THE haloes of popular household names such as ­Apple and Google are slipping, as even their devotees begin to realise that the refusal of these multi-billionaire corporations to pay any significant amount of tax in the countries where they make their profits is ­seriously damaging to those host communities.

Tomorrow afternoon, 11 Hibs players will take to the field for a date with destiny.

NOW we know. Because a water pump failed, Britain came within six hours of running out of gas in March.

It WAS one of those news items you have to catch twice because its horror was hard to believe the first time.

THERE are many competing demands on the public purse. Deciding on the merits of one project over another can be a thankless task, incredibly difficult and quite often controversial either way.

WHILE David Cameron was embarked on his latest round of diplomacy in Europe to try to get EU agreement on tackling tax avoidance by multinational companies, his Chancellor, George Osborne, was back in London responding to the report on the UK economy by the International Monetary Fund.

IF THE document on the Scottish economy published yesterday by Alex Salmond was an attempt to regain the independence initiative after a series of set-backs, it looks to have been at best a damp squib and at worst a failure.

Religious convictions, because they derive from faith in the Word of God as revealed in the Bible, are the most unshakeable of beliefs.

LEARNING that certain drugs are not available to patients on the NHS is no surprise.

Has the time come to halt the demonisation of bankers? Outgoing Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King thinks so. His point is not simply that it has gone on long enough and that it is time to move on.

SINCE the mid-1970s an important tenet of our system of law has been the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

In A speech he made in March last year, Alex Salmond cited Scotland’s first first minister Donald Dewar who said devolution was about more than our politics and our laws.

SCOTLAND’S treatment of cancer patients has been thrown into stark relief by the moving case of 63-year-old Maureen Fleming, a retired secretary from West Dunbartonshire.

THERE is no doubt it has become one of Edinburgh’s biggest eyesores.

THE taxman forces the closure of one Scottish business every working day of the year for failure to pay what is due to HM Revenue & Customs. This is just one of many brutal facts thrown up by the recession from which we are struggling to emerge.

THE referendum in September 2014 will not just be a vote on Scottish independence, it will also be a vote on whether Scotland has a future in the European Union. That, in essence, is what Alex Salmond said yesterday in what could be a landmark moment in the Scottish constitutional debate.

SINCE he left Number 10 in 2010, Gordon Brown has mostly shunned the political limelight.

FERGUS Ewing has been a well-regarded minister for energy, tourism and the economy.

GORDON Brown’s entry into the independence referendum campaign tomorrow, at the launch of Scottish Labour’s pro-UK campaign in the referendum, marks the return to the fray of one of the biggest beasts in modern Scottish politics.

WHEN you think about it, the idea of shops closing at 6pm seems contrary to just about everything else in today’s society.