Alex Salmond believes that independence will be a ‘major, perhaps dominating, issue' in the run up to the election in May. Initially this appears a peculiar stance for him to take, given that support for independence in Scotland is currently sitting at less than a third.

The future of the education maintenance allowance (EMA) which was rolled out across Scotland in 2004-5, providing 16-19 year olds with up to £30 a week to stay at school or go on to college, is looking increasingly rocky.

Judith Fisher says Scottish Labour must embrace new ideas in their manifesto for next years Holyrood elections.

Scotland doesn't like the Tories. We hold this truth to be self-evident. So how is the new coalition government viewed north of the border and what is the likely impact on next year's Holyrood elections?

As I write, only one constituency in Scotland has yet to declare. Your correspondent has notoriously bad judgement when it comes to election results, but it's fair to say that few were expecting the Labour swing witnessed in Scotland last night.

Well it has finally happened. Our first minister's ego has grown so large, that the SNP feel it just can't be contained in Scotland any longer

Yesterday's budget provided both benefits and opportunities for Scotland, as Alistair Darling sought to improve provision for pensioners, families with young children and the young unemployed whilst stimulating sustainable economic growth, all within a highly restrictive economic climate.

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel organised by the National LGBT Forum on ‘Race, Religion and Belief'. I was the token Christian. The first question I was asked centred on comments made by the Pope recently on same-sex adoption and the new equalities legislation.

Scottish Enterprise have announced the axing of a scheme with a proven track record of getting thousands of graduates into work. The Graduates for Business scheme arranges paid work placements for participants. Around 250 graduates a year have participated in paid internships of between three months and a year, with two-thirds ending up employed by the firms involved and the majority of the rest gaining an equivalent job as a result of the placement.

This month saw the publication of The Literacy Commission Report in Scotland. The Commission, set up by the Scottish Labour party but consisting of an independent group of educationalists, academics, business people and authors, has spent the last eighteen months investigating Scotland's literacy problem.

This week, the UK government announced a list of new powers it wants to transfer from Westminster to the Scottish parliament, and a few that it wants to transfer from Holyrood back to Westminster, under its response to the Calman Commission review of devolution. This comes ahead of the SNP government setting out its own white paper on independence, which is due to take place on Monday, St Andrew’s Day.

On October 13, Phil Woolas, minister of state for borders and immigration, announced major changes to the procedure for changing asylum which have particular repercussions for asylum seekers in Scotland.

Last week, the SNP made their annual budget announcement.

The Scottish government outlined plans to cut schools funding by £2.7m, the enterprise budget by £76m, with housing and regeneration the biggest loser, facing cuts of £253m. The money to be spent on affordable housing will go down from £525m this year to £352m next year.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is one of Europe’s most successful development agencies, with a track record of adopting a more holistic approach to economic development, supporting initiatives which support the wider community as a route to stimulating growth.

It's silly season at Holyrood, and you can't get much sillier than the royal family.

At a time when most people are feeling the pinch, pressure is mounting on Alex Salmond to justify spending on the Council of Economic Advisers.

The Scottish media this month has been full of coverage to mark the first decade of devolution, and with a new book published on those 10 years, ‘Uncharted Territory’ by Hamish Macdonell, it seemed timely to look back at what those years have held.

This week has seen the annual conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress under the theme of ‘Rebuilding Collective Prosperity’.

During the 2007 election, the SNP made cutting class sizes to a maximum of 18 in the first three years of primary school a flagship manifesto pledge.

The Scottish government’s budget for the coming year has been rejected by the Scottish parliament. The budget fell on the vote of the presiding officer after the vote tied at 64 votes apiece.

One of the most fundamental human needs is that of decent shelter, but, as the collapse of the housing market continues, Scottish families are finding that they do not have the same protections from repossession as their counterparts in the rest of the UK.

This week, hundreds of women (and a fair few men) took part in the annual ‘Reclaim the Night’ march around Glasgow’s West End. The march, organised by Glasgow Rape Crisis, is a declaration of the unacceptability of any violence against women, but particularly focuses on sexual violence.

