or go here: http://paulcairney.podbean.com/2013/06/19/the-indyref-and-the-scottish-parliament/
I hope to make it a bit more exciting soon, but this will have to do just now.
See also: http://paulcairney.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/testing-testing-podcast-on-independence.html
If you want to spoil the magic and just read the 'script', here it is:
A debate on constitutional change provides the main (or
only) opportunity to discuss its constitution. A constitution can be a written
document with bells and whistles or just an acknowledged set of relationships
between governing organisations and “the people”.
Yet, we have not seen the same debate around independence as
we did around devolution.
Remember all the hopes associated with the push for
devolution:
·
In general, a new form of politics to get away
from all that was wrong with Westminster
·
A new and more proportional electoral system
·
A new relationship between the government, the
parliament and the people
·
A move away from top-down government
policymaking
·
A rejection of adversarial and excessively
partisan politics
·
An effective unicameral system
·
A chance for a wide range of (previously
excluded) groups and individuals to have a routine say in policy
·
A chance for MSPs to spend quality time in their
constituencies rather than sitting around being whipped in Parliament
·
A chance to redress ridiculous imbalances in
representation, particularly for women
A lot of these aims proved to be unrealistic, but at least
we talked about ideals rather than just getting bogged down in petty disputes.
In fact, now is the only time in which we can properly
reassess devolution and ask ourselves if we want to simply keep and build on
existing arrangements or seek to change them. Obvious examples include:
·
Should we keep the mixed member electoral system
rather than STV?
·
Are we content with only one-third of MSPs being
women?
The less visible question is:
·
What do we do about the Scottish Parliament?
·
The problem is that there is not a ‘power
sharing’ relationship between government and parliament
·
The government makes policy and the parliament
examines it
·
It does not have the resources to examine it
well
·
There are too few MSPs and too few staff
·
So, the Parliament examines *some* policy, to
some extent, and has to ignore most of it
·
This happened under all forms of government so
far: coalition majority, single party minority, single party majority
·
So, if we simply add more powers or full powers
onto the current system, its ability to scrutinise government will be much more
limited
·
Now is the only time to discuss what we want to
do about that
·
Whatever you think about independence debate, it
may be the only event that allows us to re-examine the role of the Scottish
Parliament and do something about it
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