I do not favour the mushy ground of false consensus. The public interest is not served by parties incapable of defining their driving principles and … - Alex Salmond

This Government believes that it would be economically advantageous for Scotland to be an independent country. Other parties disagree. But as we continue that debate, let us at least agree that this country - our country - has the capacity to become one of the most successful economies on the planet.

The SNP's commitment to a Bill of Rights and written constitution means that we will outlaw any discrimination but we also have to eradicate it from the dark recesses of the Scottish psyche. We also have to speak out against institutionalised discrimination. For example, it is a scandal of some considerable proportions that no Catholic can sit on the throne, or marry the heir to the throne -- an attitude entrenched in law that belongs to the archaic arrangements of the eighteenth century, not the bright prospects of the twenty-first.

It is the very stuff of politics that parties like to have a go at each other - a vibrant democracy demands no less.