Changing Scotrail franchise solves nothing

AS WE APPROACH the busy festive period, I know that the everyday frustration felt by commuters, tourists and businesses when another train is cancelled or delayed will only be exaggerated in the coming weeks. And ...

Getting Brexit done - until the next extension?

YOU CANNOT GET AWAY from the Conservative slogan: Get Brexit Done. In newspapers, on television and radio, on social media, it is everywhere. But what does ‘Get Brexit Done’ actually mean? In the famous words ...

Corbynomics takes the mickey out of rational expectations

THE OTHER DAY I got a startled look from a Lib Dem canvasser at my door when I suggested that I was not minded to vote for yet another socialist party.  Clearly, the twenty-something activist ...

There may be an election on but where have all the values gone?

A COLLEAGUE TELLS ME she is struggling with this peculiar election campaign. Too many contrary influences, confused interests and conflicting incentives, she says.  But I demur; she is a political scientist looking for evidence that might ...

A tourist tax is too important to get wrong

DESPITE OBJECTIONS from Scotland’s vital tourism industry, the Scottish Government has made it clear that it wishes for local authorities to have the power to place a levy on visitors to their areas in order ...

Ending the uncertainty will deliver the winner

THE COUNTRY has endured forty-one months of uncertainty, propelled by the absence of losers’ consent, a weak prime minister, a rogue parliament, and a hand which the EU has played effectively or mischievously according to ...

Think Movies: Zombieland: Double Tap

IF THERE IS ONE ILLNESS that movies suffer from more than any other at the moment, it’s that they often come down with a really bad case of ‘the sequels’. It feels as if every ...

Brexit and the discipline of the prospectus

BORIS HAS GOT HIS ELECTION and ingenuously places his future in our hands. So what do we know, what alternatives are before us?

We may expect the parties to focus-group their lines, ...

Floundering around on Brexit

DOMINIC CUMMINGS may have a brain the size of a planet, but no-one wants their boss to cheese off his party, the Commons and the Supreme Court all in one go, then leave half the ...

Brexit's day of judgement?

IT COULD NOT BE WORSE for the Government. The Supreme Court has decided unanimously that Johnson’s prorogation was unlawful and is of no effect; and it has accepted the most extreme remedy. It has resolved ...

Shortages of food and medicines? Really?

IN THE EVENT of a customs border being re-established as a result of Brexit it is claimed this will lead to shortages of food, medicines and other essentials. This is complete nonsense.

Book review: Arnhem: ten days in the cauldron

THERE HAVE BEEN many accounts written on the Battle of Arnhem, that “glorious defeat” suffered by the British 1stAirborne Division in September 1944 during the Second World War.  Best known might possibly be Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge ...