There’s a book with the rather unsexy title ’23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism’ by Ha Joon Chang. It’s worth a browse however. Chang’s first axiom in the book of what they don’t tell you is that there is no such thing as ‘the free market’. Every market to a greater or lesser… Read More »The Rigged Market
By Sarah Salyers While ‘the nation mourned’ the death of Queen Elizabeth, officially anyway, Scotland had its own reason for mourning. Along with the mortal remains of Elizabeth Windsor, the establishment buried a permanent and crucially important constitutional settlement beneath an entirely English pageant representing an entirely English, constitutional monarchy. There are, in fact, two… Read More »In Right of the Crown?
It’s Christmas time, as the song goes. I was out with one of my Indy friends and over lunch we discussed the state of the nation and the way we thought things were heading. Later on, we moved onto more mundane subjects; I was laughing about a gig that I was doing in a bar… Read More »White Noise
A great deal has been said about the SNP’s frankly underwhelming launch of its economic plan on Monday. More qualified commentators than us have gone through it line by line re its economics and we don’t intend to repeat that here; you can see those analyses on Robin McAlpine’s page or on Richard… Read More »The Past is a Foreign Country – They Do Things Differently There.
I could talk to you today about the state of the nation. I’m not going to. You don’t need me to tell you that we are now effectively living in a failed state, a rogue state and I think Liz Truss has had quite enough column inches over the past few weeks. I want to… Read More »Hope over Fear – Speech from Saturday
There’s a scene in Yes Prime Minister with Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey, the Machiavellian head of the civil service. Hacker has just become PM and has decided that he wants to ‘take action’. This consists of cancelling Trident, investing £15billion in conventional defences and re-introducing conscription, thus saving on the balance of payments,… Read More »Why is the Budget not being Stopped?
Kings and Queens and Great White Stags It’s been a week of kings and queens so we thought we would give you a royal story. One morning a king set out to hunt in one of his royal forests. It wasn’t any old day; it was the feast of the Holy Cross, the… Read More »Kings and Queens and Great White Stags
So Boris Johnson finally makes the slow sulky walk out of the classroom and Liz Truss takes his place. We’ve not said much about the Westminster leadership contest the past few weeks, mainly because it doesn’t make much difference. Whoever it was, was going to be a Tory and unfriendly to Scotland. There… Read More »Preparing the Battlefield – Westminster Flies Some Kites
06/08/22 – 12/08/22 Naming the Dead – the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Anniversaries Last week, the 6th and 9th August marked the 77th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb attacks. It was remembered in a dutiful but unexceptional fashion by all concerned. It’s in stark contrast to the annual reporting and ceremonies that precede… Read More »This Week in Scotland – 06/08/22 – 12/08/22
30/07/22 – 05/08/22 Rebel Yell – the Conservatives discover Scotland The horror show that is the Conservative leadership contest continues. We don’t know which flunkey in the Tory party thought it would be a good idea to give this national coverage. We think they might live to regret it. Anyway, after a… Read More »This Week in Scotland 30/07/22 – 05/08/22
