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 […]
Economics
Some good news – kind of. The Royal Bank of Scotland’s latest Purchasing Managers’ Index report suggests things are starting to get built and sold again. A PMI rate above 50 suggests activity is expanding rather than contracting, and Scotland’s August PMI was 55.8, ahead of Northern Ireland and Wales but behind all English regions. […]
Scotland’s looming financial storm
“At the centre of this web of crank economics, jumbled alliance-mongering, and meaningless exhortations to the ‘international community’, there is nothing. There is no working ‘independence in Europe’ prospectus.”
David Jamieson: Outcry over Tory brinkmanship covers malaise of ‘independence in Europe’
“Already by the start of September, students are arriving at Scottish campuses for the most extraordinary academic year in living memory.”
Analysis: After the school grades fiasco – what’s next for Scottish education?
“Problems like those posed by the GC do not go away on their own. They are either addressed directly and completely, or they go septic and rot, bleeding weakness across the whole body of the independence argument. The time to lance the rancid bubo has come.”
David Jamieson: The first establishment blows against Sterlingisation are landing, and cannot be ignored
“A Democrat administration would be more hostile to Brexit, and more willing to work with Brussels to squeeze the UK in Brexit negotiations. This could create and avenue for opposition forces in the UK, above all Starmer’s Labour and the SNP.”
What does Joe Biden’s nomination mean for Scotland?
“As with many other industries during the Covid-19 induced crisis, an atmosphere of confusion and trepidation hangs heavy over media.”
Analysis: During the pandemic, UK media entered a death spiral
The official economic data for the first half of 2020 is out, and according to the ONS there is only one country in Europe that Britain has not had a deeper recession than in the first half of the year. Spain. Apart from Belgium, the two countries which have the worst deaths per million from […]
No time for fiddling while Rome burns
“The central green commitment of the Scottish Government’s economic recovery plan is an auction block of Scotland’s resources in the form of a Green Investment Portfolio.”
Analysis: The ‘Zealots’ and the Great Scottish Green Energy Auction
“It is hard to understand how the policies in the Growth Commission, and the Economic Recovery Group – both unelected elite commissions made up largely of corporate, banking and landholding figures – are designed with middle Scotland in mind.”