BY STEWART SLATER The narrative, it is clear, has been set. It may be several years, and untold millions of pounds, before the Covid inquiry reports, but its conclusion is now obvious. Not in the sense of what it actually decides, but of what it will be thought to have decided. For, after the past weeks of testimony, it is certain that Britain had a … Continue reading Asking the Wrong Question
BY EFFIE DEANS Like everyone else I did not pay much attention to the SNP conference which took place nearby me in Aberdeen. The turnout was poor with plenty of empty seats. But this isn’t the SNP’s main problem, nor indeed is Humza Yousaf. The real problem is Scottish nationalism has become a movement of fantasists. In 1989 two million people in what are now … Continue reading The SNP is a Dwindling Band of Fantasists
The Editor of Country Squire Magazine, Dom Wightman, defends the British Countryside on British Thought Leaders. Continue reading Dominic Wightman: British Thought Leaders
BY HAMISH GOBSON When Greta Thunberg won the Eurovision Sob Contest in 2019, she was the youngest winner of a major compassion tournie since Mother Teresa took gold at the Nobels in Oslo in 1979. Like the “crinklie of Calcutta”, the tear-jerking Swedelette was taken up by the great and the good as if she were a new health recipe. One of the first politicians … Continue reading Beware the likes of Tintin Thunberg & Mrs Murrell
BY HAMISH GOBSON Even the Archers’ lesbian kiss would be subject to Yousaf’s Legal Services Bill Our anti-affordable “government” in Scotland has been conspicuous by its silence in the matter of the first lesbian kiss to be broadcast on The Archers, the celebrated radio series which has been telling “an everyday story of countryfolk” since 1951. This happened on 10 August yet Humza Yousaf, who has … Continue reading Thongweed & Lugworms
BY EFFIE DEANS It ought to be possible for a Celtic fan to go to an Old Firm Game and stand amongst the Rangers fans in his Celtic shirt while cheering every time Celtic score a goal and booing each time Rangers score. Amongst all those blue shirts it ought to be possible for a single green and white shirt to be enjoying the match … Continue reading Covenanters Preaching Outside Again
BY DANIEL JUPP Modern liberal democracies were the result of having already tried everything, from the life of the nomadic hunter-gatherer to the feudal society to monarchical autocracy to the bloodiest of anti-monarchical revolutions. They were the result of brilliant men from Plato to Edmund Burke thinking about how a society should be constructed, who should rule it, and on what basis the authority of … Continue reading Freedom in the Balance?
BY EFFIE DEANS There is a problem with free speech in Scotland. The most important political events in recent times cannot openly be discussed. Secrecy still surrounds the time when Alex Salmond was First Minister and the court case in 2020. The only way to discuss is to write about something else and hope that people understand the point. The point is to illustrate the … Continue reading What Once was Free Speech
BY ALEX STORY “Farage is a pygmy” wrote Will Hutton in a tweet a few days before Dame Alison Rose resigned from her post as CEO of NatWest, the partially state-owned British bank. A few days later, she resigned, admitting she was the source of an inaccurate briefing about Nigel Farage’s finances to the media. Her position was untenable. She broke client confidentiality, smeared one of … Continue reading Double Standards as a Symptom
BY EFFIE DEANS There is always going to be a problem with the predictability of the future. I think it is for this reason that the SNP can essentially say what it likes about Scottish independence. It will give us each an extra £500 pounds assuming we don’t have to join the Euro. It will give us free travel throughout the former UK and the … Continue reading Beer & Thistles
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Ask anyone but politicians anywhere around Europe what they think of politicians, and you’ll get groans. You’ll also hear words like “low calibre” and “disconnected”. You’ll receive whingeing about “short-termism”, “career politicians” and “reacting only to polls”. There is no coincidence in this. In the Internet age we are all interconnected as never before, and politicians, under far too much scrutiny, are … Continue reading Europe’s Leadership Famine
BY ALEX STORY Coutts lied. The BBC and the Financial Times, among others, amplified the lie. Nigel Farage’s bank account closure, they had said two weeks ago, was simply down to business. BBC journalists Simon Jack and Daniel Thomas incuriously wrote, “Nigel Farage fell below the financial threshold”. Financial Times correspondents George Parker, Robert Smith and Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan noted that Coutts had financial eligibility criteria. … Continue reading The Lie that Reveals
BY HAMISH GOBSON In Culloden month this year, Mike Nevin published an excellent and informed article analysing Evgeny Prigozhin’s future march on Moscow under the title: “Why the Jacobite Rebellion Failed”. What Mr Nevin seemed to me to be saying by Aesopian analogy was that Humza Yousaf does not have the legs for a march as far as Derby, which Bonnie Prince Charlie reached, much less to … Continue reading The Upkilting of Humza
BY ALEX STORY Alastair Campbell has graced our TV studios a great deal of late. As the seventh anniversary of the vote on leaving the European Union came and went, he was the de facto cheerleader for the struggling institution. His main line of argument was and is that the people who campaigned for Brexit lied to a gullible and mostly ill-educated electorate. Because the … Continue reading Context Matters
BY ROGER WATSON ‘That surprises me’ is a response I often get to something I have said or done when I am speaking with friends and relatives who are more left-wing than me. Admittedly, it is not hard to be more left-wing than me, adhering as I do to a set of very traditional and conservative values. I dabbled with left-wing politics as a student. … Continue reading No Surprise Lefties Are Moving Right
BY THE EDITOR A few years ago, my colleague Nicholas Pearce wrote about how a Torbay-based dime store huckster known as Ellie Waugh managed to get the bleeding-heart LBC shock jock James O’Brien to promote her latest deception on air. Up to £70,000.00 was raised in donations by Waugh’s con, mostly using a crowdfunder that O’Brien innocently promoted live on air during his morning radio … Continue reading Recording of James O’Brien’s ‘Most Admirable Person’ Surfaces
BY EFFIE DEANS The likely result of the next General Election in Scotland is that the SNP will lose around 20 seats to Labour and a few to the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. If that happens the SNP might still just be the largest party in Scotland on around 25 seats, but it will no longer be the dominant force. Alex Salmond has come … Continue reading The SNP Should Ditch Sturgeon
BY ALEX STORY For a democracy to work, the losing side must accept defeat. For the next electoral cycle, the opposition should work to convince the electorate that its ideas, concepts and philosophies are better for the country. The next election tests the opposition’s views. If the programme overlaps with the opinions of the largest number of voters in the country, the opposition becomes the … Continue reading Losers’ Consensus is Missing
BY WILLIAM RITCHIE A Short History of British-Hungarian Encounters ‘The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule’Bram Stoker ‘Dracula’ ‘No country may boast more of its city, and any that has seen the King of … Continue reading Hungary: Our Friends Beyond the Forest
BY EFFIE DEANS I voted for Brexit mainly because I realised contrary to the Remain argument that leaving the EU would make Scottish independence all but impossible. EU membership encourages sub-national nationalism by allowing regions to argue that nothing much would change after independence. If the whole of Belgium is in the EU and ruled by Brussels, it matters little if Flanders and Wallonia separate. … Continue reading We Are Being Conned
