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Herald Scotland |
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. Scottish independence already exists in a strange quantum state. If you...
I was on tour in Scotland with my friend Martin Frizzell, with whom I present the podcast This Much is True Crime a few months ago. On the Edinburgh...
It was okay, I thought, Andy Burnham's speech to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool earlier this week. It was fine. The giddy excitement...
So there was, after all, yet another twist in the tale in the bid battle for a long-established Scottish company. However, while the bidder now poised...
This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter. Although a lot of the headlines around education in Scotland concern national...
Edinburgh’s buses have taken the plunge in solving a modern nuisance. Under new terms concerning anti-social behaviour, passengers can now be...
Scaffolding is the business to be in, it seems. Each week, residents evacuated from a crumbling Glasgow tenement must pay £5,000 a week for the...
It’s official: Govanhill is one of the world’s coolest neighbourhoods. Or at least that's according to Time Out, which declared that while...
Devotees of the heavy rock and metal music genre have long fought against discrimination and wilful distortion. We’re dismissed as rough and...
In September 1988, I walked out of the front door of my parents’ house and didn’t come back until Christmas Eve. I was off to university. In the...
The simple, brutal truth is no one really cares about junkies. They don’t vote, are economically inactive, commit a disproportionate amount of...
Hollywood, and the rest of the American film and TV industry, has never been just about entertainment. It’s a values machine. Domestically, it...
There was much for one of Scotland’s two biggest cities to celebrate in the latest attractiveness league table. For the other, the news was, while...
This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter. One of the arguments in favour of Scotland becoming host to a slew of giant,...
As a small child growing up in Glasgow, Saturday afternoon trips into the city centre came with free al fresco theatre. On Sauchiehall Street there...
It seems the dead are easily forgotten. Men like Michael McGoldrick, Robert Hamill and Frank O’Reilly. Women like Rosemary Nelson. Children like...
There’s long been a conspiracy of silence at Holyrood. If Vigil’s DI Kirsten Longacre had John Swinney locked in an interview room with a bare...
For generations, most ambitious Scots believed that if they wanted to build a serious career or company, they would eventually need to move to...
Last week, the Herald knocked it out of the park with its special reports on AI and the explosion of data centre applications in Scotland. By the...
The stones and the streets, they mean something. At the bottom of the hill was the Grassroots cafe, where I ate many plates of chips, and along the...
Over the years, there have been many different excuses put forward for trains being delayed, from leaves on the line to the wrong type of snow....
I’d say most of the Scottish parliamentary action since Holyrood returned from its summer break has taken place in the committee rooms. Some of the...
The flurry of news on Edinburgh Airport just kept on coming last week. Hard on the heels of the announcement the previous week that London Gatwick...
In every pub quiz I’ve ever taken part in, it has always ended in a resounding loss. I’ll go in confident, fuelled by a mediocre general knowledge...
With the budget approaching, George Foulkes warns the government against turning young against old by dismantling the triple lock. In politics U-turns...
Acknowledging the need for help when living with a long-term health condition or disability is a profoundly challenging step to take for most people....
At half past six on the morning of Sunday 31 August, 1997, I was woken by the telephone. It was the deputy editor of The Scotsman, telling me that...
One criticism of Edinburgh Council’s plans to spend its tourist tax windfall was that in trying to satisfy competing demands the result was a thin...
As he heads to his party’s annual conference in Liverpool, Michael Marra is entitled to feel mildly content with his first week as Scottish Labour...
We now know, definitively, thanks to Collette Stevenson, SNP MSP for East Kilbride, that Transport Scotland is not a registered charity so thanks once...
The University of Edinburgh has become my white whale in recent months, so it seems. Over the last two weeks, I have broken a number of exclusives...
In this column last week, I downplayed (with some justification, I think) the significance of the Cardiff Agreement between the leaders of the...
There has been no shortage of hand-wringing over Glasgow city centre in recent times. Clearly, there are areas of the city centre that present major...
A problem I encountered all summer was trying to stay on a budget while realistically not being able to spend all day in the park. For all the effort...
This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter. “I recognise the concerns that have been raised about the Government’s decision...
Labour's annual national conference runs from this Sunday until next Wednesday. It will be the first conference of the self-styled 'King of...
Donald Trump’s musings on Irish unity produced surprisingly little reaction. Political analysis is not seen as one of his strong points. And many...
National Galleries Scotland has acquired a large group of twentieth-century Scottish paintings assembled from the collection of a private donor. The...
There are very few circumstances under which I would agree to any sort of trek in the great outdoors. I abhor clunky walking boots that always seem...
At a meeting of Holyrood's Transport Committee last Wednesday morning, Collette Stevenson initiated proceedings by asking a detailed question...
This article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politics newsletter. A few weeks on from the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government,...
This may surprise you, but I’m one of those people who happens to believe we don’t pay members of Parliament enough. Unfortunately, that belief...
You could make the argument that it is easier for a chief executive to take the controls at a business after a period of underperformance, rather than...
This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter. So often what’s going on with hyperscale data centres and communities feels like...
First, a confession: “patriotism” in politics gives me the ick. It has connotations. I think of men in red and white Crusader tabards, or...
Concerns mount over Scotland's faltering offshore wind drive as North Sea industry leaders claim tax cuts could unlock 100 North Sea oil projects...
“It is my intent that my door is always open.” Those were the words of Glasgow University’s Principal and Vice Chancellor, Prof Andy Schofield,...
Back in 2015 Jack Rooke brought his debut show Good Grief to the Edinburgh Fringe. Based on his own life as the son of a Watford cab driver, it was a...
Trade has always been about more than the exchange of goods and services. At its best, it is about people, relationships, opportunity and recognition...
There’s something magical about music. Whether it’s an open-air stadium tour or whether you were, like me, seeing Primal Scream at the Barrowlands...