Labour MP Ian Murray, who is fronting the fan-led group hoping to gain control of Hearts, held a webchat following the club’s announcement that it is to enter administration.

AN INDEPENDENT Scotland would need to have its own GCHQ or face the prospect of having the British Government spy on Scottish citizens and then passing the information to Holyrood, an academic has warned.

DAVID Cameron won agreement yesterday from Britain’s network of overseas territories and Crown dependencies to sign up to a clampdown on tax dodging.

IN THE small garden of his grey pebble-dashed semi, Aberdonian Gordon Kelloh is summing up a familiar list of concerns about the city.

PARENTS are mounting a bid to create their own “alternative” state school, amid fresh calls for local authorities to provide greater choice within the education system.

THE Quarry may have been Iain Banks’s last novel, but there could be one more book to come from the late writer – a collection of poetry.

FIVE Syrians on a flight diverted to Scotland amid a terrorist alert have claimed asylum, police have said.

SCOTLAND’S Children’s Commissioner has claimed that touching children is “fundamental” to their development and that the “pendulum of safety has swung too far” in their relationship with adults such as teachers.

SCOTLAND’S post office ­network could be under threat following a vote for independence because the cost of subsidising it would be too great, a new Westminster document will claim.

A LARGE-scale police raid on Edinburgh’s brothels has been criticised by a charity that offers support to sex workers.

SCOTTISH Conservative leader Ruth Davidson yesterday backed a massive shake-up in Scotland’s education system, saying parents should be able to pick and choose where to send their children in order to weed out “failing” schools.

THEY call him Tata – the Xhosa word for “father”. And last night, as family members gathered at Nelson Mandela’s bedside after he was rushed to hospital with a lung infection, South Africans across the world prayed for their beloved father figure.

A ROW has erupted over ­payments to a handful of senior managers at the State Hospital at Carstairs at a time when nurses on the front line have had their pay frozen.

EDUCATION secretary Mike Russell will this week become the first politician to address the annual conference of Scotland’s largest teaching union, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

A prestigious school which has nurtured some of Scottish rugby’s most illustrious names has withdrawn from a raft of fixtures amid fears that the gulf in size between players could lead to its pupils being injured.

PREGNANT women are to be offered carbon monoxide monitoring to measure their exposure to cigarette smoke.

RUTH Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, has rounded on “apologetic” colleagues who have a “sackcloth and ashes” view of the party’s future, in a combative riposte to critics of her leadership.

FAR right demonstrators confronted anti-fascist protesters in Edinburgh and London during events organised to mark the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby.

DOZENS of “windcrofters” are emerging across Scotland under a new drive that offers landowners free power in exchange for allowing developers to erect mini-turbines on their property.

IN THE age-old war of the sexes over who fares better 
behind the wheel it is enough ammunition to keep the battle raging for years to come.