ThinkBusiness

Fred Mackintosh

The South Suburban Railway – an Edinburgh rail by-pass?

TO EVERYTHING there is a season, and a time for every purpose under the heaven. In Edinburgh the months running up to a Scottish Parliament election is the time for MSPs to raise the prospect of ...

Roger White

Let’s STOP this ‘four nations’ nonsense

THIS IS going to be short and sharp. Politicians who in any shape or form accept the legitimacy of the United Kingdom need to stop talking about the ‘four nations’ it comprises.

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Dr Catherine McCall

Humza’s Hate Bill – will you be criminalized for someone else’s emotion?

MUCH has been written by legal experts and others about the vagueness within the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. Vagueness in law is certainly dangerous. If the state is going to use power ...

Carole Ford

A once envied reputation trashed – why Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence is anything but

THERE CAN BE very few people left in Scotland who consider Curriculum for Excellence to have been a positive step forward for the Scottish education system. Those who do are wilfully blinding themselves to the steady ...

Eben Wilson

A Scots Pound shows the folly of abandoning Scotland’s historical scepticism

ANYONE who has been on Twitter will recognise the strong resistance to logical discourse among the “cluckeratti”; there is a vast cohort of Twitter users who stick close to consensual prejudices like a brood of ...

Catherine McBride

What could possibly go wrong for Scotland with the new Trade & Agriculture Commission?

SCOTTISH FARMERS should be patting themselves on the back. They are the backbone of the UK’s agricultural exports. Admittedly they have had a lot of help from the marketing departments of the Scotch Whisky ...

Edward Thomas Black

Follow the Money! A Forensic walk through UK fiscal pooling and sharing

WHO RECEIVES Fiscal Grants in the UK and who pays for them? In every country in the world every citizen either receives from the state or contributes to the state. This also applies to regions within ...

Jonathan Saxty

'Lockdowns don't work' – but our governments are not listening

SATURDAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT of what amounts to a second national lockdown should be the final straw for Conservative voters in England. It smacks of an authoritarianism which politicians have been only too eager to adopt, while ...

Neil Stratton

How do we deliver the benefits from controlling our fisheries again?

CURRENTLY, under the fisheries management of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, the EU allocates quota using its two sacred cows of relative stability and non-discriminatory access to its various members – in the case of the UK, that means the ...

Eben Wilson

How the EU smothers innovation, creativity and productivity – making us all the poorer

NOT MANY PEOPLE will have read the detail of the EU rejection of a specific free trade deal for electric cars. It’s a draft response to a proposal by the UK to allow “product specific ...

Stuart Crawford

Why is the British Army’s equipment procurement so shambolic?

GENERALLY SPEAKING, the British electorate doesn’t take much interest in defence matters. There are obvious exceptions to this statement – Battle of Britain Day, Remembrance Sunday, and various other anniversaries like Arnhem and D Day ...

George Galloway

A British Premiership? It's a match-winner

THE BIGGEST SINGLE THING that could be done to cement the union between Scotland and England would be for Celtic and Rangers to join The Premiership. I have pressed this case upon every Prime Minister ...