Thoughtland

PK column in The National: Did the people of the Indus civilisation have all the answers?

By Pat Kane. First published on MARCH 25TH, 2017

HYENAS currently prowl the TV studios, yelping and snarling about the clash of civilisations. So let me tell you a story I heard this week, about a real and historical utopia.

It covered 800,000 square kilometres of the landmass we now call Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, and existed between 2600 to 1900 BC. The Indus civilisation, in the words of New Scientist, “seems to have flourished for seven centuries without armour, weapons, inequality or royalty”.

PK column in The National: Legacy of 2014 is our greatest resource this time round

By Pat Kane. First published on MARCH 18TH, 2017

AND yet we realised:
Hatred, even of meanness Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice Makes the voice hoarse.
O, We who wanted to prepare
The ground for friendship Could not ourselves be friendly.

– Bertolt Brecht, To Those Born Later”

THESE lines have been running through my head, since the First Minister gravely announced her timetable for a second independence referendum. How can this binary, fundamental, what-kind-of-society-are-we choice become a “friendly” process, this time round?

PK column in The National: Wikileaks is providing post-indy food for thought

By Pat Kane. First published on MARCH 11TH, 2017

IT’S like a reject script fished from the bins of the Sherlock writing room. Inside an elegant building in Knightsbridge, London, under the protection of a Latin American embassy, lurks one of the most destabilising men in the world. His hair and beard are white; his pallor keeps pace. His revelations topple governments and explode conspiracies. And as he opens his boxes of digital secrets, he is visited in his diplomatic lair by an entirely random set of A to C-list celebs.

PK column in The National: Do the limits of party politics mean it’s time for an Alternative UK?

By Pat Kane. First published on MARCH 4TH, 2017

IT’S not often you get the chance to be involved in the launch of a new political force. But I took it this week, as one of the co-initiators of The Alternative UK (www.thealternative.org.uk), inspired by and connected to Denmark’s Alternativet party, which describes itself as being for “sustainability and entrepreneurship”.

Our soft launch in London was full of the diversity, energy and global embrace which that world city can provide, and which always makes this Scot welcome. (It also shows what a bum steer Mayor Khan was given by his Scottish comrades recently).