Anna Burnside: High street ‘star’ making its bucks at our expense
STARBUCKS. It calls itself a coffee shop but we use it as a 21st century’s bus shelter; a place to sit down in the airport, escape from the rain in town, check emails in an unfamiliar city.The...
View ArticleThe children of the world’s biggest tycoons have the genes, but after a...
THE Ewings. The Carringtons. The – gulp – Corleones. They may all be fictional family businesses hellbent on establishing a dynasty to maintain their wealth through the generations but also an object...
View ArticleComputer concerns over new land tax
THE body lined up to play a key role in Scottish tax collection may not be ready for the task, former Labour leader Iain Gray has warned, after a multi- million pound IT bungle.The heads of Registers...
View ArticleFilm review: Keep The Lights On (18)
IT’S 1998 and Erik (Thure Lindhardt, right) is a filmmaker with a string of failed relationships until he meets a funny, smart, sexy man on a gay chatline. Director: Ira SachsRunning time: 101 minutes*...
View ArticleFears over record low in number of GP surgeries
PATIENTS in rural parts fear they will lose their local doctor’s surgery when the number of GP practices in Scotland falls below 1,000 for the first time.Figures from April show there were 1,002...
View ArticleKenny Hunter leaves his urban sculpture behind to get under the skin of...
IT’S a fine but blustery October morning, with a cloudy sky that suggests an ever-present threat of rain. I’m in one of Scotland’s most northerly forests, Borgie in Sutherland, just a few miles...
View ArticleSNP party conference: 77% want answers on EU membership
More than three quarters of Scots believe the SNP Government should come clean on the legal advice it has about an independent Scotland’s membership of the European Union, a new poll has today...
View ArticleSNP party conference: Get nuclear guarantee from Nato, leadership told
THE SNP leadership is to be urged to obtain a written guarantee from Nato pledging that it would accept a nuclear weapon-free Scotland as a member.A resolution calling on party defence spokesman Angus...
View Article‘Botched operation has ruined my life’, says teacher claiming hospital then...
A TEACHER has claimed that her life has been ruined by a “botched” operation at a Scottish hospital.Amanda Larkins underwent surgery at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh for a bowel condition...
View ArticleBook review: I Can Make You Hate, by Charlie Brooker
CHARLIE Brooker’s TvGoHome has pride of place, often thumbed, in my toilet collection, but his paperback collections of TV reviews have been as ephemeral as the programmes he wrote about. I Can Make...
View ArticleSNP party conference: ‘We’re ruled by a bunch of Snootys,’ says Alex Salmond
ALEX Salmond launched an explosive attack on the Westminster government yesterday, asking why a “bunch of incompetent Lord Snootys” still held power over Scotland.In his keynote address to his party’s...
View ArticleDirector dealings: Share bid to bolster InterQuest investment
IT STAFFING specialist InterQuest recently said investment in the long-term potential of the business has been at the expense of short-term profitability in the first half of the year.The recruitment...
View ArticleFilm reviews: Room 237 (15) | Stitches (18) | I Anna (15)
Siobhn Synnot reviews the rest of this week’s cinema releasesRoom 237 (15) * * * *What was The Shining about? Since Stanley Kubrick threw Stephen King’s novel in the air and made his own version about...
View ArticleSketch: Dispute gives event a defensive edge
THERE was a lot of back-slapping in Perth yesterday as the SNP congratulated itself on what Alex Salmond described as “one of the finest debates in our party’s history”.There was also a huge sense of...
View ArticleTV Pick of the Week: Homeland| You’ve Been Trumped| Painting The Queen
PICK OF THE WEEK HomelandChannel 4, today, 9pmPoor Carrie. Everybody took her insistence that Brody was a baddie as the ravings of a lunatic, to the extent that the whole sorry episode drove her to the...
View ArticleClaire Black: “No one turns up to a dinner party with a bottle of White Ace...
COMING out of the supermarket recently I saw a woman wrestling with a massive holdall. She was small, it was huge. It was slumped like a sack of potatoes and looked as heavy, resisting all attempts to...
View ArticleGet energy deals while they last
Cheaper fixed price tariffs for gas and electricity are likely to become more elusive, writes Jeff SalwayHOUSEHOLDS are being urged to freeze their bills this winter to avoid the price hikes announced...
View ArticleJeff Salway: MP pensions betray politicos’ greed
IN HIS outstanding political diaries, Chris Mullin vents frustration at both the public perception of how MPs earn their corn and how that view is shaped by the naked self-interest of his...
View ArticleSNP party conference: UK held back by ‘chippy nationalism’
THE UK is viewed as a nation held back by “chippy nationalism” and a “fear of outsiders” by other countries around the world, a leading SNP cabinet minister said yesterday.THE UK is viewed as a nation...
View ArticleFordyce Maxwell: “Where knowing the theory of making tarte au citron will...
MY ONLY excuse for what I’ve done on the past few Tuesday nights, each time an hour that will not come again, is that I haven’t been alone. Not just at home where Liz and I have watched every oven...
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