“If we are to design a NCS worthy of the name, it is essential that the full truth about that disaster is made public, including the role of central government, private sector providers and the relationship between the two. The revelations of the last two weeks represent some tentative steps in the right direction.”
Common Weal
“It takes more than a headline to change a country. The policies must match up too. And this is where the government all too easily slips back into old language, old rhetoric and old ideas of the old ‘normal’ of the pre-pandemic world.”
Analysis: Scottish Budget 2021-22
“The year ahead will not be easy. It will be harder if we forget that feeling we felt in April when we overwhelmingly cared for each other, and that I sincerely hope you will feel again this festive season. But we can achieve so much more if we take that feeling with us.”
Robin McAlpine: Solidarity isn’t just for Christmas – it’s a cold, hard strategy for a better world
“There is no fundamental reason why the SNP can’t be the party it should be. There is no fundamental reason why the party democracy can’t still save the party.”
Robin McAlpine: This weekend, please turn up and save the SNP
“The fear may be that the incorporation of an enfeebled version of SNIB will lead to waning interest in the policy, as part of a general cynicism surrounding official political life.”
Analysis: Can the Scottish National Investment Bank deliver on its promises?
“The means to bring about change and speed up progress here at home in Scotland are already available to each and everyone of us. It’s high time to remind ourselves what they are.”
The Pressure series: Applying pressure in Scotland
The US election result looks like being a nail-biter, and there is little value in speculating, so we will come back to that in tomorrow morning’s Source Direct. If the pandemic had not intervened, the UN Climate Summit would be just about to get underway in Glasgow. As it is, COP26 has been pushed back […]
With COP26 one year away, why are we letting a serious crisis go to waste?
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, […]
Craig Dalzell: @ScotGov tiered Covid-19 restrictions a step forward
“We also need to make some serious choices. You can keep financiers and corporate lobbyists happy or you can build a stronger indigenous industry base, but not both. Scotland has to choose the latter.”
Robin McAlpine: As the government sleeps at the wheel, this is how we could save the economy
“When 75 percent of the nation would vote for independence with ‘the right economic case’, when is the Scottish Government finally going to publish one?”