The latest iPad Pro featuring 1TB of storage and cellular connectivity is on sale at Amazon for just $1,299.99. Models with less storage and just Wi-Fi are also marked down.

THE last day of term before recess saw MSPs attempt more jokes than usual at FMQs, some of them even bordering on approaching the mildly funny. Heady days.

WHAT a difference a Prime Minister makes. There used to be a time, back before it wasn’t an obstacle to promotion, that Jackson Carlaw was aghast at the idea of a no-deal Brexit.

The American politician John Nance Garner is better remembered for something he said rather than anything he did as Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-president.

In “Painting Nationalism Red?”, an engaging new pamphlet published by Democratic Left Scotland, the journalist Neal Ascherson pays tribute to Tom Nairn as Scotland’s “pre-eminent political intellectual”.

Shortly before the second general election of 1974, the late John P Mackintosh attempted to explain the rise of the Scottish National Party to a predominantly left-wing (and English) audience in an essay for the New Statesman.

A few days after a majority of Britons backed Brexit in June 2016, this newspaper reported that Nicola Sturgeon had been in talks with London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo.

The Scottish Labour Party, I think it’s fair to say, hasn’t had a good decade.

“Scotland”, declared a young Alex Salmond in May 1975, “knows from bitter experience what treatment is in store for a powerless region of a common market.”

The sight of Scottish ministers boarding flights to far-flung destinations in order to “sell Scotland to the world” has been a familiar one for more than half a century.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an “in conversation” event with the American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild at Harvard University.

What do professional golfers do in this coronavirus-induced hiatus?

In this country, where the dank, grim days of winter are as short as a resigned sigh, the onset of some decent, dry spring weather doesn’t half raise the morale. Well, it would if the coronavirus wasn’t lurking all over the parish.

THERE will be many of us who embrace technology with all the ham-fisted ineptitude of a fumbling, muttering old colonel trying to unravel the stubborn, sticky wrapping of a barley sugar.

It was 50 years ago this week that one of the greatest golfers ever to grace the greens set out on his quest to win his first US Masters championship.

To say that amateur golf in Scotland has been slow to adapt to change is putting it kindly. But where the rise of the nomads, the Equality Act, the credit crunch and repeated faltering reform efforts have failed, perhaps Covid-19 will finally be the shock that thrusts the sector into a meaningful if seriously belated overhaul.

Scottish Golf today revealed that no date has been set for the sport in this country to restart and stressed that lockdown restrictions will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

IF you’re under 40, or as I like to call it these days, "pre-arthritis", you probably won’t remember the dark days of malbec when you had a 50-50 chance of opening something that would be as rough as sandpaper.

Chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Karen Betts explains why she thinks the Scottish 'water of life' is so special.

CHRISTMAS is coming, the goose is getting fat and there's no wine as flexible with the varied foods of the season than rioja, so let’s take a seasonal look at our favourite Spaniard.

WELL, here we go again, folks. It’s time to take a look at the perfect wines for Christmas so sit back, relax and let’s go down the rabbit hole together.

IF you’re anything like me, these weird alcohol-free January fads are to be avoided so let's raise a glass to a guilt-free month and kick it off with a look at something clean and refreshing to wash the season of excess away.

IT only seems like yesterday that we were in the season to be jolly and, all of a sudden, romance is in the air. Before we know it, we’ll all be rolling eggs down a hill but, in the meantime, I guess we should take a look at rose, the wines of love.

With the Six Nations rugby in full flow (come on, Scotland – I’m forever the optimist) now is a great time to look at amazing beverages from all the nations competing.

WEEK two of the lockdown and I don't know about you, but I’m feeling a bit playful, so how about instead of a boring old wine column, we take a look at a drink that can be fun for all the family?

While lockdown has seen some people turn to DIY, it doesn't all have to be on the home or garden.

SNP MP Steven Bonnar has apologised after a heated altercation with a neighbour.

MILLIONS of face masks to protect Scottish health and care workers against coronavirus could be stuck in limbo at Prestwick airport for a week, it has emerged.

HEALTH boards across Scotland have spent almost £17 million on sending scans to other parts of the country and across the world by private companies amid a staffing crisis.

NICOLA Sturgeon has suggested the coronavirus lockdown in Scotland could end later than the one in England and that she might seek powers to close the Border.

THE SNP is so rotten it may have to be replaced by a new independence party, its former deputy leader has said.

Dumbarton police station has temporarily closed after a member of staff showed symptoms of Covid-19.

DISGRACED former finance secretary Derek Mackay will be entitled to a £12,000 golden goodbye payment this week – despite not being seen in public for three months.

Low-cost European carrier Wizz Air has announced plans to resume some flights from Luton Airport on May 1.

THE Scottish Government has been formally approached by Swedish architects proposing that a bridge to Northern Ireland can be built ... and combined with 140 wind turbines to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

People arriving in the UK could be forced to quarantine for two weeks to halt the spread of coronavirus under plans for the "second phase" of the Government's response.

It crosses one of the most scenic waterways in Scotland and is the second busiest by volume of passengers in the country.

Eurostar says all its passengers must wear face masks as a safeguard against Covid-19, effective from Monday.

Quarantining people arriving from abroad is being “actively” looked at, a senior member of the UK Government has admitted, as criticism mounts over the country dragging its feet compared to other parts of the world.

MORE than one-quarter of people in Scotland want police to take tougher action against those who flout lockdown rules, a survey has found.

LOCKDOWN may start easing soon, but it seems likely to be a long time yet before any of us find ourselves in an actual physical pub. It’s not of course the booze we’re missing – we can get plenty of that – but the company, the conviviality, the atmosphere, the feeling that, in the late hours, almost anything might kick off. So, for those who cry inside every time they walk past their closed-down local, or wake-up having dreamed of standing with a pint at the bar, here’s a few ways you

If Scotland really does have such fabulous seafood, why do ordinary citizens find it so hard to tap into this much eulogised catch? The problem has been that subsequent governments have fixated on international exports, not food for citizens.

FRANKLY? The restaurant world is going mad. Consider this: I order a home delivery from Yu-ca-taco early on Friday evening. For Saturday night. By text of course.

SCOTLAND's foremost angling organisation has set out a bid to allow people to take part in the sport as lockdown measures are eased saying it carries a "low inherent potential" for Covid-19 transmission.

It’ll be five years next month since Gerry Cinnamon released his debut single Kampfire Vampire on Glasgow-based micro-label First Run Records, a half decade in which the Castlemilk-born singer-songwriter has gone from jobbing gig jockey on the city’s DIY scene to a bona fide musical phenomenon with combined Spotify plays of well over 100 million.

IN April 2004, the Victoria & Albert museum in London staged an exhibition of the work of Vivienne Westwood. The show was a celebration and a culmination of the fashion designer’s move from the margins of the industry in the 1970s, where she was creating clothes for the punks who hung around the King’s Road, to her 21st-century incarnation as first among equals in British haute couture.

The Rolling Stones have released their first new song in eight years. Unlike everything else they've done in the last three decades, it's bang up to date. It even references the coronavirus crisis.

A FEW weeks ago, Wendy James was trending on Twitter. It’s been happening quite often over the last few months, a result of BBC Four’s repeats of Top of the Pops reaching 1988 and 1989, the years in which a pink-lipsticked, bra-flaunting James launched herself on the public consciousness as the brash, blonde frontwoman of Transvision Vamp.

Glasgow's Summer Nights at the Bandstand festival has become the latest major music event to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

WE start at the low point. “It’s hard doing music,” Jill O’Sullivan admits. “I love it. I feel compelled to sing and play and write. But I was thinking of quitting.”