Latest news with #Scottishness
Glasgow Times
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Glasgow woman could voice Lidl's new self-checkouts
Alan Cumming has teamed up with Lidl to help find their favourite Scottish voice in honour of the retailer's Scottish self-checkout roll-out. In May, Lidl put out a call to the nation to audition to be the voice of these new self-checkouts through a combination of a touring in-store phone booth and a dedicated WhatsApp audition line. (Image: Supplied) Read more: Soap stars to host live event celebrating show's 30th anniversary A total of 10 standout finalists from across Scotland have made the shortlist, and one Glasgow resident is in the running. Marco Ivone, regional director of Lidl GB in Scotland, said: "Over 5000 people from every corner of Scotland have stepped up to the mic, which just shows how much pride people take in their local dialects - and how game we are to have a bit of fun with it too. "We can't wait to give the winner their moment on our self-checkouts, adding further Scottish flavour to the Lidl shopping experience." Alan Cumming, known for his roles in popular films and TV programmes such as X-Men and The Good Wife, was given the job of revealing the Scottish finalists, including Glasgow resident Lauren, who were selected from thousands of auditionees. He said: "It's high time our self-checkouts had a bit more character and Scottish flair - and let's be honest, who doesn't want to be told that they've got an unexpected item in the bagging area by someone who sounds like their favourite cousin from Fife or sassy auntie from Glasgow? "I had an utterly delightful time listening to the 10 auditionees give it laldy; some were bold, some were bizarre, others would have me scanning in an instant! "It's a proper rollercoaster of accents, intonations, and glorious Scottishness." Glasgow and Lanarkshire groups win share of STV's £1m fund (Image: Supplied) Now, the Scottish public are invited to crown their favourite at with voting open until 5pm on Tuesday, July 29. Alan added: "Now the power is in your hands. "This isn't just about picking a winner - it's a celebration of who we are, how we speak, and our ability to have a bit of a laugh while we do it. "So don't dilly-dally and get voting."
Scotsman
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture, Edinburgh review: 'a unique artistic voice'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture, City Art Centre, Edinburgh ★★★★★ IN 1965, the year he left Edinburgh for the Royal College of Art, John Bellany painted on the ceiling of his bedroom these lines from Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle: 'To be yersel's - and to mak' that worth bein', nae harder job to mortals has been gi'en'. So much is encapsulated here: Bellany's Scottishness, his love of a drink, but most of all his passionate commitment to bringing his unique artistic voice into the world. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Installation view of John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, showing The Kiss | Ian Georgeson Photography Artists use the self-portrait in different ways. For some it is an occasional, technical exercise, for others a building block in a larger project. For a few, it is an obsession, a determination to explore, unflinchingly, their own internal struggles and by that lens to examine the human condition. John Bellany was one of these. A Life in Self-Portraiture is the first big survey of Bellany's work in Scotland since his death in 2013. So important is the self-portrait within his oeuvre that it does not feel like a narrowing down, more an opening up of a rich seam which runs through everything he did. Put together with the assistance of his wife Helen and lifelong friend Sandy Moffat, it feels personal, if not intimate. It includes examples of his sketchbooks, fragments of a handwritten memoir and a good number of paintings rarely exhibited before. These are large works, presented with a minimum of interpretation. Walking among them is a discombobulating experience, a reminder of Bellany's dazzling skill and ambition, but also that the raw material with which he chose to work so fearlessly was the product of a psyche unlike any other. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Once established at Edinburgh College of Art in 1960, having grown up in the East Lothian fishing village of Port Seton, he transformed swiftly from a quiet, studious teenager into the life and soul of every party. He, Moffat and the poet Alan Bold became a triumvirate who imbibed thirstily all they could about art, ideas, politics, culture. Detail from Self Portrait, 1965, by John Bellany | City Art Centre In 1965, just before he left ECA, Bellany painted a monumental self portrait. He is a towering, solemn figure in a fishermen's jersey and sheepskin jacket, paintbrushes in hand, the boats of Port Seton behind him. The dark background adds gives it an Old Master gravitas. The uncompromising stance and broad shoulders recall Hans Holbein's portrait of Henry VIII. In the years that followed, he would paint many more self portraits, but none in which he occupied the space as authoritatively as he did at the age of 23. His early work was in a realist, if always painterly, style. He depicted himself as an uncertain young father, holding the hand of his equally uncertain first son, and a face at the window of a fish-gutter's cabin. In his 1966 portrait of his sister Margaret, his face skulks in a mirror at her side. Installation view of John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, showing Homage to John Knox (1969) | Ian Georgeson Photography In 1969, he painted his first major triptych, Homage to John Knox. By this time, the triumvirate had travelled in Europe, seen the work of Beckmann, Ensor and Munch, and stood in the ruins of Buchenwald. Now, Bellany was reckoning not only with the guilt-heavy Calvinism of his childhood but the problem of evil in the world at large. Art historian Bill Hare has described him as a religious painter, and with reason. He never stopped wrestling with its hold on his psyche. