Bøker av Iain (Official Fellow in Politics and Professor of Politics McLean

Scotland faces its biggest choice since the 1707 union "e; should Scotland be an independent country? The Yes and No campaigns are well under way but with the vote looming closer the information available to the public is still limited. The Scottish people will have to make their own judgments, and so they need to have the issues explained as clearly as possible without spin or bias. What will happen after the referendum? How will Westminster and the rest of the UK respond? What happens if the vote is 'No'? Is it even clear what independence will mean? What about the oil? What will the currency be? What will happen to the Old Age Pension pot if the UK splits? Scotland's Choices, now fully revised for the critical last few months before the referendum, tells you everything you need to know before you place your vote. Written by one former civil servant, one academic and one think-tanker one a resident Scot, one a Scot living in England and one an Englishman the authors clearly explain the issues you may not have considered and detail how each of the options would be put into place after the referendum.

Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the ExchequerThis book aims to show that Adam Smith (1723-90), the author of The Wealth of Nations, was not the promoter of ruthless laissez-faire capitalism that is still frequently depicted. Smith's "e;right-wing"e; reputation was sealed after his death when it was not safe to claim that an author may have influenced the French revolutionaries. But as the author, also, of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which he probably regarded as his more important book, Smith sought a non-religious grounding for morals, and found it in the principle of sympathy, which should lead an impartial spectator to understand others' problems. This book locates Smith in the Scottish Enlightenment; shows how the two books are perfectly consistent with one another; traces Smith's influence in France and the United States; and draws out the lessons that Adam Smith can teach policy makers in the 21st Century. Although Smith was not a religious man, he was a very acute sociologist of religion. The book accordingly explains the Scottish religious context of Smith's time, which was, as it remains, very different to the English religious context.The whole book is shot through with Iain McLean's love for the Edinburgh of his birth, and for the Scottish Enlightenment. It begins and ends with poems by Smith's great admirer Robert Burns.