Latest Kenny MacAskill Stories

By Andrew Picken Protesters angry as Seafield work due for completion in 2011 WORK to start tackling the infamous "Seafield stench" is set to finally get under way - but campaigners warn it will be four years before they know if it has made any difference. Construction work on a GBP 20 million package of measures is expected to start next summer and will be completed by 2011. The plan - approved by the city council earlier this year - would mean 94 per cent of the affected homes around...

By DOUGLAS FRASER SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR THE drinks industry expects it can place legal challenges in the way of Scottish Government plans to impose minimum prices per unit of alcohol, as expected in a major new alcohol strategy to be unveiled in West Lothian today. The idea of putting a floor of 40 pence per unit of alcohol is reckoned by the whisky industry to mean a 12per cent price rise on the average GBP10 bottle - when tax is already rising steeply - and there is a warning it will...

By Eddie Barnes A REPORT commissioned by the SNP Government is expected to this week say that Scotland's high rates of drug and alcohol misuse mean people north of the border are twice as likely to kill or commit suicide than those in England and Wales. Researchers from Manchester University studied all homicides and suicides in Britain over the past six years. Suicide rates in Scotland equated to 18.7 per 100,000 compared to 10.2 per 100,000 for England and Wales. Meanwhile, murder...