Scottish Unionist calls it a day

I was sorry to read that Scottish Unionist has decided to stop updating his blog. I know from email correspondence that he has, from time to time, thought about the future of his blog. Now he appears to have decided to call it a day for good. What a great shame that is. Scottish Unionist […]

Where is our referendum on face-slapping?

Last week the SNP set out its legislative plan. The headline grabber was the long-promised independence referendum bill. Today I saw Caron’s post asking, “why bother with a referendum?” She has a good point. It is widely recognised that the result of any referendum would almost certainly reject the SNP’s favoured proposals. “Ah, but!”, say […]

Patrick Hannan — A Useful Fiction

Have you noticed that there is a lot of introspection about devolution just now? I suppose it underlines the fact that devolution is a process rather than a settlement that everyone is still looking at how to tweak it. Maybe it is just the newness of it. The Scottish Parliament is very young as these […]

Would a Scottish Six be less parochial?

I was interested in this recent article about SNP MSP Kenny Gibson’s comments about Reporting Scotland (via cobaltmale). For him, BBC Scotland’s flagship news programme is too parochial. Apparently the way to fix this would be the creation of a Scottish Six. It would mean you would have less of the Mrs-McGlumpha’s-cat-caught-up-a-tree-type stories that you […]

European election leaflets: The main parties

Scottish Conservatives This is a pretty substantial leaflet, with lots of copy for you to read. It’s pretty slick. One thing that strikes me is that it avoids the tacky symbolism adopted by the other right-wing Eurosceptic parties. The only sign of nationalism is a rather washed-out Union Flag acting as a background. Content-wise, it […]

It’s not all about the money

Events in the world of finance over the past few weeks have focussed that ‘national conversation’ onto matters economic. Of course, the economy always features heavily in debates surrounding independence, but events have changed the tone and moved the debate up a gear. In particular, the trouble that Iceland finds itself in has led Scottish […]

My view on Scotland’s constitutional future

If you haven’t read my previous post explaining what I’m trying to do here, feel free to take a look. In this post I will set out the thinking behind my views on Scottish independence. For what it’s worth, I think within a couple of decades the idea of the independent nation state will almost […]

Finding the common ground

In the wake of Kezia Dugdale’s retirement from blogging, and having noted the often poisonous atmosphere that pervades some of the darkest corners of the Scottish blogosphere, I think now is a good time for me to come out with an idea that has been floating around in my head for the past few months. […]

Why politics and sport shouldn’t mix

I have written before about how I struggle to understand how people feel ‘pride’ in their country at, say, sporting events. For me, being proud of your country is a bit like being proud of this week’s lottery numbers or something. I just don’t get it. For whatever reason though, patriotism undoubtedly exists and it […]

What the Foulkes?

As a fairly heavy user of trains, I was interested to hear on the radio this morning that Scotland’s trains are all going to be re-painted in a standardised Scotland-wide livery. It sounds reasonably sensible to me. I never got why trains from the west used that old-fashioned maroon and beige colour scheme, particularly when […]