John Swinney to headline Glasgow event on European climate
The Better Society Academy will take place at the city centre venue from April 29 until May 2, bringing together business leaders, activists and experts.
It follows on from events in Amsterdam and Vienna.
READ MORE: John Swinney accuses Scottish Tories of trans rights U-turn as old comments resurface
The three-and-a-half-day event is run by the TSH Talent Foundation, a non-profit established by The Social Hub, a hybrid hospitality firm founded by Edinburgh-born entrepreneur Charlie MacGregor.
The First Minister said: 'I can think of no better setting than the city that hosted Cop26 just a few years ago, to bring together forward-thinking young leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers – all working collectively to tackle one of the most urgent challenges of our time: the twin climate and nature crisis.
'This event is an example of the positive impact B-Corp organisations in Scotland like The Social Hub can bring to cities like Glasgow.
(Image: PA Wires)
'The Better Society Academy is committed to inclusive, action-driven learning, and reminds us of what's possible when we bring like-minded people together to build a better future.
'This attitude closely aligns with my ambition to build a better Scotland for generations to come, which is translated into the four core priorities I have set for my Government: eradicating child poverty; stimulating Scotland's economy; ensuring high-quality, sustainable public services; and tackling the climate emergency.
'Tackling the climate and nature emergency is intrinsically linked to the success of our nation. It is not just about numbers and carbon targets – it is about improving lives, restoring nature, and securing Scotland's future prosperity.'
The event will come just a week after the Scottish Government dropped a key climate change target to cut car use in Scotland by 20% by the end of the decade.
And that follows on from last year's decision to abandon Scotland's legally binding target to reduce emissions by 75% by 2030.
The 2025 Glasgow programme, Changemakers Leading the Way to Net Zero: Inspiring Stories of Collaboration and Impact, will feature figures in sustainability, business, design, and activism.
Among the speakers are Anna Campbell-Jones, designer and presenter of the BBC's Scotland's Home Of The Year programme; Clover Hogan, climate activist and founder of Force of Nature; Alison McRae, senior director at the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce; and economist Mattia Romani.
Frank Uffen, chairman of the TSH Talent Foundation and adviser to The Social Hub's board, said: 'The First Minister's attendance at this event shows how important these issues are to Scotland and all nations and the potential for changemakers in all industries to make a difference.
READ MORE: Piers Morgan stunned following American journalist's Gaza genocide response
'This event will equip emerging changemakers with the networks, insight and tools to drive real transformation in their communities.
'We're proud to be hosting them here in Glasgow – a city with a deep legacy of innovation and global outlook.'
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Times
18 minutes ago
- Times
Alex Salmond and the truth behind our fallout, by Nicola Sturgeon
In the dining room of my house in Glasgow on April 4, 2018, with just him and me across a table, Alex showed me a copy of the letter he had received from the Scottish government's permanent secretary, Leslie Evans, informing him of the complaints against him. The substance of the complaints, one in particular, shocked me. I felt sick. After appearing to be upset and mortified by the allegations, Alex became cold. He effectively admitted the substance of one of the complaints, but claimed that it had been a 'misunderstanding', for which he had apologised at the time. He made it obvious that he considered the whole process to be illegitimate. He would later claim differently, of course, but it was evident that he wanted me to intervene and to stop the investigation in its tracks or divert it into some kind of siding. I knew that I shouldn't do that. I didn't realise it then, but this decision made the break-up of one of the most successful partnerships in modern British politics all but inevitable. On the day before the Scottish government was due to publish the facts and outcome of the investigation, the story was leaked to the Daily Record. I do not know who leaked it, but it was not me or anyone acting with my authority or knowledge. It crossed my mind many times that it might have been Alex himself or someone acting on his behalf. To those with no experience of the dark arts of media manipulation, I know this will sound preposterous. However, in many ways it would have been classic Alex. I had known him to make these kinds of calculations in the past. If there is damaging information certain to emerge about you and there is nothing you can do to stop it, get it out in a way that gives you the best chance of controlling the narrative. At a stroke, he was able to cast himself as the victim of underhand dealing. As soon as the fact of the complaints had become public, Alex launched a judicial review of the