Venezuela’s tragedy: the Cuban invasion keeps the regime alive

RECENT EVENTS in Venezuela have demonstrated just how difficult it is to remove an established totalitarian regime.  Despite poverty levels of over 90 per cent, widespread hunger and malnutrition, absence of electricity and water supply, ...

Despite the SNP bluster the EU Election proves Nicola Sturgeon’s rhetoric isn’t working

AT FIRST GLANCE, the EU election results in Scotland look great for the SNP. They managed to gain one more seat – bringing a total tally of three out of six – as well as ...

Simply having more democracy does not make it better

LAST THURSDAY during a sunny walkabout inspecting our potholed infrastructure in Crail, my fellow East Neuk councillor, whom I work well with, asked me about the EU elections. He wore a pained expression and said ...

The case for true independence requires Scotland must vote for Brexit

I TOOK PART in the recent BBC European Parliament election debate. As we entered the studio set, like gladiators walking into an arena, I noticed those around me were strangely quiet, apprehensive one might say. ...

Scottish Tory policy is like holding an empty sack

FEW CAN ADMIT to having escaped some of the myth and hysteria (can we still use that word?) about Game of Thrones. It is for many in politics the new House of Cardsand the parallels between it ...

Thunberg is naïve: renewables alone is an Illusion

THE VISIT of Greta Thunberg to the UK and the other climate protests have been well publicised, but the muddled thinking and inconsistency amongst global warming campaigners will inevitably result in little tangible progress in ...

Scottish Tories must confront their woolly mammoths

THERE IS NOT just an elephant in the room, but the biggest woolly mammoth imaginable. 

We’re facing the biggest political crisis of my lifetime. Not just in terms of our relationship with ...

Venezuela’s tragedy: How Chavez destroyed accountability

IT IS A COMMON FEATURE of totalitarian regimes that their leaders face no accountability. In order to exercise total control over a state, totalitarian regimes systematically erode financial, judicial, and political systems designed to check ...

A bit of a (rum) do

WHAT A WEEK! What should have been the first days of Brexit have left me as much a rabbit in the headlights as anyone, astonished by the collapse of national direction. This takes us straight ...

How SNP EU policy would plunge Scotland into darkness

THIS WEEKEND is when we go through the ritual of putting our clocks forward to British Summer Time, an exercise that inevitably reignites the bi-annual debate around changing the clock for half of the year. ...

Wake-up call rings as international decline of Scottish universities due to SNP policies is revealed

THIS WEEK, the European University Association published its latest report into the state of higher education sectors in 33 nations across Europe. It did not make for happy reading for the SNP. It points to ...

Time for Sturgeon to show leadership on 'othering'

I WROTE an article on this site back in January about the language that had crept into political discourse around the Brexit debate, with MPs like Anna Soubry facing regular abuse for their opinions. ...