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DECLINE AND FALL OF SCOTTISH LABOUR

The seeds of last Thursday’s decimation at the Polls of Scottish Labour were germinating long before the 2014 Referendum.  Worried by the rise of the Nationalists in the Seventies, the late John Smith, one of Labour’s sharpest thinkers, saw critically limited devolution as the solution. His prodigy,

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SNP, Sinn Fein and Home Rule

SNP, Sinn Fein and Home Rule

For nearly one hundred years, the Constitution, has been the predominant issue in every election, fought in Northern Ireland, even at Council level,  where there is a wearying, unionist pre-occupation with flags and emblems.  The results of the Election in Scotland have ensured that independence has shot

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View From The Bridge

View From The Bridge

The Italian people were a race of emigrants, particularly through the early part of the Twentieth Century and in recent weeks the Nation and, particularly its Coast Guards, deserve Nobel Peace Prize nomination for their humanitarian work in rescuing desperate asylum seekers from the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, in

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View From The Bridge

View From The Bridge

The Italian people were a race of emigrants, particularly through the early part of the Twentieth Century and, in recent weeks,  the Nation and, particularly, its Coast Guards, deserve Nobel Peace Prize nomination for their humanitarian work in rescuing desperate asylum seekers from the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, in

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Living with Front Line Photography

Living with Front Line Photography

Publishers have always known that there is a ready market for romanticised accounts of photography on the front line of conflicts. “It’s what I do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War “ by Lynsey Addario rises above that genre, principally because she writes very well and

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BBC – Establishment Bastion

BBC – Establishment Bastion

As in most things, Nigel Farage was absolutely wrong when he decried the left wing bias of the BBC in last week’s Leaders’ Debate. On the contrary, it is a bastion of the establishment. ‘Pinkoes and Traitors’ , the recently published history of the BBC by Jane

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Bias At the BBC

Bias At the BBC

Such was the outrage, felt by YES supporters at the overt bias in BBC reporting of issues in the Referendum  , that hundreds protested last June outside the Corporation’s Glasgow headquarters on the Clyde.  The much vaunted principle of political impartiality had gone missing in the BBC News

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Sturgeon strikes a blow for women and the SNP

Sturgeon strikes a blow for women and the SNP

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” (Mark Twain) Today’s Telegraph reports that in a meeting last month with the French Ambassador, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, professed a preference for Cameron to be PM after the

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