Last weekend’s inaugural conference mixed warmth, unity and ambition with the unmistakable echo of old arguments. MATT KERR wonders whether the fledgling party’s difficulties can be overcome

Current polling shows Scottish Labour faces a stark choice: break decisively with Westminster or continue its slide into irrelevance, warns VINCE MILLS

ALISTAIR FINDLAY recommends the simple cadence, common prose, free verse, and descriptive power of a new collection by Julie McNeill

As assaults on transport staff rise and the Scottish Parliament heads for dissolution, promised legislation to protect rail workers has yet to materialise, says ANN HENDERSON

The city has some of the most expensive, fragmented and unreliable buses in Britain – the case for bringing buses back into public ownership has never been stronger, says GRACE STEVENS

England rise, France gamble and Ireland search for stability in the wide-open title race which begins on Thursday, writes FOSTER NIUMATA

MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used

From the radical promise of early land reform to today’s cautious Community Wealth Building Bill, Scotland’s Parliament has lost sight of its founding ambition to shift power and ownership, writes RICHARD LEONARD MSP

It is time to stop tolerating the governing elites incompetence which makes our lives a daily misery, argues MATT KERR

As Holyrood sets the Budget, the gulf between rich and poor is wider than ever. PETER OLECH of Unite Community Scotland argues that only by taxing extreme wealth can we properly fund public services and deliver justice for working-class communities

STEPHEN LOW looks at the SNP plans for public services

From childhood summers in a post-industrial village to midnight picket lines in Glasgow, the promise of ‘social mobility’ rings hollow for MATT KERR

Alba party leader KENNY MacASKILL makes some suggestions on how to save our pubs and reduce irresponsible drinking

Association of Tartan Army Clubs slams Fifa's ‘disgraceful and disgusting’ dynamic pricing policy

Trade union leaderships have so far stopped short of the bold industrial action over Gaza seen in Italy and Greece. NATHAN HENNEBRY calls for a re-radicalising of the union movement and rebuilding class power as vital to turning solidarity into action

Fuelled by economic abandonment and a collapsing faith in politics, Farage’s party is transforming grievance into momentum north of the border, warns COLL McCAIL

Amid the festive lights, Scotland faces a stark holiday truth: only real investment in public services and the workers who sustain them can lift communities out of poverty, argues LILIAN MACER

ROZ FOYER explains the significance and tradition of today’s St Andrew’s Day March and Rally

Tierney and McLean’s stoppage time strikes topple Denmark in Hampden classic

by Nick Forbes

The right to buy may have been scrapped in Scotland, but the damage it has done lives on even now, writes MATT KERR

VINCE MILLS sizes up the problems facing Your Party north of the border as it grapples with a range of policies, including its approach to Scottish independence

ARTHUR WEST alerts readers to peace-centred activities in Scotland in November

The visa system traps workers with abusive employers, creating a vulnerable workforce scared to complain for fear of deportation — that is why we’re campaigning for a ‘common sponsorship’ model instead, writes FAVOUR DAVIDKING

There is no chance of defending and renewing an NHS which is still savagely undermined by having to pay mark-ups of up to 23,000 per cent to Big Pharma — let’s take control of pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution, writes DREW GILCHRIST

JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite

CND’s Stop the Nuclear Nightmare conference in Glasgow will be an important step towards destroying the false arguments that weapons and war spending will lead to job creation and prosperity, rather than bringing Armageddon closer, writes SIMON BARROW

It’s hard to understand how minor divisions can come to dominate the process of building a challenge to the rule of the rich when the desperate need for a vehicle to fight poverty and despair is so abundantly clear, writes MATT KERR

Employment lawyer ALICE BOWMAN warns ‘day one rights’ include an undefined ‘initial period’ and the zero-hours contract fixes create baffling fixed-term loopholes. If the Bill doesn’t work properly and deliver, Labour is doomed

Our economic system is broken – and unless we break with the government’s obsession with short-termist private profit, things are destined to get worse, warns Mercedes Villalba

KENNY MACASKILL delivers his assessment of Nicloa Sturgeon’s account of her political career