DAVID Mundell, who was previously sacked by Boris Johnson on account of being a useless waste of space, has now been appointed by Johnson as his new trade envoy to New Zealand. A country on the other side the world whose borders are currently closed to the UK and where his primary job will be to sell out his own farming constituents – which is, after all, pretty much what he did during the entire Brexit process, so at least he has some relevant experience for the job. Source

George Gunn Caithness Makar, playwright, novelist, chronicler of and from ‘The Province of the Cat’, essayist. and Bella Caledonia columnist, is well-kent to many.  This new collection of poems ‘Chronicles of the First Light’ is the fifth collection of his poetry to have been published, and the first published with Drunk Muse Press, one of […] Source

You couldn’t make it up. Source

Brexit has emerged as the main cause of deepening food shortages in supermarkets and restaurants and predicted Christmas chaos,  leaving attempts to divert blame on to the Covid 19 ‘pingdemic’ looking increasingly threadbare. The news comes as lobby groups for the retail and transport industries have jointly written to UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng warning […] Source

A SCIENTIST, Scotch whisky distiller, businessman and Burnsian has been appointed as an ambassador of the Robert Burns World Federation. Source

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