For your viewing pleasure and edification, here you have not one, not two, but three new videos from the one man broadcasting corporation that is Phantom Power.
First there’s a new episode in the well received Journey to Yes series, number 21 features Edinburgh councillor Ashley Graczyk who serves the Sighthill and Gorgie Ward and is Edinburgh’s first profoundly deaf Councillor. Ashley’s experience fuelled her interest in disability rights and then politics as she was swept up in Scotland’s independence debate during which she campaigned for No and the status quo. Ashley’s interest in politics continued and she went on to win the Sighthill and Gorgie Ward in 2017 as a Scottish Conservative hoping to influence policies affecting the most vulnerable.
Life as a councillor opened Ashley’s eyes to the human impact of her own party’s policies and she was angered by attempts to cut vital political and employment support – the Access to Elected Office Fund as well as Access to Work. The Conservatives’ treatment of Scotland during the Brexit process provided further revelation and left Ashley with no choice but to resign in 2018. Ashley reflects on life as part of, and after, the increasingly right-wing pro-Brexit ‘Scottish’ Conservatives. Creating a successful progressive future for Scotland within the union apparatus is impossible. The political landscape has shifted to reveal a new path.
Next up is the latest edition of the discussion programme Scotia, presented by the estimable Michael Gray and Robert Somynne. This edition of the programme discusses proposals for a tourist tax and a post-mortem of the annual Edinburgh Festival and its effect upon residents of the Scottish capital.
Last but by no means least is the annual Thomas Muir lecture. The Thomas Muir Lecture celebrates the legacy of the great Scottish political reformer Thomas Muir through a commitment to the ideals of democracy, liberty and human rights. In Muir’s own words as he was tried in Edinburgh in 1793 on the trumped charges of High Treason which ultimately saw him transported to a penal colony in Australia, “I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good cause. It shall ultimately prevail. It shall finally triumph.”
This year’s lecture is delivered by the award-winning poet, playwright, singer-songwriter Gerda Stevenson, based on her latest book Quines, a collection of poems in tribute to women of Scotland.
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