A GLASGOW based social enterprise is launching a new shop in the Shawlands area to promote food growing, cookery and sustainable local food.

Locavore, which means “eater of local food”, is a Community Interest Company which aims to take forward projects which contribute to creating sustainable local food economies.

The organisation’s new food hub on Skirving Street is opening on Saturday and is set to sell a wide variety of local foods, from organic vegetables to apple juice, infused oils, sausages, jams, chutneys and preserves. It will also sell a selection of books as well as homemade deli and bakery items.

Reuben Chesters, co-ordinator of Locavore, said: “We believe we need to rethink our relationship with food, from the way it is produced to the way it is cooked, eaten, and disposed of. By changing our relationship with food we can reduce the negative impact food has on the environment while improving our health, our economy, our community and our happiness!”

The community food outlet will also double as a community kitchen where regular sessions and workshops will be held on getting the very best out of local seasonal ingredients; for example, lessons in making jam and preserves, how to cook with wild food, and how to make your own wine.

Locavore projects already include “edible platforms” at railway stations on the south side, running regular gardening and food events such as workshops and hosting volunteer opportunities.

It also works with residents to launch their own food growing projects in shared garden spaces in Shawlands.

Corrimony wind farm is a joint venture between a local farming family, the Girvans, and Soirbheas, a local development charity covering Glenurquhart and Strathglass 

The project comprises  5 turbines (Enercons) at 2.3 MW each – 11.5 MW in total, with Soirbheas having a 20% share. We have assisted the development of Soirbheas and their engagement in this project over the last 3 years through HIE’s Community Renewable Energy Support Scheme (CRESP).  The construction of the access track starts in July, with turbine bases to be installed in August.  Turbines should be in and running before ROCs go to 0.9 next Spring. As with most projects there have been a lot of ups and downs so this is a great achievement for Soirbheas – and is Community Energy Scotland’s first joint venture developed from scratch. I expect there will be a lot of interest in this project as it shows what can be achieved where there is a strong relationship between a local farming family and community – something the Scottish Government is keen to promote.

Extract from the website of the Constitutional Commission

One of the most common misconceptions in Scottish politics is that the so-called ‘constitutional debate’ will be settled, one way or the other, by the independence referendum. It might not seem like it to the SNP, but independence is the easy part – and only the beginning. The history of decolonization in the twentieth century tells us that what follows after independence is crucial to the success or failure of the newly-formed State: many countries became independent from colonial powers only to fall into the hands of a corrupt dictator and lose what chance of liberty and prosperity they might have had. The challenge facing the Scottish Government is not merely winning a referendum on independence, but, more importantly laying good foundations for post-independence state-building.

Scotland is fortunate in that many of the institutions of state already exist, making our transition to independence easier than most. We already have a legal system, a judiciary, an administration, a Parliament, local authorities, an education system, and a tolerable infrastructure. Most of the rest – a small Scottish Defence Force to protect fisheries and oil rigs, a diplomatic corps, and a fiscal apparatus – can be constructed without excessive difficultly.

What we lack, though, is the means of bringing all these together and making them public – making the Scottish State into the common possession – the res publica – of the people of Scotland. This is the function of the Constitution, the fundamental law sitting at the apex of the legal, political and social life of the country.

We tend to think of Constitutions as dry legal documents, of interest only to lawyers, academics and bureaucrats. Nothing could be further from the truth. A Constitution is much more than a legal document. It is also a political, national and moral document. The Constitution is the charter of the land, the ark of the covenant, the supreme law that binds transforms a collection of individuals living in a common space into a society of fellow-citizens living under common rights, rules and responsibilities.

There are four reasons why Scotland needs such a Constitution. Firstly, and most optimistically, a new written Constitution provides the opportunity to further reform our democracy away from the Westminster Model, with its concentrated, exclusive, secretive and unaccountable power, in favour of a more Scandinavian model characterized by greater power-sharing, decentralization, openness and accountability. This, if embraced, will pay great dividends in terms of the quality of public policies and standards in public life. No more grubby boys clubs: all open and above board.

