About this site

This site exists to answer, honestly and with sources, the questions people ask about Scottish independence. We are unashamedly in favour of Scotland running its own affairs.

What we won't do is tell you what an independent Scotland must look like. Whether Scotland rejoins the EU or joins EFTA, stays in NATO or leaves, which currency arrangement it adopts - these are decisions for the people of Scotland to make once the ability to decide has been regained. Our job is simpler: to show that the questions have answers, and that a country of Scotland's size and wealth is entirely capable of standing on its own within the international community.

One distinction matters enough to state plainly: independence is not a vote for any party. Where these pages mention the current Scottish Government's policies, they appear as facts to report, not positions we endorse. An independent Scotland will have the full range of political parties competing for your vote - including ones that don't exist yet - and a politics finally freed from the constitutional question that currently swallows every other debate. The nationalist/unionist divide isn't a permanent feature of Scottish life; it's a symptom of the question being unresolved. Resolve it, and Scotland gets to argue about the things every normal country argues about instead.

This site draws inspiration from the Wee Blue Book published before the 2014 referendum, though the world has moved on and everything here has been researched afresh.

There are no comments here, deliberately. But if you spot an error of fact, we want to know - every page cites its sources so you can check our working. Email [email protected] with the page, the claim you dispute, and ideally a source. If you're right, we'll fix it and say so.

Who this site is for

Two kinds of reader, and we're open about both.

The first is you, if you have doubts. Maybe you voted No and don't regret it, maybe you're undecided, maybe you lean Yes but have one worry that won't shift - your pension, your mortgage, the border. These pages are written to take that worry seriously, concede what's genuinely uncertain, and show you the evidence so you can weigh it yourself. You will not be shouted at here.

The second is the supporter of independence trying to answer a friend's honest question without turning Sunday dinner into a battlefield. Most minds that change on this subject change in conversations like those, not in comment sections. So every page is built to be shared mid-conversation: the answer up front, the awkward facts admitted, the sources listed for checking. If that's you, there's a guide to having those conversations well - what to ask, what to concede, and which page answers which worry.

We'd rather state that plainly than be accused of it. A site that helps two people who disagree have a fair conversation, with the working shown, seems to us like the opposite of propaganda.

How these pages are made

These pages are researched and drafted with help from AI tools, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. The research legwork, the first drafts and the fact-checking passes are done with an AI assistant working under a human editor. Every page is then reviewed, challenged, edited and approved by the editor before it is published, and nothing is published unless every claim of fact carries a source you can check for yourself.

AI is a tool here, the way a search engine and a word processor are tools. Judgement about what to publish rests with the editor, and the test for every claim is the same whoever typed it: is it true, and can you check it? So don't trust these pages because a human edited them, and don't dismiss them because a machine helped write them. Check the working. Every page shows you how.

Who publishes this

Published and edited by Gavin Bain.

I'm a small business owner from Aberdeen, and I spent my career working in IT in the oil and gas industry, in Scotland and around the world. I've believed in Scottish independence all my life, and everything I've learned and experienced along the way, at home and abroad, has only reinforced it. The simplest way I can put the case is the way this site keeps putting it: the best people to govern our country are the people who live here.