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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba

Herald Scotland

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Carlos Alba: Why is Scotland so terrible at sport and what can we do about it?

Carlos Alba: Why is Scotland so terrible at sport and what can we do about it?

For many people old enough to remember, June 7, 1978, will live long in infamy as the day that Scottish sport died.  On that date our national...

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Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Don't be blinded by Adolescence: social media can be a force for good

Carlos Alba: Don't be blinded by Adolescence: social media can be a force for good

In the suffocating cocoon of today’s 24/7, opinion-frenzied world, it’s tempting to believe that everything is unprecedented and the worst example...

27.03.2025 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Sorry, Mr Swinney, the SNP is going to need a new leader for a new age Reviving the SNP fortunes is one thing – the current unpopularity of Labour and the Conservatives north of the Border means electoral success could be by default – but reshaping and redefining it is quite another.

Carlos Alba: Sorry, Mr Swinney, the SNP is going to need a new leader for a new age Reviving the SNP fortunes is one thing – the current unpopularity of Labour and the Conservatives north of the Border means electoral success could be by default – but reshaping and redefining it is quite another.

All political careers end in failure and, if the lessons of history are anything to go by, some of the biggest failures are those who go at a time of...

19.03.2025 20

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: As SNP chief now knows, social media can haunt you forever

Carlos Alba: As SNP chief now knows, social media can haunt you forever

Despite the many undoubted benefits of modern communications technology, there are some egregious drawbacks. The ubiquitous ability to access and...

13.03.2025 20

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Winning the fight against child poverty? You sure about that, SNP?

It’s a general rule of politics, as it is in life, that when you’re backed into a corner and have nothing else to say, you should mention the...

06.03.2025 7

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Trump's new world order means SNP will have to think again on defence

In times of political turmoil, it’s comforting to seek historical comparisons with current events as a way of assuring ourselves that we have been...

27.02.2025 7

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: People like James Watt have no business playing politics

Long before she had developed a booming, baritone timbre and an air of psychopathic omniscience, Margaret Thatcher sought to persuade swathes of the...

19.02.2025 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Trump is forcing us to think about the rights of Palestinians in Israel

Anyone seeking fictional forewarning of the dystopic nightmare of a second Trump administration might consider the 1979 film Being There, in which a...

13.02.2025 8

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: A basic question: why are we forever short of qualified teachers?

To misquote the great PG Wodehouse, it is never difficult to distinguish a teacher with a grievance from a ray of sunshine. With the possible...

06.02.2025 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: We should take a leaf out of Spain's book when it comes to the elderly

Asked to name the most pressing challenges facing governments north and south of the border, most people would point to low economic growth,...

30.01.2025 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Don’t blame Trump: he’s just telling voters what they want to hear

Could Britons ever vote for someone like Donald Trump? It is a question exercising the minds of many rational, fearful people in these parts, as the...

23.01.2025 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The answer may be in the data, but what’s the question?

Depending on your footballing allegiances, the ongoing soap opera in the G52 postcode of Glasgow is either a tragedy of ancient Greek proportions, or...

16.01.2025 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

For the sake of Scottish politics, Operation Branchform needs to be resolved

There was a time when political parties in the US and the UK laid claim to the fabled title of being “the natural party of government”. In the...

09.01.2025 8

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Talk of a Reform government is as risible as Farage’s mustard cords and flat cap Reform may well have more members than the Conservatives, as Mr Farage claims, but as Jeremy Corbyn found to his cost as Labour leader, it is votes, not members, that count in the end.

Events currently unfolding and economic, social and political forces that have impacted the lives of people in the UK since 2008, will take decades...

03.01.2025 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: If only Jocky Wilson was alive to see what darts has turned into now

In the painfully slim journal of Scottish sporting greatness, there is a chapter that remains little referenced and, if landed upon by...

28.12.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The prince and the spy is more panto plot than national threat

Have you heard the Christmas fairy tale about the prince and the spy? An odious royal, who happens to be the King’s brother, gets in league with...

19.12.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

The BBC is now in permanent crisis mode: something needs to change

There are some things so irrationally, quintessentially British that they defy categorisation, or even explanation. I’m not talking about quaint...

