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Entries for August 2013

Sarah O'Neill: Consumer Protection and Representation in an Independent Scotland

The Scottish Government recently published Consumer Protection and Representation in an Independent Scotland: Options, setting out its vision for a new distinctively Scottish consumer protection, advocacy and redress regime, should Scotland vote for independence. The intention is to streamline and simplify the current complex and confusing consumer landscape, in order to better meet the needs of consumers in Scotland.

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Stephen Tierney: Towards a Fair and Democratic Process? Regulating the Referendum on Scottish Independence

The referendum on independence is still a year away and already attention is focused on major substantive issues such as economic relations between an independent Scotland and the United Kingdom, and the ease or difficulty with which an independent Scotland would achieve membership of the European Union. What is often overlooked is that the credibility of the outcome of the vote on 18 September 2014, whatever that might be, will depend greatly on the legitimacy of the referendum process itself.

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Christopher McCorkindale: An Accidental Referendum

That we are currently engaged in a debate that will lead, next September, to a referendum on Scottish independence is wholly accidental: an anomalous quirk of electoral arithmetic, as unintended by the electorate as it was unforeseen by the parties who contested the Scottish Parliament general election on 5th May 2011.

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Tom Mullen: Benefit Policy and Spending in an Independent Scotland

Last month I posted a blog analysing the report of the Expert Working Group on Welfare appointed by the Scottish Government to review its work on the cost of benefit payments in an independent Scotland, and the delivery of benefit payments and to offer views on immediate priorities for change.

 

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Christine Bell: Neutrality, the Festival and the Independence Debate

Three things happened to me this weekend. They seem related.

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