The Electric Pitchfork

Sunk: the price of oil and the dream of Scottish financial independence Many Scots want to leave the UK and go it alone, but their hopes of financial independence have been dashed by the crashing price of oil. Patricia Nicol reports from Aberdeen, where the North Sea crisis is pouring cold water on calls for a second, post-Brexit referendum. In the pub at Aberdeen’s Dyce airport, Martin, Davey and James are drinking to the end of another two-week shift offshore. It is just midday, they have been here since 9am, and are already “five or six Coors down”, slurs Davey, the youngest at 29. Do not judge them too harshly. Their original flight was cancelled. “Happens all the time now they’re half-empty,” says Martin. Aberdeen airport passenger numbers have dipped by a fifth in the past 18 months. Besides, what they are discussing is how well their pattern of two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off employment works with raising young families: Davey is expecting his first child. the-sunday-times...

Affairs are women’s natural backup plan, says scientists I call it the BBD ..  Bigger  Better  Deal Often the ladies will have one of these lined up before giving you the elbow.  Humans — and women in particular — have been programmed by evolution to pursue affairs in case they decide to leave their partners, scientists have suggested. New research challenges the widespread assumption that humans are meant to be monogamous and that breakups are a sign of failure. Instead, the “mate-switching hypothesis” suggests that humans have evolved to constantly test their own relationships and check for better long-term options. The scientists believe it applies particularly to childless women whose choice of partner can have a huge impact on their subsequent ability to raise children. “Lifelong monogamy does not characterise the primary mating pattern of humans,” said David Buss, Cari Goetz and colleagues, in a research paper. “Breaking up with one...

Love rats, watch out: soon you’ll go the way of the dodo Keeping an affair secret in the digital age is increasingly difficult as bugs, texts and social media betray the guilty. How long before we can expect a Find My Cheating Spouse app. Original Article Link Once it was so common that it was a business travel cliché. The banker away on a work trip arranges to see his mistress — who has meetings in the same town — at a five-star hotel. She sneaks into his room at night; by day they enjoy spa treatments, boat trips and dinners out together. They’re thousands of miles from home — who will be the wiser? Last week Antonio Horta-Osorio, 52, a married father of three and boss of Lloyds bank, known in financial circles as “the Special One”, was alleged to have enjoyed just such an encounter with Wendy Piatt, the unmarried director-general of the Russell Group of universities. Piatt was reported to have been spotted entering and leaving Horta-Osorio’s Singapore hotel room usin...