It's not often I find myself agreeing with George Galloway. Last week may indeed have been only the second such occasion, when I read his pronouncement that the current economic situation meant that ‘Alex Salmond and the whole separatist project is a goose which has been cooked and there's no disguising it'. He's right.

The referendum on the creation of a Scottish parliament posed two separate questions to the electorate: did we want a parliament; and if so, did we want it to have tax-varying powers? The result was an overwhelming yes to the first question, and a very definite yes to the second.

I've been a member of the Labour party for more than a decade, and yet, despite the four ‘elected' leaders we've had in Scotland, this is the first leadership contest I've had any say in.

So, last night we lost one of the safest seats in Scotland. The Scottish Labour campaign was well organised. Activists turned out to do the work. We had a great candidate. And we lost.

This week sees the end of the year at Holyrood, with parliament now in recess until September.

You know a political rammy has really kicked off when something happening in Scotland makes the UK news, so the hot topic this month has to be pushing ahead with a referendum on independence.

The SNP are a political party, some may say an overdeveloped pressure group, with a single unifying aim, Scottish independence. However, in the run up to the last election they became gradually quieter on their core motivation until, a year into their government, the only time we hear about the magical powers of an independent Scotland is when the SNP are blaming Westminster for their own inabilities to deliver any of their election commitments.

The Scottish Labour party is a queer beast. An organisation firmly rooted in tradition, our policies may have constantly urged progress and social innovation, but the infrastructure that has supported this constant call for change remains shaped by procedures developed at the birth of our movement.

We have much to be proud of in our heritage: huge social advances; the individual role of giants such as Keir Hardie; and the cultural legacy of the contribution we've made in international solidarity, for example during the Spanish Civil War, continues with us through our music and banners.

In opposition, a party has two functions: to critically scrutinise the government; and to develop and communicate its own ideas and philosophy to offer an alternative vision of how the country should be run.

Fulfilling the first of these functions is now relatively straightforward for the Scottish Labour party, as community groups across the country are becoming steadily more vocal about budget cuts and their impact on services, and with the SNP's plans to introduce an expensive, unwieldy and unjust local income tax, it appears the only problem these days in criticising the government is the number of hours in the day.

Pre-devolution, it was relatively straightforward for the SNP to portray themselves strikingly differently to different pockets of the electorate: Tartan Tories in provincial Perth and the spiritual heirs of Red Clydeside in Govan.

With the advent of the Scottish Parliament, and the SNP as the main opposition party, things became marginally more complicated as the demanding electorate now expected them to have more than one policy. The SNP, generously, dealt with this by adopting two, entirely detached, policy platforms. Their approach to economic policy was to buy wholesale into the rightwing myth that lowering taxes would increase investment in public services. Meanwhile, in a land far, far away, the other face of their party was jumping on every populist bandwagon going, from free school meals for the hummus-favouring children of the middle classes, to opposition to the private finance initiative. Underneath all this lurked the SNP's murky approach to equalities issues, with their acceptance of half-a-million pounds from strident homophobe Brian Souter to fund their election campaign, and their backing of the right of Catholic adoption agencies to turn away gay couples.

Last year was an eventful one in Scottish politics, with the Scottish National Party forming a minority government, and Scottish Labour electing a new leader, Wendy Alexander. It is now becoming clear what living under an SNP government will mean for the Scottish people. Broken promises, financial mismanagement and a prioritisation of the whims of the wealthy over the needs of the vulnerable, all look set to characterise their style of governance.

The SNP have produced a draft budget, which, with the support of the Tories, has now passed its first stage in parliament. The big achievement, supposedly, in this budget, is the agreement of local authorities to freeze council tax, a move which benefits high earners, but with no financial benefit whatsoever for those on the lowest incomes. What will impact on low earners will be the subsequent cut in services and the removal of ring-fencing agreed by the SNP in order to broker the deal with local authorities.