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad And he had evolved a language in which to do it, a personal lexicon of symbolism and allegory drawn from classical myth, seafaring superstition and the folds of his own imagination. He appears in the final of the three panels, floundering among arcing waves. In a Bellany painting, the sea is never far away. Strange creatures and figures began to populate his work as portents and tormentors. In the self-portrait painted on his 30th birthday in 1972, he wears a white spotted cap and a voluminous black cape which opens to reveal a fish, a monkey, and the ribcage of a skeleton. Death always haunted him: he painted an eerie Skull Self Portrait when he was just 27. The 1970s were Bellany's 'wild years' in which he drank heavily and painted prolifically, often working all night. He divorced Helen and married his second wife Juliet. His work became raw and expressive. Demonic faces and skeletons seem to press in from the margins. In Sad Self Portrait (1976) only his face is clearly described, part obscured by a bird hood, while the lower half of the painting fragments into abstract brush strokes. Installation view of John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh | Ian Georgeson Photography In 1985, as his health began to pay the price for the wild years - ironically at the time when he was achieving long-deserved recognition - he painted Charon's Boat, still managing a pun on the vessel's name with the biblical Rose of Sharon; such is the existential force of his painting, its black humour is easy to miss. In the boat, he stands shoulder to shoulder with his demons, stoically playing his accordion like the orchestra on the Titanic. The lifebuoy, with its legend 'Hope', is ignored. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A medical diagnosis that his only hope of survival was a liver transplant seemed, paradoxically, to bring a kind of calm. He remarried Helen; a watercolour self portrait in Êtretat, where they had a brief honeymoon, shows him grounded again in realism (Bellany's watercolours are one of the revelations of this show). In The Old Man and the Sea - Homecoming (1987) he rows his little boat resolutely through shark-infested waters. Installation view of John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, showing The Old Man and the Sea - Homecoming (second left) | Ian Georgeson Photography When the liver transplant came, in Addenbrookes Hospital in 1988, it was a new John Bellany who emerged from the fug of the anaesthetic asking for pencils and paper. He sketched his way back to life: a man to whom fate had granted a second chance, who had no time to lose. He painted as prolifically and energetically as ever for a further 20 years. This exhibition, however, crescendos up to a wild apex in the 1980s and then loses momentum. There are a few examples of outstanding post-transplant pictures, such as Prometheus III, in which he paints himself as the figure from classical mythology who, as a punishment for stealing fire from the gods, is tied to a rock by Zeus so an eagle can peck out his liver, and his birthday self-portrait from 1993 which is as rich and strange as anything here. But the show then hurries on to a final group of works from his closing years, where the emphasis is on hospital stays and declining health. Vividly, he paints himself painting the portrait of a nurse in Addenbrookes in 2008, but there is little in this show of the reborn Bellany, the one who buys a home in Barga, Italy, becomes a happy grandfather and paints, paints, paints. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad His last birthday self-portrait is his 70th in 2012. By then, his health was poor again and macular degeneration was working on his sight - though not on his ability to see himself. He looks diminished but unafraid, wearing a dinner jacket and holding his paintbrushes. Some of the animal symbols are there, but they look more like benign familiars than tormentors. He does not loom, like he did in 1965, but he looks, once again, like a man who knows who he is. Two floors of Bellany is a lot to take in. The strange symbols and bright colours come at one with such force that one has to will oneself to take note of how well and vividly he uses contrasts, how assured and ambitious his compositions are, how he drunk from the well of modern European expressionism while remaining entirely Scottish. My only complaint is what isn't there: particularly the works from the 1990s and 2000s which would allow us to form our own opinions about whether or not the 'wild years' paintings are truly his best work. But they would have needed another floor of the City Art Centre for that. This is a strong exhibition about which the chief criticism is that it's one floor too small.