process. As the government's defence was being prepared, it came to light that the investigating officer had engaged in conversations with the complainants prior to her appointment. There was no evidence that the investigating officer had been biased, but the Scottish government had no option but to abandon the case. • Nicola Sturgeon: 'I came perilously close to a breakdown' In Alex's narrative, he wasn't just a victim any more, he was now a vindicated victim. It was also at this point that his animus towards me was cemented. He was reportedly furious that I hadn't demanded the resignation of Leslie Evans. Leslie was the head of the civil service that had 'botched' the process. It was not unreasonable to say that the buck stopped with her. But I knew that, for him, Leslie's resignation was not about accountability. It was about vengeance. He wanted her punished for allowing him to be investigated in the first place. He would then have used her quitting as further 'proof' that he had been a victim all along. When evidence was disclosed in both the aborted judicial review action and his criminal trial in March 2020, a number of text and WhatsApp messages were revealed to him, some between women complainers and others involving SNP staff members. He spun these as evidence of people conspiring to bring him down, rather than simply what they were — messages between individuals who had loyally supported him over many years expressing deep upset at the nature of the allegations against him. In addition, women who considered themselves victims of his behaviour were seeking support and comfort from each other. That he tried to distort and weaponise genuine expressions of shock, in some cases trauma, was truly disgraceful, and it strikes at the heart of why I find it so hard to forgive him. A conspiracy against Alex would have needed a number of women deciding to concoct false allegations, without any obvious motive for doing so. It would then have required criminal collusion between them, senior ministers and civil servants, the police and the Crown. That is what he was alleging. The 'conspiracy' was a fabrication, the invention of a man who wasn't prepared to reflect honestly on his own conduct. This is what I found hardest to come to terms with. He was acquitted of criminal behaviour, but in the course of his defence a picture emerged of behaviour towards women that, on occasion, had been inappropriate. He seemed content during his trial to concede this, to persuade a jury that while he could have been a 'better man', he wasn't guilty of actual offences. What he never did was show any contrition. There was also never the merest hint of concern about the damage he did to the party he previously led. Indeed, it felt to me that he would have rather destroyed the SNP than see it succeed without him. He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy — government, police, Crown Office. He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all. After the reports of the two inquiries into mine and the Scottish government's handling of the matter had been published, I spoke personally to the two original complainants. I was the first minister during a Scottish government process that had let these women down. It was important to me to say sorry to them directly. It also let me hear first-hand the impact on them of the claims of conspiracy, and the scars they bear as a consequence. For a while I told myself that the bonds between Alex and me would be stronger than his thirst for revenge. Eventually, though, I had to face the fact that he was determined to destroy me. I was now engaged in mortal political combat with someone I knew to be both ruthless and highly effective. It was a difficult reality to reconcile myself to. So too was losing him as a friend. I went through what I can only describe as a grieving process. For a time after we stopped speaking I would have conversations with him in my head about politics and the issues of the day. I had occasional, vivid dreams in which we were still on good terms. I would wake up from these feeling utterly bereft. And now? Before he died, I thought I had reached the point of feeling nothing and that I had come to terms with it, wholly and completely. The emotions I felt on hearing of his death suggested otherwise. Yes, I have made peace with how things are, but it is an uneasy peace. I know I will never quite escape the shadow he casts, even in death. © Nicola Sturgeon 2025. Extracted from Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon (Macmillan £28), published on Thursday. To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members. Nicola Sturgeon discusses her memoir with Cathy Newman at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London SE1, on August 29;
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Kate Forbes: I'm standing down because I want more children
