Leaders - Scotsman.com

Scottish shops were hit by the biggest fall in sales in a decade. Picture: Getty

Leaders: A glimmer of light amid the high street gloom

FOR Scotland’s high streets and those who spend in them, these are groundhog days. Figures from the Scottish Retail Consortium show that January recorded a 1.5 per cent fall in sales, the biggest monthly decline for more than a decade.

Leaders: Rangers FC in administration has implications beyond Ibrox

EVEN for dedicated football fans, the latest turn in the deeply troubled affairs of Rangers Football Club challenges comprehension as to motivation and consequence

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Leaders: Argentina tests Britain’s resolve

LIKE the rules of political mastery, which have changed little since Machiavelli’s The Prince in 1513, the rules of international diplomacy are still largely the same as they were centuries ago. While the way countries wage war has changed beyond imagining, the way they try to prevent wars and jockey for international advantage has not.

Potholes: an increasingly common sight on Scottish roads. Picture: Dan Phillips

Leaders: Efficient spending can still save us from the rocky roads to ruin

THIS may not be the grim austerity era our grandparents experienced in the immediate post-war years.

Donald Trump turned on his once ally, Alex Salmond. Picture: PA

Leaders: Donald Trump’s swipe at wind farm site puts him in the rough

CONSIDERING that it was First Minister Alex Salmond who supported Donald Trump’s controversial luxury golf resort in Aberdeenshire and argued the case for its economic benefits in the teeth of widespread local opposition, the latest letter from the tycoon is astonishing in both content and tone.

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Finance Secretary John Swinney. Picture: PA

Leaders: John Swinney’s cash giveaway buys the SNP some extra approval

FINANCE secretary John Swinney’s last-minute distribution of extra spending as the Scottish Parliament moved to final approval of his budget for Scottish Government spending in 2012-13 had the look of pennies being thrown by a departing bride and groom.

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Should Peter Housden have been criticised for what he said about independence?

Leaders: Empathy does not imply any lack of impartiality

HAS Scotland’s top civil servant, Sir Peter Housden, “gone native” and ceased to be impartial at the outset of a long and highly sensitive run-up to Scotland’s independence referendum?

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What effect would independence have on credit rating? Picture: Jane Barlow

Leaders: A question of credit no-one can answer for certain

Between now and the independence referendum in late 2014, argument will rage over what life in an independent Scotland would be like. A recurring topic in this argument will be the state of Scotland’s public finances. This issue has sprung to the fore in the wake of statements from the world’s leading credit-rating agencies that an independent Scotland could not count on inheriting the UK’s top-drawer triple-A rating status on its sovereign debt.

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Leaders: True value may lie in a wider view of public spending

IF A GOVERNMENT department was spending £9 billion a year and yet was unable to say what benefit taxpayers received from this spending, an outcry and ministerial resignations would follow.

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Leader: Which of us gets to vote?

EXPATS are famed for their love of the old country, and perhaps Scottish expats more than most. It is not for nothing that Scotland has a host of traditional songs about people “far across the foam” yearning for their “granny’s Hielan’ hame”.

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Leader: Perfect intentions

NO DOUBT the latest guidelines being considered by officials at City of Edinburgh Council are well intentioned.

Leaders: Scottish Government must bring in the experts

RESISTING the temptation to apply the obvious epithet, the critique of the Scottish Government’s case for both independence and devo-max by Professor Arthur Midwinter of Edinburgh University’s Institute of Public Sector Accounting Research, which we carry today, could be fairly described as damning.

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Leaders: Answers raise more questions about independence

THE more we learn of the Nationalists’ plans for an independent Scotland, the less we know for sure.

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Leaders: Humiliation deserved but we, too, must learn the lessons

HOW are the once all-mighty fallen. Sir Fred Goodwin is now plain Fred. A career in which he rose from modest beginnings in Paisley to bestride the world of banking has ended in ignominy, as an establishment which embraced the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland at the height of his power and influence stripped him of the honour it had bestowed on him.

Leaders: RBS bonus retreat a potential watershed for banking sector

IN OPTING to forgo a £960,000 bonus payment, RBS chief executive Stephen Hester has acted wisely if tardily – and put his own senior staff in the firing line.

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Leader: Falklands needs our military assurance

ARGENTINA government has been loudly rattling and waving sabres at Britain’s continued possession of the Falkland Islands, or the Malvinas, as the southern Atlantic remnant of the British Empire is named on Argentine maps.

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Leader: Salmond’s slip may have highlighted a glaring flaw

ALEX Salmond, normally a sure-footed performer, appeared to have stumbled yesterday. During a television interview, he argued that if Scotland became independent, there would still be a United Kingdom. The continuance of the UK would be assured, because the Queen would still be the head of the independent Scottish state.

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Male superiority goes into reverse

ANOTHER bastion of male superiority has fallen. According to a survey by NCP, women, it seems, are better at parking cars than men.

Leader: Powerhouse no more

ONE of the reasons why a new road bridge over the River Forth is a priority of the Scottish Government – apart from the obvious and rather compelling one that the existing road bridge has corrosion difficulties – is that such a large engineering undertaking is capable of injecting massive amounts of money into the Scottish economy at a time when growth is faltering and investment is scarce.

