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Warning: This column contains material some of you may disagree with

Before I begin, I would like to offer a warning that this column contains material some readers may find difficult to stomach. Its themes include...

yesterday 3

Carlos Alba

Now we know why Sturgeon had such a focus on non-binary and trans issues

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician viewing the remains of their career in the rear view mirror must be in want of a windfall. ...

14.08.2025 5

Carlos Alba

Why does Scotland continue to drive its female leaders out of politics?

When a certain type of unionist bore has exhausted their repertoire of bigoted canards, they inevitably revert to the myth of Scottish exceptionalism....

08.08.2025 8

Carlos Alba

Shameful: our libel laws are a plaything for the rich

Back in the late 1980s when I was studying to be a journalist, my classmates and I were equipped with tools and skills that now seem like the quaint...

31.07.2025 4

Carlos Alba

Who does Labour exist to represent in Starmer’s Britain?

Britain was on the cusp of one of the last century’s two great periods of economic and social change, when Labour’s future leader delivered a...

24.07.2025 7

Carlos Alba

Consider the tears and ask yourself: how should we handle illegal immigration?

One of the most upsetting pieces of recent newsreel footage was of French police slashing a rubber dinghy containing around three dozen migrants, in...

16.07.2025 7

Carlos Alba

A doctor in your pocket? More like a hypochondriacs’ charter

One of the funniest scenes in The Office is when David Brent tries to pass himself off as a keen reader of the novels of Dostoyevsky, by scanning a...

10.07.2025 5

Carlos Alba

Why is the BBC in the dock? Why not call out Glastonbury?

Day or night, rain or shine, yin or yang, there is a universal, untransmutable constant around which we can all coalesce, no matter our political...

02.07.2025 5

Carlos Alba

Attacks on private schools won’t stop parents paying for their children’s education

I’m old enough to remember when a test of one’s middle-class, left-wing credentials meant refusing to cross a picket line. As a progressive...

26.06.2025 4

Carlos Alba

Time to be honest about the true cost of housing asylum seekers

There’s little guaranteed to get veins pumping on the necks of the great, full-breakfast-eating, Clarkson-chuckling, rights-demanding British public...

19.06.2025 20

Carlos Alba

Swinney’s knife crime summit: a political gesture or a genuine solution? There is a black and white photograph that’s routinely published when the subject of Scotland’s thorny and inglorious relationship with knife crime is written about.

There is a black and white photograph that’s routinely published when the subject of Scotland’s thorny and inglorious relationship with knife...

12.06.2025 5

Carlos Alba

Now even the British cuppa is not safe from scams

To the roster of con artists who have preyed on the human weakness for gullibility, can now be added the name of Thomas Robinson. Exploiting the...

10.06.2025 5

Carlos Alba

Scotland deserves better than Reform's despicable campaigning style

Back in the days when they weighed the Labour vote in Lanarkshire, the people’s party knew it could have fielded a Friesian heifer with learning...

29.05.2025 3

Carlos Alba

Pawns not prawns: Westminster politicians always sell out Scotland’s fishing fleet

It is an inalienable fact of political life that whenever British and European political leaders gather together in a room, the Scottish fishing...

22.05.2025 20

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The companies that drive us mad: do we only have ourselves to blame?

There’s a video clip doing the rounds on social media of a couple of lads at an airport departure gate, waiting to board a flight with a well-known...

15.05.2025 3

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Myth of the benevolent, all-powerful leader has damaged Scots politics

Anyone who has travelled the well-trodden path from youthful idealism to the centrist ground of adulthood, will recall the moment of realisation that...

08.05.2025 10

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Farage and Reform have already planted seeds of their own destruction

Nine years ago, in the wake of the Damascene Brexit referendum result, I began to research a putative biography of Nigel Farage. The fulfilment of...

01.05.2025 4

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: So we may not be alone. What does that do to religion?

The death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday will inevitably have prompted moments of deep introspection among those who believe – and many of those...

24.04.2025 8

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Farewell, Patrick Harvie: consequential for all the wrong reasons

And so farewell to Patrick Harvie, Scotland’s right-on, sanctimonious, witchfinder-general and scourge of the phobic classes. From obscurity, one...

17.04.2025 7

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: SNP must learn the lesson that the era of free higher education is over

As a young journalist at the turn of the millennium, I reported on generational changes to higher education funding. What struck me most clearly at...

10.04.2025 3

Carlos Alba

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...

03.04.2025 10

Carlos Alba

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

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.

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 30

Carlos Alba

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

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

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

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 4

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 10

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

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

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

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 4

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

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

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

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

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

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 10

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 4

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

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 3

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 10

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

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 4

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 3

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 3

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

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

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

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

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Warning: This column contains material some of you may disagree with

Carlos Alba

Now we know why Sturgeon had such a focus on non-binary and trans issues

Carlos Alba

Why does Scotland continue to drive its female leaders out of politics?

Carlos Alba

Shameful: our libel laws are a plaything for the rich

Carlos Alba

Who does Labour exist to represent in Starmer’s Britain?

Carlos Alba

Consider the tears and ask yourself: how should we handle illegal immigration?

Carlos Alba

A doctor in your pocket? More like a hypochondriacs’ charter

Carlos Alba

Why is the BBC in the dock? Why not call out Glastonbury?

Carlos Alba

Attacks on private schools won’t stop parents paying for their children’s education

Carlos Alba

Time to be honest about the true cost of housing asylum seekers

Carlos Alba

Swinney’s knife crime summit: a political gesture or a genuine solution? There is a black and white photograph that’s routinely published when the subject of Scotland’s thorny and inglorious relationship with knife crime is written about.

Carlos Alba

Now even the British cuppa is not safe from scams

Carlos Alba

Scotland deserves better than Reform's despicable campaigning style

Carlos Alba

Pawns not prawns: Westminster politicians always sell out Scotland’s fishing fleet

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The companies that drive us mad: do we only have ourselves to blame?

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Myth of the benevolent, all-powerful leader has damaged Scots politics

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Farage and Reform have already planted seeds of their own destruction

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: So we may not be alone. What does that do to religion?

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Farewell, Patrick Harvie: consequential for all the wrong reasons

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: SNP must learn the lesson that the era of free higher education is over

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

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.

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Election petition risks plunging new political depths

Carlos Alba

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

Carlos Alba