“If Scotland is to be a place to live a good life in a good society, we should take the lessons of mutual support groups and the new fluidity of governance offered by the pandemic upheaval. We’ve seen the power when people come together – when communities are shaped by us and for us, all done at a local level.”
Coronavirus
“It would appear that Police Scotland are more frightened of belligerent football fans than nonviolent anti-racist protestors. That may be entirely rational – one does not need to be an expert in urban pacification to conclude that the latter can be kettled and bullied far more easily than the former. This does not make the double standard any less grating.”
Sean Bell: It is Police Scotland’s responsibility to answer to us, not vice versa
“Care homes are asked to ‘undertake individual risk assessments to assess the rights and needs of individual residents’. The whole point of human rights surely is that no-one should be able to ‘assess’ anyone as not having them?”
Nick Kempe: The politics of care and care home visiting
“We now know what the UK is going to look like in the final years before we reach those irreversible climate tipping points and the planet stops caring how fast our economy is growing. With Scottish elections and possibly another independence referendum now looming, it’s time for the various parties to show their support for an alternative future”
Analysis: UK Budget 2021
“Tenants were already being driven into poverty by unaffordable rents before the pandemic, but the situation is now beyond repair, and we need to undo the damage that has already been done before we start to talk about stabilising things.”
Gordon Maloney: “The Scottish Government had multiple opportunities to freeze rents over the course of the pandemic, but they rejected all of them”
For now, issues of Salmond and independence are subsumed in the public mind by the question of managing the pandemic. And here, in the shadow of May’s election, the news is (superficially) good for the SNP.
Source Direct: Reasons to be Cheerful
“In order to care about journalism, one must care about journalists. That care must be demonstrated through advocacy, organisation and a clear articulation of what will and will not be tolerated.”
Sean Bell: To save the Scottish press, listen to those who defend its journalists
“Whatever replaces the council tax should not insult either the intelligence or the sense of justice of those required to pay it. It should not be levied against those who have no means of paying it. It should not support an industry of debt collection that turns despair into the background noise of its victims’ lives.”
Sean Bell: The Scottish people cannot afford to ignore council tax, so why can our politicians?
“People in Scotland deserve far better, but we will not get that so long as those responsible for the current system are responsible for redesigning it.”
Nick Kempe: The Feeley review on Adult Social Care offers only more of the same
As Nicola Sturgeon addresses Holyrood on the future of lockdowns, questions arise concerning Scotland’s wider relationships to the UK and the European Union.