It was graphic evidence of the threats today's politicians face. As Kate Forbes, Scotland's deputy first minister, stepped down from the platform after giving a talk at the Edinburgh Fringe last week, security officials closed in and hurried her to a car before whisking her away from the crowds. Protesters against her religious views — she is opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage — had demanded the event be cancelled. It carried on regardless, but police were taking no risks. 'I never like it when things like that happen,' she sighed. 'I always think it reflects badly on me, but it's not my decision.' It is not, however, the reason Forbes has decided to quit political life at the pinnacle of her career. Last Monday, her daughter Naomi turned three, and Forbes felt she faced a choice: her duty to her family or her job. She chose family. 'I'd love some more children,' she said, 'and I haven't talked openly about that, but I decided that I couldn't have more children whilst doing this job. I would be 36 at the next election [next year]. [That parliament] runs to 41. I don't need to give you a biology lesson about what that means, and I didn't want to inflict what I inflicted on Naomi on another child.' She believes that being a mother is every bit as important as holding political office. 'I do feel like motherhood is a great thing, and there's been a lot of emphasis on proving that women can have it all,' she said. 'But what if you actually do want to be a mum, and you want to do your best work at mothering? There's a tendency in our society nowadays to say that's a failure, that you're giving up high office to do this thing that society views as small and insignificant. And I don't feel that way. I feel like it's a great thing, and I'm not doing a terribly good job of it. So I wanted to do a better job of it.' Representing her Highlands constituency, one of the largest in Britain, has meant travelling four hours from her home in Dingwall to Edinburgh and four hours back every week. The parliament has a crèche, but it is only available three hours a day (when Forbes had her baby it was only four hours a week — she got that changed, but not enough.) She relies on childminders and family friends, but the strain has finally told. 'I think it's always been impossible,' she said. 'I entered an extremely tough leadership contest [ losing to Humza Yousaf in March 2023]. Fresh from maternity leave, I then juggled a year on the back benches, which you may have thought was quieter, and that's true, but I didn't have any of the assistance that comes with ministerial office. 'So we drove up and down, with a baby in the back, and I had to do everything myself in that year. There were lots of situations I thought were just impossible, in terms of being on Zoom calls with a one-year-old and then going back into the deputy first minister role. Being so far from home, I could fill a library of books with the number of close calls and close shaves where I was seconds away from cancelling something.' Her decision to quit has stunned her supporters and the country. Forbes is regarded as a star in the SNP, one of the few in the party's ranks with a business brain and a firm grasp of economic policy. She studied history at Selwyn College, Cambridge, before going on to achieve a master's degree in diaspora and migration history from Edinburgh University. She joined the SNP in 2011, and worked as a researcher in the Scottish parliament before training to be an accountant and working for Barclays bank. Selected as a candidate for Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch, she fought the 2016 election and nearly doubled the majority of her predecessor. Nicola Sturgeon appointed her minister for public finance and, when the finance secretary quit in a sex scandal, she delivered the budget on a few hours' notice. At 35, she was seen by many as a future first minister, and her close working relationship with her boss, John Swinney, was regarded as critical to the party's prospects at next year's Holyrood elections. The conflict between loyalty to her constituents and her family responsibilities is one she feels keenly. Last March she again put her name forward for selection as a candidate 'because I felt I would be letting too many people down by not standing'. Then, over the summer, the balance shifted. 'I suddenly realised I just didn't want to do another five years of bearing the weight of everybody's expectations,' she said. 'There's no joy in juggling all of that relentlessly. And I think you've got to have joy in your job to keep doing it.' Her epiphany came in India where she and her husband, Alasdair, who has three daughters from a previous marriage, went earlier this summer. Forbes was educated between India and Scotland, returning to Dingwall Academy when she was 15. Her parents were missionaries for the Free Church of Scotland on the subcontinent, and she feels at home there. Visiting an orphanage run by the Deep Griha Society near Pune in western India, she suddenly realised what these children lacked, and what she had to give. 'I don't care what anybody says — we do not understand about absolute poverty,' she says. 'We do not understand what it feels like to be completely left and abandoned. These were slum kids from Mumbai, five or six-year-olds with ill-fitting clothes and shoes twice the size of their feet. This charity takes them into the village and gives them an education — just one couple looking after 40 or 50 kids. 