'National strike' and anti-racism protestors separated by police
Free Tommy Robinson banners were held by those forming part of the Great British National Strike, which has been branded as a far right protest by many.
The group are also protesting in Aberdeen, Dumfries, Dundee, Edinburgh, Inverness and Perth as well as in cities and towns throughout England.
They say they are against 'illegal immigration, net zero and two-tier justice' as well as other issues.
Police separated the two sets of protestors (Image: Colin Mearns/Herald) The National Strike protestors (Image: Colin Mearns/Herald)
It led to groups in Scotland including the Glasgow Trades Council, Cabaret Against Hate Speech and the Afghan Human Rights Foundation joining Stand Up To Racism for counter-protests in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.
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Pictures show the two groups in Glasgow being separated by a line of police with those involved shouting across at each other from either side of the divide.
Chants of "Fascist Scum, Off Our Streets" could be heard from those in the counter demonstration.
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The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
Commuting by bus from Edinburgh's suburbs is awful. Here's my solution
This week's Herald investigation into The Future of Edinburgh serves as a timely reminder of the capital's national importance. Edinburgh is the beating economic heart of the country. With one of the strongest records on Gross Value Added in the UK, Edinburgh is making the money required to fix the other struggling cities and towns around it. And a massive part of Edinburgh's economic success lies in its ability to efficiently move workers into and around the city. Read more by Andy Maciver I have lived in Edinburgh for about 40 of my 45 years, with my only absences being short stints in Glasgow and Dundee. I grew up in Currie; not much over 5 miles from the city centre, it is pretty much the dictionary definition of a suburb. Growing up, the borders of my world were close; my primary concern was getting to school, which I did on foot or by bike. However my father worked in town, and normally relied on the bus. Looking back now, that journey on the Red 44 or the Green 66 was relatively easy because we lived close to the Lanark Road, but was more of an ordeal for the majority of people in the village who lived down the hill. Currie experienced a very substantial housebuilding boom in the 1960s and 1970s but, with the Water of Leith immediately to the south of the A70 Lanark Road, all the houses were built down in the fields to the north, and expansion inevitably took place further and further away from the main road. With a 20-minute walk up a hill to the Lanark Road, and a 45 minute bus journey, we begin to see this as a very, very long five miles. It can feel shorter for those who happen to be near Curriehill Railway Station (which sits on the Shotts Line), but with only one train an hour heading into town, this is not a service designed with commuter convenience in mind. I now live inside the City Bypass, in Morningside. As was the case when I lived in Currie, I am very near the main road, so I can walk out of the door and find an array of buses awaiting me. As it happens, I tend not to use them, and instead I cycle to work in town, trying to avoid swerving into one of the new Lothian electric buses as I dodge the potholes on our truly deplorable roads. Again, though, you do not have to stray far from the main road to find yourself marooned in a location with no bus route particularly nearby. Morningside is only two miles from the West End, but for people who have, perhaps, a 15 minute walk to the bus, and then sit for 30 minutes as the bus crawls through traffic on narrow streets, it can be an awfully long two miles. Lothian Buses are up to date (Image: free) For suburbanites living away from bus stops, especially those who are elderly or immobile, the car is and will remain a necessary feature in their lives, and we need to provide them with quieter roads. To do that, we need to give commuters who choose to use the car, or to stay at home, with better options. As a mechanism for getting suburban workers to work, Edinburgh's mass transit system needs to extend beyond the bus. Time is money, and with one of Scotland's key economic problems being a lack of productivity in the workforce, efficient mass transit starts to look significantly more important than it might at first glance appear. It is time not only for Edinburgh's local authority to generate new ideas, but for the Scottish Government to help. Scotland - all of Scotland - needs Edinburgh performing to its full potential. Edinburgh, conversely, is so economically successful that it relies on workers not only from its own suburbs but from Fife, the Borders, and Mid, West and East Lothian. Driving out of Edinburgh on a weekday