The Scottish political & social revolution? Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party delivered a level headed speech at the end of the SNP Conference last weekend which spelt out the issues and which was not characterised by the triumphalism associated with run-of-the-mill British political parties. In around 150 days the minority SNP led executive has transformed Scottish politics by conducting themselves in a responsible manner and avoiding, most of the time, time-wasting in-fighting with the less-than-friendly larger party in the form of disgruntled Labour members. If it hasn't sunk in already the Labour members will soon begin to realise that a large proportion of the Scottish electorate are tending to talk about Labour as the past, as the party that tried to make a fiefdom out of Scotland and squandered the generous resources pumped up from Westminster by their Labour government colleagues. CybaCity reports that the National Conversation launched by Alex Salmond has gone well and has broken up into many different groups who are going into more depth on their views of Scottish futures. One of the emerging points of interest which has become a topic of internal seminars on constitution at SEEL (Systems Engineering Economics Lab) has been that irrespective of the fact that Alex Salmond advocates independence for Scotland a large number of people in Scotland, who do not at the moment support independence, have been impressed that the performance of the SNP. Alex Salmond has learned the trick of explaining in simple terms why the SNP-headed executive will head into to more difficult period as a direct result of a disciminatory move by Alistair Darling the Chancellotr of the Exchequer reducing the rate of growth in transfers to Scotland below those of the rest of the UK. This has caused Alex Salmond's argument that Scotland should raise all of its own revenues to receive a sympathetic reception by all Scots be they in favour of indpendence or a consolidated devolution within the Union. In this way the Labour party is losing traction fast and helping feed the support for the SNP. There is not much doubt that it is not an exaggeration to speak in terms of a political revolution if one compares the mood of the people with that during the last days of the Labour administration. The recent moves of return to free education and a range of other reasonable moves concerning caring responsibilities of government are stimulating a revolution in the social dimensions of Scottish politics. No one in their right senses can not hope Scotland proves to be successful if not for the selfish reason that proof of concept might well force the Westminster government to begin to provide the same level of consideration to the English which the Scottish executive affords the people of Scotland. For all of our sakes we should wish Scotland well. Our email is: scotlandreview@apeurope.org Freedom is so important, why not defend it?