“Like the Catalan movement, Scots may face an allied UK and European apparatus increasingly disrespectful of democracy and focused on the interests of the already institutionally dominant.”
Analysis
Who would be a Catalan President? Or at least, a pro-independence Catalan President? Look through the list of those who have served as president of Catalonia before and after the period of dictatorship under General Franco and you will find that just one served out their term in office, the rest were forced out by […]
Banned for banners: Torra’s absurd removal
Within about 24 hours of a ‘Glasgow Uni Rent Strike’ social media campaign starting, university principal Anton Muscatelli stepped in with a one-month re-fund “to compensate for the disruption they are facing”. It appeared to be some sort of admission of guilt that there was, at minimum, a lack of institutional preparation for students moving […]
Box-room revolt
“Wales is now taking a much more serious approach to independence than Scotland is, even though it is almost certainly further away.”
Robin McAlpine: Wales shows Scotland how to do independence
The title of what Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced yesterday, ‘Job Support Scheme’, flatters to deceive. The key thing to be aware of is that employers are being asked to pay one-third of the topping up of a worker’s wage who has been moved from full-time to part-time hours, which many of them are not going […]
Sunak’s ‘Job Support Scheme’ is a deception
Are you a ‘Kurzarbeit’ or a ‘chômage partiel’ person? UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak will make an important statement to the House of Commons this afternoon about what will replace the furlough scheme at the end of October, with debate rife about whether German or French models will be preferred, or something completely different altogether. The Kurzarbeit […]
Beyond furlough
Exactly six months today since full lockdown, Scotland is back in a mini-lockdown again. This time, only other people’s homes are off-limits. As in England, pubs will shut at 10pm. There are good reasons to be sceptical that these measures will be sufficient to contain the spread of covid-19. They appear suspiciously like applying maximum […]
Six months since lockdown, is ‘Test and Protect’ ready?
“Scotland is now fighting Covid with precisely as much testing capacity as the UK will permit us… What it means is more than that Scotland isn’t taking a distinctive approach – it means it can’t.”
Analysis: Scotland is now locked into a Four Nations Covid strategy
“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 […]
‘One step forward, five steps back’
“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.”