COVID-19 support funds for businesses should be contingent on them offering better employee benefits in order to combat an endemic of low pay and precarious work, a think tank has said. Source

MORE than £3.6 billion has been used to support businesses in Scotland since the pandemic hit last spring, figures show. Source

Watching the response to the SNP-SGP co-operation agreement has been an amazing insight into how the media works, who are the gatekeepers and and police of opinion – and the gulf between Scotland’s elected pro-indy majority and the entitled commentariat that hold permanent positions of media power. They are almost all white men of a […] Source

A STUDENT from Edinburgh has revealed plans to open Edinburgh’s first bar for “all queer women and lesbians”. Source

The sense of despair after watching the debacle in Kabul is palpable. War and western imperialism – the threat to women and children – and the panic and chaos of our disgraceful shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan seem to be just the latest in a litany of critical problems we face. In Scotland we suffer from […] Source

Marked by the emergence of  a diverse social movement, mass political self-education, and panic at the pinnacle of the British state – the heady days of 2014 are now a far distant memory. Yet an echo of the strange final weeks before the referendum could be heard amidst the howling from unionist and conservative commentators […] Source

CLAIM: BBC’s Good Morning Scotland presenter Andrew Black said: “The power to hold [indyref2] legally still lies with the UK Government.” Source

LLOYDS Bank runs more than half of the UK’s bank branches that are the last in their community, according to new figures supplied to MPs. Source

SPACE Hub Sutherland, the world’s first carbon-neutral spaceport on A’ Mhoine peninsula, has been given the go-ahead by Lord Doherty after he ruled in a judicial review instigated by Danish ASOS billionaire Anders Povlsen. Source

Liberal media went crazy for the Tory back-benchers sticking it to Boris Johnson in Westminster yesterday. Ex-soldiers were a favourite but so too was the disastrous ex-PM Theresa May now resurrected as a principled back-bencher. Stumbling into an accidentally prophetic sentence she said: “We boast about Global Britain, but where is Global Britain on the […] Source

The power sharing deal agreed between SNP and Green negotiators includes a renewed commitment to holding indyref2 within the current parliamentary term and preferably before the end of 2023. The commitment was included in the details of the deal revealed earlier today and will undoubtedly make the Scottish government’s demand for a second independence vote […] Source

A NEW independent report has set out a series of five recommendations to transform how Scottish companies secure work in offshore wind. Source

CLAIM: BBC’s Douglas Fraser on 2020-2021 GERS: “Subtract the tax take from the spend total, you reach an estimate of the deficit with which Scotland would have been operating last financial year if it were independent and if nothing else were to change.” Source

CLAIM: BBC’s Douglas Fraser on 2020-2021 GERS: “Subtract the tax take from the spend total, you reach an estimate of the deficit with which Scotland would have been operating last financial year if it were independent and if nothing else were to change.” Source