I'd vaguely noticed the picture of a poke of chips floating about an event post on my Facebook feed for a while before it really caught my eye. For a couple of days, ever since it was posted at one minute to midnight on Hogmanay 2015, I'd half-registered the words The Glasgow Effect accompanying the picture. At the time, the words didn't really mean anything, certainly not in the way they do now, so wasn't really something to concern myself with. When I eventually clicked onto the post, I was first bemused, then confused by what I read. There are a ton of event invitations that pop up on social media over the course of the day, but this one seemed to be written in some opaque bureaucrat-speak, and didn't seem to refer to an event at all. Which is fine if that's what you're into, and the name Ellie Harrison rang a bell, right enough, but I was too distracted by other things to pay it much attention. Only when a friend private messaged me with the words
An archive of arts writing by Neil Cooper. Effete No Obstacle.