Page 4 - Derek Ball News Today

THE Tory press repeats nauseously that Douglas Ross won a seat in the Scottish Parliament. Mr Ross did not win a seat, he was awarded a seat under the quirky d’Hont system that penalises the party who won 62 of the 73 (a massive majority by any standards) seats available in the direct vote for people who actually faced the electorate. It was the SNP’s massive majority in the regional vote which allowed Ross to slip in through the back door. Mike Underwood Linlithgow I WAS fascinated...

ONE of the more important things about Ian Blackford standing up and delivering his speech is that it is beamed unedited worldwide. All those news outlets that congratulated the spectacular independence majority in Holyrood will have been watching, and I rather think that Johnson knows that – hence he did not answer! Well, that, and he is a petulant, spoiled man child that has never, at a guess, had the word “no” directed at him. Johnson cannot cope with defeat, he cannot cope with ...

letters The division will not go away or be healed without a resolution to the reasons why that division exists IT is demonstrated once again that Scotland is broadly evenly split on independence. The opposition parties exploit this by maintaining that division. Their problem is that they fail to understand that a split of opinion like this can never be resolved while fact-based reasonable opinion remains untested. What they are promoting instead is that because the split exists, we are g...

HAVING listened for weeks to the First Minister defend Scotland’s vaccine roll-out because it was apparently “falling behind”, I was amused to see that, as of Valentine’s Day, England was behind Scotland in administering the first jab. As Jason Leitch points out, it is not a race and this is an entirely frivolous statistic, but I doubt any politician or journalist will be asking Boris Johnson why England is “falling behind”. It is only the devolved nations that can be considered...

P Davidson Falkirk THE SNP drive to overwhelmingly win the 2021 Holyrood election is more important than the egos and aspirations of any individual or of any internal factions. There has been a lot that has happened with the SNP that should not have happened. That is not to take sides but to emphasise the point that the collective aim of winning this election is the most important cause, and the reason for the SNP’s existence. Every other issue, irrespective how any individual may feel,...

ALISTER Jack’s offer “of assistance to the Scottish Government in Scotland’s hour of need” by sending in the army to boost the number of Covid vaccinations being delivered deserves careful consideration and a very considered response from the First Minister, and I’m sure that’s what it will get. Given that there is a plan and systems in place to achieve many more vaccinations this week and thereafter, I think it’s wise to see what number of vaccinations have been achieved in a...

OH to have been a spy in the office as Richard Leonard pondered his future as branch manager of the imperial Labourites! He has always struck me as an oddity, someone way out of his depth and certainly not a person with any clear understanding of the Scottish politic. Did he honestly believe all he had to do was swan in and speak in disjointed statements and the voters of Scotland would flock back to the banner? Did he not realise the toxicity of his party? Did he not understand that his pa...

News Transcript News Briefs, Jan. 13 Six men have been hired by Freehold Township and have joined the ranks of the Freehold Township Police Department. During a Township Committee meeting on Dec. 2, the oath of office was administered to Alexander Conoshenti, Rocco Hernandez, Matthew Horvath, Nicholas Mezzacappa, Erik Stumpf and Justin Purves. Municipal officials said the appointment of the new patrol officers follows the retirement of veteran officers from the Freehold Township police force. A...

I MUST admit I share the concerns of private care home owners that the Scottish Government may simply nationalise the private care home sector in Scotland in response to the coronavirus outbreak. We still need a thorough review of everything that has happened in the care sector since the initial lockdown back in March. However, the initial findings that private care homes had far more outbreaks of Covid than those run by either the public or the voluntary sector raise some serious concerns....

THE US reveals it has a new suspect in the Lockerbie bombing case. Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, says he finds the timing of the American announcement “suspect”. I wholeheartedly agree, not least because this is the THIRD time in just over five years that Abu Agila Mas’ud has been named as a NEW suspect! On October 15, 2015, BBC News revealed that Mas’ud was a new suspect in the Lockerbie bombing case and authorities were keen to interview him. On December 20, 2018 –...