Scotland, bloody Scotland. Less than three decades ago, home to a great footballing side, one feared, or at least admired, throughout Europe and beyond, for punching well beyond its weight. Now it has fallen on hard times: mediocrity has replaced magic. It’s a shift that didn’t happen overnight. But day by day, week by week, […]

This month, Vic Galloway has more on Meursault who are currently on tour in Germany.  Other gigs this month include The Jetpacks in France, Veronica Falls in San Francisco, and Primal Scream in Argentina (thanks to another South American reader for pointing that out). Full details below:

The future of Scottish football sits on Celtic’s shoulders. Following a catastrophic set of qualifying results which saw all four Scottish entrants dismissed from continental competition, Celtic were handed a reprieve when UEFA (rightfully, in my opinion) expelled FC Sion from the Europa League tournament. The Parkhead side replaced the team that knocked them out […]

The inspection shelf is a German invention, though I first encountered one in Prague. The shelf extends above the waterline in a toilet, holding the fecal matter for a quick review before it’s flushed. Changes in the shape, consistency, or colour of bowel movements often indicate disease, so spot-checking the stool is a healthy Teutonic […]

Alan Spence is one of those writers who seems to stand apart from other contemporary Scottish writers. I’ve been thinking about why this might be, and I think it is a matter of style. If you think of the adjectives that are most often applied to modern Scottish fiction they will include; grim, gritty, urban, […]

Each month we present some of the best new photos of Scotland in the gloaming, the magical time before sunrise or after sunset. This month featuring images of Glasgow, Moray, Islay, Shetland and more.

In the pub last Sunday, an English friend told the tale of his teenage journey to the Edinburgh Festival, hitchhiking up from the Midlands to sleep rough in Princes Street Gardens. He was woken from his newspaper-wrapped slumber not by a rapist, a mugger, or the Lothian police, but by a friendly Scotsman handing him […]

This month in Scottish Entertainment / Actor News, Helygen has all the news from the world’s best Scottish actors, including casting updates from Irvine Welsh’s ‘Filth’, trailers for Gerry Butler’s new films and the latest movements of Tennant, Scott, McKidd and more:

Back in the early 1990’s, the European Cup stopped being a football tournament and became the Champions League. The raison d’etre of the rebranded competition: creation of an ever-expanding trough of filthy lucre to feed the pigs running European football’s biggest clubs. To their credit, UEFA do a shamelessly good job of quantifying exactly how […]