The Battle of Hawthorn Town Hall

         Last night shortly after I started this the battery in my modem melted down. It just stopped working, and on inspection it felt as though the interior of the battery had turned to mush. So today I will be spending the day without internet access until I can collect a replacement, hopefully tomorrow. This …

Power: A Winters Tale

  I want to talk to you about power. Not political power, or entrenched patriarchal power, but the everyday kind you get from the socket in the wall. Because I heard something very disturbing indeed recently – the UK almost ran out of gas, at the worst possible time. Now at the time I heard …

Spin Cycle

Spin Cycle, Part 2What Are We Going To Do!?!Before I start there is something I have to explain, which is that ‘Spin Cycle, Part 1’ was written, and recorded for the podcast, on the 22 May, mere hours before the Manchester bombing. Obviously a great deal has happened in the campaign since then. I think …

GE2017: Kick Out The Tories

  Available FREE on iTunes and Podbean On this Pre-Election special, we’ll have Derek Stewart Macpherson with the first part of his Spin Cycle series, John McHarg talking about voter choice, Richie Venton on the choices socialists are facing in this election, and we’ll be hearing from Nick Durie about how this election proves the YES …

Left, Right and Centre

Ok, let’s get this left/right political spectrum thing sorted out. Some people believe that the centre ground has shifted, especially since Thatcher, and that is certainly one way of looking at it, but I’m not convinced. You see, the evidence of 2015’s election just doesn’t support that explanation. Labour did not lose because they were …

The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The 2017 Local Elections

Since 2013 these ‘Hitchhikers’ electoral guides (for both Scotland and Australia) have become a bit of a tradition on my blog.  I’ve now covered two Australian federal elections, a European Parliament election, a Westminster general election (No.2 coming soon), a Scottish Parliament election and of course two very different referenda. This will be the first …

Derek From Dublin

  Ah, who’d be a traveller? The great adventures are all behind us now, and yet there are always some who set out to travel hopelessly and fail to arrive. The desire to boldly go, etc. is still strong in some. I was one such would-be adventurer, but my tale is not one of derring-do. …

Derek Stewart Macpherson Articles

News, Articles and Opinion The Greatest Financial Scam of All Time Derek from Dublin  Lest We Forget: the Clydebank Blitz  The Hitchhikers’ Guide To The 2017 Local Elections Left, Right and Centre Power: A Winter’s Tale Ursula K. Le Guin – A Personal Tribute The Battle of Hawthorne Town Hall Stop. Seriously, just stop. Now!

The Greatest Financial Scam Of All Time

  First published June 7th 2014 Well, somebody has to say it, so it might as well be me. Privatisation is very probably the biggest financial scam of all time. It dwarves anything else I can think of. LIBOR? Fiddling small change. The original Charles Ponzi? Amateur! There has been renewed talk of privatisation recently, …

Derek Stewart Macpherson

Born in Glasgow in 1965 and brought up in Clydebank, in the shadow of the John Brown cranes, Derek Stewart Macpherson’s earliest memory is attending the launch of the QE2 at the age of two. Since then he has been a student activist, traveller, father of two, public servant, negotiator, political strategist, campaign manager and …

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started