The National
09-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
Scotland's future is something that is worth talking about
It's our second such gathering, following our Spring Convention in Edinburgh in March, and we're making good on our promise to move around the country. This time, we're visiting the fair city of Perth, and we look forward to welcoming 90 or so participants to the Salutation Hotel for a day of fascinating presentations and discussions. The main purpose of the convention is to address issues affecting Scotland's future. We're not directly discussing independence and how we get there, but as we deal with questions about various key subjects, we tend to find that in every case at least part of the answer is independence. READ MORE: SNP must turn support for independence into 'real political action', says Swinney The opening session of Saturday's event will be about identity and cultural issues: 'Wha's like us? A look at Scottishness, Scotland and independence.' Why? Well, culture, language and history are pivotal facets of nationhood. When a nation is absorbed into another, or into an empire, there is a very real danger that these crucial facets are diluted or lost. Thus a vital part of regaining independent nationhood is a rediscovery of our culture, language and history – yet, at least until recently, this has not figured greatly in Scotland's campaign for independence. The session will be led by Stuart McHardy – the writer and historian who has demonstrated how our history has been distorted and suppressed over the years – and Roger Emmerson, a distinguished architect whose latest book, Scotland In 100 Buildings, was published last month. Stuart and Roger will outline how culture leads politics, not the other way round, and lead participants in an examination of Scottish distinctiveness and why it matters. With Stuart's penchant for storytelling, we expect a lively conversation which will inform and, we expect, inspire everyone in the room. Our discussions from the Spring Convention are still ongoing, of course, so the remainder of the morning will be devoted to catching up on the topics we covered in Edinburgh. It's been great to witness the progress our colleagues at Energy Scotland have been making since their splendid contribution to the Spring Convention. They've featured in the pages of The National several times; developed a strong website, published papers on various key energy topics; made a splash at last month's Scottish Sovereignty Research Group conference, and featured on a special Lesley Riddoch podcast. John Proctor, the chair, will update us further on their activities and put a number of policy propositions to the convention. The need for land reform, as a means of unlocking the potential of our nation and its population, continues to be a major issue in Scottish politics. It's been frustrating to see all manner of good intentions over the past 18 years failing to shift the dial. At present, our hopes are vested in the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which is at stage two of its consideration by the Scottish Parliament. John Hutchison will report on its progress and the work of Community Land Scotland, which held its annual conference at the end of last month. The third strand of the Spring Convention we'll revisit is democracy and governance. Here, while our aspirations are for the restoration of Scotland's independence, we don't want that to result in a replica of the limited democracy that the UK provides. Geoff Bush will review the multitude of views expressed by participants in Edinburgh, and the discussion will continue from there. READ MORE: SNP candidate calls out Tory rival for being in 'lockstep with failed ideology' At lunchtime, we're delighted to be able to present a feature common to many gatherings – a fringe event! For those who are interested (quite a few, we suspect) David Younger of Scotland Decides will give a presentation about his organisation's independent blockchain voting platform, technology-enabled Direct Democracy which offers a way forward backed by international law and free of UK interference. He'll also outline how this fits with this own vision of how a National Convention might be organised – and what it could achieve. In the afternoon we'll be concentrating exclusively on the massive issue of poverty and the wellbeing economy. We've got a host of speakers and panellists lined up, including William Thomson of Scotonomics; Craig Dalzell of Common Weal; lawyer and activist Eva Comrie; Jim Osborne of the Scottish Currency Group, and Annie Miller of Basic Income Network Scotland. Not yet signed up for the Summer Convention? There are still one or two places available, and we'd be delighted if you could join us. It's free to attend, but booking is essential, and you can do so via We'll also be happy to answer any questions you may have – just email us at convention@ Looking forward to seeing you in Perth!
