From the Observer

Please, Scotland, vote Yes and take us northerners with you Act of Union, 1707. Still nailed in my head from history A-level. Three centuries on, could Scotland really be about to tear it up? People.co.uk Maria Miller is still an MP and the poor people of Basingstoke are lumbered with her Selfies Like most people, Sunday People columnist Carol McGiffin had not forgotten the expenses scandals, but had kind of moved on - now it has all come flooding back Scotland and England: we need each other, in sickness and in health There can be something akin to love between peoples. In the debate on Scottish independence this seems too often forgotten. Divorce lawyers' bickering over currency arrangements, nuclear weapons and economic advantage takes precedence over appraisal of what is at the heart of the marriage. We are, after all, talking about breaking up a love match.

Scots Labour leader derided for casting independence gains as 'wee things' A Scottish Labour party attack on Alex Salmond's plans for currency union imploded after the party's leader, Johann Lamont, derided nationalist opposition to Trident, the Iraq war and the bedroom tax as simply "wee things" offered by independence. Lamont was lambasted by the first minister for her "mind-boggling" phrase, which immediately began trending on Twitter in Scotland with the hashtag #weethings as Scottish government ministers, nationalist MSPs and pro-independence campaigners, accused the Scottish Labour leader of a major own goal. The first minister's chief spokesman at Holyrood quickly circulated a poster given a new headline, Labour's #weethings, over a full-page graphic listing the benefits of independence, lifted from the Scottish government's referendum white paper, Scotland's Future. She added: "[It] is a ludicrous defence by a man who used to cry freedom but who now gives us a list of wee things that we could do, which we could do."

If I were a Scot, I might vote yes to independence. As it is, I can only plead with them to stay Even before David Cameron had opened his mouth, a Scottish friend of mine got in touch. "Today reminds me of an old joke," his email began, "about a pilot announcing that he'll have to make an emergency landing in the sea. Panicked passengers ask the flight attendant where the life vests are. Scottish independence: opponents are like rabbits in SNP's headlights With barely seven months until Scotland decides its future, the No campaign is now being forced to dance to Alex Salmond's tune. These are desperate days for those entrusted with the task of ensuring that we are not living in the last days of the union. Several opinion polls in the last month or so are all suggesting that the momentum is flowing with Yes and startled London is now fully awake to the distinct possibility that the wind is shaking the barley in another part of its fiefdom. The Financial Times has made Scotland its special project in the first month of the year and is concluding that Scotland is sufficiently economically fit and lean to at least be optimistic about its prospects as an independent country.

Memo to George Osborne: England's bullying of Scots will drive us into the Yes camp Almost 95 years ago to the day after another rightwing coalition government sent English tanks on to the streets of Glasgow, the current heir to the Osborne baronetcy is using force once more to bend a nation to his will. The tanks that appeared on the streets around Glasgow's municipal buildings on 31 January 1919 represented an overreaction to skirmishes about low pay and rent strikes by a government terrified it had a Bolshevist uprising on its hands. George Osborne's attempt last Thursday to dictate currency law to Scotland was no less clumsy, even if the military hardware was missing. England's Tories are panicking again as the prospect of losing a quarter of their kingdom and with it their seat on the UN Security Council looms. In the context of the Scottish independence referendum, it remains to be seen if the chancellor's currency intervention proves decisive.

With seven months to go to the Scottish referendum, the scaremongering has begun Suddenly I feel we are the most loathed nation on earth. Everyone used to love us. With our whisky, our tartans and tweeds, our Edinburgh Festival, our music, and the Loch Ness monster, we were one of the most recognisable and best-loved "brands" in the world. Now, it seems, if we dare to express this unique and much-loved identity of ours by voting for independence in September, we will be outcasts.

Britain rules, UKOK? It does not slip easily off the tongue and could be mispronounced. But government authorities have decided the four-letter phrase, "UKOK", is the perfect way to encourage tourists back to Britain. The "UKOK" concept will form the heart of a multimillion-pound advertising and marketing campaign for the British tourist authority. It is designed to be more inclusive than the youth-oriented "Cool Britannia" theme of previous ad campaigns. Whatever the result of Scotland's referendum, nothing will be the same Tunnelling through the sudden avalanche of coverage of the Scottish independence referendum, you could be forgiven for thinking that the prospects for September 2014 are as binary as the question that will be on the ballot paper. If the Scots vote yes, all hell will break loose – but if a majority opt for no, everything will once again go quiet, the union will be glued back together, and most of the English media will once again forget that north of the border actually exists. But it is not going to work out like that. The referendum campaign is underlining the huge differences between politics as practised in Edinburgh and London.

Scottish independence is winning over uncommitted, says SNP Margie Maxwell is no Scottish nationalist. But she is Glaswegian, and intensely loyal with it. It never occurred to her she would vote for independence. But then the threats were made, to shipyard jobs on the Clyde, to Scotland's right to keep the pound and to her country's economy. Scottish referendum: could they make this any easier for the Nats? Is there any bribe or blandishment that the Tories will not use as the prospect of losing a quarter of their kingdom looms? In last week's budget, a sinister new low was reached by the Tories, brutish and un-British in its conception. It was an obvious response to recent polling on the independence referendum, which has consistently shown that working-class people are more likely to vote yes. It's the "let's just jolly well ensure that the blighters stay out of the polling booths on 18 September by enticing them into pubs and bingo halls" strategy. There are occasions when the rest of us get to see what Britain looks like through the eyes of David Cameron and George Osborne. When they occur, they are delightful to behold and should be cherished.

More power to Glasgow's online journalists To those who know about these things, the signs and symbols that recently began to appear buried deep beneath the streets of Glasgow were unmistakable: the cybernats are coming to get us and our children are in peril. It was these fears presumably that must have informed the decision of Strathclyde Partnership for Transport to outlaw a series of unique and paid-for adverts by the nationalist website Wings Over Scotland: "There are 37 national or daily newspapers in Scotland. Just five of them are owned in Scotland.