Weekend by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperbacks 2006)

She paused the tape and started to spool forward. She was looking for a moment during the question time that followed Harry Beck's lecture. Mickey Deans had asked a question in a tone of such aggression it had stirred the room from somnolence into tension. Eventually she found it.

'You mentioned in class once that you still regard yourself as a socialist. How is that possible when you have such a jaundiced view of humanity?'

She thought she could almost hear Harry Beck's sad smile.

'First thing is, I don't think it's jaundiced. I think any kind of hope begins in honestly trying to confront what you see as the truth. That's all I've been trying to do. It's the darkness of that truth as I see it that makes me a socialist. After all, the dark is where the dawn comes from. I don't believe in Utopia. You won't find it on any map we can ever make. And if it did exist, we couldn't breathe the air there. It would be too pure for us. But I believe in our ability to drift endlessly towards dystopia. We seem to be programmed for it. As if we were saying to ourselves: if we can't beat the dark, let's celebrate it. I'm against that. I'm a dystopian socialist. Socialism is an attempt to share as justly as we can with one another the terms of human experience. Don't do the dark's work for it. If it's only void out there, let's write our own defiant meaning on it. And make it a shared meaning. I think believing in good is the good. Against all the odds. Even if I'm part of the odds against us. I think it's what makes us what we are.'

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid (2008)

It had been a few years since Karen had last taken the single-track road to Newton of Wemyss. But it was obvious that the hamlet had undergone the same transformation as its sister villages on the main road. Commuters had fallen ravenous upon all four of the Wemyss villages, seeing rustic possibilities in what had been grim little miners' rows. One-bedroom hovels had been knocked through to make lavish cottages, back yards transformed by conservatories that poured light into gloomy living-kitchens. Villages that had shrivelled and died following the Michael pit disaster in '67 and the closures that followed the 1984 strike had found a new incarnation as dormitories whose entire idea of community was a pub quiz night. In the village shops you could buy a scented candle but not a pint of milk. The only way you could tell there had ever been a mining community was the scale model of pit winding gear that straddled the point where the private steam railway had once crossed the main road laden with open trucks of coal bound for the railhead at Thornton Junction. Now, the whitewashed miners' rows looked like an architect's deliberate choice of what a vernacular village ought to look like. Their history had been overwhelmed by a designer present.

Boiling A Frog by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 2000)

Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms. She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said, and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own career. Yeah, sure, and the band played "Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had always been accused of abandoning their principles in pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time served pincer-movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position, you were an unprincipled chancer who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew they'd never face the same charge because they didn't have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically compromise a stance built on greed, materialism and xenophobia?

Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing. Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose canonisation had been rescinded. It was an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies had too often beaten them.

Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely unlikely ever to exceed single figures. In binary.

Near Neighbours by Gordon Legge (Jonathan Cape 1998)

Adam switched off the motor.

'Oh,' said Geordie, 'you're back again.'

'Back to listen to you and your blethers, aye.'

'By God, see if I was a younger man - I'd take my hand off your face before you could say Gazza. I've battered bigger than you, mind. Plenty bigger.'

Aye, I think I mind you telling me - hundreds of times.'

Geordie was the type as would probably be quite happy if Adam were to headbutt. He'd live off it for years. 'Aye,' he'd tell folk, 'just right in front of my face. What a mess it was and all. Blood and brains all over the shop. Never get that cleaned. That's what the polis said. Said to me, "Geordie," they said, "long as you live, and as hard as you try, you'll never get that cleaned."'

Adam replaced the seat. 'Well, want to give it a go, auld yin?'

Geordie made to get up. He adjusted his legs. He adjusted his legs like they were artificial. To all intents and purposes, they were.

(From the short story, 'Past Masters'.)

Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre (Abacus 1996)

'My grandfather always maintained that where there was muck, there was brass,' Parlabane said. 'If you're not afraid to get your hands dirty and put your back into your work, you'll get a fair reward. However, throughout the tenure of our present government, I discovered a valuable reciprocal to be true: where there's lots of brass, there's usually muck, and I've made a career out of looking for it.

