“One projection we can make about the psychological state of the population, is that a return to lockdown in conditions of a second wave of infections would deal a sharp blow to consumer spending and business investment.”
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We spoke to Excluded UK, an organisation that sprung up to support the 3 million people that have been excluded from government support during the Covid-19 pandemic.
3 Million People Excluded from Government Support
Suddenly everyone’s talking about Brexit and ‘power-grabs’ again. It’s 25 months yesterday since SNP MPs staged a walk-out from the House of Commons over the “power-grab” of the EU Withdrawal Bill, and now it’s back. If you thought we were done with all that, think again. What are we actually talking about here? As part […]
What’s Gove up to?
Sunday’s Spanish regional elections in the Basque Autonomous Community and Galicia did not produce a surprise in terms of the victors, but it did show that the trend of rising support for pro-independence parties in Europe has not been slowed by the pandemic. In the BAC, EH Bildu, the left-wing pro-independence coalition, won nearly 28 […]
Europe’s nationalist left is on the rise
“Scotland has effectively reached the end of its ‘devolution journey’. Once Scotland was promised that it would have ‘the most powerful devolved government in the world’ but it seems that the limits of that high tide has been reached and those powers are now retreating by the day.”
Craig Dalzell: Westminster power grabs and the high tide of devolution
On Source Direct yesterday morning we asked what the Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes would do differently from the Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s mini-budget on Wednesday. The answer soon followed. Forbes announced a tax cut to property buying and selling (LBTT), very similar in substance to the Chancellor’s cut to the English version of the same tax (Stamp […]
Is the Scottish Govt really prioritising rising property values when a “tidal wave” of evictions are on their way?
“Sunak is arming the British state with a new language and ethos of economics and civic responsibility – fusing the state, the citizenry, and the ‘private’ economy.”
David Jamieson: Why Sunak’s ‘Economic Unionism’ means the independence movement must rearm
Despite the Court of Appeal ruling a year ago that the UK government’s actions in selling arms to Saudi Arabia were “unlawful”, they are now set to resume sales. “They have prioritised billions of pounds in arms sales over human lives as evidence mounts of blatant violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition.” […]
UK Resumes Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia
The hedge-fund Chancellor knows how to grab the front-pages. £10 per head for a meal out, but only in August, and only on Monday-Wednesday, is novel. The Rishi-burger is indicative of the kind of gimmicky, short-term, consumption-heavy and corporate-subsidy laden approach of the Chancellor’s announcement. As The Guardian’s economics commentator Aditya Chakrabortty pointed out, it’s […]
Who wants a Rishi-burger?
“Let’s raise a toast to all those new homeworkers who have kept our country going since lockdown started, let’s reward them by making it a legal right to do what they have been doing throughout this crisis.”
Keith Baker: Why homeworking must become a right
The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival is currently taking place online, and yesterday I watched ‘Riptide’, a film produced and directed by Tim Barrow, one of our Source Direct subscribers. It is a story about Jacob, living in Edinburgh and suffering from schizophrenia. He falls in love with another schizophrenic person, and what follows is a […]
Confront the structural forces inducing individualism and social isolation
“If there is a solution to the problems of arts funding, it will involve more than a handout from Boris Johnson, or the wisdom of Creative Scotland.”
Sean Bell: If we purport to care about art, we must care about artists
“I say directly to the Scottish Parliament and especially to the SNP MSPs, we haven’t forgotten your promises of 2016. We haven’t forgotten that you identified the rising cost of rent as a problem and then fobbed it off every step of the way. We haven’t forgotten and we are angry.”