Twenty-five years after the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, we rightly celebrate devolution. In the words of Donald Dewar this was, ‘the day when democracy was renewed in Scotland when we revitalised our place in this our United Kingdom.’ While the Scottish Parliament has brought democracy closer to Scotland, it has not created a genuine…
Steeped in history and surrounded by natural beauty, our rural communities are often fawned over and fantasised about by inhabitants of our towns and cities, where the promise of an idyllic holiday, or perhaps even retirement, awaits. Yet these are places filled with people carrying on with their everyday lives. Living, working and learning in…
Something special happened in 2022. A Scottish election with the lowest ever number of candidates, a turnout of just 44.8%, the lowest in northern Europe and a high number of wards where there was no election because candidate numbers precisely matched the available seats. But there was very little fuss or recrimination because these were…
This year is the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament and we have seen many events marking the milestone. There continues to be much discussion looking back on what has been achieved and looking forward to what could or should be done over the next 25 years. As Coordinator of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, I…
There are many reasons to seek really powerful, really participative local government in Scotland. Electoral Reform Society, Scotland published a longer pamphlet about this in 2022. Here we focus on what could well be the two most important reasons ; Community and Resilience. Ours is a system that combines single, symmetrical units that seeks to…
There is an incorrect presumption embedded into many government frameworks that, by definition, ‘big is beautiful’. The argument is then that that governments at all levels should embrace the need to realise the economies of scale offered by being parts of bigger entities. Best value regimes, public procurement rules, the Green Book (which the UK…
There are a small number of great challenges facing us as a society. The climate emergency is the most significant, but we have a social care crisis that also threatens our wellbeing and that of our loved ones. Too often the scale of the challenge creates a false assumption that the answers lie in changes…
As a former Labour Councillor, I spent many hours persuading people not just that voting was a good thing but why voting for me was an even better thing. I was stopped in my tracks one inclement election day however, when I thanked an older woman for coming out on such a day to cast…