Queensferry Crossing is a bridge too far for the SNP spin machine

IT WAS all so different back at the beginning of September. On the day of the opening of the new Queensferry Crossing, the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: The Queensferry Crossing is a symbol of a ...

The carnage is our culture, let the vultures devour the carcass

WHEN MICHAEL GOVE was Education Secretary he found he had to take on the "Blob" of the establishment. The very educated establishment it appeared. So too conservatives have had to bite hard against established privilege in ...

Hammond’s Budget shows Scots Tory influence

IF THERE WERE ever any doubts as to the value of having 13 new Scottish Conservative MPs at Westminster, then the detail of Philip Hammond’s Budget this week made it clear. A whole raft of ...

Why are we funding enemies of our country?

FEW PEOPLE in European politics are as absurd as Leo Vadakar. The current Taoiseach has been very busy overplaying a weak hand badly.

I can't remember any Dublin politician being ...

How our criminal justice system is failing victims and their families

AS IT STANDS, those who suffer the most from crime find themselves side-lined in favour of a process that cares more about helping offenders than the rights or needs of victims.

According ...

How the SNP Government skews the tax debate

A NEW PAPER from the Scottish Government is keen for us to debate the future use of our income tax powers.  Our choices in this debate are framed thus: “income tax policy should ...

The Chancellor should raise whisky duty, and cut it too

I LOVED the dodgems as a boy. Driving around in circles, banging into other children and their suffering fathers. Then finally, the cars all stop and everyone returns to glum normality once the cash runs ...

Paradise lost in tax avoidance debate

THIS WEEK'S publication of the “Paradise Papers” reignited the public debate about tax avoidance. The revelation that various wealthy individuals would use offshore accounts in order to minimise their tax liability comes as no great ...

Where now for Spain and Catalonia?

WAS the Catalan vote for independence illegal? Yes. It’s that simple.

The 1978 Spanish Constitution, agreed across the country in the years after Franco’s death in 1975, makes two explicit provisions regarding ...

John Swinney at an impasse of his own making

NOT SURPRISINGLY, the SNP has gone very quiet about its named persons policy. This is not because the policy is now so discredited – the public have seen to that – but because the proposed ...

Strangers on a train – can be strangers to the truth

RECENTLY I took a train from Aberdeen to Glasgow. Behind me sat a gentlemen engrossed in the “Nat onal”. Across the aisle from him, a woman with children who, on seeing his comic struck up ...

A curious look at a curious cat

WHEN I HEARD Nicola Sturgeon state during the SNP conference that she proposes to launch a new public Scottish Energy Corporation (SEC) to provide cheap energy to help those 900,0000 Scots in energy poverty, I saw ...