The SNP, in their previously published constitutional drafts, made significant headway in this direction. Even before it was fashionable, all SNP drafts for a Scottish Constitution have included proportional representation, a limitation on Crown prerogatives, and an empowered parliamentary committee system. Their greatest innovation is to recommending a minority-veto mechanism to replace the checking power of a second chamber. This mechanism, derived from Danish practice, would enable two-fifths of the members of Parliament to suspend non-financial legislation for up to eighteen months, unless over-ruled by a referendum.

Secondly, a written Constitution is necessary to provide legitimacy to the new Scottish State. A Constitution does more than just protect personal rights – important though that function is. It also legitimizes and institutionalizes public authority. It draws a line between the state and the government, between the res publica and those who at any moment happen to hold positions of power. It proclaims that the state is not a patrimony, in the possession of any one person or party, but is our common possession. It is therefore crucial to making an independent Scotland ‘work’ in the interests of its people, and not merely in the interests of its rulers. This reassures citizens that an independent Scotland will belong to all the people, of all parties and none, and not just to the SNP. Henry McLeish will be glad of this when he tries to become Scotland’s first Labour Prime Minister!

Thirdly, the distinction between a higher, constitutional law approved by the people and a lower, ordinary law made by Parliaments is the logical consequence of the SNP’s core belief in the sovereignty of the people. To talk about sovereignty of the people, and then merely substitute the sovereignty of Westminster for that of Holyrood, would be an unacceptable sleight of hand.

Finally, a written Constitution is not an optional extra. European and world opinion would make the adoption of a written Constitution necessary: the UK has, for historical reasons, managed to avoid adopting a written Constitution; Scotland, as a newly formed independent state, would not be able, even if it wished, to continue such an anomaly. The EU and the Council of Europe would rightly laugh.

The SNP also have tactical reasons for shifting their rhetoric from ‘mere independence’ to ‘state-building’.  Fear of state failure is one of the most effective anti-independence arguments: “Better the devil you know”; “Don’t let King Eck rule Scotland as his personal fiefdom.” A poster emanating from Willie Rennie’s office highlighted this vulnerability perfectly: drawing parallels with Qatar, it depicted a future independent Scotland as being ‘ruled by one man’ and having a death penalty.  The only way to address this vulnerability is to propose a written Constitution for Scotland that conforms to the best practice of other small European democracies, is technically sound, and has the broadest possible support. Publishing such a Constitution – preferably in as a detailed final draft, but at least in outline – before the independence referendum would go a long way to convince people that an independent Scotland would really be a ‘progressive beacon’ and a bastion of democracy.

This then, is the choice between us: to be under the domination of an arbitrary power which we do not control – whether that power sits in Westminster or Holyrood, and whether it goes under the name of UK PLC or Scotland Inc. – or to adopt a written, fundamental, democratic Constitution, and thereby to become fellow-citizens, joint and equal shareholders in the great co-operative enterprise of building a good community for all our people.

Extract from Nudging Citizens Towards Localism?

By Peter John, Liz Richardson

Times are tough for public policy-makers. Government faces many pressures. Public health outcomes are unsatisfactory. Improved parenting could make a real difference to children’s opportunities in life. Many communities suffer from a weak sense of cohesion. Care and support services for the growing numbers of older people are unsatisfactory. On the other hand, improving services to meet these objectives would cost money, which is in short supply.

In this context, behavioural change policies look increasingly attractive. If we can use the resources of social psychology and related disciplines to influence people’s choices, the way may be open to securing real improvements without expensive interventions. ‘Nudge’ – i.e. achieving behavioural change by persuasion from government and other bodies – is a popular theme in policy debates. 

In this report, Professor Peter John from UCL, with help from Liz Richardson from Manchester University, has examined the effectiveness of the nudge approach, informed by interviews with policy-makers in a range of central government departments and local agencies, and parliamentary reports. The conclusions emphasise that, despite the enthusiasm and the frequent references to behavioural change in the official literature, there is insufficient knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in practical contexts. The implementation of nudge policies to promote positive choices across a broad range of areas from smoking and diet to sorting rubbish, from good neighbouring to cutting down car use is patchy.

