Jim Lynch (Page 9)

New compiler;  We say farewell, on the Flag only, to Jennifer Dunn, who will still be writing in the Scots Independent, and welcome to Alison Thewliss;  Alison’s  first Flag will be next week.  She will give us a brief biography and a picture. Jennifer has been contributing to the Flag for quite some time; she has also been contributing to the Scots Independent since before I became Editor.     The Isle of Man I was most intrigued to read that First Minister Alex Salmond had written an article  in the Mail on Sunday on currency, and I looked in vain in Monday’s Herald, theRead More →

St Andrews On Monday 1st April I was reading with great interest a report about the Principal of St Andrew’s University, expressing her view that £9000 was a good price to pay for a degree from that institution; this, on the front page of the Herald, named the Principal as Professor Louise Richardson.  The report continued on Page 2, with a picture of Louise Robertson; in fairness they also did an interview and profile on her on Page 13. Such slips are commonplace in the Herald these days, but no correction was noted the following day, but then they had another slip that took upRead More →

  At long last we have the date of the Referendum, when  the people of Scotland  will be asked if we want Independence. We were asked in 1979 if we wanted an Assembly, and we voted “Yes”, but the iniquitous 40% rule, never used in any Referendum anywhere in the world, meant that the votes of even those who were dead counted as “No”; despite a “promise” of something better, the Tory Government scrapped the whole issue, a procedure they will slavishly follow if Scotland does not vote “Yes”. We were asked in 1997 if we wanted a Scottish Parliament, and one with financial powers,Read More →

That is the key fact which underlies the welter of figures, claims and counter-claims of recent days about Scotland’s economic prospects as an independent nation.  The discussion paper I prepared for the Scottish Cabinet around a year ago, and which is now in the public domain, demonstrates just how seriously the Scottish Government is approaching the task of managing Scotland’s finances as we look forward to the prospect of a Yes vote in the referendum next year The document is a serious, hard-headed look at some of the challenges and opportunities that will be presented by having control of all of our own resources forRead More →

  January editorial from Scots Independent As I have said, I will publish the Editorial from the preceding month’s Scots Independent. Here is the Editorial from January; it does not seem dated, as the Unionists   keep repeating their behaviour Depreciate and deprecate The Leveson Report is published on the day of writing.  We had some repartee at First Minister’s Questions, calmly spiked by Alex Salmond’s proposal that as no one had actually seen the report it would be more sensible to have the debate next week.  This very reasonable approach was somehow not to the liking of the ‘earnest concerned’ leader of the Liberal rump,Read More →

Jimmy Halliday was unable to remember a time when he was not a Nationalist. He used to read the Scots Independent in the Greenock Public Library on the way home from school, and he joined the SNP in 1943 when he turned 16. He graduated in history at Glasgow University, and taught in Ardeer, Coatbridge, Uddingston and Dunfermline. In 1967 he joined the History Department of Dundee College of Education, and retired in 1988 as head of that department. He has written extensively on history and the teaching of the subject; in 1990 he wrote “Scotland – A Concise History – BC to 1990”.  HeRead More →

Last week I said I would publish, via the Flag, at least the editorials in the printed Scots Independent  a month or so afterwards. This week I am publishing the one for November; I usually do the Flag over the Christmas period as other Compilers may wish to have a complete break from politics, but I am too old and set in my ways to change! FIRST MINISTER’S NEW YEAR MESSAGE Monday December 31, 2012 Referendum to bring new opportunities for Scots to make own choices The First Minister’s New Year message has highlighted the restoration of free higher education as an example of theRead More →

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 →

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 →

I was privileged to be at St Andrew’s House in Edinburgh this week and to see the arrival, and departure, of Prime Minister David Cameron and his entourage, all five cars of them.  Access to the public was denied to the street outside, with somewhere between twenty and thirty police on duty.  The most memorable moment of that event was when Michael Moore MP was going into St Andrew’s House and one of the assembled press called out “How does it feel to be the last Secretary of State for Scotland?”;  Mr Moore just carried on, but as I observed at the time, he wasRead More →