Angus Robertson

Vienna is an international capital, a city that has been a pivot for diplomacy, culture, intellectual thought, music, art, design and architecture for hundreds of years. Its famous annual New Year’s concert and its glittering winter balls are long traditions that seem to distil the essence of festive celebration and they have survived periods of turmoil and upheaval. They have their origins in the pomp and circumstance of the Habsburg court, which had its seat in Vienna for 600 years. Heading

THE vibrant development in our screen industries over the last five years is continuing at pace as I saw for myself this week when BBC Studioworks were announced as the operators of the £11.9m Kelvin Hall Film and Broadcast Studio Hub.

As we remember the centenaries of World War One it is understandable that we are most familiar about the Western Front. After all it was our grandfathers and great-grandfathers who fought at the Somme and Passchendaele. We also hear about our English-speaking cousins and their sacrifices at Gallipoli or Vimy Ridge. Perhaps that’s the reason we see so little about centenary commemorations from other fronts: whether at Tannenberg, Galicia, the Carpathians or countless other battlefields. We also hear next to nothing about the southern front, which pitted Italy against Austro-Hungary and was just as bloody as anywhere else, but took place in the Alps. To this day it is the biggest ever conflict in mountains in the history of mankind with over one million casualties.

THE stark contrast between the progressive and ambitious SNP Government in Scotland and the tired and divided Tory Government at Westminster could not have been clearer this week.