The report focuses on the use of nudge to encourage citizens to take more responsibility for meeting local needs themselves. It provides an independent view of the evidence and comments on the current government’s interest in localism and decentralisation. It points out that the best way to pursue nudge policies is exactly the kind of issue that lends itself to local experimentation and to properly randomised trials. There are real opportunities to improve understanding of the kinds of behavioural changes that would help us achieve policy objectives at relatively low cost by systematically investigating the outcomes of local initiatives.

This report commends the work of the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team. It argues that we need more experimentation and more randomised controlled trials so that behavioural change policies can be properly assessed and can be converted from a fashionable idea to a practicable way of achieving policy objectives.

Executive Summary

Do policies designed to create desired behaviour changes on the part of citizens need concerted action by central government to ensure their effective delivery? Or is there a need for a more decentralised approach whereby the centre sets the guidelines, but other agencies, the voluntary sector and citizens decide policies and implement the changes needed? This report reviews the arguments for and against these different approaches to implementing policies that promote behaviour change, paying particular attention to the possible tension between national policy objectives and theapproach of decentralisation and the ‘Big Society’. Greater decentralisation

of power could inhibit the government from achieving its objectives, but on the other hand decentralisation could encourage a more legitimate and selfsustaining form of behaviour change. Therefore a key question addressed here is: has the government arrived at an uneasy compromise of not acting enough to push policies through but not fostering sufficient decentralisation to energise localities?

This report comes to the following conclusions:

 1. The claim that behaviour change could be implemented by strong central action as implied by the findings of the House of Lords Science and Technology Sub-Committee I report, Behaviour Change (2011), still needs much more evidence to support it. There is relatively little robust knowledge about the extent to which citizens will change their behaviour as a result of greater central direction and effort. Governments need to know more about the workings of the policy instruments at their disposal to achieve desired behaviour changes.

2. The House of Lords report claims that there has been a patchy response to the behaviour change agenda across Whitehall. This report supports this view, but also finds that there are examples of good practice and the collection of robust evidence through randomised controlled trials, which have been promoted by the successful work of Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team. This report for the British Academy recommends extending the work of the Team beyond its current two-year term.

3. The level of expertise and use of behaviour change interventions in local government and the voluntary sector are also patchy and confined to a few innovator authorities and organisations. Local government is often held back by too much focus on strategies and not enough attention to action and delivery. The report recommends

nudging local policy-makers so they become more innovative in their approach to behaviour change policies.

4. The decentralisation reforms introduced by the Localism Act and measures to promote the ‘Big Society’ also rely on behaviour changes for their effective implementation. These causal linkages have not as yet been fully taken into account by central government in its provisions for the implementation of the legislation. This report

recommends that more research should be undertaken on the best means to encourage more engagement of citizens.

5. Policy-makers need to pay more attention to the exact relationship between central direction, local autonomy and citizen input to decision making. Such attention would lead to a self-sustained improvement in policy outcomes, which would then be regarded as legitimate by the citizens who have a say in how these policies

emerge. The report recommends more interventions that, as well as nudging citizens, encourage them to ‘think’.

6. It is not clear at the present time what the impact is of other changes to central tools of implementation, in particular the abolition of Central Office for Information (COI). The report recommends an evaluation of the abolition of COI.

7. The implication of this report’s findings is that – in the short-run at least – it is likely there will only be moderate changes in citizen behaviour, both from central direction and from decentralised methods of delivering services and collective goods. The chief reason for this is the lack of knowledge about the exact relationship between government actions, citizen behaviours and effective public outcomes.

8. To remedy the gap in evidence, the report makes the case for more experiments, in particular randomised controlled trials, to find the best means to encourage behaviour change and citizen participation in public decisions. Such research would encourage a virtuous circle of better-guided central government policies (in order to provide the general regulatory framework), greater decentralisation to local agencies and community groups, and more effective mechanisms that stimulate the desired behaviour changes.

