Thoughtland

PK column in The National: This is how shows like Jeremy Vine's feed social media

By Pat Kane. First published on JUNE 29TH, 2019

BELIEVE me, I know all about morning television. The soft furnishings, the militantly pleasing colours, your face literally aching from its permanent smile. The researchers chopping away at your massively subtle perspective (book/politics/album), until it fits their news grid for the morning.

The twitchy alertness of the news presenters, caffeinated out of their gourds, trying to balance journalistic rigour with holiday-camp bonhomie. The green room collisions, whether it be with basketball players, misery memoirists, urban gardeners. Or some unidentifiable reality TV star, sleek as a seal.

PK column in The National: Why Facebook's Libra currency plans have alarm bells ringing

By Pat Kane. First published on JUNE 22ND, 2019

‘MOVE fast and break things,” said the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2009. “Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.”

You might have thought their recent troubles – that is, being revealed as a tool of political extremism, misinformation and destabilisation – would have slowed Facebook down a little.

PK column in The National: The building media narrative that Scottish music has died is misplaced

By Pat Kane. First published on JUNE 15TH, 2019

WHEN a festival dies, there’s a range of lamentations. The organisers make their apologies to the “community” that’s grown around it. The local politicians regret the loss of income from thousands of revellers coming to their locality.

Some of the regular attendees, and a few of the acts, may mourn the end of these particular epiphanies – but mostly they’ll move on to the next “unique experience”. Because there’s bound to be one. Festivals, these days are irrepressible.

PK column in The National: Scotland needs a review of books with broad views of the wider world

By Pat Kane. First published on JUNE 8TH, 2019

IT’S a storm in a cortado cup, admittedly. But the demise of the paper edition of the Scottish Review of Books, as a consequence of Creative Scotland rejecting their grant application, is a dark and concentrated swirl of contemporary Scottish issues all on its own.

Adjust your vintage tortoiseshell specs, re-roll your black poloneck, and read on.

PK column in The National: Scotland's independence movement needs the right kind of nostalgia

By Pat Kane. First published on JUNE 1ST, 2019

NOSTALGIA is a feeling that lingers inside you, like a cloud of smoke you can’t dispel. It’s an interesting question to ask yourself: what do you feel nostalgic about?

Spontaneously, my own response is: radical bookshops. As a GlasgowUniversity student in the 80s, I used to drift between about six of them, studding the town centre and the West End.