Alan Bissett

UP until a year ago, like most Scots, I was familiar with the popular conception of our national bard as a loveable rogue – a drinker, fornicator and thorn in the side of the religious establishment – of his political reputation as a radical and Scots patriot, and of the folk myth of Rabbie the “heaven-taught ploughman”.

IT had never been the intention of Better Together – or “Project Fear” as they termed themselves – to inspire or uplift.

PLAYWRIGHT, author, performer and dad Alan Bissett takes his much-loved character Moira Bell back to the Fringe for (More) Moira Monologues, the long-awaited sequel to the straight-talking Falkirk cleaner’s 2009 Edinburgh debut.

IN many ways, the course of events in post-indyref Scottish politics has been very easy to predict. Those of us who voted Yes could see from a mile away that Scotland would be more vulnerable rather than stronger as a result of the No vote. Since 2014, we’ve been saddled with a Tory majority, a surging Ukip and removal from the EU against our will. Promises from the No campaign about protecting HMRC and steelwork jobs, shipbuilding contracts and renewable energy have proven hollow. Westminster’s “new powers for Scotland” gambit was a pig in a poke. The Scottish Government has been left to fiddle at the margins of income tax – their single, paltry new economic lever – in order to offset Tory austerity.