MY COMMUNITY RIGHTS

Taken from the ‘right to challenge’ page of a new support service run by Locality – DTAS’ sister organisation in England

The Community Right to Challenge is expected to come into effect on 27 June 2012. It enables communities to challenge to take over local council services that they think they can run differently and better. The Right to Challenge could be used to run a wide range of local council services.

Some examples of community groups already providing local services include:

Fresh Horizons – who run an efficient library service in Huddersfield, combining this with advice and credit union services and in the future a cinema.

Himmat – delivers services for young people in Halifax, it has been awarded contracts to run probation services and a Youth Offending Team dealing with kids most at risk.

A challenge will be considered by a local authority and may be accepted or rejected, but if it is accepted does not mean you will necessarily get to run the service as the council would have to run a tendering exercise which anyone can bid for, including the private sector.

Support and advice

Get further support through the website and learn from others in the case studies section.  Still have questions? Contact us via the advice service.

Resources will be added to the website in June including the launch of the grants programme and Contract Readiness Checker.

We also welcome enquiries from local councils needing guidance on the policies and how best to respond to Expressions of Interest.

Other guidance

We can assist with the running or bidding to run of public services even if you are not planning to use the Community Right to Challenge mechanism itself.

Margaret Wheatley (extracts from her website)

For many years, I’ve been interested in seeing the world differently. I’ve wanted to see beyond the Western, mechanical view of the world and see what else might appear when the lens was changed. I’ve learned, just as Joel Barker predicted when he introduced us to paradigms years ago, that “problems that are impossible to solve with one paradigm may be easily solved with a different one.”

I’ve been applying the lens of living systems theory to organizations and communities. With wonderful colleagues, I’ve been exploring the question: “How might we organize differently if we understood how Life organizes?” It’s been an exploration that has helped me look into old patterns and problems and develop new and hopeful insights and practices. It has also increased my sense of wonder for life, and for the great capacity of the human spirit.

I’ve been a speaker, consultant, and writer since 1973. I’ve been inside most kinds of organizations – from the Girl Scouts to the U.S. Army, from Fortune 100 companies to small town churches– and lived and worked in many different cultures and countries. I love the diversity, and I love even more the realization that around the world, we share a common human desire to live together more humanely and more harmoniously.

My questions, observations, and ideas always appear as articles or talks. You can browse through most of my articles, and learn about videos and audio tapes, on this website. My hope is that your own sense of wonder will compel you to continue exploring the world with new eyes. We need many pioneers and explorers now.

I invite you also to come learn about and join in my work with The Berkana Institute, which I co-founded in 1992. 

For more information about Meg Wheatley’s  latest book  – 

WALKING OUT AND WALKING ON Click here

Walk Outs are people who bravely choose to leave behind a world of unsolvable problems, scarce resources, limiting beliefs and destructive individualism. They walk on to the ideas, beliefs and practices that enable them to give birth to new systems that serve community. This is the story of an emerging movement of pioneering leaders and communities around the world who are self-organizing to create healthy and resilient communities.

In Walk Out Walk On, authors Meg Wheatley and Deborah Frieze invite you on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have walked out of limiting beliefs and assumptions and walked on to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs Who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.

Executive summary of full report by SAC which can be accessed here.

• In its 2011 election manifesto, the Scottish national Party (SNP) made a commitment to take forward proposals for a Rural Parliament. This commitment was reaffirmed in the SNP’s 2011-2012 Programme for Government

• In October 2011, researchers at SAC were asked by the Scottish Government to carry out a study of existing Rural Parliament in Europe. The aim of the study was to ‘enhance understanding of how and why Rural Parliaments operate, and the outcomes they generate, through examining international examples’.

• Rural parliaments in six countries were identified for analysis in discussion with the Scottish Government : Sweden, the Netherlands, Estonia, (Swedish speaking)  Finland,Hungary and Slovakia.

