Marian Pallister, chair of Pax Christi Scotland, says the 50th ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is an important milestone for the global anti-nukes movement, but they have not yet reached the summit. I think that being a hill walker helps. When you climb a Munro – those Scottish hills over […]
Last week, North Edinburgh Arts opened up a new ‘Pennywell Pantry’. For a weekly membership of £3.50, members of the Pantry will be able to choose a selection of food with a value of £15-£20 each week. The Pantry is laid out just like a small super-market, where people go in and select items for their […]
With the beginning of the pandemic bringing lowered emissions and claims of ‘nature healing itself’, where are we left 7 months on in our fight against the climate emergency?
Tory attempts to justify opposition to free school meals over the holidays are becoming increasingly desperate, and have a shrinking audience among the public. “Not destroying the currency with excessive QE is also one of our duties,” backbench Tory MP Steve Baker barked on Twitter at Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford, who successfully led a […]
There was a remarkable contrast this morning in two stories standing side by side on the BBC homepage. On the left, US President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows saying “we’re not going to control the pandemic”. On the right, one positive covid-19 case sparking the testing of all 4.7 million people in the […]
“Having abandoned Bolivian democracy to the coup, the international community then stood by while repeated promises of elections were transgressed.”
Common Weal head of policy & research Craig Dalzell, author of a paper last month proposing a tiered approach to covid-19 restrictions, examines the Scottish Government’s new five-level alert system. Over a month after Common Weal called for a localised, tiered response to the Covid pandemic and six months since countries like France adopted one, […]
Nick Kempe, former head of service for Elderly People in Glasgow, examines what we know so far about the review of adult social care, and if it’s really thinking radically enough about the scale of changes required to address the deep structural problems in the sector which have been so evident during the covid-19 crisis. […]
Chancellor Rishi Sunak is hoping its third time lucky with his latest post-furlough scheme plans. First he argued that no replacement for the furlough scheme was needed on 1 November. Then, as pressure grew, at the end of September he proposed a “Job Support Scheme”, which was more like an unemployment creation scheme. Now, the original […]
“The purpose of an experiment is to determine whether observations of the real world agree with or conflict with the predictions derived from a hypothesis. If they agree, confidence in the hypothesis increases; otherwise, it decreases.” It is time for the independence movement to get to grips with the scientific method. Something does not become […]
Bob Gillespie, Global Justice Now activist in Glasgow, finds that the UK is looking increasingly isolated in the world, which makes a bad trade deal with the United States even more likely. The increasing likelihood of a “No Deal” Brexit will mean that the UK has only a deal with Japan to show off in […]
As damning indictments go, the government-supported, Fife-based BiFab withdrawing its bid to build jackets for the government-licensed NnG wind farm project off the coast of Fife is right up there. If there is a more obvious example of a failing industrial policy, I can’t think of one. Let’s remind ourselves of the back-story. In December […]
Glasgow based activist John Rogers says Universal Basic Income is the alternative to the damaging Universal Credit system that we need. If we are going to plan changes to how we live together, we need to come up with a lot of ideas about how to make that work. Here is one – Universal Basic […]