Opinion
Comment: Changing of guard bodes ill for FirstGroup
THE expected retirement this week of Martin Gilbert as chairman of transport operator FirstGroup follows similar announcements over the last month from Lord Smith at Weir, Sir Win Bischoff at Lloyds Banking Group and Richard Findlay at STV. The guard is clearly changing.
1 comment
Bill Jamieson: Finally, the recovery gains traction
WHAT now unites Alex Salmond, the CBI, Sir Mervyn King, the OECD and the Federation of Small Businesses? It’s the economy, stupid.
3 comments
Euan McColm: Farage showed his true colours
IT WAS Otto Inglis I felt sorry for. Nobody cared about Otto, with his bright smile and his “wows”. While Ukip leader Nigel Farage held court, Otto bounced around, working the edge of the room.
18 comments
Claire Black: Young women face the same problems as men
DIANE Abbott MP, is a woman I have some trouble taking seriously since my retinas were scarred watching as she and Michael Portillo writhed together, OK sat, on the This Week sofa, and also that time she said private schools were bad before promptly sending her son to one.
Comment
Leaders: No hiding place for abusive men
SINCE the mid-1970s an important tenet of our system of law has been the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
3 comments
H&M earns plus points for hot girl in a bikini
H&M is not, for me, a happy place. I associate it with fruitlessly searching for a school skirt acceptable to a teenager and getting up very early in the morning to queue for a Marni jacket.
Gerald Warner: Feminism driving holocaust of abortion
THE case of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist convicted of three charges of first degree murder in America, has brought home to some people a few of the realities of abortion, which is now a global holocaust promoted pre-eminently by the same government whose laws incongruously condemned Gosnell.
9 comments
Drumlanrig: Even cabbies flustered by Farage farrago
The Farage stushie in and around the Canon’s Gait pub has already entered Scottish political folklore. Shortly after it was over and the Ukip leader had been escorted off the premises in a polis meat wagon, thirsty hacks retreated to the Holyrood bar to swap “war stories”.
1 comment
British identity is key to debate on independence
WITHIN weeks of being elected to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 I learned the hard way how fraught issues of identity politics could be. I found myself on the front pages of most newspapers twice in one week for a stance on opposite sides of the same identity coin and managed to irk nationalists and unionists in equal measure. Nice.
48 comments
Leaders
Leaders: No hiding place for abusive men
SINCE the mid-1970s an important tenet of our system of law has been the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.
3 comments
Leaders: Are Scots happy to walk away? | Natural conflict
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.
4 comments
Leaders: Heated debate, not civil war | Noteworthy plea
IN 500 days, Scots will go to the polls to decide this country’s future. It will be an extraordinary and highly charged moment.
2 commentsLeaders: Salmond faces internal battle | Students at loss
AFTER the toughest week for the Yes campaign so far, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is restlessness in the ranks of those who are pushing for Scottish independence.
2 comments
Leaders: Devo-sceptics a test for Lamont
THEY have been carping from the sidelines for many months. But at Scottish Labour’s conference in Inverness this weekend the devo-sceptic wing of the party’s Westminster contingent of MPs has finally been flushed out into the open.
14 comments
Andrew Wilson
British identity is key to debate on independence
WITHIN weeks of being elected to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 I learned the hard way how fraught issues of identity politics could be. I found myself on the front pages of most newspapers twice in one week for a stance on opposite sides of the same identity coin and managed to irk nationalists and unionists in equal measure. Nice.
48 comments
Andrew Wilson: The duty of former leaders is to respect their baton carriers
THE noble Lord Lawson of Blaby is entitled to his views on pulling the UK out of Europe.
3 comments
Andrew Wilson: Destructive personal abuse has no place in decent political debate
DOUGLAS Alexander, in my estimation, is one of the most talented, thoughtful and capable politicians of his generation. He has a devotion to public service that is proper and deep.
15 comments
Andrew Wilson: Policy row is all ‘should’, no ‘could’
AS SO often is the case, the few words of a Tweet managed to sum up a large and complex, but inevitably noisy and occasionally risible, debate for me last week.
4 comments
Andrew Wilson: Time to lay boom and bust to rest
HOW rare it is we get a chance to talk to our younger selves like I did this week. It’s funny how much you recognise and how much seems foreign.
5 comments
Euan McColm
Euan McColm: Labour rolls out Brown in a bold effort to rewrite Scotland’s story
THE crucial difference between the SNP’s story and those told by many other nationalist movements, is that it’s primarily about ourselves rather than others.
