Spouting Cave

In early November, Guxim Imerio, a 25 year old man from Albania, absconded from Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre near Strathaven. Reports say Guxim attached himself to the underside of a van, waited until it was out of the compound and had stopped, before fleeing. Even after escaping the centre, he faced several cross-country miles on foot. A search on Google Maps would have told him it is “unable to calculate transit directions” to or from the facility. Tucked in the rural backroads of South Lanarkshire, Dungavel is a remote abstraction, out of sight and out of mind. Housed in this strange outpost are around 250 asylum seekers, many having fled war, persecution, even torture; cast to our geographic and societal periphery while awaiting deportation or a ruling on their claim. Men and women enduring compound displacement, and locked up indefinitely for the crime of seeking residence in this country. Two weeks after Guxim’s escape, around 200 protestors descend on th...

with foe piety they pray upon us  these profits of death these bottom-line martials who make the rich idols while the poor suffer a loan and suffer always alone caged in a sell ate daze a weak  losing hour minds as the mighty eight the week  oh, how they whined and they dined and licked every last peace  with our bodies on a steak and our blood read as meat the world’s now in vein as the son starts to brake  on the seize on the land on the cracks on our souls on the waits on our feat

I wrote this post for my work's blog In her address to Parliament outlining the Programme for Government, Nicola Sturgeon once again made clear that improving education was her number one priority. More specifically, the First Minister reiterated the importance of closing the attainment gap between children from the wealthiest and poorest backgrounds. In pursuit of that goal, she pledged to introduce a new Education Bill that would deliver the “biggest and most radical change” to the governance of schools since the advent of devolution. The First Minister’s tenure will, in large part, be defined by performance on this issue, for better or worse. It is a bold objective, for while there remain many strengths to Scottish education – the recent increase in Higher and Advanced Higher pass rates, for example – a number of areas have come under intense scrutiny. The most recent PISA results indicated Scotland’s standing has declined in maths, reading and science, with the poorest over...

Even in a country as blessed with dramatic scenery as Scotland, the Outer Hebrides evoke a special sense of wonder. As well as the varied landscape of these islands, their persistence as a Gaelic stronghold and the Old Norse influences add to their unique intrigue, with place-names such as Frobost, Quidinish, Geocrab, Amhuinnsuidhe, and Tolstachaolais. The bird's-eye shape of the islands evokes something ancient and wild, like dinosaur fossils or the spine of a mountain range. With a week off work, I decided to embark on the much-heralded Hebridean Way cycle route. I arrived at Castlebay, Barra, on a pleasantly bright and warm evening, following a four and a half hour ferry from Oban. Along with a range of other useful advice, my pal Neil had suggested I use the remaining light to cycle to Vatersay. On the winding road out of the village towards the causeway two miles south, I soon reached a very steep hill, passing the mildly-mocking cry of an old man - "You've go...

I wrote this poem for my work's blog . This is an astonishing intervention A spectacular u-turn A staggering humiliation We can exclusively reveal That our bungling opponents Have fallen asleep at the wheel Families up and down the country Will not forget This betrayal of trust And it will be at the polling station Where they express their disgust Let us be clear: The cat is out of the bag The mask has well-and-truly slipped Ministers have dropped the ball It’s no wonder poll ratings have dipped Time and again Working households have been sold down the river No ifs, no buts It’s time to deliver Voters will be deeply concerned At politicians so inept and fickle Who say one thing but then Rollover at the drop of a hat for a tickle Now more than ever It’s time to get back around the negotiating table Put aside the rhetoric And prove who’s strong and stable

On Saturday 3rd December, approaching the midway point of the season, Raith Rovers sat in joint 4th place in the Scottish Championship, 19 points ahead of bottom-placed St Mirren. At the weekend - following a spectacular collapse which saw the club finish below the Buddies on goal difference - Raith were relegated in the most ignominious of circumstances: in a play-off, on penalties, at home to part-timers Brechin City. It was a curious experience, watching the culmination of this most farcical season play out in a desperate but entirely fitting manner. Surrendering a 3-2 extra time lead - having earlier salvaged a lifeline with a stoppage time equaliser - only to go down via spot-kicks was an appropriate end to a year that witnessed the bizarre appointment of Gary Locke, the loaning of one of our best players to a direct rival, a midfielder playing a whole match in goals, and a small-time attempt to court the "Edinburgh media" through the signing of the once excellent but no...

We’ve just arrived in Chennai after a long day’s travel, weary but excited. On the journey to Vellore, Nav’s home town, the raw force and pulsing energy of the street scenes leave me dizzy. Ubiquitous bright yellow auto-rickshaws – three-wheeled mini-taxis – jostle for space with cavalier bikers, brazen cyclists and cars without seatbelts. Commuters are crammed into kicking-can buses, with a dozen more hanging nonchalantly off the outside windows. Women in sarees sit casually sideways on the back of 40mph motorbikes, while rogue cows and bulls plod alongside or simply park themselves in the middle of the frenzied traffic for a nap. The scuttling packs of stray dogs are an unfamiliar species; straggly limbed and vaguely malevolent. Every would-be collision is a near miraculous escape in this zig-zagging, criss-crossing, technicolour chaos. The whole scene has an exhilarating offbeat rhythm, echoed by the Tamil hip-hop that pounds from the car stereo. The Gurusamy family home ...

Also featured on Bella Caledonia . Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Gibraltar, Israel, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro and San Marino. Of the 55 member countries of UEFA, these footballing titans are the only nations not to have qualified for a major tournament since Scotland last did, at the 1998 World Cup in France. I was at Celtic Park as an 8 year old to watch us record a routine 2-0 win over Latvia to effectively clinch our place at that tournament, blissfully unaware that a whole generation would become adults without memory of seeing us back at that stage. After the latest shambles this week, another couple of these teams might soon be crossed off before Scotland. When I was about 15, I chose to write an essay about a "transaction" for a Standard Grade English prelim exam. By that age I really should have known what the word meant, but I got it co...

In 2015, over one million people journeyed to Europe from the Middle East, central Asia and Africa in one of the greatest mass migrations of modern history. Another 280,000 souls have made the monumental exodus so far this year, trekking hundreds of miles through all seasons, risking their lives on flimsy, jam-packed dinghies across the treacherous Mediterranean, or left stranded to await their fate at gridlocked borders. Thousands remain in limbo in refugee camps, with over sixty such sites in Greece alone. A small camp just outside Filippiada in north western Greece is currently home to 400 of these women, men and children. Given the scale of such a crisis, my vague expectation when I arrived was to find a fairly well-functioning and co-ordinated humanitarian effort, led by international NGOs and supported by volunteers with assigned tasks and roles. I was pretty amazed to discover that untrained volunteers were essentially running the show. The organisation and delivery of the dai...