countries we trust, and the threat of far-right regimes must be acknowledged. Yet the UK continues to treat the Trump regime as though it's a reliable ally, while it threatens democratic countries like Greenland and Canada. Food and water security, and so much else that international development invests in, also provide the basis for a more secure world. Yet the UK has followed the lead of the Trump White House by slashing development aid. The climate emergency is barely mentioned in the review, and where it does come up it's mostly about access to Arctic waters rather than the profound threat it poses to human and environmental security around the world. And of course the UK's continued attachment to nuclear weapons continues unabated. Reconsidering the vastly expensive replacement of Trident doesn't even merit a line. In truth, Trident poses a greater threat to the people of Scotland than it does to anyone else. Its record of accidents and poor maintenance goes back a long way, and its presence makes the west coast of Scotland a key target in any potential conflict. The hundreds of billions of pounds spent on these weapons could be far better spent on international development, climate action, or emerging issues like cybersecurity or biosecurity which can't be addressed by just hiking military spending. There's so much that's needed aside from military responses that can actually reduce the threats we face instead of funnelling even more funds towards nuclear weapons. Let's also remember that these are weapons which cannot discriminate between military and civilian targets, and whose use in any circumstances would surely be the biggest war crime in human history. Such a decision made now will lock us into a more dangerous world, for decades to come. And that decision would be at the expense of action that could be taken to promote peace, and make progress towards a world that's safer because it's fairer, greener, and more just. As for the claims about jobs, this truly is a red herring. Spend tens of billions on pretty much anything and you'll create jobs, and in truth there are far better ways to build an economy that works for people than making a '10 times more lethal' army. A defence review that really engages with the changing world we live in is something I'd really like to see. This simply isn't it.
The National
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Anger as TWO Labour politicians get key BBC slot on by-election eve
The BBC is hosting a 'Glasgow Special' episode of the show tonight, featuring the SNP's Glasgow Council leader Susan Aitken, Scottish Tory MSP Annie Wells, artist David Eustace as well as both Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney and Labour peer Willie Haughey. It comes as voters are set to go to the polls tomorrow (Thursday) for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election on June 5, which is widely considered to be a three-horse race between the SNP, Labour and Reform UK. READ MORE: 'New low': SNP slam Labour over MP lobbying trip to Israel amid Gaza genocide An SNP source told The National that Debate Night appears to have 'thrown the BBC's proposed guidance on balance out of the window' by including two Labour representatives. "Debate Night appears to have thrown the BBC's proposed guidance on balance out of the window - the night before a crucial by-election,' the source said. 'Does Sir Keir Starmer really need two apologists to back up his woeful record?" Announcing the guests on social media site X, the BBC described Haughey as an 'entrepreneur'. (Image: Canva) But the millionaire tycoon (above with Sweeney) was actually made a Labour member of the House of Lords in 2013. He donated over £1 million to the party between 2003 and 2010. More recently, he gave £3900 to Scottish Labour MP Michael Shanks ahead of the General Election last year. Scottish Greens councillor Jon Molyneux also called out the BBC. 'Labour MSP and Peer for a "Glasgow Special" but no Glasgow Greens representative despite having 4 times as many elected representatives in the city than the Tories,' he wrote on Twitter/X. 'Farce.' The SNP also took issue with last week's BBC Debate Night by-election special for not including the actual candidates. It comes as Labour's candidate Davy Russell has repeatedly dodged not only the STV debate earlier this week but also local hustings and radio interviews during the campaign. The BBC have been approached for comment.