The Herald Scotland
01-06-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Nigel Farage and his controversial history in Scotland
This ignorance is perhaps unsurprising given the former UKIP leader was once caught out on Irish television with a clip of him declaring "up the RA", apparently oblivious to what it meant. Farage made his sectarianism declaration in the wake of a controversial advert by his party, Reform UK, which took a speech made by Mr Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, out of context and declared he'd "said he will prioritise the Pakistani community". Read More: The video comes from a 2022 speech at an event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of Pakistan, at which the Labour leader said "Pakistanis need represented in every mainstream political party in Scotland and across the UK". He made no mention of 'prioritising' the Pakistani community. Both Sarwar and the First Minister John Swinney have described the advert as being blatantly racist, with the former describing it as a "dog whistle" questioning his Scottishness. The Reform leader will visit Scotland next week ahead of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election - one his party stands a good chance of winning. Farage, however, has something of a chequered history with Scotland. The most famous incident involving the 61-year-old north of the border came when he was UKIP leader in 2013. Farage attempted to host a press conference at the Canons' Gait pub on Edinburgh's Royal Mile but was set upon by protestors and eventually had to flee the scene in the back of a police car. Milkshaking hadn't been invented yet and it paled into comparison to an incident three years prior when a plane - Polish, as Farage notes in his autobiography - crashed while attempting to tow a UKIP banner and planted him head first into the ground. Still, the pub pillorying appears to have severely triggered the erstwhile reality TV star. In the immediate aftermath he described the protestors as "fascist scum" and said the incident was "deeply racist" with the crowd "filled with a total and utter hatred of the English". He insisted Alex Salmond should have condemned the incident, with an SNP spokesman saying: "Nothing he says can be treated with a shred of credibility." Farage was still banging on about it a year later ahead of a rally in Glasgow, calling the SNP "the voice of anti-Englishness". Nigel Farage (Image: Newsquest) To recap then, Reform's Sarwar advert was fine but its leader being heckled in a pub is "deeply racist". Farage has also said he would be "concerned" if Romanians moved in next door to him, is "awkward" hearing foreign languages spoken on the train, that Muslims "do not subscribe to British values" and that a UKIP candidate who used the word "ch**ky" was a "rough diamond". One might suggest that comments like those are more of a factor in the protests which greet him both north and south of the border than some kind of virulent anti-English racism. Farage returned to Scotland on the eve of the independence vote - despite the No campaign urging him not to - telling voters they could not hope to achieve a "self-confident, self-governing Scotland" while part of the European Union. Whether this late intervention had any bearing on the no vote is dubious, but the UKIP leader was soon back campaigning for his pet political project. In April 2016 he joined the party's Scottish leader, David Coburn, at a Grassroots Out meeting in Glasgow and was greeted with protestors blasting 'YMCA' by The Village People. The song has since been adopted by Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, and Farage was spotted singing it at a £25k per head champagne party in London