morning tells you what you need to know. As you breeze along the M8, up the M9 or M90 or down the A1, A7, A68, A701 or A702, you count your lucky stars that you're heading out and not sitting at 5 mph trying to come in. Travelling on four wheels cannot be Edinburgh's answer, either for those coming in or for those already living in an EH postcode. There are game-changing options which, happily, would require relatively little capital investment, and in the spirit of the Herald's efforts this week to lift the lid on some of the key discussions the capital needs to have, I will offer two. Neither involve roads; the first involves the river, and the second involves the railway. The southern side of Fife - from Dunfermline and Rosyth round the coast through Aberdour, Burntisland, Kinghorn and up to Kirkcaldy - is constantly expanding and increasingly becoming an Edinburgh commuter belt. Rail can play a role here, but only for those who live relatively close to a station, so the roads take the strain. If only we had another method of connecting Fife and Edinburgh such as, say, a body of water like a river or estuary. Ah, but we do! I am by no means the first person to moot the idea of a ferry across the Forth, but past discussion seems too often to have revolved around a beach-to-beach tourist service rather than something to integrate with the mass transit network. Read more of our Future of Edinburgh series Instead, a rapid, regular, commuter-focussed service from a new park-and-sail at Dalgety Bay (probably), directly into the tram stop at Newhaven would be an efficient, productive option for the army of workers who come from the Kingdom every day. And, not to forget those of us who inhabit the city, we live on top of a railway line called the South Suburban, currently used only for freight. If we wanted a light rail line to complement the routes driven by Lothian Buses, cutting across the south suburbs and linking Haymarket at one end and Waverley at the other, with an easy spur to the Royal Infirmary, we could not possibly design one better than what we already have. It is easy for our local and national civil servants to spend a few decades poring over hundred-page strategies which lead to consultations which lead to more strategies which lead to more consultations. But when opportunities to fix Edinburgh's commuter transport problems are already sitting before our eyes, it mightn't be a bad idea to take them. Andy Maciver is Founding Director of Message Matters, and co-host of the Holyrood Sources podcast
The Herald Scotland
2 days ago
- The Herald Scotland
It's no surprise to us the hulking nonsense Glen Sannox is failing
The size and scale of the Glen Sannox, Caledonian Isles, Glen Rosa (and others) is singularly down to the fact that the trade unions and Scottish Government insist that the crew must be provided with onboard accommodation. Free board and lodgings to you and me. For the Glen Sannox, the majority of the upper deck spaces are taken up by the 33 or so ensuite cabins for the crew. Passenger spaces are squeezed around the side of the boat. Check this out next time you travel. This (hotel space) adds an exponential amount to the build cost and ongoing operating costs across many routes. Solution: build bunk houses at the pier side for crew at a fraction of the cost of on-board rooms and this would have three immediate benefits: less bulk above the waterline (using catamarans) meaning greater reliability of sailings; substantially lower build costs; lower operating costs – no need for so many cooks, cleaners and maintenance people and the like. All in all, this is a great example of a government with no spine or reverse gear to break with nonsensical procurement and operating requirements for a ferry service that will forever fail the communities it is meant to serve. Derek A Robertson, Lamlash, Isle of Arran. Read more letters What's so clever about AI? There was a stark contrast between two articles in Tuesday's Herald (June 3) discussing Artificial Intelligence. On page 15, there was Neil Mackay's "When AI kills off the ScotRail lady, you know we're all in trouble… is this what we want?" And on page 17, there was the Agenda article, "How to make AI work for SMEs in Scotland". Neil Mackay's piece is concrete rather than abstract; it lays out an argument that is coherent, intelligible, and intelligent. The meaning is clear; the language is of the real world, humane, and passionate. By contrast, the Agenda article, as a piece of prose, is almost entirely devoid of meaning. It could well have been written by a robot. Every sentence exhibits abstraction, and lack of precision. An example: "The application layer is not a black box, it's an enabler, a multiplier of human potential." I've read the piece several times, and still have no idea what the application in question is supposed to do. George Orwell saw it all coming, this eradication of meaning in abstraction. In Politics and the