Sceptical Scot

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Willis Pickard

About Willis Pickard

Willis Pickard, a lifelong member of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, stood twice for the party in general elections in North East Fife. He was features and literary editor of the Scotsman, then for 24 years editor of the Times Educational Supplement Scotland. He was rector of Aberdeen University 1988–90 and has been a Trustee of the National Library of Scotland since 2005.

Schools: ending poverty and poor performance

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Deprivation and poor school performance go together – and have done for generations. If the First Minister truly wanted to start to end this perennial blight on Scotland she would have put John Swinney in charge of equality, not his feckless predecessor Angela Constance.

Charles Kennedy: a principled politician

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Charles Kennedy was a conviction politician. Affability and an ability to bring commonsense warmth into the nation’s living rooms won him affection, but no one who studied his career from 23-year-old MP to sceptical (but loyal) observer of the LibDems in coalition could doubt that principles were more important than public performance.