Brexit “Pants on fire!”

POLITICIANS have never had much of a reputation for straightforwardness – it is of the essence of their calling that hard lines get softened. We are more than a century away from Victorian standards of ...

Renewables fail us again

ONE DOES NOT have to work in electricity supply to recognise how electricity supports almost every aspect of our lives.  There would be no modern financial services, no food storage, no instant power and light, no ...

Theresa May: the worst English ruler since Mary Tudor?

IT WOULD Be foolish not to see the Chequers settlement for the shocker it is. May is transparently trying to shunt any kind of palpable Brexit into the sidings, with baleful consequences. Possibly if they ...

How recycling contributes to marine plastic pollution

WHILE MUCH FUSS is made about recycling, the majority of what we send to so-called mechanical-biological waste treatment plants can’t be recycled at all. So thousands of tonnes of plastic are quietly landfilled, incinerated or ...

Battery storage has a long way to go before it will make a difference to wind power inefficiency

A BATTERY of 1MWh connected to Hywind's 30 MW of offshore wind turbinesdoes not represent a landmark in making wind generation reliable. These two numbers tell the whole story. The turbines can produce 30 ...

The European Council - what needs to be said...

MOST THINGS are what they seem to be. Brexit suffered a stumble three weeks ago, with the lamentable “Technical Note on Temporary Customs Arrangements” and its last minute weasel-words about “intentions” and “backstop”. On the ...

Just what did Jim Sillars say to the Scottish Secretary?

FOR THE AVOIDENCE OF DOUBT Jim Sillars has kindly given us the letter he sent to David Mundell…

21stJune , 2018

The Rt. Hon. David Mundell, Secretary of State, 

Potholes ARE politics!

IT’S A LONG-HELD JOKE that the way to get elected is to start a local pothole campaign. It’s a political love-hate relationship with something that recurs year after year.  It’s British politics through and through; satirical, ...

Growth Commission, really? Here's how to create new Scottish growth

MY FIRST REVIEW of the Sustainable Growth Commission revealed its inherent centralism; a stance that forces it into the error of trying to improve innovation, growth and productivity by state planning.  Economic experience tells us ...

Scotland PLC cannot be invented

THERE’S A LOT to learn from the Growth Commission Report, but not about growth.

Rather, its importance is to illustrate how to dig a hole and then fall into it; it’s a ...

The Growth Commission’s recipe for recession

THE SNP’S ‘Growth Commission’ – designed to recast the economic case for breaking up the UK – proposes measures that would restrict growth and damage business and jobs. As Chairman of Scottish-Business.UKit is clear ...

The Growth Commission should be renamed the 'Recession Commission'

ANDREW Wilson’s Growth Commission is finally with us. After reading it I feel as though I’ve just woken up from a bad dream in which I’m struggling to find answers to problems that in reality ...