“If anybody is interested further, you can search online for several campaigns to end child detention and detailing the damaging experiences of children at Yarls Wood”

An SNP list MSP for Glasgow who was well known as a blogger before she was elected is supporting a family which includes a ten year old girl who came to the UK, legally, when she was three. The family have left the abusive father, who has returned home and are now on the point of being deported to Malawi where it is expected that the father will get custody.

You can read about it on the MSP’s blog.

http://indygalgoestoholyrood.blogspot.com/

That’s one way of looking at it. There are people from all parties in Scotland and Wales who doubted at the time that he actually understood what he was agreeing to.

John Curtice credits Margaret Thatcher with persuading the Scots of the merits of devolution, as one of only three enduring achievements. (The other two were intentional.)

It must have been the easiest of decisions to appoint Donald Dewar in the Scottish office to deal with John Smith’s two soundbite factlets: “the settled will of the Scottish people” and “unfinished business”

Donald had it all worked out in every detail by the time he was 16 or 17 years old and had been rehearsing the arguments for at least 40 years.

David Steel was concerned when Donald complained about the efforts he was having to make to persuade people in London about the merits of the plan, so he asked the civil servants who were travelling with Donald if things were going badly and was reassured that Donald was winning every argument.

After 40+ years practice he would surely convince anyone with just a periphral interest that he had a command of the issues and that it could be left to him to get on with it.

I don’t think TB had the time to get too involved, or to listen to Donald. Once appointing Donald to deal with the “unfinished business” the die was cast.

Given that he had had a plan for which he had been been developing the arguments in favour for 40+ years; had had a debate involving the whole political class; got approval from the Constitutional Convention, parliament, at least four political parties, the trade unions and churches and the overwhelming support from the electorate in referendum, do you think there was a good chance of getting it right?

Which is why, whatever one thinks of him, Tony Blair’s revival of the Scottish Parliament ranks as one of his greatest legacies.

Certainly not in the short term, and only in crisis.

I wrote a little satire for my SNP friends to show them that Independence per se wasn’t what they actually wanted.

Set the future, the beneficial consequenses that Nationalists believe would flow from independence had been acheived and an impoverished R-UK, outwith the EU and paying for Scottish electrictity in €’s had become a failed state with a huge ill educated underclass and a tiny rich and powerful elite. In other words, SNP aspirations and present UK trends were extrapolated.

It ended with a reluctant Scotland (&RoI) annexing the failed state of R-UK at the behest of the Germans with the help of the European army.

Within my lifetime, the SNP has come from a being a party without a single councillor to being a minority Scottish Government. Had we had a parliament fit for purpose during that time it would not have happened.

“Westminster will not copy the model of the Scottish Parliament this side of independence.”

Probably not. But the answer is likely to be “definitely not” the other side of independence.