As Michael Portillo fearlessly said, in this country, as opposed to those wog-ridden foreign sties - I'm paraphrasing here, although only slightly - if you win a contract, it's not because your brother is a government minister or you blatantly bribed an official. Of course not. That would be corruption. In this country, you win contracts because you are "one of us", you went to the right school, give money to the right party, and have awarded an executive post to a member of the cabinet's family, or have promised a seat on the board to the appropriate minister when he resigns to spend more time with his bankers.

'We don't have anything as vulgar or primitive as a bribe. It's a matter of trust. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. For every contract, there's a kickback. It's more noble, more gentlemanly. A matter of mutual understanding. And very, very British.'

Sarah stared across, unimpressed. 'Once again, hot-shot, this much I know. Not an exclusive. Cut to the chase.'

'Fair enough. I got a bit of a reputation for myself through in Glasgow, sniffing out scams, investigating dodgy deals. But what I really wanted was to go after the big game down south, and I was head-hunted by one of the big broadsheet Sundays. I thought it would either make my career or turn out to be the worst move south by a promising young Scot since Charlie Nicholas. In the end it was both.

I Love Me (Who Do You Love?) by Gordon Legge (Polygon Press 1994)

'Captain what?' said Neil.

'Captain Trip, best band ever.' Deke switched on the machine and the music came out of the speakers: muffled tribal drumming; mumbled tribal vocals; a really loud guitar that sounded as if it was recorded best part of half a mile away; and a bass that appeared to have been set up all of two inches from the mic.

'Fucking brilliant, eh,' said Deke.

Neil gave a serious nod like he was into it and said, 'Bit like Can.'

'One of our influences,' said Deke. 'Mostly we just made it up, though. Well, us and the drugs, like.'

'Listen,' said Gary, coming in at just the right moment so at to drown out his famous missed beat, 'we've got to do something and get this thing going again.'

Deke shook his head. 'Nah, it's gone, Gary, finished. Had to be of its time. Let the bastards catch up and then we'll fucking show them.'

'Oh, come on,' pleaded Gary.

Deke turned to Neil, though. 'Listen to this,' he said, 'just listen to this, listen to it. This was a 12" before there was a 12", this was rave before there was a rave, this was baggy before there was a baggy. Listen. Telling you, I'm hearing all this new stuff, and it all sounds fucking familiar to me, you know, and I just goes back and plays the old tape, and, bang, there you go, there it all is, it's all there. Listen to this bit.'

Neil listened. 'Nirvana?'

'Exactly,' said Deke. 'We were Nirvana,, we were Nirvana years ago, years ago, we were doing all that grunge stuff years ago. We were Nirvana before they even knew they existed, and they've made millions out of that, by the way, millions. That three and a half seconds there, that's their fucking career. Hold on, this bit?'

'My Bloody Valentine?' said Neil

'There you go. More fucking millionaires. Telling you, you want to have seen the reactions we got when we were on stage. The kids just loved us.'

'Mind Kirkcaldy?' said Gary.

'Mind it? Come on, how am I ever going to forget Kirkcaldy?' Deke turned to Neil again. 'You ever heard of anyone getting themselves a life-long ban from the Kingdom of Fife? No? Well. wait till you hear this one . . .'

Hearing his past so gloriously described almost made Gary forgive Deke for not wanting to get the band going again. Maybe though it was for the best to consign all this to the past, not to want to recapture it but, like Deke said, to move on, to go for the future.