44 comments
Euan McColm: SNP’s distancing ploy won’t look so clever come pocket money time
ONE thing is absolutely certain: the rise of the UK Independence Party in local elections in England and a smidgeon of Wales proves something. It gives us all the evidence we need. And the really good news is that, so far, the something it proves can be whatever you want, depending on your political position.
10 comments
Euan McColm: Church covenant tough for new state
THERE’S nothing like a great TV occasion to unite us all. An Olympic Games, a royal wedding, a jubilee party: these big events help create some sense of community. They bring us together, as we sit alone watching telly, eating biscuits from commemorative tins.
1 comment
Euan McColm: Faith schools can teach the rest of
I WAS educated, frequently against my will and with no great success, at three Proddie schools – two primaries and one secondary – in the West of Scotland.
30 comments
Gerald Warner
Gerald Warner: Feminism driving holocaust of abortion
THE case of Kermit Gosnell, the abortionist convicted of three charges of first degree murder in America, has brought home to some people a few of the realities of abortion, which is now a global holocaust promoted pre-eminently by the same government whose laws incongruously condemned Gosnell.
9 comments
Gerald Warner: Irresponsibility and cynicism lie behind calls to expel Trident
AMONG the ragtag-and-bobtail of Jurassic socialists, fading Blair babes and public-teat sucklings that calls itself “Civic Scotland” it has long been an article of faith that Britain’s nuclear deterrent is “immoral” and the fact that it desecrates Scottish soil is “obscene”.
22 comments
Gerald Warner: Egotists of the Enlightenment wreaked destruction on mankind
‘ENLIGHTENMENT values” is becoming the fashionable rallying cry for the zealots who espouse the “progressive” cause; from Will Hutton, who numbers “climate-change deniers” among contemporary enemies of the so-called Enlightenment, to the inevitable Richard Dawkins, an eclectic congregation of comic singers is invoking this mantra.
22 comments
Gerald Warner: Obama blight’s benefits Bush
DUBYA’S stock is rising: it might be premature to call it a bull market, but George W Bush is recovering his popularity and esteem to a degree that his notorious comrade-in-arms Tony Blair will never achieve.
11 comments
Gerald Warner: We should fight Hungary’s corner
ON THE same day, almost at the hour, that Margaret Thatcher died the Eurosceptic baton was picked up by another European leader.
33 comments
Chitra Ramaswamy
Chitra Ramaswamy: A toast to vermin
MONDAY mornings are never the easiest. What should feel as fresh and full of possibilities as a newly washed sheet can instead, after you’ve seen more than 1,000 of them, feel as sad and tired as an old pair of pants.
Alice Wyllie: A bit of down-spicing
A FRIEND recently announced that there are two things all couples argue about: money and sex.
Chitra Ramaswamy: Great British fallout
THERE is an old saying, repeated in kitchens up and down the country on sad Sundays. When in doubt, bake.
Letters
Western Isles’ Arctic heroes
NOWHERE was the war at sea followed more closely than in the Western Isles of Scotland. Each time it was announced over the wireless that a ship was lost, the islanders wondered if husbands, sons and brothers were safe.
Nazis murdered without emotion
I WAS interested by Dani Garavelli’s linking of Stuart Hall with the Nazis, “cruel, cold figures who stalked the concentration camps” (12 May). This presents an inaccurate image of the Nazi attitude to exterminating “undesirables”. Sadism and perversion were not their driving force; indeed Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the scheme, was described by psychiatrists as perfectly normal. Equally normal were the many other Germans, both civilian and military, who willingly joined in.
1 commentWhen a junket comes around
YOUR article on the Dutch design for a “cyclist-safe” roundabout carried welcome information for those of us who enjoy travelling by bike (News, 5 May). The fact that the Scottish Government is to examine the feasibility of introducing it is particularly welcome.
1 commentHypocrisy of EU ‘democrats’
JAMES Temple-Smithson, Head of the European Parliament Office in Edinburgh states: “The EU has an obligation to act when it fears that fundamental democratic rights are being threatened” (Letters 12 May). That is good to hear.
4 commentsScottish Labour can’t convert English Tories
“DITCH the Tories not the Union” says Gordon Brown (News, 12 May). Obviously his recent sabbatical has not improved his intellectual insight.
3 comments
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Weather for Edinburgh
Monday 20 May 2013
Today
Thunderstorm
Temperature: 9 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: West
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Sunny spells
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