in January. Of the musical protest he said: "It's a deliberate attempt by the so-called nationalists to close down genuine, open proper political debate in this country". Journalists attending the event were told they wouldn't be allowed re-entry if they deigned to speak to the protestors. The event saw the launch of UKIP's manifesto for the 2016 Holyrood election, which included a pledge to allow smoking in pubs again and raise the drink driving limit. The party stood in every regional seat and managed 2% of the vote though, of course, Farage got his wish in the Brexit referendum the following month as, on June 23, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. His appeal remained more selective in Scotland, though, which voted by 62% to remain. Having voted to leave the European Union, the country and its political parties couldn't quite work out exactly that that meant. David Cameron resigned the morning after the vote and, like a dog actually catching the car it's chasing, the Brexiteer wing of the Conservative Party appeared to have very little plan for what they'd do next. With deadlock in parliament, Farage - who had left UKIP in December 2018 - launched the Brexit Party on January 20, 2019. In May of that year he was back in Scotland, telling a rally in Edinburgh: "You cannot be independent if you're governed from the European Court of Justice. You cannot be independent if you're in the EU's customs union and single market. You cannot be independent if you're governed by Monsieur Barnier and Mr Juncker. "Unless we get Brexit, you cannot really have an intelligent debate about Scotland's future. "Actually, what you ought to do folks, is at this election lend your votes to the Brexit Party. Let's get out of the European Union and then have an honest debate about the future of Scotland." That appeared to represent a slight softening of his position on the constitution, though he noted that another vote "shouldn't happen for a very long time". The speech came during campaigning for the 2019 European Parliament election in which the Brexit Party would take 30% of the vote nationwide but only just under half that in Scotland. That campaign also gave birth to the phenomenon of 'milkshaking' right wing politicians and activists. Nigel Farage covered in milkshake Tommy Robinson was doused in dairy twice in two days while running as an independent candidate, while Farage was hit with a £5.25 Five Guys banana and salted caramel number while on the trail in Newcastle. At his campaign stop in Edinburgh a few days later a nearby McDonald's had a sign in the window advising: "We will not be selling milkshakes or ice creams tonight. This is due to a police request given recent events.' Rival chain Burger King wrote on Twitter: "Dear people of Scotland. We're selling milkshakes all weekend. Have fun. Love BK #justsaying" before clarifying "we'd never endorse violence - or wasting our delicious milkshakes!". The switch from the noble British tradition of egging politicians was probably due to it being a lot easier to explain why you're walking around with a milkshake than a dozen eggs, with the yolky protest dating back to at least 1830s given it was described in George Eliot's Middlemarch. Figures from across the political spectrum including Nick Griffin, George Galloway, Ed Miliband, and Farage himself have been given an egging, though only John Prescott responded with a right hook. It's fair to say, then, that up until now Farage hasn't really understood Scotland and Scotland hasn't understood Farage. That could all change in a few days. The Reform leader is sure to come to North Lanarkshire with a big security team in tow - there are, after all, several ice cream shops in Hamilton.
