Shona Craven

Columnist & Community Editor

Shona edits the National Conversation section of the paper and also writes a Tuesday column, which usually takes a sideways look at the week's developments in Scottish, UK and international politics.

Shona edits the National Conversation section of the paper and also writes a Tuesday column, which usually takes a sideways look at the week's developments in Scottish, UK and international politics.

Latest articles from Shona Craven

With the loss of shops we lose something else that’s hard to quantify – a trip to the shops that is at minimum great fun, and at best magic, writes Shona Craven

comment Shona Craven: The joke is on us if we let our magical high street stores disappear

IT was a vanishing act many will have seen coming, but it’s no less sad for that. Tam Shepherds Trick Shop, a fixture on Glasgow’s Queen Street for an incredible 138 years, is closing its doors.

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The latest revelations must give even the most ardent of royalists pause, writes Shona Craven

COMMENT Shona Craven: Royals give with one hand only to grab with the other

THERE’S an unsettling moment 10 minutes into the new Dispatches documentary about royal finances, when Charles and Camilla emerge from their tartan-bedecked home in Birkhall, Aberdeenshire to clap for NHS workers during the Covid pandemic ...

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Kirat Assi’s extraordinary story is told in the new Netflix documentary Sweet Bobby

comment Shona Craven: Don’t be too confident a catfish couldn’t trick you
IF scammers would only learn how to punctuate, they would surely be far more effective.

Rachel Reeves is expected to further freeze income tax thresholds in next week’s Budget

COMMENT Shona Craven: Expect stealth tax rises from loophole Labour

‘FISCAL drag” is a weird phrase, in that it sounds simultaneously very boring and slightly edgy. If something is a bit of a drag it’s not great, but it’s not a crisis, right?

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Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking from Downing Street on October 15, 2024

COMMENT Now Keir Starmer's duped his way into power, what principles can Labour show?

THE clock is ticking for Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she scrambles to find sources of additional revenue ahead of the Budget on October 30 ...

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The broadcaster is making a fly-on-the-wall show starring Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash

COMMENT Shona Craven: Why should the BBC licence fee fund contrived ‘reality’?

WHEN Big Brother first hit UK screens 24 years ago, one of the current contestants was a tender 11 years old ...

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Kemi Badenoch compared herself to Margaret Thatcher

comment Shona Craven: Dizzying incoherence as Kemi Badenoch 'cuts through'

‘I WAS interrupted,” insists Kemi Badenoch, when asked on stage at the Conservative party conference to explain her comment that maternity pay was “excessive” and had “gone too far”. Apparently she was answering a different question, just steamrolling her way through the interview with no regard to what she was being asked at any given point.

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Perth Museum’s debut show had much to tell its youngest visitors about gender identity

COMMENT Was Perth Museum's unicorn exhibition all it appeared to be?

WE were promised enchantment when the fabulous new Perth Museum opened in the spring. It seemed fitting that its debut exhibition, Unicorn, would tell the story of Scotland’s national animal, from its mythical origins to the present day. An equine face complete with iridescent spiral horn peeked out from the top gallery, high above the swish new secure room that houses the Stone of Destiny.

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Campaigners for assisted dying north of the Border will now be watching developments in England and Wales with great interest, writes Shona Craven

COMMENT Shona Craven: Is winter good timing for assisted dying debate?

THE contrast between the two papers could not have been starker. Saturday’s Daily Express led with “PM, please promise to change ‘cruel’ law”, quoting the terminally ill broadcaster Esther Rantzen, who is seeking to “gently” remind the Prime Minister that he promised to make parliamentary time to debate the issue ..

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Police in Southport, Merseyside, after a man was detained and a knife seized following a horrific stabbing which killed three

COMMENT Will ‘levelling’ with racists about the truth prevent riots in the future?

"NOT being treated as terror-related” is an odd phrase, when you think about it. We only hear it when something objectively terrifying has occurred. “Isolated incident” is another one. Such statements from the police should go some way to reassuring the public that while a horrendous incident has occurred, it has been a senseless one-off.

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