• The study has been undertaken in four phases: 

i) scoping and location of existing Rural parliaments 

ii)desk-based analysis of the information available about selected existing Parlaiments

iii)interviews with representatives of the Parliaments and with idividuals centrally involved with rural movements in Europe to discuss in more detailthe ways in which they operate

iv) summarising the implications of phases i)-iii) for the establishment of a rural parliament in Scotland

The number of Scottish councils should be cut by almost half and their powers boosted to revitalise local government, a think tank has said.

Reform Scotland also said health and police boards should be scrapped, and their responsibility added to councils. It wants to see local authorities reduced from the current 32, to 19. The think tank said the “crisis” in local government was highlighted by poor turnouts at the 3 May council elections.

The recommendations were dismissed by local authority umbrella group Cosla and the Scottish government.

In a new report on renewing local government, Reform Scotland also proposed the election of mayors and the devolution of local taxes, all under plans to bring power closer to the people and “reverse the trend” of centralising power with government.

Under Reform Scotland’s proposals, some city councils and ones with large areas, like Edinburgh and Highland, would stay the same. But other neighbouring authorities, like North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire, would be merged into a new area simply known as “Lanarkshire”.

The new councils under the proposed structure would be:

• Ayrshire (comprising East, North and South Ayrshire)

• Dunbartonshire (comprising East and West Dunbartonshire)

• East and Midlothian (comprising East and Midlothian)

• Forth Valley (comprising Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, West Lothian and Stirling)

• Grampian (comprising Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire and Moray)

• Lanarkshire (comprising North and South Lanarkshire)

• Renfrewshire (comprising East Renfrewshire, Inverclyde and Renfrewshire)

• Tayside (comprising Dundee and Angus)

• Argyll and Bute, Perth and Kinross, Dumfries and Galloway, Edinburgh, Eilean Siar, Fife, Glasgow, Highland, Orkney, Shetland and Borders remain unchanged.

Reform Scotland chairman Ben Thomson said: “It is clear from the recent disappointing local election turnout that we have to take action against the erosion of local democracy in Scotland. This is not a party-political issue, and we hope to start a vital debate in this country which will result in a solution being found which empowers our councils, and which engages people at election-time.”

“It is certainly the case that there is too much confusion caused by the inconsistent number of councils, police boards and health boards, and, by making these boundaries the same and making local authorities more responsible for these essential services, we will take a big step in the right direction.”

A Cosla spokesman, described the Reform Scotland report as “disappointing” and said some of the thinking behind it was “woolly and piecemeal”.

He added: “It is also interesting and somewhat odd that a think tank that champions localism is trying to deny councils the opportunity to be truly local with some of the suggestions in this report.”

A Scottish government spokesman said: “Our approach to reforming Scotland’s public services, following on from the Christie Commission’s recommendations, is about making sure that they are consistently well-designed and delivered to the right people by the right people – it does not rely on wholesale structural reform.

“Local authorities are already finding innovative ways of collaborating and improving frontline services to deliver the best outcomes for the people of Scotland.”

To see full report, visit Jimmy Reid Foundation here.

The Jimmy Reid Foundation, Scotland’s left-wing think tank, has published The Silent Crisis: Failure and Revival in Local Democracy in Scotland. It concludes that below the national level, Scotland is the least democratic country in Europe. Seven indicators were used to assess this:

• Population size: Scotland’s councils are by far the biggest in population size in Europe – the average EU council serves is 5,630 voters while in Scotland an average council services 163,200 voters

• Geographical size: Scottish councils are by far the biggest by land area in Europe. The EU average size is 49 square kilometers compared with Scotland’s average size of 2,461 square kilometers. Even countries with lower density of population have much smaller countries – Finland averages 1,008 square kilometers.

• Turnout at elections: Scotland has an artificially high turnout rate because we’ve held the last three local elections at the same time as national electons. Even so, only England has a lower turnout and it is very likely that Scotland will fall below England on 3rd May.

• Number of elected bodies: Scotland has a tiny number of elected bodies below the natioanal level and the flattest structure of government of any EU nation. 

• Ratio of electors: Scotland has the fewest elected councillors per citizen in Europe. France has one councillor per 125 people, Finland one per 500, Spain one per 700, even England manages one per 2,860. In Scotland we have one elected councillor per 4,270 citizens.

