Latest articles from Cat Boyd

Cat Boyd: Can shocking photos of Gaza's suffering make the world act?

The daily images of atrocity from Gaza have a way of reaching all human senses. Even in a single snapshot, terror and sorrow are audible. Facial expressions reveal the cries of men mourning families trapped under rubble; I hear the wailing of a mother with her head bowed embracing her dead child.

Cat Boyd: Keir Starmer's tough guy act over ceasefire shows his real weakness

Hospitals bombed; electricity, water and communication cut off; journalists and aid workers killed in their beds; hundreds of videos of wailing rescuers, lifting lifeless children’s bodies from piles of ashen grey rubble. Apocalyptic scenes, but none of it enough to move Britain’s official representatives of the parliamentary left.

Opinion Cat Boyd: Why I took my family to pro-Palestine protest

Growing up, I remember spending countless hours outside Lanarkshire supermarkets, playing games behind stall tables with the other kids as the adults around us clutched piles of soggy leaflets. My mother would explain to shoppers and passersby why they shouldn’t buy oranges with the Outspan sticker or Cape apples. The small act of boycotting was my family’s little contribution to raising awareness of our government’s complicity with an odious regime.

Opinion Cat Boyd: Could you ever forgive a Nazi?

An article in the Washington Post once observed that all internet conversation, given time, tends to boil down to three themes: irony, pornography and Nazis. Pundits across the political spectrum act as if constant references to fascism will eventually equate to greater understanding of its deadly legacy. I tend to disagree. Persistently screaming danger doesn’t always make people more vigilant, otherwise hoax 999 callers would be treated like public safety heroes.

Opinion Cat Boyd: To her right-wing critics, Slater is a wild leftist rebel. Sadly, she's not

Whenever I hear the term “free trade”, I tend to think of the maniacal and chilling final scene in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The oil industry epic ends as Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day Lewis, has gone from frontier pioneer to deranged, drunk robber-baron, devoid of conscience. He has sucked the land dry of oil and cheated preacher’s boy Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), the more honourable side of capitalist enterprise.