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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
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...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
YOU'LL HAVE had your debate. It took about an hour on Thursday for the decision to be taken by the UK Cabinet to replace Trident. The consultation will be an empty one, taking place over the Christmas holiday season, and...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Iain Macwhirter on pugilism in politics
During the Queen’s speech last week, Tony Blair jeered: “However much you dance around the ring, at some point you’ll come within reach of a big clunking fist.” The “dancer” is, of course, the Tory leader David Cameron; the “clunker”,...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Muriel Gray on the SNP’s ‘interesting’ policies
Don’t you hate it when artists use the word ‘interested’ when discussing their work? You know the sort of thing. Some sullen, unshaven creature will be filmed standing beside a melted plastic box topped by a toaster and a doll...
Read more » | Comments
(10)
Another week, another exposé of the parliament’s wretched Edinburgh Accommodation Allowance. Where John Home Robertson billed the public for renting from his son, and where transport minister Tavish Scott admitted to renting from his sister, the Sunday Herald has now...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Trevor Royle on Segolene Royal, the new socialist hope
It’s not easy being a woman in politics. For all that the glass ceiling has been broken by people as different as Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi, there’s still a suspicion in men’s minds that a politician wearing...
Read more » | Comments
(3)
Iain Macwhirter on the cost of the war for Britain
Look, I too am opposed to the death penalty. But sometimes even I wonder if there should be an exception made; for Tony Blair. After all, there we were last week condemning Saddam Hussein for causing the deaths of tens,...
Read more » | Comments
(1)
Muriel Gray on a debate that demeans the war dead
Journalist Jon Snow’s refusal to wear a poppy while reading the news, his subsequent comment about “poppy fascism” and Christian calls to wear a white poppy instead of red to make a pacifist statement, all contributed this week to the...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Last week, as a result of disclosures in this paper, the Scottish parliament agreed to review the system of living allowances which has permitted MSPs to make large gains on the Edinburgh property market at the public’s expense. None of...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Remembrance Sunday no longer serves to commemorate only military triumphs of the past. Most of us, if we paused in silence for two minutes, gave thanks to parents and grandparents for their part in events which, although we know them...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
SOUTH Dakota is a conservative sort of place. It barely counts as a fly-over state for the sophisticates of America’s coasts, glancing down on the farmlands from 30,000 feet. Below, the descendents of west European immigrants have made little impact...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Trevor Royle on why cluster bombs should be banned
There are few more hallowed places on God’s Earth than the rolling chalk downlands of the Somme or the wooded expanse of the Ypres salient to the north. Within their acres, hundreds of thousands of young men fought and died...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
An extended curfew on the streets of Baghdad and in other provinces throughout Iraq; a climate of increasing violence, the discovery of 83 bodies showing signs of torture and a promise to open the gates of hell if a death...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Iain Macwhirter on the state of democracy
Do we live in a democracy? I only ask. Of course, we elect people to parliaments – three of them, if you include the Scottish and European parliaments. But what do our elected members do when they get there, apart...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Trevor Royle on a cold-war standoff of state and army
In most parts of the world, a military commander’s promise of support is as good a reason as any for a politician to start packing bags and booking flights to unknown destinations. It’s a sure sign that their jacket is...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
STUDIES have shown that most drug users seek help with the aim of eventually beating their addiction. Yet new research has revealed that only 4% of heroin addicts in Scotland who were prescribed methadone managed to become drug free nearly...
Read more » | Comments
(3)
You make a mistake and, so the story goes, you learn a lesson and move on. The US president John F Kennedy acknowledged he made a mistake in trying to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He later...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
HOLYROOD COMMENTARY: Iain Macwhirter
The authentication of North Korea’s nuclear test by the American authorities last week confirmed that we are in a new and disturbing atomic age. No longer is the use of nuclear weapons as a means of resolving international disputes made...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Iain Macwhirter on Britain and the US' struggle to find a retreat from Iraq
So that’s it then. We’re pulling out of Iraq within the next, ooh, 18 months or so, before we become a “provocation”. So said the prime minister last week, echoing the dramatic change of tone from the White House. Funny,...
Read more » | Comments
(1)
THE government’s policy on Iraq has never been a transient creed. There has been, even prior to the invasion of 2003, a stated aim: to turn Iraq, post-Saddam, into a pro-West democratic state. Its objective, emanating from the White House...
