(798) RECORDS OF THE PARLIAMENTS OF SCOTLAND ONLINE

Scots Law News notes with pleasure the official launch of the digital, online version of the Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 on 15 May 2008, at the appropriate venue of the Scottish Parliament. The project has been run from the University of St Andrews since 1997, when it gained its initial funding from Tory Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth, who hoped that with this initiative alongside the earlier return of the Stone of Destiny (see No 2) Scottish national feeling would abate, his party would once more be returned to power in a pending general election, and any question of devolution or even independence could be safely put back in the cupboard of political ideas whose time had been and gone. A master stroke, evidently. Meantime the Labour-dominated Westminster Commons Scottish Affairs Committee helped keep the union on tenterhooks by reporting that control of Scottish elections should not be handed over to the Scottish Government and Parliament despite the fiasco of the Scotland Office-run Scottish elections in May 2007 (see Nos 644, 692 and 708). Scotland Office reactions still awaited.