Whilst the YES Scotland campaign sums up the 2014 Referendum as the biggest grassroots/community campaign Scotland will have ever seen (I wonder if John MacCormick would be throwing his arms aloft with copies of the National Covenant, saying ‘beat me’!), quietly in the ivory towers of Scotland’s universities there are a number of research programmes taking place looking at devolution, independence, post-independence and all their public policy implications. A recent blog post about an event held in Edinburgh gave an insight into some academics thinking about the economics of constitutional change. “Speakers from Ireland, Belgium, Lithuania, Catalonia and Spain, Quebec and Canada, explored the constitutionalRead More →

The Editor of the paper has just shared a link on Facebook, as I write this, from Business for Scotland’s webpage on why the No camp really don’t want a Scottish Oil Fund. I thought I would share it with you to let the editor see that I do get his communications…..http://www.businessforscotland.co.uk/articles/ where you can find not only the piece on the oil fund but the article on the poll vote after last week’s Business for Scotland meeting and a few other interesting pieces not supplied by the main media. I really do despair of the “talent” in the U.K. parties and their approach toRead More →

With the Yes Scotland campaign boosted by the hugely successful Independence March and Rally, the ‘no’ side would appear still to be floundering in their attempt to put a case – any case – for staying in the Union. They don’t even seem able to find someone to make that case, as David Cameron has declined yet again to debate with Alex Salmond. Letters have been zipping back and forth between the two, with Cameron finding all kinds of reasons to dodge the debate. Correspondence quoted in The Herald from Cameron to Salmond states that: “…it is right for you and Alistair Darling, as theRead More →