Welcome to Sceptical Scot, Scotland’s premier non-tribal forum for passionate, informed debate.
These pages are for all who care about Scotland’s future, regardless of how they vote: for party, independence/union, EU/Brexit. Sceptical Scot aims to provide a forum that is both broader and deeper than current online/print offers with a rich diet of well-researched, polemical, thought-provoking writing.
Why ‘Sceptical Scot’? Because none of us can lay claim to absolute truth, and all policies and proposals need to be subjected to enlightened, sceptical scrutiny and investigation.
We welcome contributions that focus on issues affecting Scotland regardless of its constitutional arrangements and that are truly international in scale. These might include the nature of modern democracy, the question of identity and national character, inequality and fairness, globalisation and de-industrialisation, the future of work, localism and cross-border collaboration, migration and ageing, the empowering role of the state, the role and future of media in a devolved country – and, not least, the impact of climate change and loss of biodiversity on the economics and politics of the world we, as humans, share with other species.
Editorial Board
Our Editorial Board consists of journalists, activists and commentators from both sides of the Yes/No divide – and beyond. We have no axe to grind, though we welcome those who have, so long as they do so with good will, wit and without rancour – and above all with knowledge and understanding for us all to share. Sceptical Scot is funded by the Editorial Board and other unpaid volunteers.
David Gow (Co-Editor)
David Gow, FRSE chairs the RSE Scotland Europe Initiative and is a member of the Society’s programme and international committees. He is also a former editor of Social Europe (now senior adviser) and a former European Business Editor and Germany Correspondent at The Guardian. He contributed to The Red Paper on Scotland (1975). He co-wrote Basta! An end to austerity politics (2013). He lives in Scotland.
Fay Young (Co-Editor)
Fay Young is a writer and editor with special interest in social issues, arts and the environment, both natural and manmade. She is research and development director of Walking Heads, and co-founder-organiser Leith Open Space. She manages a woodland garden with husband Ray Perman, open to public through Scotland’s Gardens Scheme.
Lucy Hunter Blackburn
Lucy Hunter Blackburn is a freelance writer and researcher specialising in student funding. She is currently also a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh doing a PhD. She has 20 years’ experience of working in public policy, including a decade in senior positions in the civil service in Scotland.
Jackie Kemp
Jackie Kemp is a journalist and commentator based in Boston USA. She has a Huffington Post blog and a website www.jackiekemp.scot. Follow her on Twitter @jackiekemp. In 2012, she created an anthology of her father Arnold Kemp’s journalism Confusion to Our Enemies: Selected Journalism of Arnold Kemp 1939-2001 (NWP).
David McAllister
David McAllister is now Production & Associate Editor at Prospect Magazine. He joined Sceptical Scot as editorial adviser/designer and contributor in 2015. He holds a Bachelor of Design in Graphic Design from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, and has completed an MA in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art, London.
Tony O’Donnell
Tony O’Donnell has returned to Edinburgh from Brussels, where he worked for the both the European Commission and Parliament. He was previously a BBC and news agency journalist and is also a former Health Service psychologist.