The Herald Scotland
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
SNP has betrayed voters - no wonder Reform is on the march in Scotland
As the referendum campaign entered its final weeks I travelled extensively throughout Scotland and began to sense a dynamic in our towns and villages that seemed to have been overlooked by Yes strategists. As the opinion polls crept up from a starting point of around 27% in favour of Yes and moved into the high 30s and mid-40s, the inconvenience was easily buried. Read more The truth that dare not speak its name in ardent Yes society was this: that a large percentage of Scots were quite happy to belong to the Union and harboured deep feelings of affection about England and the English. What's more: they considered themselves to be as fiercely proud of their Scottishness as the most fervent nationalist. This simply didn't compute at Yes HQ. What if people just liked the Union for its own sake and for what it seemed to represent to them: peace, stability, permanence, yet still permitting badinage and nationalistic tomfoolery around the big sporting occasions? It was unlikely, given the intensity of the emotional excursions and alarums around September, 2014, that these people would be out and proud about this. Alex Salmond seemed to recognise this too (though somewhat late in the day) when he delivered a speech in Cromarty about the social, cultural and political unions that would always bind Scotland and England in a fraternal embrace. Certainly, support for Scottish independence has more or less held up since 2014. It could hardly have failed to: not when you consider the Boris Johnson years and extreme Brexit and Jacob Rees Mogg and the obscene get-rich-quick Covid schemes that operated for friends and families of Tory grandees. And then, even when it seemed that the SNP would inevitably lose Holyrood to Labour in 2026, along came a windfall named Sir Keir Starmer, a man so shallow and insincere that he makes John Swinney look principled. Two questions remain for those who still think independence is a possibility in the next ten years or so: how many of those quiet Scottish No voters have become even more attached to the Union. And to what extent have their numbers been augmented by Scottish nationalists sickened by the way their party has been hollowed out by an ugly and vicious cartel of special interest groups hell-bent on cancelling women arguing for their sex-based rights? SNP leader and First Minister John Swinney (Image: free) Even a cursory glance at social media reveals that many could scarce forbear to shout 'three cheers for the Union' when first the UK Tories activated the Section 35 provision to thwart self-ID and then again when the UK Supreme Court ruled in favour of biological reality for the purposes of the 2010 Equality Act. We may get an answer to these questions if Reform UK, lacking even a Scottish figurehead, occupies either of the top two places at next week's Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by election. The disgusting race-baiting that's featured in Reform's attacks on Anas Sarwar should alert those tempted to vote for this deeply unpleasant party. It's reasonable to ask why decent people might consider voting for them. An even more pressing question arises, though. What does it say about Scotland's counterfeit Left that large sections of the working-class seem intent on doing just that? John Swinney already seems to have read the runes. In one of several rambling, incoherent interviews, the First Minister – under probing by BBC Scotland's excellent Martin Geissler – tried to explain what a 'compelling and demonstrable demonstration of support for independence' looks like. Mr Swinney said it would be something like the numbers in the run-up to the 1997 election in Scotland, when there was 'demonstrable, clear consensus of opinion that Scotland should have its own parliament within the United Kingdom'. In other words, 74%. I've long suspected that the SNP in the Sturgeon/Yousaf/Swinney era has been duping its support base. This confirmed it. A few days later, Michael Gove could scarcely wipe the smirk from his face when he said that he agreed with Mr Swinney that another referendum might happen if there was 'an overwhelming desire on the part of the Scottish people for one'. Effectively, he was saying: 'my job here is done'. And neither he, nor his Unionist chums even had to lift a finger to make it happen. All of the heavy lifting has been done by the SNP who surrendered independence to their malevolent little identity parade. Such has been the chaos engulfing Scottish and UK politics in the last 12 months that it's been claimed that Nigel Farage may yet be the man to keep the dream of independence alive. Another suspect narrative attaches to this: that if he were to lead Reform UK into Downing Street then surely all reasonable, liberal and thoughtful Scots would have no other option than to vote for independence to disassociate us from this riot of a party. Read more This though would be to ignore the ugly, class-baiting tendencies of the SNP in recent years in which they routinely attack working class communities for not speaking properly, for drinking too much; for eating unhealthy food, for being unfit parents; for exhibiting irresponsible attitudes to refuse collection; for their callousness in the face of Scotland's drugs death crisis. 'Find something else to moan about,' Mr Swinney spat at a Labour MSP who had attempted to question him about child homelessness, a response for which he was later forced to apologise. Elements of the deeply unpleasant nature of Reform's attacks on Anas Sarwar are present in the tide of malevolence that the SNP and Greens have directed towards decent Scottish women who have refused to be cancelled. It may be that having seen the sewer that runs beneath the SNP, the darkness at the heart of Reform doesn't scare voters so much now. The SNP have brought us to this bad, bad place in Scottish politics, no-one else. Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist. He is Scottish Feature Writer of the Year. He's fiercely proud of never having been approached by any political party or lobbying firm to do their bidding.
