I’m too young to remember much about the referendum on a Scottish Parliament – I do remember that it didn’t really dominate discussion in my household. We were living in California at the time, although my parents were voting by proxy, and while I’m sure it came up at the dinner table every so often, [...]
Filed under: culture, history, identity, scotland, ukpolitics on May 5th, 2007 | 10 Comments »
…until the smoking ban in public places comes into force in England on July 1st. Yay! I was there in Scotland when it happened a year ago and was a resounding success. Smokers were giving up in preparation for the ban and publicans were forced to admit that their dire predictions of [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, scotland, society on March 14th, 2007 | 8 Comments »
The Glasgow Herald reports that parts of the prison system are going to be taken over by the Church of Scotland. This made me laugh, although it is on the face of it a perfectly reasonable suggestion, as church groups including the Church of Scotland already provide other social services such as schools and [...]
Filed under: crime, religion, scotland on March 7th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I thought I’d weigh in on the debate over Scottish independence. Despite the hackneyed plea that we must learn lessons from history, the simple truth is that it is never clear what history is supposed to tell us: some people choose to cite Britain’s imperial past as proof that the countries are stronger in the [...]
Filed under: identity, scotland, uspolitics on January 20th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
(yes, I do realise I’m using a baseball metaphor as a headline for a post about football. Just ignore it)
So Gordon Brown has apparently said he’ll support England in the 2018 World Cup. Aside from the fact that caring about the 2018 World Cup 11 years beforehand is completely ridiculous, why is this [...]
Filed under: gordonbrown, scotland, ukpolitics on January 20th, 2007 | No Comments »
Reading Will’s post on constitutional reform, I can’t help but disagree with almost all of it (hello by the way, my name is Owen, the final member of the Clare politics. Like Patrick and Will, I’m a history student, a point which may become apparent in the course of this post…)
The Union is a bizarre [...]
Filed under: constitution, scotland, ukpolitics on January 19th, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Reaching near saturation with the current political debate on the U.K and its apparent imminent disintegration, I have been left asking why we have let ourselves get into such a constitutional mess? Since labour’s introduction of devolution, we have been trying to set up regional governments to represent the four nations, which make up this [...]
Filed under: constitution, scotland, ukpolitics on January 19th, 2007 | No Comments »
