Payday loan lenders in this country have grown exponentially since the Financial Crash of 2008 and have been allowed to extort money from the most vulnerable citizens for the past five years. Government and, indeed, the Opposition, have not seemed overly concerned about their activities until
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The eccentric people of Lewes in Sussex burned an effigy of the First Minister, Alex Salmond, on Bonfire Night last week. Various media apologists assured us that this was just good fun and that many other ‘weel kent’ faces have suffered a similar fate on previous occasions.
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BBC News today has been headlining the case of a Welsh man who pretended to be in a coma while he was in receipt of disability benefit. However, he was filmed on CCTV pushing a shopping trolley unaided . Nobody condones this behaviour but I suspect that
Read more →For many people, the most startling revelation to emerge from Johann Lamont’s dramatic resignation was her enforced silence by Labour at Westminster from voicing any criticism of the ‘Bedroom Tax’ because Ed Milliband had yet to form an opinion of it. We are talking here about
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Scottish Labour and, by extension, Ed Milliband may well be the net losers in the wake of the Scottish Referendum. It is being hit by the double whammy of mass defection in its heartland constituencies to the YES campaign and being ensnared by the Tories in failure
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A steady column of journalists and politicians from the Republic of Ireland has been paying tribute to the late Ian Paisley for his pivotal role in the Peace Process. Former Taoiseach, Bertie Aherne, said that he was a big man with a big heart while the current
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The weekend message from the polls precipitated an unexpected and rushed recalibration of the Better Together Campaign which would not have been out of place in a Whitehall Farce. Had Nick Clegg dropped his trousers in Galashiels today, the picture would have been complete. However, for now
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Watching ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ at the Edinburgh Festival, it struck me that the individual narratives such as that of Ubu are representative of the national picture. They are each too an essential part of it and must participate. There was a dawning of realisation when
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The First Minister, Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling will meet again in a BBC Network Referendum debate tonight. Since the Kennedy/Nixon encounter of the fifties, television debates, in my view, have assumed undue and unproven importance in persuading the electorate. It is highly unlikely that five o’clock shadow
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Many in the education bubble were saddened to learn of the death yesterday of Sam Galbraith, the former Children’s Minister at Holyrood, who had responsibility for Education when I was President of the EIS. He had also been a Minister in the first Blair Government and, with Donald
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