ThinkBusiness

Nick Cook

Edinburgh tram extension should terminate in the City Chambers

LATER THIS MONTH, Edinburgh councillors will take a final decision on extending the city’s troubled tram project. Despite the massive cost overrun, delay, disruption and reputational damage brought by the original project, there is a principled ...

Miles Saltiel

Brexit: Something's gotta give?

HAD TO JETTISON the spreadsheets after those 6,500 data points sent in the last blog were so far apparently off-piste. These were the figures arguing that May was obliged to tack to the ERG, whose ...

Brian Monteith

Politicians on a road to nowhere with trams as car use keeps growing

THE CAR IS BACK, and it is not going to go away. That was the clear message this week’s latest figures for transport use in Scotland revealed – and our politicians had better take note ...

Paul Spare

How to decarbonise in the real world

THE UK ENERGY INDUSTRY is being exhorted to decarbonise and eliminate fossil fuels to help to reduce ‘Global Warming’. Will there be any positive benefits or will there be only sacrifices and problems?

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Robert Kilgour

The Accounts Commission and Scottish Government are condoning local council waste and largesse

OVER 150 DAYS ON from revealing results of a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests aimed at obtaining a detailed breakdown of all 32 Scottish local councils’ wasteful spending on building and running their ...

Miles Saltiel

Westminster Brexit arithmetic: So now we know

DOESN'T IT just get your goat? All those reminders of Lyndon Johnson’s good ol’ boy throwaway that politicians need first to know how to count. But then again, his homespun shrewdness fairly does bear down ...

John Petley

It's not just the backstop: UK Defence should not be in the Withdrawal Agreement

WHILE MOST DEBATE over the draft UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement has revolved around the so-called “backstop” ensuring no hard border is created in Ireland, the sections that seek to tie the UK into the EU’s military ...

Brian Monteith

Cuba must get out of Venezuela and reform before we reward it with our trade

IF YOU ARE a Foreign Office Minster and are praised by a Corbynista group, then surely you must know you are doing something wrong? The Cuba Solidarity Campaign is now very supportive of British foreign ...

Miles Saltiel

Brexit and Hell's special places

MY REGULAR READERS have been asking what I make of current events. Last week, the President of the European Commission, Donald Tusk, stagily expressed his own frustrations with remarks about a “special place in Hell” ...

Eben Wilson

Ending import tariffs does not require smashing plates

AS CONSUMERS with choice, we should beware those who prophesy doom if the UK chooses a zero import tariff policy post-Brexit. This, it is suggested, is being considered by the Department of International Trade.

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Aaron Brown

A ban on Pulse Fishing post-Brexit must be honoured

BY ALLOWING PULSE FISHING against its own rules the EU has provided unchallengeable proof of why we need Brexit and how the Common Fisheries Policy has been an environmental, economic and social disaster.

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Stuart Crawford

An Armed Forces Federation: Representation for the UK Services

THE QUESTION of whether the British armed forces should have some sort of statutory and official representative body, somewhat akin to the Police Federation, comes up regularly in debate on military matters. Its most recent ...