Ausnahmezustand anxiety in St Andrews

AT LAST MONDAY’S Coronavirus briefing Housing Minister Robert Jendrick announced the UK was now on “an emergency footing” in a way “unprecedented” in peacetime.

Even “unprecedented” is rapidly becoming old hat. “It ...

Planning Edinburgh's future in the time of Coronavirus

WHEN Edinburgh Council went into an early recess and cancelled Committees, emails started coming in from a few constituents asking whether the current consultation Choices for City Plan 2030 would be extended.  My initial, optimistic, response was to ...

ThinkLockdown: a right Royal misjudgement?

EVERYTHING IS GRIST to the nationalist mill, and there is no reason to think that the Covid-19 pandemic would be any exception. The weekend’s influx of visitors to the Highlands and islands brought cries to ...

ThinkLockdown: before the Tsunami

OVER THE WEEKEND, hordes of townies flooded into the countryside in search of refuge from the coronavirus. Curiously, however, no-one seems to have predicted this mass evacuation.

The spectacle brought to mind ...

(Tempers) flaring at Mossmorran

YOU DON’T NEED ME to tell you that media coverage in Scotland has been hijacked by two major topics recently. The first, and most important is, of course the Covid-19 virus pandemic which has captured ...

Covid-19 has us guddling for reality

IF YOU HAVE EVER tried guddling for trout you will understand the trials of an observing economist in these strange times.  We’re trained to stand away from received opinion and slowly put together our intellectual feelers, ...

Black swans and oil shakes… why the maths for Scotland seceding just got worse

THE SNP MAY HAVE its troubles in the courtroom but that is not the party’s only problem.

Frankly the SNP’s sums have just gotten a whole lot worse as the price of ...

Opposing the false assertions of the statists will make us all better off

I HAVE STARTED to read the Guardian; lucky me, but my journalism tutor always said we should “read the opposition” and not sit in the comfort of our own silo for ideas. 

Leaving ...

Can we have a real Scottish Conservative approach to migration please?

WELL THAT DID NOT LAST VERY LONG did it? Less than a week after being elected leader Jackson Carlaw’s ruddy red face is on show with his disdain at his Conservative Government’s migration plan with his aids ...

When it comes to exports it’s the cash flow, stupid

A RECENT VISIT to South East Asia prompts in me a policy challenge. Now that Scotland is freed from the burdens of the EU’s protectionist trade stance, and ignoring SNP posturing, how do we use ...

National Conservatism has the progressive left in its sights

I HAVE JUST RETURNED brimming with optimism from my first ever National Conservative conference at the Grand Plaza Hotel in Rome. As the research director of the Bow Group, one of the events main sponsors, ...

Regulating regulation now that we have left the EU

EARLY SIGNS suggest that the EU is hoping to play hardball in negotiations over regulation; its negotiators are clearly hell-bent on restricting competition from us.  We have to hope the UK will seize the opportunity to ...