The Distant Echo by Val McDermid (St Martin's Minotaur 2003)

And they were off. Like wizards casting combative spells at each other, Sigmund and Davey threw song titles, lyrics and guitar riffs back and forth in the ritual dance of an argument they'd been having for the past six or seven years. It didn't matter that, these days, the music rattling the windows of their student rooms was more likely to come from the Clash, the Jam or the Skids. Even their nicknames spoke of their early passions. From the very first afternoon they'd congregated in Alex's bedroom after school to listen to his purchase of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it had been inevitable that the charismatic Sigmund would be Ziggy, the leper messiah, for eternity. And the others would have to settle for being the Spiders. Alex became Gilly, in spite of his protestations that it was a jessie nickname for someone who aspired to the burly build of a rugby player. But there was no arguing with the accident of his surname. And none of them had a moment's doubt about the appropriateness of christening the fourth member of their quartet Weird. Because Tom Mackie was weird, make no mistake about it. The tallest in their year, his long gangling limbs even looked like a mutation, matching a personality that delighted in being perverse.

That left Davey, loyal to the cause of the Floyd, steadfastly refusing to accept any nickname from the Bowie canon. For a while, he'd been known halfheatedly as Pink, but from the first time they'd all heard "Shine on, You Crazy Diamond" there had been no further debate: Davey was a crazy diamond, right enough, flashing fire in unpredictable directions, edgy and uncomfortable out of the right setting. Diamond soon became Mondo, and Mondo Davey Kerr had remained through the remaining year of high school and on to university.

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

They always had good rants, Mental and Richard. The miners' strike provided eighteen months of debating material. Mental was completely disillusioned with the Protestant work ethic and found the refusal to hold a ballot smug and disturbing. Richard blamed the miners' loss on their amateurish use of the media and the media's innate bias. He talked of camera angles, interview locations and distorted emphasis. A ballot was useless, Richard said, since the media determined the information supply and the media was biased. The miners had elected leaders to make decisions on their behalf. That's what Scargill's job was. But Mental was unimpressed. The miners represented everything he hated about the 'mince and tatties mentality': 'All these places are Hun cities. Take Bo'ness, for example, typical fucking mining community. Hun bastards. You've got all these fat bastards moaning about not having any food. And I hate the word "scab". People degrade themselves by using that kind of attack.' They all wanted to see the miners win and they all agreed that Leonard Parkin was a fascist. But mostly they wanted to see Margaret Hilda Thatcher melt.

Children of Albion Rovers edited by Kevin Williamson (Rebel Inc. 1996)

Gillian stepped back, put her feet together and described an area of the pavement with her hands. It was here, she said, that Carlyle saved himself from despair. He'd become a man with an emptiness where his spirit used to be. He'd lost faith in God, and belief in the Devil. He'd lost faith in love. He saw no rewards in heaven or punishments in hell. His sense of right and wrong seemed like rubbish left behind by illusions of God. It seemed that people just lived afraid of pain, and wanting pleasure. He could imagine people finding a reason for living in their work, but he had no work to show for his time on earth, He was 28 years old. Something inside him was angry but it didn't seem to have anything to do with the boredom of the universe he was stuck in. He hardly noticed other people, they were like parts in a machine to him. The world was the machine, and it didn't do him the favour of wanting him to suffer. No, because it ground him down automatically. He would have killed himself, but there was a small bit of religious teaching stuck in his brain, and anyway, he couldn't be bothered. And all the while he felt frightened. He didn't know what he was afraid of. Until he came here, to Leith Walk, and one moment he didn't know and the next moment he knew. He was frightened of death, nothing more or less, because in the end that was all there was to be afraid of. And when he knew it, he looked at death, and said: Come on, then. I'll meet you and I'll take you on. He stood there, a man still young, miserable with the grey world and his being lost in it, and he reached out over forty years ahead and shouted at death that he could see it hiding there and it might as well come out because he could look at it and still live on as a free man until the final reckoning came. And he felt so strongly and angry after that, burning up with hatred for death, and so he was alive.

John was quiet for a bit. Then he said: Let's call our first child Leith.

My surname's Walker.

Well. mine's Keith.

Come on, finish your bridie and go back to work.

John got up and stood closer to Gillian. Your hair's just like the adverts, he said. It smells like turkish delight.

(From 'The Brown Pint of Courage' by James Meek)