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Posted on Monday, November 07, 2011 8:32 PM
By serendipity we came across two interesting articles on charity and charities this weekend. The first comes fromBrendan O’Neill of Spiked, a summary of his lecture to the Liberty League last month attacking the concept of ‘the poor’ and the moralising of those who purport to help them and the perceived ‘underclass’. “We should be super-sceptical whenever we hear the phrase ‘the underclass’… because I can guarantee you that every time you hear those phrases, you will discover far more about the person doing the talking than you will about the people being talked about” |
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Posted on Sunday, October 30, 2011 6:43 PM
Has Dr Eilidh Whiteford now taken her grievance a step too far? In today’sScotland on Sunday, she likens the alleged bully-boy tactics of Labour MP and chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee Ian Davidson to women who are subjected to domestic abuse and are said to be’ asking for it’. Methinks the lady doth protest a tad too much. As doesthe paper’s editorial. Now we hold no brief for Mr Davidson, who we suspect is a product of that old West of Scotland school where men are men and women belong in the scullery. |
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Posted on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 4:17 PM
So, are we convinced by the Prime Minister and Chris Huhne’s little chat with the energy companies? Did we see the big six retreating cowed, licking their wounds and promising we’d all be warm this winter. Porcine squadrons more like. Instead, we’re to be sent little leaflets urging us to switch to another company charging almost exactly the same, and those of us who have the temerity to cling to quarterly bills to go for that direct debit. |
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Posted on Friday, October 14, 2011 9:35 AM
All this week the Guardian has been running a series of articles and readers’ comments under the banner ofDisunited Kingdomthat looks at the process of devolution in all three administrations. What makes it interesting, apart from excellent (if predictable) contributions fromProfessor John Curtice,AL KennedyandSimon Jenkinsamongst others, is that this is almost the first time that a UK-wide newspaper has treated the subject of devolution and independence with anything approaching seriousness. |
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Posted on Thursday, October 06, 2011 10:04 PM
We can't help feeling we should be exercised over the Scottish Tory election, but frankly, the party seems so hell bent on destroying itself one way or another that it’s impossible for even political nerds like us to maintain much enthusiasm for the details. The most interesting press contribution we’ve seen so far came fromKenny Farquharson in last week’s Scotland on Sunday; if Murdo Fraser wins, he thinks, and presumably, all goes according to plan, the formation of a new centre right party believing in devo-max will galvanise those of all parties who support this putative second option on the referendum ballot. |
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Posted on Tuesday, August 02, 2011 8:12 AM
We’ve said it before. They’re looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope. We can’t help feeling that unionists down south are missing a huge opportunity for political point scoring and increasing the union dividend immeasurably by not starting HST2 from this end and working south. The project could adopt the Waverley line, now stuck with contractual difficulties in that no-one is quite sure how the Scottish Futures Trust not-for-profit alternative to PFI actually will work. Trains need only stop at the new Tweedbank station before heading south-west to Carlisle, opening up the largest swathe of countryside in Europe not served by a railway to freight and passengers. |
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Posted on Sunday, July 31, 2011 3:56 PM
This week the spectral figure of Al-Megrahi came back to haunt the Scottish government. Pictures of the released Lockerbie bomber wheeled from his deathbed to a rally of Gaddafi supporters revived angst amongst victims’ families in the US and continued mixed backing and condemnation for Kenny MacAskill at home. Eddie Barnes in today’s Scotland on Sundaysays the Justice for Megrahi group is calling for us to open the door of Greenock Prison for him to return, rather than face the extradition being eyed up by US senators led once more by Robert Menendez. |
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Posted on Monday, April 18, 2011 1:39 PM
Archie Stirling explains why he's not standing for Holyrood this time round... "The country's voters are being short-changed, with the party machines determining the shape of the Scottish political landscape With the Holyrood election campaign now in full flow, the more assiduous among you may have noticed that neither my name nor that of my party, Scottish Voice, is among the runners and riders. After my first (and expensive) attempt to become an MSP in 2007, I thought long and hard before deciding to eschew a second opportunity to make my principal place of work that architectural aberration at the foot of the Royal Mile. |
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Posted on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 3:02 PM
Now his new leaderEd Milibandhas also sought to distance himself from the great unlamented Gordon by half-apologising for Labour’s failure to regulate the banks. If either of them had any sense of contrition, they would have more accurately said, “Labour didn’t get it right on the economy |
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Posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 2:00 PM
Our readers (I live in hope) will have been following the daily dramas unfolding in Egypt. Even so, they may have missed our faintly ridiculous, so far apparently incompetent and embarrassingly home-grown European Foreign Policy Commissioner, who said,“[there is] the need for an orderly transition and concrete and decisive measures...” We actually pay for this school of the ******** obvious nonsense from an unelected (both in the UK and in Europe) bureaucrat operating so far beyond her competence as to be positively dangerous. |
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