No region of Scotland should be dragged out of Britain against its will

THE 2014 INDYREF required only a Scotland-wide simple majority of valid votes cast.  If there were to be a repeat an IndyRef2 should, conversely, require a simple majority of the registered electorate.

In ...

New defence spending has the potential to revive British shipbuilding

CREDIT where credit is due. The predicted announcement by Boris Johnson that the UK will launch its largest investment in defence since the Cold War, with a call to end an “era of retreat”, and ...

It is time to call out the Scottish Government’s Voodoo Data

WHAT IS WRONG with Scotland? For many ThinkScotland readers, the short answer will be nationalism and/or the SNP. But even if the SNP weren’t running Scotland, would we really be alright? Would the rest of ...

Scotland’s Brexit must seize opportunities like fishing and CANZUK

WHILE COVID-19 appears to impact primarily the old and those with pre-existing health problems, the long-term ramifications of lockdowns will disproportionately impact the young. This week we learned that the UK unemployment rate rose by ...

Would you really put yourself ‘in for a penny….’?

IF ONE THING has bedevilled the SNP’s Scexit campaign, it is the currency issue. Losing the pound Sterling was one of the greatest concerns in 2014 among those who voted No to leaving the UK. 

The evidence does not lie – the SNP is bad for your health

I VOTED FOR DEVOLUTION in 1997 from a sense of Scottishness and because I thought bringing decision making closer to home would improve our public services. But Scotland has never been so divided and unhappy ...

In defence of David Hume

IN HIS PLAY, “The Crucible”, Arthur Miller has the protagonist John Proctor, say the following,         

"We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the ...

How we found 93 per cent of No voters would like to vote tactically to defeat the SNP

TWO YEARS AGO a few Aberdeen City and Shire Better Together veterans, including the two chairmen Ian Lakin and Professor Hugh Pennington (better known as Nicola Sturgeon’s Covid bête noire) got together to create Scotland Matters. 

Devolving more powers – or launching union-focussed parties – offer no solution to the nationalist threat

ONE OF THE REASONS for the deep and debilitating incoherence of the unionist response to the SNP’s Covid-fuelled resurgence is that different parts of it seem to be trapped at different, equally useless stages of ...

For secession to be democratic a majority of Scots must vote to leave the union

THERE IS NO INTERNATIONALLY AGREED principle for the maintenance or breakup of states even within Europe. While Czechs and Slovaks are rightly proud that their ‘velvet divorce’ break-up of the former Czechoslovakia in 1992, was ...

£3m is needed this winter to stop closures of outdoor education centres – and it’s needed now

THERE IS a very blunt message coming from those who run Scotland’s outdoor education centres and we all need to pay attention. They are telling us that around half of the 36 centres currently operating will probably have to close by ...

Pandemic planning needs to keep the City alive now – or there shall be nothing left open for the future

EDINBURGH CITY COUNCIL is at it again, planning the big picture future whilst the city slowly stops turning.  

Wednesday this week brought a report to the Planning Committee to commission a ‘Strategy for Princes ...