Read more » | Comments
(1)
HOLYROOD COMMENTARY: Iain Macwhirter
WHO would have thought that the SNP would stage the most successful party conference of the season? Labour were at war with themselves, the Liberal Democrats shell-shocked ,and the Tories accident prone. The nationalists, by contrast, seemed united, confident, businesslike,...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
Iain Macwhirter on a lack of rational thinking
YOU don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps. The British Cabinet, it seems, was riddled with mental distress throughout the course of the Iraq war. It wasn’t just Gordon Brown who had psychological flaws. Alastair Campbell,...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
THE ongoing bitterness between Nation alist leader Alex Salmond and his former ally Michael Russell will surprise few in the SNP. Although Salmond trounced the one-time MSP to regain the leadership in 2005, he was unimpressed by many of Russell’s...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
Unconventional and non-parliamentary political action has seen a substantial growth in Britain during the nine years Tony Blair has been prime minister. The poll-tax demonstrations at the tail-end of the Thatcher years showed the potential of a frustrated electorate. And...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Trevor Royle on why the spy claim reveals deeper divisions
The Georgians are the Irish of the Caucasus. They are proud, high-minded, independent, prone to take offence, and when in a scrap they generally give as good as they get. Most of the time they think of themselves as poets...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Holyrood commentary: Iain Macwhirter
The Scottish parliament discovered climate change this week – or rather the denial of it. The Futures Forum had decided to invite one of the last of the climate-change sceptics, the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, to address an invited audience...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Guest Vocals: Bernard Crick
DO we not all want to be good citizens, and for others – especially the young – to be good too? Yet we seem less keen on being active citizens. Even the minimal activity of voting in official elections is...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Iain Macwhirter on why Labour is tearing itself apart
Talk about open goals. David Cameron has been handed the easiest job in politics this week in Bournemouth as he makes his first annual conference address to the Conservatives as their leader. All he needs to do is stand there,...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
Iain Macwhirter on the green chancellor
WHAT a week. The government of California took leading car manufacturers to court for manufacturing polluting vehicles; Richard Branson said he would plough the proceeds of his various transport interests into renewable energy; we learned that the Arctic is melting...
Read more » | Comments
(1)
Iain Macwhirter on a plan for peace in the middle east
FIRST Minister Jack McConnell can’t win. If he speaks about important moral issues like nuclear defence, he is attacked for getting above himself. If he avoids the issue, on the grounds that defence is not a responsibility of the Scottish...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
Trevor Royle on a president at odds with the world
Every year, as late summer gives way to the deep red and gold of a New England fall, world leaders get the chance to spend a few days schmoozing in New York. The United Nations gets back to business this...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
A vacuum exists in the Scottish political spectrum larger than at any time since 1975, and the collective efforts of Scotland's political parties, which between them can persuade barely half the population to vote, seem unlikely to fill it. In...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
HOLYROOD COMMENTARY: Iain Macwhirter
In future, the Scottish Tories are going to have to learn to love homosexuals. Well, that’s surely the implication of the historic meeting between the Conservative Party chairman, Francis Maude, and the gay pressure group Stonewall on Friday. I wonder...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Tommy Sheridan on the issues that must be confronted before Scotland is truly free
Scotland is a rich country. We are a nation rich in talent, rich in ideas, rich in resources, yet some of our citizens have a lower life expectancy than people in Iraq and the Gaza strip. We export energy, oil,...
Read more » | Comments
(18)
By Norman Tebbit, former tory party chairman and close ally of Margaret Thatcher
Observing the dying days of prime minister Blair is bound to bring back memories of Margaret Thatcher’s last days in Number 10. In 1987, she won her third great election victory, polling some 40,000 more votes than at her first...
Read more » | Comments
(1)
IF you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the little red book and those cute Mao button badges that were such useful fashion accessories for those of an agitprop tendency back in the seventies. Thirty years after Mao Zedong’s death,...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Nicola Sturgeon outlines the benefits she believes independence would offer Caledonia
The best future for Scotland and the Scottish people is independence. Not even Mr McConnell believes all the scaremongering rubbish he has been spouting in the last few days. He's just following orders. Everybody else in the Labour Party is...
Read more » | Comments
(5)
Holyrood commentary: Iain Macwhirter on the failure of Scotland’s small parties
There’s only one question at the start of this crucial election campaign: have they got the bottle? Do Scottish opposition parties really want to be in government after the Holyrood elections in May? I’m afraid that the short answer...
Read more » | Comments
(5)
Muriel Gray on the crazy notion of foetal asbos
Does Blair think we’re all buttoned up the back? Nothing he utters any more seems to have the remotest connection to the welfare of the country. It’s as though while hunched over Cherie’s Prada calculator, working out how much...
Read more » | Comments
(6)
Iain Macwhirter on the PM’s maddening long goodbye
So, now we know. Tony Blair isn’t going, according to The Times on Friday. Oh yes he is, according to The Guardian on the same day. The PM has decided it would be destabilising to give a timetable for his...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
Trevor Royle on the plight of the Palestinians struggling to survive in the Gaza Strip
Either by accident or design, while events in southern Lebanon were grabbing the headlines all over the world everyone seemed to forget the plight facing the Palestinians in Gaza. In the same period over 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
By his own confession, Charles Kennedy drank too much, too often, while attempting to lead the Liberal Democrats. Neither aberration is, in fact, illegal. A handful of people in Kennedy’s party and the Westminster media knew that excess had become...
Read more » | Comments
(2)
Writer, musician and optimist Pat Kane on the rise and rise of the independence movement
It sounds like something you'd read in an alternative universe, where the New Statesman replaces Heat as the commuter's browse of choice: but yes, I Was Once An Eighties' Scottish Nationalist. Actually, I'm still an Oughties' Scottish Nationalist, and for...
Read more » | Comments
(13)
Shiona Baird argues for limits to be placed on political parties' spending on election campaigns
Public funding of political parties is not exactly a popular cause. Meanwhile private funding of political parties has led to the "cash for peerages" scandal, to policy u-turns made solely to benefit rich donors, and to political parties being seen...
Read more » | Comments
(0)
RSS Subscriptions
[?]