Separating - the book

It’s not every day that one’s home country decides to separate from the larger state which has been a crucial part of its identity for 300 years – so my readers (particularly in the US and Ukraine let alone in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania) will understand why I have chosen to focus my posts of the past week on what appears to be this imminent event.

One of the problems with a blog is that you are reading backwards – from the last post to the oldest. And you do lose what narrative there might be. So I’ve decided to collate them – unedited – starting with the oldest……
All I've added is a Preface and a final section for hose of you who want a reading list.

I’ve called the little book - Separating – home thoughts from abroad

It is simply a record of the reverbations of the debate which has reached someone who loves Scotland but who has been absent for 24 years.At the best of times, we hear what we want to hear; and, in my case, I am hearing the debate via the internet….with echoes from the memory chamber of the 1970s and 1980s.

Collating the posts I thought might be useful as a historical record –

- to give a sense of how a Scot expat had responded to the (growing) prospect of separation

- to list the readings which I had found helpful as I struggled both for myself and for my foreign readers to identify (and comment on) the key issues

- to link all this to the experience I have had since 1968 of leading and managing people involved in systems of government