When I was a child, there was a comedian who always started his gags by saying “I wanna tell you a story.” My guess is that he thought that there was something unusual about that. He was wrong. Story telling is what we do all the time.
YOU would have thought Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi would want to be quiet about tax. After all, he was sacked from the Cabinet last year over his own tax affairs. Paying a tax penalty of more than a million pounds to HM Revenue & Customs would be enough to teach most people the virtue of silence.
Scotland is, as The National has reported and as all experts from Prof McCrone onwards have agreed, rich with energy resources. These days, what matters is that most of these are sustainable. Where once oil should have given Scotland a wealth and prosperity to rival that of Norway, now it is wind, sun, Highland water and its tides that provide Scotland with a new opportunity to be one of the richest nations on earth because is natural resource endowment is so strong.
OVER the last two days the US House of Representatives has made clear what happens when far-right elements are elected to office under the banner of what was once a respectable political party.
I HAVE written about the need for an independent Scotland to have its own currency for some time. I rather hope that the events of the last week or so have resolved this issue.
IT'S hard to write that I now think that we are at the start of the biggest economic crisis of my 64-year lifetime, but I have no choice. I warned in this column that things would be bad with Truss in charge. But I must be honest and say that I never thought she and Kwasi Kwarteng would be as bad as it turns out they are intent on being.
THE days following the death of the Queen required a moment for reflection. If her supposed tradition of being apolitical was to have been followed, then this might have been the time for politicians to take a very temporary back seat. Due process might have been enough, at least for a few days. And yet nothing like that has happened.
ONE day I will be able to think about something other than the economic crisis that is coming our way this winter, but right now it dominates my waking hours.
I HAVE done a number of media interviews over the last week, and they all suggest that the message I have been trying to impart about the cost-of-living crisis is beginning to get through to some journalists. When I was asked by a BBC reporter “Can our economy survive the crisis that is coming?” I really thought that at long last the scale of the problem that we are facing had begun to be understood. But, of course, my answer did not get on air.
Nicola Sturgeon says the independence referendum campaign is on again. I really do hope that she is right.
