Thoughtland

PK column in The National: Meat eaters can hardly take the moral high ground when it comes to hunting

By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 27TH, 2018

O MIGHTY American huntress, in your pseudo-Gulf-War combats, bearing your sniper-level high-tech rifle, picking unsuspecting goats off the cliffs of Islay, taking selfies with your bro-friend, grinning over your grotesquely glass-eyed spoils.

The modern Artemis, you ain’t. But what are you, exactly?

The immediate answer is that Larysa Switlyk, whose Twitter celebrations of her killing spree on the lovely island have triggered pearl-clutching on an epidemic scale, was legitimately hiring a sporting service provided by a local Islay landowner.

PK column in The National: Is free speech cybercat out of the bag – or will we limit the sh*tstorm?

By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 20TH, 2018

YOU think you’re looking into the heart of darkness – and then, over there, something even worse distracts you.

If you’ve come upon the barbaric details of the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, then no need to repeat them here. Your soul deserves some respite.

But suffice to say, and combined with his valiant final column for the Washington Post, Khashoggi’s death might well have you running up the “free speech” flag above any other this week.

PK column in The National: It's time to ask some serious questions ... about the BBC's Question Time

By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 13TH, 2018

THE tweets went round, a little less desultory than usual: “I suppose this seems like a BBC Question Time (#bbcqt) I might watch this week.” And indeed, Thursday’s show – its cast-list scattered all over the HolyroodParliament chamber – looked as if it might rub cliches together vigorously enough to catch some flame.

A strangulated editor of the Spectator, a Duracell-powered young Scots Tory, the near-papal Michael Russell, a Celebrity Who’s Clearly Getting Out Of Here, and Val McDermid (representing literature and humans). Plus a “diverse” audience which we now know is carefully assembled by an “audience producer” (with equally carefully placed “star turns”, in case the pabulum threatens to choke us all). Haud me back.

PK column in The National: Even Scotland must up its game to help avoid climate crisis

By Pat Kane. First published on OCTOBER 6TH, 2018

THE advance tremors are already rattling the tea-cups. The seismic event, this coming Monday, is the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Which, if it was an Arctic survey boat (to change metaphors), would be at the bottom of the sea, so leaky has it become.

According to the latest PDF to slip out from the biggest scientific peer-review exercise ever conducted, the message is stark. We must aim to keep global warming below 1.5% (that’s the percentage above pre-industrial eras) by 2050. We’re already at 1% above.