The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
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Could Scotland be about to gain a new ferry service to Scandinavia?
A lighthouse in Scotland
Today’s interconnected conflicts are enriching the arms industry while pushing the entire world towards permanent militarisation, argues ROGER McKENZIE
by Nana Backland, Merseyside Morning Star Readers & Supporters Group
The government’s Pip review looks like a carefully managed exercise in legitimising future cuts to disability support, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
JO GRIMOND, the Liberal Party leader from 1956 to 1967, was asked to give the name of his nearest railway station on a form for parliamentary expenses — or so the story goes. Being the MP for Orkney and Shetland, he reportedly wrote “Bergen, Norway.”
Norway’s imperial control of parts of Scotland waned after the inconclusive battle of Largs in 1263, after which King Haakon retreated to Orkney — which, along with Shetland, remained under Norwegian sovereignty until 1468.
But that was not the end of the affinity felt with Scandinavia north of the border. Many Scots words still in common usage — such as bairn and midden — derive from Old Norse. And more recently Scottish crime writers and screenwriters have placed themselves in the tradition of Nordic noir rather than the English golden age of fictional murder.
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