Scotland

A coup for the Royal Zoologocial Society of Scotland which announced today that it will take delivery of and house two Giant Pandas, courtesy of a deal with the Chinese government. A coup too, I dare say, for Alex Salmond who will be happy to accept whatever credit you may care to bestow upon him. I believe the going rate for a panda is something like $1m a year but Edinburgh Zoo will certainly be able to afford that. Hard to imagine pandas actually breeding in Edinburgh, but who knows? If a McPanda ever emerges I hope it gets a better name than “Butterstick” – the unfortunate moniker slapped upon

And so another year passes, replete with the usual misadventures, follies and debacles. Of course there were better moments too but this is no time to be dwelling on those. Anyway, thank you all for your company here this year and may the New Year bring you great joy and encouragement. See you again in 2011. Meanwhile, here’s another cheery Hogmanay missive from that sage of all our Caledonian yesteryears, the Reverend I.M. Jolly.

Whaddyaknow, Wikileaks have some Lockerbie-related cables? Unfortunately they’re only about the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and so less interesting – or perhaps simply less illuminating – than Lockerbie-related cables from the investigation and trial years might be. The Guardian’s headline is typically tendentious: Lockerbie bomber freed after Gaddafi’s ‘thuggish’ threats. This is true in as much as Gaddafi threatened to cut-off British business interests in Libya and then Megrahi was released. It is not true however that, as the headline implies, Megrahi was freed because of those threats. Nor, despite everything, is there any evidence in these cables that Gaddafi’s threats  – made to a body that was not

On this, at least, there is consensus: devolution has proved a disappointment. How could it be otherwise when the Scottish parliament was granted power without responsibility? A parliament that may spend but cannot raise money is but half a parliament. Politicians like spending even more than they like taxing; removing that latter part of the deal leaves the equation unbalanced. It encourages the attitude that more money is the answer to every public policy problem and, in Scotland, has reinforced an already distressingly statist consensus. Yesterday’s Scotland Bill, then, is a modest step forward. The proposals, based on the Calman Commission’s recommendations, are needlessly complex and, in places, batty but

Yes, it’s from the Daily Record but if there’s one thing the Record does well it’s cover gangland Glasgow: Scots gangsters are using “waterboarding” terror tactics to torture rivals. Hardened crooks have copied the CIA-style interrogation technique where water is poured on to a cloth covering the victim’s mouth and nose to simulate drowning. We can reveal that a leading member of one of Scotland’s most notorious crime clans was tortured by a rival gang using the shock tactics last week. Drug dealer John Fox was terrorised after being snatched off the street by four thugs during a row over stolen drugs. Associates of Fox said he was taken to

I half-agree with James’s (dangerously!) quasi-Whiggish view on the teaching of British history but would put it slightly differently: pupils in England should learn how Britain became a United Kingdom. (So should Scottish pupils. And Welsh ones too.) Simon Schama’s Guardian piece contains a good deal of sense but the most important passage, I think, certainly as regards the teaching of history is this: My own anecdotal evidence suggests that right across the secondary school system our children are being short-changed of the patrimony of their story, which is to say the lineaments of the whole story, for there can be no true history that refuses to span the arc,