Search: David J Black

Clowns to the left and jokers to the right: the Scottish electorate is zugzwanged as David J Black sees it. Some weeks ago The Guardian’s Marina Hyde levelled a blast against Labour and its normally hesitant leader. Her headline, 'What was that dreadful thud? The sound of Keir Starmer falling

SNP leadership election? What’s that? Oakeshott v Hancock? Forget it. Boris’s bung for his dad – a knighthood was it? Do we care? The Macron-Sunak alliance? Missed that one. Some Stirling girl’s war movie up for an Oscar? Nope. A missile attack on a nuclear power station in U

It seems odd that a psychiatrist once described in a Times interview with Stephanie Marsh as "the most hated doctor in Britain" should suddenly become the most all-powerful doctor in that very same benighted realm – yet that is precisely what has happened. On January 27th Sir Simon Wessely too

David J Black makes a likely connection. Fans of the brilliant, yet chilling, HBO series Succession seem to assume that the part of merciless Logan Roy, played to terrifying perfection by Brian Cox, is a thinly disguised portrayal of the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. If so, they really don’t kno

See how the cookie crumbles: David J Black recounts a time when politicians, given the chance to practise what they preach, decided to just preach some more.

Review: Justice need not be static. In Scotland the lady, sans her blindfold, but with a vestige of the tell-tale scales in her left hand, once stood proudly over the doorway of Scotland’s 1639 Parliament with her companion Mercy until that building was ‘improved’ (i.e. largely dem

David J Black looks at how the Golden Turd plopped onto Edinburgh's skyline. Read part one here. It is true that every judgement as to what constitutes good or bad architecture is subjective, yet searching around Edinburgh to find someone who likes the Golden Turd Hotel is a fruitless task. The Scot

My cool son in the west assured me over a civilised lunch in Cottier’s, in Dowanhill, that a leisurely meal at Glasgow’s Ka Pau, just off the Byres Road, is an experience to be savoured, and he knows about such things. What a dreadful turn of events, then, that this same culinary icon wo

David J Black reminds the powers that be of the separation of powers. It goes without saying that all those who are in the business of dealing with the intricacies of legal process enjoy harvesting the ripened fruits of historic precedent. These can go back a long way, but not often as far as the 5

The final part in David J Black's forensic examination of the ME/CFS scandal looks at alleged scientific misconduct and a possible cover-up. Read the last part here. The tragedy of the putative ME/CFS scandal as the revelations following the PACE controversy emerged, was that, for a time, thing

Prone to making the facts fit their theories, academics have, for decades, gaslit ME/CFS sufferers by telling them their condition was all in their heads. To compound matters, a pliant British media happily preached the false biopsychosocial gospel and misery ensued. But the pandemic has changed eve

David J Black continues to investigate the biggest medical scandal of the 21st century. Read part one here and see also his series from last year for SLN. October the 29th 2021 was something of a red-letter day for those who believed the psychiatric biopsychosocial (BPS) model had, fo

Melanie Phillips may not be everyone’s favourite journalist or radio opinion former but who could fail to share her astonishment in The Times at the outcome of one of the greatest corporate injustices of our time? Inexplicably, no-one, it seems, was responsible for the relentless persecution a

And so the time has come to talk of David and Henry, and the crimes of which they stand accused. In David Hume’s case sentence has already been passed, his name now severed from the largest post-war building on Edinburgh University’s principal campus. Given that he had fixed ideas on bea

Editor's note: All animals are cancellable, but some are more cancellable than others. That is the inference to be drawn from the manner in which we pick and choose history's villains. David Hume is out but Marie Stopes, eugenicist and admirer of Adolf Hitler, is apparently in. Edinburgh Council has