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 […]
Analysis
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?
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
All you despots out there – beware! The UK Government is coming for you. In its new post-Brexit sanctions regime, the UK is taking action against those behind the most “notorious” human rights abuses in the world, with the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 named as one of those acts of brutality to […]
UK sanctions list is about geopolitical influence, not human rights
“Will these polling results resemble the eventual makeup of Holyrood in 2021? Mibbes aye, mibbes naw. Will continuous and verifiable majority support for independence lead to a second referendum on the national question? Could be – but nobody’s quite sure how.”
Sean Bell: Polls, pundits and the perils of heeding the loudest voices
“Never before have the foundations of public support for the Union looked so weak,” polling expert John Curtice has declared. His basis for this assessment is the latest poll by PanelBase showing 54 per cent in favour of Scottish independence, with 46 per cent against, which added to other previous polls over the past six […]
5 ways to build pressure for the Right to Decide
“In the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, the US is making a concerted effort to suffocate the revolution once and for all.”
Iain Bruce: The UK’s theft of Venezuelan gold endangers a successful fightback against the pandemic
How do you unite US politicians in the Trump era? Act against China. The US Senate passed legislation on Thursday to sanction Chinese officials who implement the new Security Law in Hong Kong, a day after the House of Representatives did the same. It will be signed by US President Donald Trump today, all without […]
Britain can do little to prevent China’s Hong Kong power-grab
“The latest side-stepping of protections for tenants comes at a time when they are suffering through the lockdown economy.”
Analysis: Rentier Parliament? How Scots’ demands for fairer rents were locked-out
When Prime Minister Boris Johnson is accusing anyone else of “astonishing and shameful” responses to Covid-19, and when Scottish Secretary Alister Jack is describing others as “reckless” in how they are handling this health crisis, they should be put in their place. The facts are the UK is third highest in the world for excess […]