“Will you be needing toiletries with this one dear?” asks a kindly volunteer at a Leith Walk foodbank, as she begins to empty out the contents of a big plastic box into bags.

Embarrassed, I mumble something about not being a client but that I’m interested in volunteering, and then feel …read more

Nuno Silva, a Portuguese-born footballer who has played in Angola and Portugal, and who has just started playing for Spanish football team Real Jaén in Andalusia, this week wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco (who died in 1975) to his inaugural press conference. Twitter …read more

Commentary by Derek Bateman

Iain Macwhirter has been up to his old tricks – applying logic to politics. This will never do. What where might that lead – to honest politicians, public funding of parties, fair taxation and even people admitting mistakes? It doesn’t bear thinking about. There would hardly be …read more

Ivor Cutler used to distribute stickers saying ‘Save the Amoeba’. His point was that smaller, less photogenic creatures deserved protection as well as Whales and Tigers and Elephants. Our confusion about nature and the environmental crisis is everywhere to be seen. The response to Walter Palmer killing a lion has …read more

First let me once again thank Bella Caledonia, Independence Live and all those other individuals who have been donating to and spreading the word about the National YES Registry project and its goals. All your help has been wonderful and very much appreciated.

Throughout the last 3 weeks of our launch …read more

Yellow, four-fingered, but getting somewhere: Europe’s Greater Springfield’ can learn from the Simpsons.

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It is good to see Jim McColl banging heads together to revive Scottish marine enterprise after three decades of steady shrinkage. It also reminds us that we had such a scheme, forty years back, from Sir William Lithgow, …read more

The problem of the radicalisation of young people is getting more desperate, as 1000s of people make the journey to ‘Corbyn’.

One proud New Labour parent, said “These kids don’t know what they’re doing. It’s all done over the internet. One minute they were good unthinking Blairites, the next thing …read more