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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba

Herald Scotland

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Carlos Alba: Today's new danger: online porn is corrupting real-life relationships

For people of my generation, porn was something you found in bushes on the way to school or in your friend’s father’s toolbox. The reason buses...

yesterday 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Blame Tony Blair and his voting system for ludicrous power of the Greens

Well, what the hell was that about? A week ago, last Monday, we were all going about our lives, getting up for work, going to Lidl for our mince, and...

30.04.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Predictions of the demise of Mr Yousaf and the SNP may be premature

Asked which issue is most important to them when casting their vote few, if any, Scots would say the cost of building ferries. Fewer still would...

25.04.2024 10

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: SNP 'defence' plans are a fantasy - look at Israel, Gaza, Iran, Ukraine

Some policies are so flawed that their catastrophic shortcomings can be articulated in a single image. General election campaigns are peppered with...

16.04.2024 5

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: How the £10 loaf convinced me that things have to change

I knew there was a need for radical social and economic change when I first saw the £10 loaf. I’d heard the rumour of this fabled retail...

09.04.2024 7

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Labour is going to win. So why aren't we partying like it's 1997?

Were you still up when Michael Portillo lost his seat? It’s difficult to believe now that the genial presenter of TV railway journey programmes was...

03.04.2024 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: It feels like I can't even give my hopeless electric car away

The car you drive can say much about the kind of person you are and, for people who love their cars, that’s just the way they like it. In...

27.03.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Rishi Sunak's science and technology plan is doomed to failure

Every school had one:  a golden girl or boy super-achiever who swept all before them and was voted one of the most likely to succeed, only to end up...

20.03.2024 9

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Do you fancy gambling your savings to get Sunak out of a hole?

Every school had one:  a golden girl or boy super-achiever who swept all before them and was voted one of the most likely to succeed, only to end up...

19.03.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Asking the public to invest in R&D? That's an F for Fail

Every school had one:  a golden girl or boy super-achiever who swept all before them and was voted one of the most likely to succeed, only to end up...

19.03.2024 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: A dystopian future, where machines rule, could be closer than we think

Do you ever long for a time when the world was a simpler and more enjoyable place, when food tasted better, people were more pleasant and tolerant,...

12.03.2024 8

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: I campaigned for George Galloway - here's what I learned about him

In some small way, George Galloway helped me to decide on my future career. As a student, I campaigned for him in the 1987 General Election, when he...

05.03.2024 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: I campaigned for George Galloway - here's what I learned about him

In some small way, George Galloway helped me to decide on my future career. As a student, I campaigned for him in the 1987 General Election, when he...

05.03.2024 4

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Is Sarwar right to channel his inner Thatcher?

For someone who never ventured north of the Border if she could possibly avoid it, there’s a bitter irony that Margaret Thatcher continues to...

20.02.2024 5

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Stop the social media world, I want to get off

Do you believe that every morning is brighter and sunnier than the last; that simply getting out of bed is a special gift – another golden...

14.02.2024 8

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: So what do you do with a friend like Trump?

At what point do you admit that one of your longest standing friendships, which you’ve shared since way back when, has finally run its course? You...

07.02.2024 2

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The misogyny Nicola Sturgeon has had to endure is disgraceful

That we never properly understand something until it’s considered in hindsight, has rarely been more evident than with the misogyny, in all its...

31.01.2024 6

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The misogyny Nicola Sturgeon has had to endure is disgraceful

That we never properly understand something until it’s considered in hindsight, has rarely been more evident than with the misogyny, in all its...

30.01.2024 7

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Anti-media privacy laws make scandals like Post Office much more likely

The question of whether we have the right to know details of the private affairs of public figures is one that excites, and divides, opinion in equal...

24.01.2024 4

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Time to consign Burns to history and celebrate today's Scots artists

As a young schoolboy, I recall the torture of the weeks leading up to the annual St Andrew’s Night Dance, when gym lessons were given over to...

17.01.2024 30

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Indy could be a success but not with an SNP steeped in the public sector

It is telling that Humza Yousaf has waited almost a year in office to make his first significant speech on the economy. The beef of his presentation...

09.01.2024 4

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Scottish football fans have a genuine chance to make their voices heard

In the mid-1980s a friend moved from Glasgow to Los Angeles, where he met Javier, a fellow immigrant who had been born and raised in desperate poverty...

03.01.2024 9

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Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Middle class and private school pupils miss out on top universities

Radical political action usually happens in response to significant physical changes in circumstances experienced by voters, rather than from mere...

27.12.2023 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Self-obsessed fantasist Michelle Mone - and the future of the Lords

By I first came across Michelle Mone when she gave a speech at a journalists’ charity lunch in Glasgow in the early noughties. Addressing an...

19.12.2023 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: First Minister should learn the lessons of devolution's strengths

The Court of Session’s landmark ruling that the UK Government was within its rights to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill should...

13.12.2023 10

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: First Minister should learn the lessons of Scotland’s parliament

The Court of Session’s landmark ruling that the UK Government was within its rights to block the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill should...

13.12.2023 8

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: The Elgin marbles, a syphilis-ridden Scots aristocrat and Billy Connolly

The regular resurfacing of the row over the Elgin Marbles – and other hardy perennials, where Britain takes a high-handed stance against upstart...

06.12.2023 20

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Scotia Nostra SNP has taken on the mantle of the failed Labour Mafia

You know you’re at the fag end of a government when the ruling party abandons the pretence of even trying. It’s like when both parties in a...

29.11.2023 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Migrant boats on English Channel show what is wrong with UK politics

What constitutes objective reality? It appears that this most intractable of questions – first posed by Plato 2,500 years ago – has a simple...

22.11.2023 9

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Cultural and political gap between Scotland and England is widening

As a child I remember the muffled voices of my soon-to-be-separated parents rowing noisily as I lay upstairs in bed, frightened and bewildered. I...

15.11.2023 9

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Gaelic immigration idea shows SNP never 'got' middle Scotland

It’s a truism of political life that a party sinking in the polls and facing electoral defeat, inevitably reverts to its base. Nothing says panic...

08.11.2023 8

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: Green Brigade failed to observe the code of decency – they had to go

The link between sport and politics has a long and distinguished history. From the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - when black, US athlete Jesse Owens...

31.10.2023 3

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Carlos Alba: All of us have a duty to calm down on the trans debate

The appearance of JK Rowling at a conference held to discuss violence and discrimination faced by women, earlier this month, was eclipsed by her less...

28.10.2023 5

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

Give every parent, not just those who go private, a say in their children's education

Before Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has had a chance to put pen to paper, to draft his party’s manifesto for the next Holyrood election,...

17.10.2023 2

Herald Scotland

Carlos Alba

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