Panicking the public? How Covid stories don't stack up

ON FRIDAY Nicola Sturgeon addressed the nation yet again and openly considered the possibility of tightening current Covid restrictions further. Where is Scotland now? How did we get here? Where are we going?

THAT fishing deal - what really are the facts?

SO, THE DEAL HAS BEEN DONE and the new fisheries arrangement agreed. At the outset of the negotiations the UK government declared in The Future Relationship with the EU: The UK’s Approach to Negotiations (February 2020) that, ...

ThinkBooks: Despised: why the modern left loathes the working class

IN THE AFTERMATH of Labour’s crushing electoral defeat minds quickly turned to speculating how such a thing could have happened. Was it Brexit? Or perhaps the fatal element had been the character of the leader ...

Covid-19 in Scotland – what does the data really tell us?

WITH SCOTTISH EXCESS DEATHS approaching 6,000 for 2020 it is critically important we identify the causes of excess mortality. Historically, this has been an unprecedented year. Never before has so much infrastructure (including healthcare) been ...

Solidarity is why Britain works and the EU doesn’t

THE FAILURE of the UK Government over the last four years to resolve the Brexit impasse – coupled with its incoherent response to the Covid pandemic – has clearly provided ammunition for Scottish nationalists. Every ...

If Brexit will deliver independence why does Sturgeon fight it so much?

VICTIMHOOD has always been the core of nationalism. We are oppressed by Them: if we were free, our problems would be solved. 

This has been the lure of nationalism, and the reason why it is ...

The stark truth about Covid and the SNP

THERE IS A PERCEPTION in Britain that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have handled the Coronavirus pandemic well. Support for Scottish independence has, apparently, been strengthened by this belief. Nicola Sturgeon has dominated the SNP’s ...

First do no harm – An open letter from health professionals and scientists to the UK Prime Minister & First Ministers of the home nations

An open letter signed by nearly 500 health professionals and scientists has been sent to the Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford. The letter, entitled “First do no harm” – the medical principle that ...

Michele Ballantyne’s resignation highlights Scottish Tory blues

REMEMBER that heady time after Better Together when Ruth Davidson seemed to be leading a Scottish Conservative renaissance, throwing off the crusty old image of Scottish Tories as Westminster lackeys and delivering one breathtaking election ...

Scotland needs direct democracy not an authoritarian leader

THE TIMES REPORTED last year that increasing numbers of young people want a strong leader. Two thirds of younger voters are in favour of “strongman leaders” prepared to defy parliament. A quarter believe that democracy is ...

The India Cross – pandering to imperialism or apologising for the truth?

FROM A MORAL PERSPECTIVE, empire, which by definition implies conquest, can never be justified. Yet for most of world history empire was the normal mode of government and under different names it still exists today. Historians ...

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 ...