Jackie Kemp

On #KingsmanTheSecretService and the Porno Society.

A friend of mine was kind enough to say recently that she had found the piece I wrote below about the movie Kingsman The Secret Service really helpful. Her 15-year-old daughter had been to the movie with friends and because my friend had read my blog, she was able to raise with her daughter the fact that there is a graphic image of anal penetration in the closing minutes of the movie. Her daughter said “Oh Mum, it’s all right, the woman wanted that done to her.” My friend responded that this scene represented a male fantasy. My friend then went on to say that she felt sorry for all the young women who might be thinking: ‘What’s wrong with me, that I don’t enjoy this?”

The scene is a glimpse into the porno world which I generally manage to avoid. But taking place as it does in a mainstream movie now heavily advertised on TV as a DVD or download – it’s another example of how mainstream that current has become.

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Lavrenti Beria and The Collapse of the Soviet Union

A column from The Herald 1992 on an article by Donald Rayfield in the Scottish Slavonic Review.

That Lavrenti Beria was a monster is well enough known, though the full extent of his activities is still dimly understood. Apart from developing state terror as an instrument of policy, he killed and tortured personally, for the pleasure of it. He became Stalin’s secret police chief. When the Soviet Union finally acknowledged its responsibility for the Katyn Massacre of 1943 – when more or less the entire Polish officer squad was wiped out by the Soviet secret police – it named Beria as the guilty man, though his recommendation was countersigned by Stalin and others.

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Quiz about physically disabled students.

This is a quiz from a fundraising event for physically disabled school students at George Watson’s College. The questions are based on the short descriptions of inspiring people who overcame disability as children and young people below. Answers are at the foot.

1 Whose musical feet found a path to success?

2 Who turned out to be a lot brighter than his teacher thought?

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‘Dramatising Scotland’s Past’ at Scotland’s History Festival 2014

Actor and Gaelic singer Dolina Maclennan began this event at Scotland’s History Festival ‘Previously…’ with a reading from her recently published book, ‘Dolina: An Island Girl’s Journey’. http://www.theislandsbooktrust.com/store/books/dolina-an-island-girls-journey/

Maclennan read a passage about her memories of touring the Highlands and Islands in 1973 with the huge theatrical success of that time ‘The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil’ , a play about the Highland clearances, and land rights. Dolina recalled the audience member who rose to her feet to deliver a Gaelic curse to the actor playing land agent Patrick Sellar; rolling up the gaffa tape on a pencil to use it again; travelling with pots and pans and taking £5 from the cast each Thursday to feed them for the week. She linked the tumultous reception the play received in its tour across Scotland to a surge of nationalism which sent 11 SNP MPs to Westminster a year later.

James McArdle and Gordon Kennedy. Photo: Manuel Harlan

History? James McArdle (James I) and Gordon Kennedy (Murdac Stewart). Photo: Manuel Harlan

Dramatising Scotland’s Past: free event at Scotland’s History Festival, ‘Previously…’ Adam House on November 19, 2014.

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A Find

This poem is inspired by Burns Yard, a junk yard in East Lothian.

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Season: Summer. Scene: A Slavic War.

I wrote this poem in the early 1990s after travelling round the former Soviet Union with my friend Georgina Wroe. We stopped off in the breakaway region of Trans…

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Advice

Hillwalking with my father, he would say: Take the slow way Over the shoulder of the hill. Follow the lie of the land.

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Why I voted ‘No’ in Scotland’s independence referendum

Blogpost: Why I voted ‘No’ in the referendum. Revised on October 17, 2014

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The Silence of the Nos – written on the eve of Scotland’s independence vote in 2014

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“Were we just wrong Jim?” – Sillars and devolution

From Arnold Kemp’s book, a personal history of post-war Scotland “The Hollow Drum”.

…Jim Sillars told me a story about himself which, he said, explained his character. When he was 15 he was apprenticed to a plasterer and was one of a team working on a job. Although he was the junior apprentice he found he was expected to do the labouring. On further inquiry he discovered from the boss that the job had been priced to allow for three labourers, a junior apprentice, a senior apprentice and a journeyman. The boss had not employed any labourers; he was skimming more profit by making the junior apprentice do the donkey-work.

Sillars walked off the job. There was an enormous row. His father was called to a meeting. But it was to no avail and that day the plastering trade lost a recruit.

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Why I believe in Britain – on the eve of Scotland’s independence vote in 2014

From Prospect magazine website, September 11, 2014. One of Scotland’s best-known plays is Peter Pan. At the dramatic moment when the fairy Tinkerbell, traditionally played by a spotlight which flickers and then seems to go out, is close to death. Peter Pan turns to the audience and says she can only be saved if the audience demonstrates that they do believe in fairies by clapping their hands, which generally results in thunderous applause from adults and children alike.

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Israeli Performers and the Edinburgh festival: A Personal View

Also published in the Scottish Review on 27 August 2014

Jerusalem’s Incubator Theatre company

This year’s theme for the Edinburgh International Festival – ‘War’ – was more apposite than planned, disturbed as the city was this summer by the rumble of distant guns.

The Fringe, which took shape along with the festival in the years after the second world war, is an open access event, with every church hall and pub backroom being turned into a venue, along with temporary pop-ups, from the glamorous ‘Famous Spiegeltent’ to a tiny two-man housing the Thermos Museum. This year someone even put on a one-woman show in a Fiat, luckily a stationary one.

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A defence of the Red Road flats demolition plan

Destroying the unwanted flats and using them as a metaphor for change is not a bad message to take from Glasgow’s Games, writes Jackie Kemp From the Scotsman April 8 (this plan was later abandoned). THE Red Road flats are coming down – should it be with a bang or a whimper?

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How to heat ourselves and not the spaces we occupy

From the Scotsman, Dec 13, 2013. Attacking those who dare to suggest alternative ways of affording to heat homes limits the discourse, writes Jackie Kemp. A FAMOUS Punch cartoon shows a stately lady showing a guest to her room. “It’s a little chilly,” she is saying kindly. “So I’ve put another dog on your bed.”

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Rome listens to flock at last

Quizzing parishioners on faith and daily life could be a turning point for the Catholic Church, writes Jackie Kemp. Published in the Scotsman November 5 2013. It is a document that may have momentous implications for the future of a venerable institution which is recognised throughout the world. Tens of thousands of Scots are poring over it, considering their own responses and how to articulate them. No, it is not the white paper on Scottish independence. It is the Catholic Church’s questionnaire on social attitudes to the family, which for the first time asks for the faithful’s thoughts on the thorny issues of gay marriage, divorce and contraception. Across the country, it is sparking discussions of difficult subjects which for many years have been no-go areas. It as if a door which had been locked tight for many years had suddenly creaked open.