For this story on Scottish independence out in this week’s International dead tree edition of TIME, I sat down on Sept. 30 with Alex Salmond at Bute House, the official residence of the Scottish First Minister. The following are excerpts from the more than hour-long interview.
TIME: The elections…
AS: We won.
Your …
After covering the Tottenham riots, I was curious why England rioted and Scotland didn’t. Glasgow, after all, has far greater problems of economic inequity and youth violence. In some neighborhoods, the average life expectancy for a man is just 54 compared to 82 in neighboring areas.
So, I went up to Glasgow to take a look at what …
Sure, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his family are on track to make £70 million from their 38% stake in easyJet this year. And, yes, Haji-Ioannou was knighted for his “entrepreneurship” in founding the discount airline in 1995. But that doesn’t seem to have stopped the Greek-Cypriot billionaire from launching a rival …
Cleggmania has returned. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t reached the Beatle-level hysteria the Liberal Democrat leader enjoyed in the lead up to last year’s elections. But the angry party recriminations that plagued Clegg earlier this year seem to have evaporated – or at least are simmering deep below the surface. This week the …
There was a moment during Nick Clegg’s Q&A Monday at the annual Liberal Democrat Party conference in Birmingham where a questioner asked if Clegg was feeling “hopeless and embarrassed” to be sharing a government with British Prime Minister David Cameron. The question had to do with a scandal earlier this year over the hiring of …
By all accounts Kweku Adoboli was a quiet, affable guy. An amateur photographer who loved music and cycling, friends in his artsy circle hardly knew he was a banker, let alone one who’d be accused of losing UBS $2 billion in rogue trades. “He was a great fan of beautiful things,” says Sanjhana Moon, a photographer who met …
Though you wouldn’t believe it from the hacking scandal and the panoply of salacious headlines gracing Britain’s papers daily, the U.K. actually has tougher libel laws than the U.S. There is no guaranteed freedom of speech in Britain, and the truth is judged on face value with no regard to intent, i.e., even if it’s an …
As the criticism over his testimony has mounted in recent weeks, so has speculation that James Murdoch would be recalled by the U.K. commission investigating the hacking scandal to clarify the record. As so the announcement Tuesday that Murdoch would indeed be returning to the stand came as no real surprise to anyone.
Committee …
Bernard Hogan-Howe may not have been anybody’s first choice to be the new head of London’s Metropolitan police, but the important thing is he was everyone’s last choice. Home Secretary Theresa May and London Mayor Boris Johnson on Monday announced that Hogan-Howe, who has been acting deputy commission for the last couple of …
The British Parliament on Wednesday held a rare debate on abortion before shooting down a bill that attempted to curb access to the procedure by a vote of 368-118. Anyone looking for a U.S.-style drag out, hot tempered fight was surely disappointed.
First of all, Nadine Dorries, the conservative member who offered the legislation, …
In last month’s installment of the hacking drama gripping the U.K., a 2007 letter from Clive Goodman, a former employee fired for hacking, emerged with accusations that practice was widespread. At the same time, a prominent London media law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, hired to handle Goodman’s firing dismissed James Murdoch’s …
Most Europeans – 54% — want to see strong American leadership, according to a new Transatlantic Trends poll out Sept. 14. And a whopping 85% of Americans want their country to lead the world. Certainly, if you listen to the GOP field of U.S. presidential wannabes, American exceptionalism has been on the decline and should be a …
For centuries Romany gypsies and a nomadic group traditionally called the Irish Travelers have roamed the British Isles, branded by demagogues as thieves, child snatchers and thugs. Their numbers have dwindled as U.K. authorities have blocked their roaming ways. Forced into trailer parks, or to the nomads’ horror, permanent homes, the
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