BELFAST. June 2026. Burnt out homes. Terrified families fleeing in the night. We’ve been here before. A knife attack by Hadi Alodid, a Sudanese asylum seeker in Nationalist North Belfast, triggered anti-immigration riots by Union Jack clad mobs. Loyalist-led pogroms are not new, but their target is. Catholic Irish have been replaced by people of colour.

IT'S BEEN 12 years since Glasgow hosted the 2014 Commonwealth Games and the 23rd iteration of the event—the 2026 Glasgow games—has now kicked off again in the city, far sooner than anyone would have predicted back in 2014.

I AM tempted to think that the recent intervention by Dave Scott of Nil By Mouth to demand that police officers declare their membership of various organisations is more about keeping his organisation relevant than it is about challenging the real impact of racism and bigotry in Scotland as it manifests itself in the sphere of policing and justice.

AS DERRYMAN Mickey Mullen reminded readers of The Irish Voice in these pages recently, and as Paul Brady’s song recalls, it can frequently be ‘nothing but the same old story’ when the Irish diaspora shows its face in Britain.

THE last two months have seen wide-ranging events and activities across Scotland, ranging from attending Celtic political forums to supporting Irish community events to mark St Patrick’s Day.

AS PAUL Brady once sang: “It’s nothing but the same old story.” And lately that line feels painfully accurate.

ELITE sport—especially on display at large-scale televised events—can provide a site for social, political and ideological messaging, including in the form of promotion, support, dissent or opposition.

ON MARCH 14, 2026, the Glasgow St Patrick’s Festival Parade will once again bring colour, music and life to the heart of the city. This year’s theme ‘A Celebration of Irish Immigration to Glasgow’ is more than a commemoration. It is a declaration of who we are, where we come from, and the immeasurable contribution our community has made to Glasgow for almost two centuries.

THE year 2025 was a notable year one for Irish-Scottish relations. The Consulate has seen the highest number of inward ministerial visits from Ireland, with six visits to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberdeen in areas ranging from special and inclusive education to cultural cooperation.

THIS time of year is known as the season of goodwill and that phrase may be one that, for some, has lost a little meaning in recent times.

DUBLIN—a city once described by novelist Brendan Behan as holding ‘familiarity without friendship’—now finds its residents asking the haunting question: ‘Why me?’ This comes in the wake of a series of violent attacks targeting members of Ireland’s immigrant communities throughout the summer of 2025.

RECENT comments by East Ayrshire Council’s Head of Education Linda McAulay-Griffiths regarding the merits of education in music have forced an apology after a clip went viral online for all the wrong reasons.

LIKE the Emerald Isle, Edinburgh is a very green place. Though this is on the more local scale of a city, just how many green spaces and gardening initiatives, both large and small are present within the city has always impressed me. Scotland as a whole, like Ireland, also has a rich botanical cultural history.

BEING chosen as the Edinburgh Mary 2025 has been one of the greatest honours of my life. Representing Scotland—my new home—here in Donegal, where I was born and raised, made the experience even more meaningful. It felt like everything had come full circle.

Tánaiste SIMON HARRIS looks forward to Ireland assuming its eighth presidency of the EU in 2026.

Twenty years ago, I was with colleagues in Dublin for a once -per-term meet-up of participants in a postgraduate psychotherapy course. It was organised across Northern Europe with students from Britain, Denmark, Iceland and Ireland.

IT IS perhaps the human condition to take for granted your good fortune. However, I have no excuse for failing to regularly remind myself that for the past 30 years, I’ve been able to call Ireland’s best-kept secret my homeplace.

THE British establishment is pushing the dangerous narrative that ‘mass immigration’ is the problem behind working class people’s hardship in Scotland and across Britain.

THE decision of the organisers of TRNSMT to cancel Kneecap’s appearance this summer was, in some way, not that surprising.

AMIDST glorious sunshine across Scotland, the last while also saw a blaze of activity in terms of Irish Scottish business links.