I live in Edinburgh, Scotland,  and I am a spokesperson for the human rights group Scotland Against Criminalising Communities. This blog is where (in a personal capacity) I let my hair down. It will mostly be sort-of political with a hot and spicy human rights flavour.

It will also include some older stuff I’ve written or talked about over the years that hasn’t previously been available online.

I’m a socialist. If you are socialism-averse, or you are thrilled by the sight of military parades, or you worry that Europe is being Islamified, or you fear that your town is about to be swamped by immigrants, or you are fond of locking people up and throwing away the key, or you think Britain’s security services are doing a great job, you probably won’t like this blog. You’d be much happier somewhere else.

I voted Yes to an independent Scotland and I support the creation of an independent Scotland sooner rather than later. But that doesn’t mean I have to be nice to the SNP.

I don’t do fashion. It’s fashionable at the moment – at least in Britain – to tear out the throat of anyone  whose views differ from your own by the thickness of a cigarette paper.  So I’ll try not to do too much of that until it becomes nicely unfashionable again.

Nothing in the previous paragraph shall be interpreted as a promise of restraint or courtesy towards people whose views differ from mine by the thickness of a Tory skull.

There’s a complementary fashion for gushing over anything that seems  more or less harmless and likely to generate a lot of applause. It works nicely for children’s TV presenters and social media gurus, but I’ve never got the hang of it myself.  I won’t be trying any of that stuff here.

If this seems like your kind of toilet wall, please scrawl your comments onto it. Try to be polite. If you’re looking for a place where you can persuade people that the Daily Telegraph is right after all, don’t bother. And please don’t spam. I know it’s only a job and you wouldn’t be doing it unless you were desperate (even if you are a bot), but please do it somewhere else.