English Language (1946), he translated a verse from Ecclesiastes into modern prose: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Here is Orwell's version in modern English: "Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account." Well done to Neil Mackay for dumping AI from his phone. Dr Hamish Maclaren, Stirling. • Neil Mackay's article on AI strikes a chord with me. A couple of weeks ago while doing my weekly task of making slides of Bible passages for our Sunday service, I was interrupted by my Microsoft Copilot suggesting that "ecstatically happy" would be much better than "very happy". Considering that I was working with an already-typed document I was not inspired to make the change. Having had a few previous interruptions I looked for ways of getting rid of my undesirable "friend" and was delighted to find that I could uninstall it. A couple of sentences later there it was again, this time asking "Is a comma appropriate there?" I spotted the chat box and typed in "I thought I had uninstalled you." Instantly back came the typed reply, "Well, it seems I'm still here". Had it been delivered in the voice of Stanley Kubrick's Hal, I could not have been more freaked out. Who needs this? David Adams, Glasgow. Legal v illegal It is legal to buy and sell tobacco. Restrictions apply so that only adults, who know the health risks, can use it. That's all we need. Banning the purchase of a legal substance by birthdate is nonsense ('MSPs vote to ban tobacco for young', The Herald, May 30, and Letters, June 3). In years to come, can anyone visualise the application of this new law in your local Spar, where middle-aged adults are asked for their birth certificates? The issue is freedom of choice, as it is with the overly emotional discussions around "assisted suicide". The fact is, committing suicide is not illegal. So how can helping someone to do something legal be a crime? AJ Clarence, Prestwick. Beware of the lynx The proposed introduction of the lynx to our countryside reminds me of advice given when I suggested taking a walk in Californian woodland many years ago. 'Sure,' said my host, "...remember to take your gun.' Those walking here should be similarly equipped if the introduction of wild species proceeds. Wolves have also been suggested. These creatures are not jolly Disney characters. They are dangerous wild animals. Malcolm Parkin, Kinross. There is a campaign to reintroduce the lynx to Scotland (Image: Getty) The Red and Green blues For some reason, the Red Route tourist bus still goes to Glasgow Green. I imagine a revised commentary for visitors: 'This is the People's Palace, which is closed and behind it are the Winter Gardens which are also closed and on my left is the Doulton Fountain which doesn't work and has bits of the stonework falling off, so moving swiftly on, let's take you to George Square, oh no, wait a minute...' Stuart Neville, Clydebank.
STV News
3 days ago
- STV News
Former St Mirren director defamed colleagues over comments on charity build
Two St Mirren directors were defamed when a former colleague accused them of pursuing a 'secret plan' to build a charity centre on the club's land, a judge has concluded. Alan Wardrop claimed that children's charity Kibble – a shareholder in the Premiership side – had applied for a £2.65m grant from the Scottish Government. Mr Wardrop claimed the application was to allow it to finance a 'first of its kind' wellness centre for disadvantaged children on ground belonging to the side. He then claimed the charity had lied about what it was doing. He then made allegations against Jim Gillespie and Mark MacMillan, the chief executive and director of corporate services of the charity, who are also directors of St Mirren. These remarks prompted Mr Gillespie and Mr MacMillan to launch a legal action against Mr Wardrop, who was a Buddies' director between 2016 and 2022. The two men claimed the remarks made by Mr Wardrop had damaged their reputations. They instructed lawyers to pursue a defamation action at the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court. The remarks were made in May 2023 during his campaign to become elected to the board of the St Mirren Independent Supporters Association – an organisation which owns 51% of shares in the club – and the Herald newspaper. Lawyers for Mr Wardrop told judge Lord Clark that Mr Wardrop's comments were covered by sections six and seven of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021. Section six covers matters of public interest – that somebody being sued for defamation can defend themselves against the action if they can show that the remarks were made in the public interest. Section seven covers honest opinion – that if a person can show their opinions were formed as a consequence of scrutinising evidence available then this can be a defence to the action. In a written judgement published by the court on Wednesday, Lord Clark concluded that the statements made by Mr Wardrop were defamatory. He said that the evidence showed that the two pursuers and the charity weren't planning to build the facility on land owned by St Mirren. But he did not award the two pursuers any damages. He said this was because lawyers for Mr Wardrop had shown that his remarks were covered by sections six and seven of the 2021 Act. He wrote: 'The central issues in this case are whether the statements were true and, if not, whether the defences under section 6 or section 7 of the 2021 Act succeed. 