The Last Word blog comes straight from the heart of WORD UP.

In our irregular online offering, we aim to please, entertain, and be brutally honest in our musings on small biz, the ageing process, and life. But we sometimes raise hackles and spark off debate, so feel free to join in, or fire back if you don’t like what you read.

Keep an eye on our @WordUpScot socials for updates about our latest wordy witterings.

The Blog

Belief systems and Easter eggs

Oh ye of little faith, join the club. But ye of faith, don’t give up the holy ghost just yet. Because I’m genuinely interested in your take on this wee heathen’s modus operandi when it comes to matters of belief. Like many others who don’t have any kind of religious affiliation or formal belief system,

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In (faint) praise of partisan parents

Annoy Your Kids. Surely one of the most important inclusions on any parent’s job description? However, it’s a bit rich for me to cast aspersions on anyone else’s parenting skills, seeing as I often rate pretty damn low on the Word Up Wean’s goodwill to all mumkind scale. So please forgive me when I moan

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Bringing down the career curtain

Exactly one year ago this week, I hung up my headphones, flicked the On Air switch off, picked up my P45, and headed out of the door at the great glass shoebox that is BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay HQ. It was a momentous milestone in my working life, one which made me feel very weird

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The slovenly side effects of start up

It was a shaft of spring sunlight that nearly caused my own wee waterworks to start sprinkling this week. Admittedly, I was a bit broken after a few days of particularly tough graft and nowhere near sufficient shut-eye. I had a horrid headache and burny eyes, a queasy tummy and a wee bit of the

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Praise be for rough-edged role models

Polished professionals, business behemoths and the fabulously famous don’t mean diddly squat to me. Well okay then, I might make an exception for David Bowie, but when it comes to role models, whether in business, personal or social life, I like mine real, and preferably with a few rough edges. Because for me, fame doesn’t

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Bleeding hearts and business

Take your bleeding heart and stuff it. Well okay then, that’s not exactly what a fellow traveller in small business was told recently by a certain gentleman from the dinosaur school of wheeling and dealing. But this particular gentleman did mention that my mate was unusual for someone in business because she has a social

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Small business signs of spring

I wandered, lonely as a cloud. Well actually, I wasn’t wandering, I was running. Running through the monsoon conditions that have been sweeping in over the wilds of west Glasgow at regular (nay, incessant) intervals lately. And I wasn’t lonely, though there were clouds – great big black bruisers of nasty nimbostratus. But I was

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Wanna be in my band of believers?

Belief breaks my heart. Or, more accurately, the lack of it. In one week alone I have witnessed two smashing specimens of Scottishness show a really saddening lack of self-belief. One didn’t even want to big up his business. A business, by the way, which is well worth shouting about. I’m far from the full

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Offspring versus enterprise

What is it about women and wee yins? Or to be more maternally and entrepreneurially correct, why is that women in business tend to make so many apologies for being a mother? Let’s set out my own stall right from the off – in my business I’m not in the business of saying sorry for the

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Business is like buses

We’re all doomed. No, I’ve not gone and joined a group of end of the world adventists, but I definitely had a Private Frazer moment recently.  For a couple of days I simply couldn’t shrug off a certain despair. There I was in early January, looking over the vast tundra of emptiness that was my

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