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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

Abolishing the 'Tampon Tax' should only be the start of Brexit reforms

IN MARCH 2016, Britain appeared to have scored a rare victory in Brussels. The deeply unpopular and unfair “tampon tax” – the 5 per cent VAT applied to women’s sanitary products – was finally going to ...

Pro or anti treaty? Could you make that choice?

A CENTURY AGO a plucky new nation, the Saorstat, embarked on a voyage. How could the Irish Free State survive and thrive outside the UK and strike up trade relations with the rest of the ...

Double Double Toil and Trouble - A Yes/Leave view of the general election

SINCE I LAST WROTE for ThinkScotland.org we have had a momentous election, which disappointed me in many ways. Wearing my "Yes" hat, I was disappointed (and frankly surprised to some extent) about the serious SNP ...

What’s better? Fracking or Wind Turbines?

IT IS AN ARTICLE OF FAITH amongst the environmental lobby that wind energy is good, benign and undisruptive, and that obtaining shale gas by hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ is damaging and disruptive.

The SNP's sectarian politics is no way to fight sectarianism

THE SNP does not shy away from ill-conceived, controversial legislation – you only have to look at the past few years: the Named Person Scheme, the destruction of British Transport Police in Scotland, and the ...

Why has the Scottish Office supported a poison pill in the Brexit Bill?

AT LONG LAST we have seen the first draft of the Great Repeal Bill. It was always going to be sport deciphering the jargon and legalese and sure enough it was worth the patience.

Are electric cars the future?

AS GOVERNMENTS continue to push for cars with lower CO2 emissions, most manufacturers have gone beyond simply making their diesel and petrol-engined models more efficient (although the results of this have been impressive). They have also ...

Neverendum: the referendum question in Quebec

ON 24 JULY 1967, President Charles De Gaulle of France made a rousing speech to a crowd of some twenty thousand in front of the city hall in Montreal, which culminated in the words ‘Long ...

Tory paternalism was the Conservative's problem, not the solution

THERE IS MISCHIEF brewing in Westminster, just in time for the summer recess of course. Apparently a vote for this was indeed a vote for that, and a... are you sick of this already? I ...