OurKingdom is reading

Field wants everyone to be given a say in the nation’s constitutional future and claims that if the Scots voted for independence while England voted against, the prime minister should not negotiate the union’s demise with the first minister.

No one needs to explain to Jacqui Smith why it is wrong to give the police extended detention powers because she already knows the arguments. Many years ago when we were both activists in the Labour party's student wing, she was in the office of Sally Morgan, the party's student officer, when the police told her they were holding me under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. She knows what happened to me and she must know that she will be inflicting this on other innocent people.

Demand 'growing' for English parliament

Before his show trial in Hungary in 1948, Robert Vogeler spent three months in a cell sleeping on a board that hovered just above two inches of water. Day and night a bright light bathed his cell, and even then someone would bang on the wall next door just to make sure he couldn't get any sleep. "It is just a question of time before you confess," he said afterwards. "With some it takes a little longer than others, but nobody can resist that treatment indefinitely."

Alex Salmond is set to raise the issue of "Scotland's oil" and high fuel prices when he travels to London on Wednesday for a meeting with ministers of the devolved administrations and the UK Government.

More than 500 schools in England will focus on the subject of Britishness as part of a government initiative. The Who Do We Think We Are? week will see pupils look at identity, history, faith and community.

Scotland is a small, closed society, a bit like North Korea only less democratic

"My nightmare is that in 2010 the Tories win big, then Salmond has a referendum on independence, and we've lost the possibility of progressive politics for a generation."

Looking ahead Looking forward, the research suggests a UK recession will be hard to avoid. Relative to mid-2007, the decline in the housing wealth to income ratio will soon reach 15%, which would eventually lower the consumption/income ratio by about 2.5 percentage points. But real household incomes are themselves falling, under pressure from oil and food prices. A further 1% or more fall in consumption is likely from the direct and interaction effects of the contraction of credit availability. On top of all that comes the effect of the fall in the stock market. The estimated adjustment speed in the model is 0.35 per quarter, so it takes several quarters for the full effects to show up.