This article examines a key feature of Scotland’s religious landscape as reported through the 2022 Census: the rise of the religiously unaffiliated, or ‘Nones’. Nones are marked out by strong age factors and clear – though diminishing – sex differentials. Considerable regional variation is also explained through the extent of secularisation amongst (formerly) Protestant communities and greater resistance to those forces amongst Roman Catholics. Overall, whilst the rise of Scotland’s Nones is striking it is by no means unique, and reflects wider patterns of secularisation in highly developed societies.

Scottish devolution built on an existing structure of administrative devolution around the Scottish Office. The architects of devolution gave a lot of attention to the design of the Scottish Parliament but less to policy-making and delivery. Much of the policy capacity built up since the 1960s had been run down under Conservative governments after 1979. The new Scottish institutions faced a number of institutional, economic and political constraints on making their own policies. There have been significant divergences from policy in England but often these take the form of England diverging while Scotland remained the same. Successive Scotland Acts in 2012 and 2016 were guided by political considerations rather than examination of the powers and instruments needed. There has been a lack of the policy innovation that might have been expected in the new system. The argument is illustrated by examples, together with some footnoted personal reflections from half a century of following policy making in Scotland. There is no attempt to be comprehensive but rather to highlight key issues and trends.

This paper estimates levels of prejudice in Scotland with data from the 2021 Scottish Election Survey. It examines both direct and indirect indicators of prejudice to discover that somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of respondents indicate prejudicial feelings towards immigrants. Comparisons with results from other surveys in the UK and abroad suggest lower rates of prejudice in Scotland, and declining rates of prejudice over time. Empirical comparisons reveal direct and indirect prejudice to be closely related in Scotland, and regression analysis discovers common determinants of directly and indirectly prejudicial feelings. Political positions, such as ideological conservativism, identifying as a Remainer in the Brexit debate, and support for Scottish independence are important determinants across indicators of prejudice, and the strength of these political indicators demonstrates how Scottish political culture has been linked to minority politics in such a way as to re-draw social boundaries around expressions of prejudice.

This contribution, by four LGBT+ women of the Porty Pride committee, explores the background of Porty Pride as well as the priorities and values that underpin their approach to the events that take place every June. It also touches on the challenges facing particular LGBT+ communities at present, the burgeoning local Pride movement in Scotland and the continued importance of localism moving forward.

In 2015 Ferguson’s, the only remaining shipyard on the Lower Clyde, was awarded the contract to build two passenger ferries for the Hebridean routes. The vessels are uncompleted, the MV Glen Sannox having been ‘launched’ in 2017, and Hull 802 much further behind. Delivery is already five years overdue, and costs have spiralled to an estimated £350m: a staggering amount that might have been spent in better ways. Whilst the underlying story is likely to remain unknown without a full public inquiry, this essay recounts how the story has developed, how the project sank into rancorous failure, and the ways in which the people of Inverclyde have been sold short yet again.