Tom Hunter publishes Scottish independence info, The Scotsman

With just weeks to go until Scotland’s historic independence referendum, new leaflets and information booklets are being made available to help voters north of the border make up their minds.

A new e-book has been launched today, featuring contributions from leading academics who have been examining key issues in the debate.

A paperback version of the book, titled Scotland’s Decision - 16 Questions to think about for the referendum on 18 September, is also planned by its producers, which include businessman Sir Tom Hunter’s Hunter Foundation.

At the same time the Scottish Government is spending £550,000 sending a 12 page guide to the opportunities it says independence offers to all 2.5 million homes north of the border.

Meanwhile the UK Government will this week start sending out a leaflet to Scottish homes, setting it out what it believes are the five main benefits of remaining in the Union.

But Sir Tom said the decision voters will make on September 18 was “too important to leave to politicians to inform us”.

The Ayrshire-born entrepreneur said: “Like many voters, I am genuinely undecided, but I don’t feel that the campaigns so far have given me the facts and unbiased assessment to make a properly informed decision. I know I am not alone in thinking this way.

“A recent poll commissioned by the Hunter Foundation and published in early July showed 56% of undecided voters simply don’t feel they have enough impartial information to make a decision. And 45% of all voters claim they don’t trust either the UK or the Scottish Government’s predictions

“This series of papers we hope will bring some light upon the critical issues voters may wish to consider in making up their minds when they put a cross on the ballot paper on September 18.”

Read more here:

Darling’s ultimate TV test... save the Union in two hours. Daily Mail.

It will be the most important televised clash in British history. On Tuesday night, Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling will debate Scottish independence.

 With only six weeks to go to the referendum, more than a million Scots are expected to tune in. Salmond has two hours to revive the flagging case for Scottish independence – and Darling two hours to secure the Union.

Salmond has been preparing intensively for this debate. The word is that he is relying on a lifestyle coach to help make sure he sounds sufficiently upbeat.

As one of his opponents observes: ‘If shouty Salmond turns up, he’ll turn off women.’

Darling is under a different kind of pressure. One big slip and he puts the entire Union in jeopardy. He will spend this weekend conducting mock debates against people playing Alex Salmond.

His team feels that after two years of public meetings and interviews on independence, he knows what he wants to say and how he wants to say it.

But this hasn’t stopped nervousness in London about how Darling will perform. Some Cabinet Ministers are fretting that Darling isn’t Scottish enough.

This might seem a bizarre thing to say about someone who went to school and university in Scotland and sits for Edinburgh South West in the House of Commons.

But in Salmond’s world, Westminster is a foreign country.

‘Salmond will play dirty,’ warns one Cabinet Minister. ‘He won’t hesitate to try to portray Alistair as an English lackey.’

Read more here:

Commonwealth Games fail to deliver ‘Braveheart bounce’ to Salmond’s YES drive in favour of Scottish independence. Daily Mail

  First poll of Scottish voters conducted since the Games began puts ‘Yes’ vote on 40% – down one point on last month

  Those in favour of keeping the Union remain static on 46%

  Nationalists hoped Games would lead to surge of anti-UK votes 

Alex Salmond begins the most crucial week yet in the battle for Scotland’s future – without the hoped-for Commonwealth Games ‘bounce’ in favour of independence.

Three days before Mr Salmond’s live TV debate with anti-independence campaign leader Alistair Darling, a poll for The Mail on Sunday revealed no boost for the ‘Yes’ campaign from the Games in Glasgow.

The Survation survey, the first of Scottish voters to be conducted since the Games began, puts the ‘Yes’ vote on 40 per cent – down one point on last month – and ‘No’ unchanged on 46 per cent. The outcome will be a bitter disappointment for Scottish Nationalists, who had hoped that scheduling the independence referendum on September 18 on the back of the Games would lead to a surge of votes to break up the UK.

It also flies in the face of reports that a feel-good factor at Glasgow’s success in staging the Games and Scotland’s record haul of medals would provide a so-called ‘Braveheart bounce’ and revitalise the ‘Yes’ campaign.

But the survey does show that Scottish First Minister Mr Salmond is a clear favourite to win Tuesday night’s debate – the first head-to-head contest between the two campaign leaders.

Read more here:

Red Len’s right-hand man backs the pro-Putin rebels: Unite union’s chief of staff brands Kiev rulers ‘fascist’ Daily Mail

  Andrew Murray is chief of staff of Britain’s largest trade union Unite

  Mr Murray was chairman of the Stop the War Coalition from 2001 until 2011

  ‘We must demand that our government stops supporting EU and Nato expansion' 

The chief of staff of Britain’s largest trade union Unite has launched a group supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

Rebel groups are now widely suspected of shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in the east of the country.

Andrew Murray, right-hand man to the Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, spoke at the inaugural meeting of a campaign called Solidarity With The Antifascist Resistance In Ukraine (SARU) in June.

‘We must demand that our government stops supporting EU and Nato expansion and stops supporting the Kiev government.’

Since the airliner was shot down last month, with the loss of all 298 people on board, SARU has held a demonstration outside the Ukrainian Embassy in London, against ‘repression in Eastern Ukraine’.

A posting on the SARU website read: ‘Protesters also spoke up against the media coverage of the downed Malaysian flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine, criticising the haste [sic] attribution of guilt to Russian President Vladimir Putin.’

Elsewhere it suggested that the airliner flew ‘lower than usual over the danger zone at the request of the Ukrainian dispatchers’.

Read more here: