‘The flexibilities the Scottish government is introducing to Universal Credit could prove significant in easing budgetary pressures like the ones that the individuals in my research feared’.
Housing
Plukes on plinths: an inquiry
‘But Gibson’s Red Road flats owed much more to constituents chapping his door about their damp decrepit decaying sandstone tenements, his wish to keep Glaswegians in Glasgow, and a desire to help local industry by building big towers with steel frames’.
Scotland’s lost architectural futures
Owen Hopkins’s book Lost Futures surveys the rise, fall and rise again of the reputation of British post-war architectural modernism, including iconic Scottish projects such as Glasgow’s Red Roads Flat and Hutchenstown C, the Cockenzie Power Station and St Peter’s Seminary.
More powers yes, higher taxes no
“Scots are only slightly more egalitarian than people in England, while support for redistribution has declined across the UK. People will pay for specific services, notably health, but are not keen on redistribution. They want more powers for Scotland but are less keen on different policies or taxes.”
Commoditising student life
Is this the shape of higher education to come? In Scotland we worry about widening access; in London about being able to afford it all. The sheer cost of student living must act as a deterrent – and turn the entire HE experience into a commoditised service.
PFI: is the £56bn capital cost worth it?
The closure of 17 Edinburgh schools built under PFI contracts has become a big issue in the Holyrood elections. Here an expert goes behind the headlines to analyse the system of public/private co-financing as a whole – and the SG’s profit-capping model.
Lessons from the Edinburgh schools fiasco
Nicola Sturgeon has called for an inquiry into the Edinburgh school closures and the PFI scheme behind it is under renewed scrutiny. Here Unison’s senior Scottish official, a long-time PFI/PPP opponent, looks at why things went so badly wrong.
City of astounding normality
The monumental ordinariness of Aberdeen makes it a city that is faceless or even anonymous. But its buildings should make us pause, look again and think of urban living.