Dear Scotland

Imagine you are the financial controller of a multi-million pound corporation. You discover that your new boss might have forged tax invoices for payments that were never made. What do you do? I’d like to think I’d call the cops. But if you’re Ken Olverman, the man in charge of counting the diminished pile of [...]

In 1996, Madeline Albright, then Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, was asked if she thought the death of half a million Iraqi children due to United Nation sanctions was a price worth paying in the cold war against Saddam Hussein. Her answer, amid much humming and ha’ing, was basically: “Yes”. Albright later castigated herself for [...]

“The butterfly effect” is a classic illustration of chaos theory: an insect flapping its wings in Macau can, weeks later, cause a hurricane in Miami. The point is that in a complex system, a seemingly insignificant act can cause a major change at a faraway time and place. I think the butterfly effect helps explain [...]

Dear Neil, We usually do your report card at the end of the season, but after last Sunday’s game, well, that’s our season over, isn’t it? So let’s do this now. Usual format: I’ll tell you three things I think you’re doing well, and three you need to improve on. First off, I have to [...]

“Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” – Proverbs In my first year of secondary school, gym classes were given over to Highland dancing lessons in the weeks prior to the Xmas party. As physical education in my school was divided by gender, this meant that twice a week [...]

Never an organisation known for original thinking, the SFA has recently managed to both shut the barn door after the horse has bolted and then flog a dead horse. However they don’t know who opened the barn door, nor who killed the colt. They need to take a lesson from the Japanese. Have I put [...]

There’s only one story in Scottish football at the moment, and it isn’t the aftermath of the Slovenia v Scotland friendly last week (decent performance, nothing to write home about). So I make no apologies for writing about Rangers again. The club has been in administration for almost a month now, and still speculation outweighs [...]

“I will admit there have been times when I have wished that I had never entertained the idea of taking over Rangers,” you said in a public statement on Wednesday. There are times when I wish the same: from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep. A few weeks ago [...]

“I’m all out of love, what am I without you?” – Air Supply Hong Kong can’t live without Air Supply. Aging Aussie soft rock crooners Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock retain astonishing popularity in the city. Their most famous dirge frequently pollutes the public airwaves, and decades after their 1980’s heyday they regularly sell out [...]