The National
29-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Israel to expand illegal settlements in Palestinian West Bank
Israel has already built well over 100 settlements across the territory that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with blocks of flats, shopping centres, factories, and public parks. Settlements have been widely condemned by the international community as illegal, with the UK Government announcing sanctions last week on three people and four organisations in the settler movement. READ MORE: Row erupts on BBC Debate Night over 'racist' Reform UK ad Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said the settlement decision 'strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria', using the biblical term for the West Bank, 'anchors our historical right in the Land of Israel, and constitutes a crushing response to Palestinian terrorism'. He added it was also 'a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel'. The West Bank is home to three million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres. The settlers have Israeli citizenship. Israel has accelerated settlement construction in recent years – long before Hamas's October 7 2023 attack escalated its assault on Gaza – confining Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas of the West Bank and making the prospect of establishing a viable, independent state even more remote. The top United Nations court ruled last year that Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and called on it to end, and for settlement construction to stop immediately. Israel denounced the non-binding opinion by a 15-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, saying the territories are part of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but leading figures in the current government have called for them to be re-established and for much of the Palestinian population of the territory to be resettled elsewhere through what they describe as voluntary emigration. READ MORE: Kneecap correct BBC headline after TRNSMT show cancelled Palestinians view such plans as a blueprint for their forcible expulsion from their homeland, and experts say the plans would violate international law. Israel now controls more than 70% of Gaza, according to Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies at Ben Gurion University, who has examined Israeli-Palestinian land use patterns for decades. The area includes buffer zones along the border with Israel as well as the southern city of Rafah, which is now mostly uninhabited, and other large areas that Israel has ordered to be evacuated. Meanwhile, local hospitals have said that Israeli strikes killed at least 13 Palestinians overnight in Gaza. Four were killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City late on Wednesday and another eight, including two women and three children, were killed in a strike on a home in Jabaliya. A strike on a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza killed one person and wounded 18. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants are embedded in populated areas. More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, most of whom were women and children.
The National
29-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
John Swinney: Nigel Farage 'has peddled Russian propaganda for years'
The SNP leader hit out at the Reform UK MP in an open letter published by the Daily Record on Thursday. In it, Swinney said that the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Holyrood by-election, set to take place on June 5, had become a 'straight contest' between his SNP and Farage's Reform. The First Minister urged Labour voters who aimed to keep out Reform to support his party – just as Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on Wednesday urged people who oppose the SNP to unite around his party's candidate. READ MORE: BBC Debate Night row erupts over 'racist' Reform UK ad Swinney wrote: 'At the start of this election most people saw this as a two-horse race between the SNP and Labour. But that's not how things have played out. Labour have collapsed. 'Their candidate is in hiding, refusing to be interviewed on the radio, and or take part in the planned TV debate. 'It's clear to me from being out and about that Labour can't win and are struggling to even come second. In their place, the challenge is coming from Nigel Farage's Reform UK. 'I've been warning for months about the danger that Farage poses to Scotland. He was the driving force behind Brexit, which has made us all poorer and is responsible for your food prices going up. 'Because of him and his Brexit campaign, the economy is weaker and the NHS has less funding. And, if he had his way, he would go further. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been accused of spreading Russian propaganda'He is on record saying people should have to pay for the NHS and his party has all but said they would roll back the powers of the Scottish Parliament. This is not a man who cares about Scotland. 'He spent years peddling Russian propaganda on Ukraine, and in this by-election he is now promoting racist disinformation about my political rival, Labour's Anas Sarwar.' Reform UK have spent more than £10,000 promoting a 'racist' advert which falsely claims that Sarwar has 'said he will prioritise the Pakistani community', continuing to pour money into it despite accusations of 'race-baiting'. Farage has faced intense criticism for his position on Russia, including when in 2024 he said that the country's invasion of Ukraine had been 'provoked' by the West. In 2014, Farage named despot Vladimir Putin as the world leader he most admired. READ MORE: Sangita Myska issues statement on LBC and James O'Brien amid Israel row There were also questions about ties between Arron Banks, the millionaire political donor who bankrolled Farage's Brexit campaign, and Russia. The Guardian reported in 2018 that Banks had overseen meetings between and Russian officials between 2015 and 2017, including two in the week of official campaign launch and a meeting between Banks and the Russian ambassador the day after the launch. In 2019, MEPs in Farage's Brexit Party voted against a motion expressing 'deep concern over the highly dangerous nature of Russian propaganda' and calling for the EU to better tackle it. Reform UK have been approached for comment. Responding to Swinney's assertion that the Hamilton by-election is a two-horse race between the SNP and Reform UK, Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: 'This by-election is a direct fight between Scottish Labour and the SNP, and it is desperate and dishonest spin for John Swinney to pretend otherwise. 'John Swinney wants to make this by-election about Reform because he has no ideas for the future and cannot defend his government's record.'
