Councillor Paul Johnston

On the day that Scottish Exam results drop through the letterboxes of expecting students, there remains the unresolved debate about the future of higher education that underlies all the comments that will flow forth from the great and good.

My concerns that commentators will rubbish the results again, as they do when any increase in pass rates [...]

There has always been a debate about what is ‘common’ in a fisheries policy.  I remember being quoted the legalese english of the common fisheries policy and Common Market treaties and it always bore out this idea that Scotland and Britain more widely had to ‘give away’ fisheries – as it was now a common policy.

This [...]

It’s the silly season for the news again. The headlines are that shellfish are getting high on Prozac. Just another laugh?

It is the way the media reports science. This case it’s environmental science and the media chosen to rubbish it, is Fishing News.

All this is based on a piece of research done at Portsmouth University which [...]

I am not a great supporter of unequal partnerships.  The world of politics in this country has grown up as an adversarial battleground with only outward courtesy although their are friendships that can transcend it. So it is that a coalition between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives has come about.  There is outward courtesy but there is [...]

[...]

I am not sure if it was a good use of time for somebody campaigning in politics to sit and watch the leaders’ debate – the first ever televised – last night on ITV.

I wanted to get a ‘flavour’ and also just be there for what is a small piece of political history.

I did [...]

If I ever want to be reminded what the Conservatives would be like in control, I only have to listen again to the double speak of Andrew Lansley MP this morning on Radio 4′s Today programme. when faced with the fairly reasonable point made simply by the Kings Fund, that the ‘savings’ from their proposed cancelling [...]

On the day that Kraft foods apologised to a House of Commons Committee for the ‘lie’ as one MP put it, that it was not going to close the Cadbury’s Bristol factory just prior to shareholders agreeing to the takeover of Cadbury by Kraft; I thought it worth mentioning the crisis I think is emerging in [...]

The budget process in Aberdeenshire hardly made more than a dozen column inches in either of the main local papers. The broadsheet Press and Journal squeezed it to the minimum level because of the more highly charged decisions of Aberdeen City.

The Evening Express tabloid, equally saw the City’s financial difficulties as being the better news story.

However, [...]

The Press and Journal today had the story of the increase in rail passengers in and around Aberdeen. The success is down to the reality of travel. Its frankly better travelling by train than sitting in a car. The idea that one should then turn to NESTRANS to have this debated suggests its role is [...]