By Kenneth Roy

Earlier this week, I suggested that for many of the people who have been arrested as a result of the extensive phone-hacking investigation on both sides of the border, the process has become the punishment. Months, years, drift by without trial.

In this second article, I want to highlight other victims of a judicial system which seems to be in a state of near-paralysis. They are not suspected of any crime. They do not daily endure the prospect of a prison sentence if their case ever comes to court and they are found guilty. But their suffering is none the less real. It is indeed greater. All of them have lost someone.

By Kenneth Roy

We are approaching the first anniversary of the arrest by Strathclyde Police of the prime minister's former director of communications, Andy Coulson. He was lifted – as they say in Glasgow – in an atmosphere of high drama.

Officers from Scotland called at his house in Dulwich, south London, at 630am in the sort of 'dawn raid' which has become a hallmark of the police investigation into the phone hacking scandal. So urgent was this matter that Mr Coulson was that very day driven all the way to Govan police station in Glasgow, where he arrived at 3.20 in the afternoon.

By Ken Ferguson

THE Scottish Socialist Party has agreed to seek discussions with other progressive parties and campaigns on the pro-independence left to explore the possibility of reaching an agreed set of policies for a post-Yes Scotland.

Agreed by the party’s conference in Edinburgh the approach aims to explore the areas of agreement on a wide range of policies such as housing, jobs and the environment reflecting the left of centre consensus in Scottish society.

By Roddy Macdonald

The independence campaign is really only the second important campaign I’ve been involved in so far in my life.  The first was for the removal of the ludicrous ban on gay people serving openly in the UK Armed Forces.  As time moves on, I’m noticing a striking similarity between the opposition to the two campaigns.

By the 1990s, it was blindingly obvious that the internal opposition to gay people serving openly in the Armed Forces came not from straight colleagues, who really couldn’t care less. By far the most vocal opposition came from high ranking, self-loathing, closet homosexuals.