Barcelona Attacks: Edinburgh Next?

ANOTHER WEEK, another terrorist outrage in a European city. This time Barcelona (and nearby Cambrils) joined Nice, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and London (three times) in the list of recent targets for ISIS’ new terrorism strategy. This so-called “low tech” terrorism, involving driving vehicles at ...

Reasons to be Cheerful Part 3: After Brexit science shall still flourish

LEAVING the European Union creates huge challenges and opportunities for the UK. What is clear is that the biggest challenge for science is to maintain cooperation with other EU countries. Partnerships both professional and personal ...

The Meeting

DEAR READER, during my absence this past month I have been asked several times why modernist art became so readily accepted, especially in view of the things I have explained. The short answer is – ...

Why I’m still not excited about Tidal Power

THE TIDAL POWER company Atlantis has announced that the four 1.5MW turbines they installed in the Pentland Firth have generated 1GWh of electricity. When the company started installation of the first turbine last September I ...

Whose problem is the Irish problem?

THE IRISH TAOISEACH’S recent speech in Belfast repeated a standardised pro-EU political position including the mantra that there should be “a plan for a hard Brexit“. This echoed what many of the commentariat demand and, ...

Will dog days give way to dog fights in the Tory party?

WHILE under-secretaries reach for long drinks under blistering skies, their betters hike the shores of Lake Garda. Over these dog days, information reaches us slowly and indirectly, if at all. Any sensible blogger has knocked ...

10 Things to thank the Americans for

BASHING our transatlantic cousins has been a popular sport for as long as I can remember, whether it be for their extraordinary dress sense, extraordinary appetites, or extraordinary rendition – or perhaps all three and ...

Brexit is a chance to rebalance our economy

THE LEFT has long insisted that Margaret Thatcher destroyed our manufacturing base and created an economy almost wholly reliant on services, in particular the inherent vice of economic production: finance.

Like most ...

Big Bobby is watching you

FEW THINGS irritate advocates of civil liberties that the perverse need of our authorities to spy on fellow citizens.

The Oyster card you scan on a bus,  the smartphone that logs onto available networks, the ...

The real costs of wind energy defeat the case for having it

THERE ARE COSTS and benefits to everything in life. The costs of wind energy are high and the benefits few.

Every country needs a cheap, reliable supply of electricity and wind energy ...

How the business rate revaluation threatens small businesses

FAR FROM the Madding Crowd is a small bookshop in Linlithgow. But one of some distinction. It runs West Lothian's only literary Festival, organised several school book weeks (and our First Minister's aim is to ...

Crown cash king again - Let's have a one thousand pound note

PLAY IT COOL Rodney, play it cool, know what I mean? That scene where David Jason as Del Boy falls through the bar is a British classic. Comedy gold, and so very 1980s. The carnations, ...