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Crumbs off the table
Attempts at haggling to win a deal over the Scottish Budget still leave public services short-changed, writes MATT KERR
ET OFF LIGHTLY: Finance Secretary Shona Robison announcing the draft Budget for 2025-26 to MSPs at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh

UNLESS you would like to live forever in a cave in some far-off wilderness, never seeing a soul or even reading this paper, we negotiate.

Even our interactions with other species are a negotiation of sorts, or at least they were at the point of domestication, with the notable exception of cats of course — they appear to dictate terms.

Part of my own domestication involved banding together with my sister to negotiate our pocket money from the Old Man. Having spent his working day negotiating, you’d have thought he just couldn’t be bothered — that was certainly our calculation. 

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