Independence Referendum

It’s five months today that Scotland goes to the polls on the question of the century, whether or not Scotland should be an independent country.  Both the Yes and No campaigns have entered their full-time statuses, and neither are very far from the headlines of the news each day.  Polls have been favouring the No option since the SNP’s election to the Scottish Government in 2011 that paved the way for this referendum to take place, but in the last month there has been a — Read more →

Browsing the BBC’s magazine offerings last weekend, as I often do; I came across a piece by writer and philosopher Roger Scruton discussing whether the English should have a say on whether Scotland should be independent.  It is an interesting piece, coming from an Englishman looking on the referendum with a nationalist frame of mind of his own – but it makes many failings that I’d like to address (to be considered alongside a rebuttal today from Murray Pittock).  I’m not committed to either side — Read more →

To argue is natural; to debate is human. Debating is the art of structuring an argument in a way to ensure that the audience will agree with you, and therefore that you will win.  I learned when I had a brief experience with debating in secondary school that there are three specific forms of argument that can be used when debating, known as modes of persuasion. The first is ethos.  Ethos is the Greek for character, and this part of debating is an appeal to — Read more →

Perhaps one of the most significant events of the Scottish independence referendum campaign so far came yesterday as George Osborne announced definitively that should Scotland vote Yes in September, they will not be allowed to share the British Pound Sterling in a currency union with the continuing UK.  To add further weight to the statement, he was joined by the most senior financial representatives of the two other major UK political parties: Danny Alexander (Lib Dem, Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Ed Balls (Labour, — Read more →

2014 is set to be a busy year in Scottish politics, all building up to a crescendo in September with the long-awaited referendum on independence. There are many other important events happening throughout this year; some directly connected to the referendum, and some that will indirectly provide an indicator as to how the Scottish public are being swayed by both the Yes and No campaigns. Here are the dates of the milestones on the road to the referendum: 23rd January – Cowdenbeath By-Election After the — Read more →