Mark Irvine - Blogger, Campaigner, Organiser

I recognise several voices in this outstanding, inspirational video including, if I'm correct, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and Nigel deGrasse Tyson. We may all be going to die, but how fortunate are we to have lived in the first place, to have acquired such an understanding of the origins of the universe and our relative place in the grand order things.  T he reason I stopped believing in religion, as a teenager, is that I said to myself one day: "if there really is an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God who created the universe, then who or what created God?" And I find hilariously funny the claim that this Supreme Being has apparently bestowed his blessing on a succession organised religions - with Jews, Christians and Muslims (in various guises) all vying to present themselves as his 'chosen people'.     

Equal pay settlement offers have now been sent out to all A4ES clients in Fife, but in a number of cases the relevant paperwork has been returned, presumably because the people concerned have moved without advising A4ES of their new home addresses. So if readers in Fife are in touch with any of the following individuals, please pass the word and ask them to make contact with the A4ES office in Edinburgh, as quickly as possible. 1 David Adamson 2 Tracie Anderson 3 Hazel Blake 4 Dorothy Fleming 5 Alexander Fowler 6 Marlyn Lindsay 7 Tracy Lock 8 Kelly Lockhart 9 Carol McInnes 10 Margaret Pearson 11 Joyce Reid 12 Avril Sidebottom 13 Jane Stevens 14 John Syme 15 Hazel Tognarelli 16 Theresa Williams Action 4 Equality Scotland Here are contact details for Action 4 Equality Scotland - including a new telephone number .  Action 4 Equality Scotland 10 York Place Edinburgh EH1 3EP Email:  enquiries@action4equality.uk Phone:  0131 659 9958

The 'sunshine of socialism' is not much of a slogan, but so far it's all that Jezza and John have come up with to illustrate their brand of 'kinder, gentler politics' which seems to have turned rather nasty of late. Ugly, hateful language is now routinely used in place of political debate, especially on social media, where Labour MPs are regularly attacked as 'Tory scum' for taking a different stance to the present leadership, despite the fact that Jeremy Corbyn has been a serial rebel himself during his 32 years in the House of Commons as a London Labour MP.  John McTernan wrote an interesting article   for The Telegraph recently in which he argues that this increasingly intolerant atmosphere is being whipped up as a means of targeting and driving out critics of Corbyn's lacklustre  leadership . The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that while the Labour Party   itself may be in real trouble, so too is the language of political debate which is b

I didn't hear Kezia Dugdale deliver her leader's speech to the Scottish Labour conference at the weekend, but I read what she had to say later (see link below) and the following two sections stood out for me like a sore thumb.  "I want to thank our brothers and sisters in the union movement for standing by us, in good times and bad. Your values are our values. We are, and always will be, the party of working people, a proud party of trade unionists." "In Scotland nearly 350,000 families rely on the money from tax credits. The average family will be more than £100 a month worse off as a result of these changes. 70% of the money saved by this tax rise on working people will come from the pockets of working mothers." http://labourlist.org/2015/10/lets-make-the-change-kezia-dugdales-scottish-labour-conference-speech-full-text/ Now back in the year 2000 when the Scottish Government was Labour-led, Jack McConnell (then education minister) signed-off on a

Equal pay settlement offers have now been sent out to all A4ES clients in Fife, but in a number of cases the relevant paperwork has been returned, presumably because the people concerned have moved without advising A4ES of their new home addresses. So if readers in Fife are in touch with any of the following individuals, please pass the word and ask them to make contact with the A4ES office in Edinburgh, as quickly as possible. 1 David Adamson 2 Tracie Anderson 3 Hazel Blake 4 Dorothy Fleming 5 Alexander Fowler 6 Marlyn Lindsay 7 Tracy Lock 8 Kelly Lockhart 9 Carol McInnes 10 Margaret Pearson 11 Joyce Reid 12 Avril Sidebottom 13 Jane Stevens 14 John Syme 15 Hazel Tognarelli 16 Theresa Williams Action 4 Equality Scotland Here are contact details for Action 4 Equality Scotland - including a new telephone number .  Action 4 Equality Scotland 10 York Place Edinburgh EH1 3EP Email:  enquiries@action4equality.uk Phone:  0131 659 9958