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Leader: Let young adults vote

THE Scottish Government’s suggestion that 16 and 17-year-olds be given the chance to vote in the independence referendum has elicited much critical comment from opposition politicians, who have questioned the SNP’s motives.

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Leader: The system, not Stephen Hester, is at fault

IS STEPHEN Hester entitled to a bonus of £1 million? Pegging it at about £963,000 is the equivalent of a supermarket pricing soap powder at £4.99 and fools no-one.

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Leader: Unorthodox parole rule is deeply unsettling

TOMMY Sheridan, former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, might have considered himself fortunate. He was convicted on five counts of perjury and given a three-year jail sentence. Having served a year, he is now allowed out on parole.

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Leader: Details must come before a decision on independence

THE Scotsman retains an open mind as to the number of options that might appear on the independence referendum ballot paper. The clarity of a single yes/no question is appealing; Mr Salmond’s manoeuvring to divide the Unionist camp with a “devo-max” option is only too transparent.

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Leader: Simple, clear and decisive? Well, yes and no

TO SECEDE or not to secede, that is the constitutional question facing Scotland. Twenty-four hours after the launch of the Nationalist government’s consultation paper on the referendum and questions over the question have emerged to which there appear to be no satisfactory answers.

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Leader: Scotland needs a lean police machine

CUTTING back on administrative support jobs in any organisation is a painful but necessary part of adaptation to changing times and priorities.

Leader: Tweet in haste, repent at leisure

TWITTER ye not would seem sound advice for any new member of the fast-growing Twitter-sphere unfamiliar with its wrecking potential. Avoid the temptation to “make a statement” by an angry or offensive tweet that might seem clever in draft but all-destructive once the “send” button is hit.

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Leader: Much more to be made clear before we reach journey’s end

SCOTLAND, First Minister Alex Salmond solemnly proclaimed yesterday, is on a journey. It is a journey he and the Scottish National Party government he leads believe has as its destination the end of a union which has endured for more than three centuries and a declaration of the restoration of Scottish sovereignty. Mark it in your diary: 5 May, 2016. Independence Day.

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Leader: Coffee penny-pinching takes the biscuit

POLITICAL battle may rage over devo-max. But in the corridors and carriages of ScotRail trains, there is one issue even hotter: coffee-min.

Leader: Dreary days of enforced austerity

CUT spending and bear down on the fripperies: great advice. A snapshot survey of the nation’s finances finds households are cutting back on frivolous spending and focusing on the essentials.

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Leader: Referendum debate gets down to the nitty-gritty

WHEN he stands up in Holyrood this afternoon to unveil the Scottish Government’s consultation paper on the independence referendum, and then hosts what is expected to be a packed press conference at Edinburgh Castle, Alex Salmond will articulate what the SNP believes is the core message to convince Scots to vote to break up the United Kingdom: that we will be more prosperous as a nation in our own right.

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Leader: Shareholders put down a marker

OF THE many examples of corporate pay excess, the planned share bonus award to Sir Bill Gammell of Cairn Energy could not be regarded as an outrageous case of reward for failure.

Leader: Voters need the truth, not just propaganda

THE wages of sin is death. The wages of spin is the death of the truth. That is the only conclusion in examining the contents of the e-mails relating to the SNP’s referendum policy highlighted yesterday, which shed some light into the dark recesses of the Nationalists’ ruthless propaganda machine.

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Leader: DNA plays a part, but lifestyle counts too

DOOMED to an impaired life before we are even born? This would seem the depressing conclusion of research by the University of Glasgow’s College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, after studying blood samples of people across deprived and affluent areas of the city.

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Leader: Tinker, tailor, soldier … housebuilder

HOME owners in the proposed model village of New Esk, close to the Aberdeenshire-Angus border, should not be surprised if their radio reception has an occasional strange crackle: that may be the sound of deepest secrets.

Leader: Change is coming – and not just for Scotland

HAS the long-predicted English backlash against Scotland begun? On the evidence of polling released today, it may well have.

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Leader: Benefit plan deserves a fair hearing

THE Lords’ revolt against the coalition’s Welfare Reform Bill is expected to continue tonight with an attempt to throw out the key notion of a benefits cap.

Leader: Liquor and loose women likely on Rabbie’s menu

ROBERT Burns has his 253rd birthday on Wednesday. If Rabbie were around today, what poem would we ask him to recite?

Leader: Petty restrictions

IMMIGRATION is a contentious issue that raises strong emotions, but the fact remains that successive waves of incomers to Scotland - Irish, Italian, Pakistani and Polish to name just a few - have had an enormously positive effect on this country, helping to make it the diverse and dynamic society we enjoy today.

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Leader: Defence is now a pressing issue

ONE cheer for Alex Salmond. This newspaper has been arguing for some time that the First Minister must make clear his intentions about how Scotland would move to independence, and what the practicalities of that transition would be. After the past few days of political skirmishing on how to defend a sovereign Scotland, we know a little bit more about the SNP leader’s views on this important aspect of the independence project.

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