12.12.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Election petition risks plunging new political depths

When my dear old grandmother was in politically expansive mood, she would often opine that the best way to sort out Britain’s (in her view,...

04.12.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Who'd be a whistleblower? Thank goodness some take it on

One of the most predictable developments following a violent outrage, or exposure of abuse or wrongdoing, is the slew of subsequent new stories...

27.11.2024 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: X marks the turning point: we must regulate social media

I can clearly remember reading about the death of Elvis Presley as I walked across Glasgow's Arran Drive, at the foot of Mosspark Avenue. It was on...

20.11.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Even Trump can't destroy the West in the next four years - here's why

For anyone with even a vague sense of history, one of the most perplexing things about the current age of populism is how it has normalised the...

13.11.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The lessons Spain must learn from the tragedy of Valencia

If the first duty of a government is to keep its citizens alive, then the government at all levels in Spain, has epically failed the people of...

06.11.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Sadly, Chris Hoy’s selfless revelation will change nothing

The public revelation by Sir Chris Hoy that he has an untreatable form of cancer, which started in his prostate, was a selfless act by a remarkable...

30.10.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Want to boost Scotland’s economy? The let asylum seekers work

The Scottish Government’s decision to scrap free bus travel for asylum seekers is, in the words of the Scottish Greens’ transport spokesman Mark...

23.10.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The darker side of Alex Salmond cannot be ignored

The key to understanding what made Alex Salmond tick is to know that he was a gambler. Depending on who you speak to, his habit ranged from...

15.10.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Happy, pleasant Denmark: like returning to Glasgow from Edinburgh

One of the first things you notice when visiting Denmark is how utterly, beguilingly pleasant everyone is. Unlike their counterparts in Germany,...

09.10.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Anas Sarwar is feeling the sweat on the back of his neck. No wonder

The cut to the winter fuel allowance, rows over ministers accepting gifts and donations, conflicted advisers working at the heart of Downing...

01.10.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: What's all the fuss about? Who doesn't love a freebie?

Who doesn’t love a freebie? I mean, what’s not to love? You get something you can’t afford, or wouldn’t otherwise buy for yourself, and it’s free....

25.09.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

'People will steal anything': I let a holiday flat – here is what I have learned “The people have spoken, the bastards,” declared Democrat hopeful Dick Tuck in his concession speech, following defeat in the 1962 California Senate primary.

“The people have spoken, the bastards,” declared Democrat hopeful Dick Tuck in his concession speech, following defeat in the 1962 California...

17.09.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Be very wary of politicians scrambling to rewrite the past

You wonder what went through Alex Salmond’s mind when a producer from Firecrest Films called to ask him to participate in a documentary called “...

11.09.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The SNP needs a lesson in economic literacy

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to...

03.09.2024 1

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: So will the Fringe become a victim of its own success?

Long ago and in a different life, when I lived in Edinburgh, I used to dread festival time, not least because my place of work was just off the...

28.08.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: We need a conspiracy of silence on my former friend Neil Oliver

Who benefits, asks Neil Oliver in a recent episode of his doomsday monologues on YouTube, understatedly entitled “Civil War”. Attired in a fluffy...

23.08.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: There is a fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the EV debate

In a depressing survey of electric car use published this week, the most significant statistic was that only 1.4 per cent of motorists in Scotland...

14.08.2024 30

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

I'm not saying it could never happen here, Keir, but these are not 'UK riots'

The Olympics is one of the few occasions when we have an opportunity to feel collectively and unashamedly British, without the distracting taint of...

06.08.2024 1

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Wronged LGBT service personnel need more than an apology

Paul Wilson was a Lance Corporal in the Royal Highland Fusiliers and a member of the regimental band, who played at some of Britain’s highest...

24.07.2024 1

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Thank goodness we were spared an England victory and all that goes with that While my Spanish heritage has given me and my family countless reasons to celebrate footballing success over the past decade-and-a-half, for decades Spain, like Scotland, were perennial under-achievers.

I was not even a year old when England won the football World Cup in 1966. While I have no memory of the event or its aftermath, it has cast a long...

16.07.2024 1

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Independence isn't dead – and nor is the SNP, despite what pundits say

The polls had yet to open, far less close, when the predictions began. The 2024 General Election would be remembered as the moment when the threat...

10.07.2024 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba