Ten years on and the Bully State continues to grow

THE OTHER DAY I Tweeted a link to an article I had written for ThinkScotland about a further possible incursion into our rights as individuals by the state. (This time it’s demands to restrict ...

Venezuela’s tragedy: How Chavez destroyed accountability

IT IS A COMMON FEATURE of totalitarian regimes that their leaders face no accountability. In order to exercise total control over a state, totalitarian regimes systematically erode financial, judicial, and political systems designed to check ...

Review: Wild Rose

Spoiler Warning: Unlike my usual style of review, this article contains significant plot spoilers for Wild Rose.

 ALLOW ME TO ASK a hypothetical question. Imagine that you are at a party and ...

Hold fast and hold the line to defend liberty and democracy

FISHING FOR LEAVE’S PRIMARY CAUSE has always been the repatriation of our fishing waters from EU management, and a rejuvenation of our coastal communities through enactment of new policy that this will allow.

Venezuela's tragedy: Enrichment has been for the few, not the many

THERE IS A MYTH that as president the late Hugo Chavez reduced poverty in Venezuela. That he helped the poorest at the expense of the rich. It is untrue. Venezuela has, under his and his ...

A bit of a (rum) do

WHAT A WEEK! What should have been the first days of Brexit have left me as much a rabbit in the headlights as anyone, astonished by the collapse of national direction. This takes us straight ...

The Mummy Diaries: Two babies – Week 43

AFTER SPENDING the week being careful and consciously thinking about what I say before it blurts out of my mouth, I think we’ve managed to curb the swearing – thankfully! Jamie has now moved on ...

Brunei has become a terrorist state, it's time to call it out

THERE IS SOMETHING extremely vulgar about Brunei. For long a fiefdom of the British establishment who never shy from fawning over its leader, it has descended in recent years down the path of Sharia – ...

Arguments for assisted suicide need answered

THIS WEEK the “Dignity in Dying” campaign launched a new bid to change the law around assisted suicide. A Cross Party Group of MSPs wrote to The Sunday Times  making the case for reform, highlighting ...

How SNP EU policy would plunge Scotland into darkness

THIS WEEKEND is when we go through the ritual of putting our clocks forward to British Summer Time, an exercise that inevitably reignites the bi-annual debate around changing the clock for half of the year. ...

Review: Shazam!

THERE’S A CLEVER running gag throughout Shazam! about the protagonist’s inability to settle on exactly what his superhero name should be. While those who are new to the DC universe or the superhero milieu more generally might ...

Don’t laugh at Laffer – it is redistribution that's risible

AT A PUBLIC MEETING the other night I was challenged by an attendee to agree how important “redistribution” is to social cohesion. I had been extolling the virtues of wealth creation by avoiding the dead ...