'Each side had sound reasons for the positions they took before the court, with evidence giving a fair degree of support. As has been explained, there was sufficient material before the defender which allowed him to reach his understanding about what the pursuers planned to do. 'But, on balance, it has not been shown that his allegations were true. They were defamatory. 'However, the circumstances result in the defence under section 6 applying in relation to the campaign statement and Herald statement, and also the defence under section 7 being made out for the Herald statement. 'As a consequence, the pursuers' claims for damages have not been successful. 'It is not necessary to grant an interdict against the defender from making any such statements again, as sought in the pursuers' first conclusion in the summons. 'The defender will be aware, from the reasoning I have given, that the statements made were defamatory and, but for the defences, would have led to awards of damages. 'There is no right or basis for him to be able to make such statements again and if he were to do so the defences would not apply. 'It would not be in the public interest to make such statements, since the true position has now been determined, and as he now knows the statements were not true he could no longer have an honest opinion.' Lawyers believed the case was the first time that the Scottish defamation law was considered by the courts. The judgement tells of Mr Wardrop's defamatory remarks. Lord Clark wrote that in the supporters association statement, Mr Wardrop said that Mr Gillespie and Mr McMillan 'failed to disclose' to club shareholders, officials and supporters that the charity wanted to build a facility on land owned by the club. Mr Wardrop said that 'together with Renfrewshire Council they applied to the Scottish Government for a £2.65m grant under the name The St Mirren Wellbeing and Regeneration Masterplan.' Mr Wardrop also stated: 'It was not disclosed to other SMISA club board directors and no prior agreement was secured. 'Both Kibble employees did not declare their plans to build on St Mirren owned land to St Mirren SMISA board members but denied any conflict of interest. 'Having discovered the issue under Freedom of Information, I raised it at the club's AGM. I, like many others, no longer have trust and confidence in Kibble's directors serving on the board of St. Mirren FC and I put my SMISA board application forward on the basis I wish to remove them'. The judgement also states that Mr Wardrop told the Herald: 'I have been made out to be a liar by Kibble and the board of St Mirren, now it should be clear to everyone what a huge cover-up this has been, in denying, denying and denying, when they were actually lying, lying and lying.' Lawyers for Mr Wardrop argued that these comments were made on a matter of public interest. They also argued that he made them after scrutinising publically available information and that the legislation covered him in the action. Lord Clark upheld these submissions. He wrote: 'It was apparent from the evidence that the defender actually believed that publication of the campaign statement and the Herald statement were in the public interest. 'There is no suggestion that he knew that the defamatory facts presented were untrue. 'Far from it, his post-publication conduct supports his actual belief and indeed on his evidence in court he remains in the belief that the statements were true. 'He did not unwarrantedly or gratuitously drag into the statements any allegations which do not have a real bearing on the theme of the statements generally.' He also wrote: 'The evidence supports the point that the defender took reasonably extensive steps to verify his belief that it was in the public interest to publish what was said. 'They were reliable sources. The amount of information sought and obtained demonstrates the steps taken to verify the information. 'The status and content of that information, taken together, is reasonably capable of allowing the inferences to be drawn, resulting in his view. 'He carried out the enquiries and checks that were reasonable to expect and open to him, coming across no obviously contradictory evidence.' Lord Clark also said that if the pursuers had been successful, they would have been awarded £40,000 each. Get all the latest news from around the country Follow STV News Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country
