“We’re taking one step forward, five steps back,” Devi Sridhar, professor of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh and on the Scottish Government’s covid-19 advisory group, wrote yesterday, in summing up her exasperation about the covid-19 situation in the UK. She’s not wrong. Lockdown was a big social sacrifice, one where the vulnerable suffered […]
“Remember that the stock market value of oil and gas firms is based on their oil and gas reserves. They are worth what the stock market thinks these can be sold for. So for them, these reserves must be part of the solution to climate change; this is why they place dirty, fossil fuel-based hydrogen at the heart of their plan.”
Scottish Labour have proposed a ‘right to food’ bill, that was out to community consultation until last week. With Scotland facing increasing levels of food poverty, could this be what is needed?
“Regulation of the care home market is very weak, with almost no attention is given to issues like sector consolidation, let alone questions about whether the owner of a care home is prepared to put care before profit.”
Another year, another banking scandal. They’re like clock-work these days. This time, it’s the FinCEN files: a leak of 2,657 documents from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the US Treasury that deals with money laundering. The files total $2 trillion worth of transactions, and contain 2,121 ‘SARs’, Suspicious Activity Reports which […]
“Those few interesting questions which might have emerged from the controversy have been almost entirely overlooked. The first is not whether Nicola Sturgeon has used her briefings for political purposes, but rather: should we care?”
“What are the costs of little or no governance, scrutiny and understanding of multiple health data initiatives when governments, academics, public sector organisations and businesses can avoid the normal controls and transparency?”
September 18th. The sixth anniversary of Indyref. I’m sure I am not alone among Source Direct subscribers in wondering if we will ever see as politically vibrant times again as the summer of 2014, when it felt like there wasn’t a person in Scotland who wasn’t actively engaged in shaping the country’s future. So much […]
“Those of us on the side of the poor souls who hold our society together when they hardly have the cash to hold their own lives together have won the moral argument. Great, but that’s not enough.”
Free Our City is a campaign being launched by Get Glasgow Moving calling for public transport to be made free to use. “This radical policy is a necessary one: to address the climate emergency and gross inequalities in our society and ensure we make a just and green recovery from the pandemic.”
‘A fish rots from its head’ is an old Chinese proverb that I like. When any system begins to fail, look to the top to figure out why. The international system is not headed by Boris Johnson, he is merely an opportunist looking to take advantage of new trends to protect his interests. No, if […]
“This experience is an opportunity to reach out to those forgotten by the system and allow an essential feeling to resurface: human dignity.”
The Scottish Household Survey has just been published. This data provides the most detailed account of the demographic make-up of Scotland’s communities, and how it has changed over time. It also provides information on people’s views and beliefs on a number of issues, from climate change to religious belonging. Here, we will focus on what the […]