• Participation in local politics: Scots are the least likely of any comparator to get involed in local politics. One in 84 people in Norway stands for election. One in 145 in Sweden. One in 2,071 in Scotland.

• Competition for for election: candidates in Scottish elections have the least competition of any comparator. In Norway an average of 5.5 pople contest each seat, in Sweden 4.4 people. In Scotland only 2.1 people contest each seat.

In every regard, local democracy in Scotland is failing. But the report accepts that, broadly, local administration is working reasonably efficiently. So it concludes that the cost and disruption of any wholesale reorganisation of local government would be entirely unjustified. 

It therefore calls for the Scottish Government to establish a Commission to devise a full plan for an extra layer of democracy at the community level but supported by the existing bureaucracy.

The report contains detail of the sorts of issues that need to be resolved (including finance and powers) and also puts forward a set of principles which should guide the work of the proposed Commission. Because minimal additional bureaucracy would be required, the report models the cost of running a more democratic system and concludes that it need cost no more than £20 million to run. Further details are available in the report and the summary report.

Commenting on the report Robin McAlpine, Director of the Jimmy Reid Foundation and one of the report authors, said:

“Government is a combination of good administration delivering the priorities set by real democracy. At the local level in Scotland the administration is basically fine but the democracy is an absolute disaster. I don’t think anyone really believes they can use their vote to change their community any more.That just can’t be acceptable.

There has been an assumption among the professional classes that ordinary people can’t be trusted to run their own communities. Not only is this patronising nonsense, the experience of almost every other European country shows it’s just not true. Scotland’s communities deserve better than to be treated like naughty children.

This is a cross-party issue and the only thing stopping us from fixing this problem is that hardly anyone seems to realise the problem exists. Our report proposes a relatively simple and inexpensive way to revive local democracy. We believe it would not only inject life into local communities, it would reinvogorate politics in Scotland from your doorstep all the way to Holyrood.” 

Supporting the launch of the report Rob Gibson, SNP MSP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, said: “Building a new democracy in today’s Scotland requires accountability and decision-taking at the most local levels. I welcome this key contribution to the debate about subsidiarity for real. Small works! “

Paul Coleshill, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Glasgow City Council said: “This report is a significant analysis of the democratic deficit in Scotland. Taking power to the centre whilst proclaiming localism feeds disempowerment that people demonstrate by not voting. The powers passed from Westminster to Parliaments in Scotland and Wales have not inspired those bodies to redistribute them to local authorities and beyond. 

Control should cascade from Westminster to Holyrood to local councils to geographically small but general local bodies like community councils. Voters care about their local GP surgery, their local bus service, the swimming baths and the primary school in a way they don’t about the whole NHS, or centralised leisure policy or educational administration. So take control over these things and give it to local communities. Taking the implications of this report seriously might get people voting.”

Patrick Harvie, Co-convener of the Scottish Greens said:

“Greens have long argued for decision-making closer to communities and across Scotland we have dozens of council candidates campaigning on this issue. Sadly we’ve seen centrist tendencies hold sway for years, under successive governments. Greens at local level have a track record of encouraging community involvement in decision-making. The Jimmy Reid Foundation has put forward some radical and provocative ideas, which deserve serious consideration from all parties.

“I’d like to see this debate go beyond local decision-making, and address local ownership too. Banking, media, energy, retail and food production are all areas where a more diverse ownership structure would bring about more democratic accountability for the economy as a whole, not just for the public sector.”

Extract of an article by Lesley Riddoch in The Scotsman 2/4/12 

…In Iceland the standards, expectations and capacity of “the people” are rather higher (than in Britain). The 2009 banking crash in Reykjavik created losses equal to seven times the country’s annual income and plunged Iceland into near bankruptcy. The subsequent “pots and pans” revolution of 2009 (a series of large, noisy, weekend demonstrations) saw the election of Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir and moves to prosecute former Premier Geir Haarde for negligence. The world’s first openly lesbian Prime Minister was (more to the point) also a green activist who supported the growing clamour for a politician-free “reboot” of Icelandic democracy.

