This is the October Editorial. As I watched First Minister’s Questions this week, the quote came to me “Oh what can ail thee knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering”  I suppose it was looking at the Labour benches, who sat, in thrall, as in the poem, but definitely not enthralled, as their leader dragged them doggedly further and further into the mire. We had been expecting some sort of a fightback from the Unionists, making a case for staying in the Union, but this was a very strange way to introduce it, and it flies in the face of reality.  We have had five years ofRead More →

When is a power not a power?  When you are the President of the USA it seems. Barack Obama was meant to be different.  Not being in the pocket of vested interests when first elected was meant to give him a free hand to sweep the same away.  But the inertia of office soon kicked in and any hope of radical change was quickly extinguished.  In many ways, this might have been just as well for, had expectations not been reset so early, his re-election might not have been so straightforward and who knows what course the US would be embarking on now. Already beingRead More →

On the fringes of Europe, a nation chooses whether or not to plunge itself into isolation, removing itself from the rest of the world. Business will falter as a result of this narrow minded parochial mindset. Families scattered across borders could find it more difficult to meet each other. What could, arguably, be seen as national pride and the desire for a nation to run its own affairs could be taken and twisted into a country having a smaller place on the world stage, and regressive effects on trade, culture and diplomacy. David Cameron’s plans for a referendum on the EU is far more isolationistRead More →

4 December, 2012 First Minister invites cross-party suggestions on press group Necessary for Scottish Parliament to act on self-regulation criteria – FM First Minister Alex Salmond today invited the main opposition parties to suggest suitable candidates to sit on the implementation group that he has proposed be set up to determine how self-regulation of the press can be recognised in Scots law following the Leveson report. Speaking at Holyrood, the First Minister said that whatever type of voluntary self-regulation model was devised by the press in the wake of Leveson, it was necessary for the Scottish Parliament to set the criteria by which any newRead More →