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Western liberal democracy doesn't have a lot of friends in the modern world and it's enemies are increasingly brazen. Keeping in with our main alliance partner seems like a good idea, even if it may have a despicable leader. Not all Republicans support all Trump's notions - though sadly too...

It's Swinney if he wants the job. Steady the ship, get through the election and take the flak for any losses. Meanwhile the others can jockey for position for when he goes.

It's not particularly nationalistic for a national railway system to use the name of the country. Of course there are Scottish and Welsh separatists who hate the B-word and may be annoyed that a union-supporting (in the constitutional sense!) British government should use it. And probably said...

I feel a wee bit sorry for Yousaf. Having to follow two extremely charismatic leaders is hard, and when standing to lead the SNP he was seen as the continuity candidate, just when a lot of the SNP were looking for change; result: a narrow victory (52-48%). Then he inherits impossible climate...

The problem with the Scottish PR system is the mix of FPTP and PR. If you are confident your party will win most of the FPTP seats in your region, you can use your regional list vote to choose a second party. The Greens benefit from this. In the days when Labour won most FPTP seats, a lot of...

'Train tracks' seems to be a common American usage. The price of inventing the world's favourite language is that the world messes around with it.

Correct? Correctness in practice means acceptability to well-educated people. Some well-educated people actively dislike 'train station'; some notice it but don't care; some don't even notice. I suspect the first group is getting smaller and the last bigger.

The Google Books Ngram viewer shows the use of 'train station' growing rapidly from the 1980s. This is based on use in publications, which includes historical works, and not on contemporary speech.

After 25 years recollections are often incomplete. Human rights, overseas aid, family support (Surestart, in-work tax credits) were all areas of difference.

But who started the war (or, if you like, the new campaign in an ongoing war)? Hamas staged brutal raids targeting civilians, knowing fine well how Israel would respond (with great vengeance and furious anger) and that Palestinian civilians would be in the firing line. Israel took the bait...

But CD do provide an English-language version. Applying the Firefox translate function to bahn.de, von and nach become by and after, which is not so good. A single by Berlin after Dresden, please.

The Acts of Parliament for the various railway companies have many instances of abandonments being authorised. I assume they didn't go through this rigmarole for fun. As luck would have it, the LMS 1933 Act refers to the Leek and Manifold Railway at para. 25. Perhaps you missed it.

The privately-owned railways were highly regulated. They needed parliamentary approval to abandon even small sections of railway, close dockyards or canals etc., which must have been cumbersome and expensive. Any radical closures would probably have been difficult to get through Parliament.

It worked OK after 1997. A narrow majority and Starmer would have to govern with half an eye on the next election - a good majority and the probability of at least two terms will give him the space to be a bit bolder.

Deleted the nytimes cookie today and have lost unregistered access to statistics.

Still OK (for now anyway) using a browser on my laptop.

Not for me, my stats are still showing.

Offering a donation is one thing, accepting it another - they are not 'the same thing'. The Tories are free to accept donations from any source, but who they choose to accept them from is a legitimate topic for debate.

What euphoria? It's a game like many others, some luck, some skill, some mental training. Obviously a long run of success is not just luck. I get an infinitesimal rush (yay!) when I solve it, especially if quickly, then forget it.

It has nothing to do with free speech - Hester can say what he likes, within the law. The issue is whether a political cause should accept or retain funds from someone who can come out with such remarks.