Public scrutiny uncovered an absence of checks and balances in Iceland’s system of government – a crucial weakness in the “old” constitution borrowed from “Mother” Denmark when Iceland declared independence in 1944.

Political donations by commercial interests in Iceland have been outrageously high – averaging an annual $8 per Icelander, compared to just 60 cents per person in the donation-crazy US.

Two Icelandic government ministers were able to commit Iceland to the invasion of Iraq without consulting parliament. The justice minister could appoint judges without oversight. Public land had been sold to private aluminium firms for hydro dams and fishing grants and quotas had been awarded to a suspiciously small number of boat owners.

Enough was enough. A new constitution was needed, but after such compelling evidence of “establishment capture” – and after 67 years failing to deliver a promised overhaul – the political class could not be trusted to write it. So Iceland’s “crowd sourced” constitutional process was born. The first move in 2010 was a National Assembly populated by a random sample of 953 ordinary Icelanders who created a basic framework for the constitutional review. Then 25 people were elected from 550 self-nominating volunteers to rewrite the democratic rulebook.

The Icelandic Constitutional Council (ICC) took four months to write the world’s newest constitution with input by e-mail and social media (95 per cent of Icelanders are online with 66 per cent on Facebook). The resulting people’s constitution was debated last week and will be put to a referendum this summer. The Icelandic economist Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason won the highest number of votes – and was in the Scottish Parliament this week to explain what happened next.

“This is the first time a constitution has been drafted on the internet. The public could see new rules come into being before their eyes … very different from old times where constitution-makers found themselves a remote spot out of sight and out of touch.”

The ICC posted draft clauses on its website every week and weekly rewrites, which took into account 3,600 public comments, 323 formal propositions and subsequent discussions on the ICC Facebook page. The ICC also had a Twitter account and a YouTube page where interviews with constitution-writers were watched by 5,000 people. ICC meetings were open to the public and streamed live on the website and Facebook page. There was no special access for once-preferred interest groups like bankers, farmers and boat owners. As Professor Gylfason told a packed Committee room, the forces of the establishment clearly believe “their” representatives will be able to amend or somehow blunt the Constitution’s force during parliamentary debate.

Perhaps they will. But perhaps “the people” are now a political force to be reckoned with in Iceland, distinct from party, parliamentary and establishment interests. So what has Iceland’s democratic renewal got to do with Broken Britain or even self-determining Scotland?

Disillusioned voters here want a fresh start every bit as badly as the 320,000 inhabitants of Iceland. What the public here gets is the chance to elect a man as excluded and resentful as themselves. What disillusioned voters in “basket case”, Iceland have done is go a whole step further – writing a constitution that would end a culture of cronyism their own politicians had failed to tackle.

That raises a big question for Scotland. Would political independence from England guarantee an end to the influence of the Edinburgh Establishment, described by Bill Jamieson as “the largest and most enduring elite in Scottish life – interlocked, cross-connected and intensely self-reinforcing (with) power and influence (that) extends over culture, the arts, business, politics and government”.

A Scottish Government minister said recently that the SNP controls the government but isn’t even a member of the establishment. Three cheers for that – look what the Tories’ monopoly on power has done to civic life in England.

But is Scotland much better? Conformity reigns in many walks of life and dissidents fast become unemployable. Is there evidence that the SNP will tackle the entitlement, privilege, cliques and special pleading that still hobbles Scotland? A politician-free Constitutional Commission would be a way to champion the sovereignty of the people. Otherwise many will conclude that Scotland – unlike Iceland – is incapable of elite-challenging constitutional change, inside or outside the Union. 

Prof Gylfason’s Edinburgh lecture can be heard at nordichorizons.org

For further information on the plans of So Say Scotland contact 

Susan Pettie : hq@prophetscotland.co.uk

Oliver Escobar : oliver.escobar@ed.ac.uk

Stephen Elstub : stephen.elstub@uws.ac.uk