SO, WE'RE taking more cocaine than ever. Oh, good. All's the better to blather on 'till four am about pyramids on Jupiter while drinking yourself into a toxic broth and feeling, the next day, like an incubus mugged you in...
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WHAT'S WRONG with shoes?" Imelda Marcos once said. "I collected them because it was like a symbol of thanksgiving and love." Back in the days when most women had no more than a half-dozen pairs, the world was shocked when...
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AS A firm advocate of a more festive approach to Scotland's national saint's day, I felt duty bound to attend Glasgow City Council's main event for St Andrew's Nicht. The appetite was doubly whetted since the celebration consisted of a...
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WHO'LL GET the first sit-down with Misbah Rana? You might find something in the question - jargon, intent, or implication - disturbing. I might even agree with you. I'll guarantee, nevertheless, that certain newsdesks in certain of Scotland's cities are...
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YOU COULDN'T make it up. Our report today reveals that, according to YouGov, the Scottish Labour Party could be reduced to only one council after May 3: North Lanarkshire. It's fitting that the local authority that has become a by-word...
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JUST AS Scotland is beginning to tire of the latest flurry of nationalist speculation, based on a couple of rather optimistic opinion polls, England has rediscovered perfidious Caledonia. Last week, the London press was full of challenges to Scotland to...
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NOT SO long ago, the sick and disabled children of prominent people were hidden away, their very existences denied. Prince John, son of George V and Queen Mary, was all but erased from history from the age of four when...
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SO YOU pays your money and you takes your choice. Should we condemn David Cameron, the Conservative party leader, for snubbing business by avoiding the CBI conference in London last week? Conference delegates had to make do with shadow chancellor...
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By Trevor Royle, Diplomatic Editor
BRITAIN'S SPECIAL relationship with the US is one of the oddities of the world of diplomacy. It's not a treaty and it's never been encapsulated by any formal agreement but, for good or ill, it does exist. Without it Britain...
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BEFORE CHRISTMAS, and possibly as early as next Friday, the prime minister of the government of the United Kingdom will be interviewed by police from Scotland Yard. The team headed by assistant commissioner John Yates is investigating whether or not...
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In the war against drugs, there are, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, things we know and things we know we don't know. We know, for example, that our current tactics are not working. Drugs, and particularly heroin, continue to be a...
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NOT so long ago I wrote a little piece on atheism and the education of children. I happen to be in favour of both, in moderation, but in some eyes that disqualified me from commenting on either. Cheeringly, a prince...
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CHRISTMAS these days is a tug of love, not so much between the in-laws and the blood relatives as between two warring camps: the family, and those who know how to have fun, ie your friends. At this time of...
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So farewell then Kofi Annan. Later this week you'll make your last public pronouncement and then it will be time to start clearing your desk on the 38th floor of the UN building in New York, your embattled eyrie for...
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I THOUGHT it couldn't get worse, but it just has. The Iraq Study Group, far from showing a way out of the crisis, has become a new dimension of it. The wise men confirmed the war is unwinnable, but didn't...
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LAST Thursday, at Arbroath Sheriff Court, the Conservation of Seals Act 1970 (CSA) yet again proved incapable of protecting seals. David Pullar, of Usan Salmon Fisheries, has nets at the River Esk estuary. On July 20, 2005, his brother George...
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I AM very upset with the judges of the Turner Prize. They had the opportunity to give the £25,000 to the artist whose opus was a cherry stone, a dirty cotton-wool ball and other bits of debris in a display...
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SENDING offenders to prison isn't always the best way of dealing with crime. While it satisfies a primordial desire for retribution or a requirement to make the punishment fit the crime, all too often custodial sentences are a blunt instrument....
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