'I felt what an unfair privilege my daughter has — and yet she is not getting the benefit of it. And that was that. I just loved being with my family for a week, absolutely loved it, and I was so struck by the fact you have this great privilege and you're squandering it, if that's not too strong a word.' EUAN CHERRY FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES Forbes, a member of the same church as her parents, denies that hostility to her strongly held religious views and her brand of social conservatism, which fit uneasily with the left-leaning mainstream of her party, had anything to do with her decision. At the time she stood for the leadership, supporters of Sturgeon were briefing against her, and even Swinney expressed the view that some of her convictions were incompatible with the party's policies. The relationship with Swinney, she says, is now a strong and supportive one. As for Sturgeon, she has yet to order a copy of her memoirs. 'I did not stand down when I was in the eye of the storm, because I don't back off when things are tough, when the chips are down,' she said. 'The party is still on track to win the next election. I've not seen a single poll that suggests I was going to lose my seat. I am leaving in my own way, on my own terms, for the reasons that I have set out.' She does, however, worry about the toxic atmosphere encountered by those who take on public office. 'Over the last ten years there have been a number of points where I have been fearful for my physical safety,' she admits. 'I don't talk about them. Sometimes they get reported, but I don't make a big deal about them for a whole host of reasons, not least, the more you talk about it, the more it draws awareness to other people. But it's the hatred that I just find exhausting.' She added: 'I learnt very quickly at the beginning of my political career that if you put too much store on people's views, it would be a rollercoaster — one moment being loved and the next minute being hated. And if you believe their love, you have to believe their hate.' Forbes hopes she has done enough to encourage others to come forward to take up a political life. 'I am extremely proud of the fact that I've left a legacy to support or to enable more people with my views to even think of standing — because fear characterises our politics to a great extent,' she said. 'People are fearful that if they're not on the bandwagon, they're under the wheels, and so they don't go near politics. But I get huge encouragement from people who say, 'You have given me confidence to open my mouth in a public place and express my views, my faith, my perspectives, and I would never have done that before.''
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Telegraph
Val, it's not misogyny that got Sturgeon – it's her wokester ideology
Spare a thought for Nicola Sturgeon. One minute she was in charge of a small country, trying to make it seem bigger by cutting it off from England; the next she's wandering around literary festivals talking about a tattoo. That's not the Royal Military Tattoo, the annual extravaganza at Edinburgh Castle, she's on about, but an actual tattoo she's had inked on her wrist. According to what she told her mother, which every parent knows may not be the whole truth, it's an 'infinity symbol' capped with an arrow, which she describes as a 'symbol of strength'. Who would deny her this wee act of rebellion? After a spectacular fall from political grace and a very public marriage break up, Sturgeon has certainly been through the wringer. Yet strength is what the rest of us required throughout her reign as First Minister, especially during the pandemic, when Boris Johnson kept having to ban things to stop her sounding tougher. The female population in Scotland needed particular fortitude to withstand her assault on their identity. Promoting her disastrous 'gender recognition' reforms, she kept insisting that 'trans women are women' when quite obviously they are biological men. It was all terribly disturbing, especially when a bloke named Isla Bryson, who used 'her' penis to carry out two rapes, was placed in a women's prison. Sturgeon's refusal to define this individual as male pretty much did for her political career. Her biggest ambition was Scottish independence, a cause she managed to set back for generations by demonstrating just how badly her party would run everything. Amid ill concealed contempt for the Monarchy, she railed against Westminster and obsessed about 'hate crimes' while Scottish NHS waiting lists exploded. Year after year, Scotland recorded the worst drug-related death rate in Europe. 'If I could turn the clock back… I would have done things differently,' she claimed, in what was not exactly a heartfelt apology for so many lives ruined and wasted. These days, she seems to be spending a lot of time with her old pal Val McDermid. In an interview with The Telegraph, the author claims Sturgeon has been 'treated appallingly' and is the victim of misogyny. 'I've seen some of the stuff she gets poured on her head and it's horrible,' McDermid said. Apparently, she is taking comfort from the new tattoo. Aye, well – it will take much more than a bit of ink for her country to recover. We can only hope that the 'infinity' symbol does not make her legacy indelible.
