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2 months ago | 
thinkscotland.org | Owen Polley |Brian Monteith |Stuart Crawford |Christine Padgham
ONE YEAR AGO this week, the Stormont Assembly was restored, after the DUP struck its Safeguarding the Union deal with Rishi Sunak’s government. The unionist party had boycotted power-sharing for two years, due to its opposition to the Irish Sea border. And during that period, its critics argued it prevented all sorts of progress by the executive and made Northern Ireland’s problems worse.
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2 months ago | 
thinkscotland.org | Stuart Crawford |Brian Monteith |Owen Polley |Christine Padgham
I HAPPENED to be travelling along Edinburgh’s City Bypass last Saturday on my way to Glasgow at the same time as the farmer’s protest against Starmer’s inheritance tax (IHT) had taken to the busy route. Since 1984, agricultural property relief has allowed land used for crops or rearing animals – as well as farm buildings, cottages and houses – to be exempt from inheritance tax. But the UK government has now announced that a 20% rate, will apply ver a £1m threshold from April 2026.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Jill Stephenson |Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham
MANY WILL REMEMBER Michael Gove, as a cabinet minister, saying, in relation to Brexit, ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of experts’. While this was provocative and extravagant, there was some sense in it. After all, trust in experts had been eroded by prominent cases of experts getting it wrong or even doing wrong. This has included cases of damaging surgery carried out on blameless patients, and the crashing of financial institutions by their directors.
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich
IT SEEMS people like parables. Even those not familiar with the Bible can probably tell you about the parable of the Prodigal Son, or the parable of the Lost Sheep. 2000 years later it seems we still need simple stories to highlight complex ideas.
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Jan 2, 2025 | 
thinkscotland.org | Linda Holt |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson
CHANGE, the title of its manifesto, was the stand-out slogan of Labour’s campaign earlier this year against a lost fourteen years of Conservative rule. But when didn’t a political party or candidate promise change? Voters’ thirst for political change seems to have accelerated in the last year as, in democratic elections across the world, incumbency has ceased to confer an automatic advantage. So what of the change promised by Keir Starmer?
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Ian Mitchell |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich
LAST SATURDAY I had the pleasure of speaking at the Reform UK conference in Perth. It was actually Reform’s fourth Scottish Conference, but the three previous ones might have fitted in the backroom of some pub. This one was rather different. 350 attendees, an overflow room, a hugely enthusiastic audience and a dozen speakers including one of two former Tory councillors that had defected to Reform UK that very day.
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Nov 13, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Hamish Gobson |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson
THE NEXT President of the United States is 78, and has already been shot at once while under secret service protection. He happened to turn his head as the bullet flew past him, which almost certainly saved his life. What if the next assassination attempt is successful? The chances are small but, given American history, not that small. Seven of the 46 presidents to date (15 per cent) have been shot and 4 of those killed, which is just under 10 per cent.
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Oct 22, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Hamish Gobson |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich
ANYONE who has followed the development of the windfarm industry in Scotland will have been struck by the effort which the Scottish government puts into further impoverishing both underprivileged city dwellers and all rural ones. The former suffer from artificially high power costs, and the latter from that plus the desecration of their visual environment by giant white turbines and giant grey pylons.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson
WE HAVE SEEN how Britain is failing. Its growth rate per head has collapsed to the worst in 200 years and the country is in relative global structural decline. We have seen how the State has, over the last twenty years, come to dominate the UK growing from a third of the economy to almost half and how this underestimates the state’s reach given the exponential increase in regulation.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thinkscotland.org | Ewen Stewart |Christine Padgham |Regina Erich |Jill Stephenson
THE SHORT ANSWER is your guess is as good as mine, save for raising yet more tax. Rachel Reeves has claimed there is a £22bn black hole (around £750 for every family) but while she is correct the current position is, unsustainable in the longer term, the additional £22bn – if you believe it and I don’t – is largely of her own doing. Labour’s early decisions have made matters somewhat worse.
