Sunday Trading Laws - Dissecting the conservative Medusa

This is a response to the article "Sunday trading laws protect the family and civil society. Libertarians should not do away with them." by Thomas Byrne (aka @ByrneToff), which appeared on Conservative Home earlier today.

Why do Sunday Trading Laws exist?

Thomas offers broadly three strands of argument for why the Sunday Trading Laws exist. The first is historical, cultural and religious, and promulgates this idea that protecting Sundays from work strengthens the family unit. The second is couched in the language of employment rights, and protecting employees from being exploited by large retail outlets insisting they work long weeks. The third is couched in the idea that free trading hours only help oligarchical supermarkets and harm small businesses, who need protected.

Let's look at those arguments in turn:

1. History, Culture, Religion, the Family

The first argument we get opens as follows:

"To [relax Sunday Trading Laws] wouldn't be a declaration of war upon Christianity, the damage has been done there by the changes in 1994. This would stick up two fingers to wider society and the soft Christian outlook that they hold"

This employs the following suppositions. First, it claims that the 1994 reforms (which allowed shops to trade on Sundays, but restricted larger outlets to only 6 hours of trading) were a "declaration of war upon Christianity". Without wishing to be too curt, that is drivel. Christianity was not undermined by allowing individuals to buy and sell things on a Sunday. Let's be clear what we're talking about here. At the absolute maximum, we are talking about an erosion in the influence of Christianity on the laws of the state. The ideas of Christianity, and the pursuit of religious ends by Christian individuals and Christian communities was somehow undermined by permitting people to trade on a Sunday is totally unsubstantiated.

For this critique to be a valid one, therefore, references to Christianity, must refer to the influence of Christianity on the law and the state in shaping society. But then Thomas and others have to explain why it is morally legitimate for Christianity to do this, but not any other belief system. Why should trade be prohibited or heavily restricted on a Sunday because it's the Christian Sabbath, but not on Saturdays for the Jewish Sabbath, or Fridays for the Islamic day of rest and prayer? What is so special about Christianity.

We get an attempt at an answer when he says that relaxing Sunday Trading Laws would "[stick] up... two fingers to wider society and the soft Christian outlook that they hold". There are two problems with this. Firstly, it is simply categorically not true that "wider society" holds a "soft Christian outlook". Wider society is not a homogenous or contiguous group with one set of values as to how families should operate, when they should work, when they should rest, and what constitutes positive collective activity.

On the particulars, this assertion is empirically untrue. Only a slender majority of the English and Welsh population identify as Christian (circa 53.48%) and even then, only 29% of the population consider themselves to be "religious". That isn't evidence of a "soft Christian outlook". That's evidence of a declining religious/Christian outlook in our society, and a small minority of our society considering values exclusive to religion playing in any sense an important part of the way we conduct our affairs with other people.

But let us assume for a minute that we were in a society in which the overwhelming majority of the population went to church every Sunday, held sincerely the view that trading on the Sabbath was morally wrong and that people should spend Sundays with their families. Let's say then, that we have a Sunday Trading Law. Is it then legitimate for them to insist that nobody in their society can say "oh my God" or "Jesus Christ" because in a "Christian worldview" or "Christian outlook" these things constitute blasphemy? Is it then legitimate for that group to insist that no one in that society may engage in a homosexual relationship, since that contradicts their historical "soft Christian outlook"?

No. Religion does not command moral legitimacy over our laws simply because, historically, large sections of society have agreed with them. That it's the way it was always done does not mean that it's the way it should be. This is a classic example of the Hume's Guillotine. Religion needs more than prevalence to justify a special place in the law and the morality contained therein. The only legitimate presumption of all laws is that they should have a secular application. The only way you avoid imposing a morality on other people is to recognise that there is a plurality of views about what the family is and how it interacts with wider society.

Even if we think of Sunday as a secular universal day of rest, as Thomas would then like you to ponder, he casts implicit judgment about what families should be doing with this day of rest. This conforms to a historical and coercive idea of the family unit, how it functions, how the constituent parts interact. He hectors families who value different forms of "together time" than that which conforms to his world-view:

"There is a clear divide between the young and the old as to whether the current laws should stay the same as the invisible hand of business has crushed tradition. Some couples now see shopping at supermarkets as a leisure activity in itself. Has family time really been reduced to buying the latest games console because the state won’t grant them any time to form a real relationship with their children?"

The reality is that the family unit is a lot more complicated and a lot more plural than the traditional unit suggests. Some families have different commitments from others: some will value going shopping together, as a communal activity that they could not otherwise enjoy on other days when fitting them around their hectic weekday schedule and that busy Saturday taking kids to and from sporting activities or other events. Some families will value spending a cold, wet and rainy weekend in front of the television playing Wii Sports and watching Doctor Who, before choosing to amble out to Asda after 6pm to do a big shop that sets them up to make all the kids pack lunches the following week with fresh food.

What Thomas has to answer is why that choice by a family is any less legitimate than surrendering their already limited free time at other points in the week to a set of laws that are inconvenient for them, for a morality they do not share.

2. Employment rights, universal benefit/perk/quirk

Second, we've got this idea that relaxing Sunday Trading Laws is to "allow ourselves to capitulate entirely to [large employers'] needs and demands."

Further, we have this idea that:

"Sunday before 1994 was a day in which families were, for a while, set free from capitalism and were able to join together as a family, or as a community, knowing that they were all equally able to set aside their time for this task

...

The law was widely supported because it was a privilege that was universal.
...

What we have seen is Sunday slowly turned into just another day where the poor are forced to work and therefore forced away from their family and friends."

This is a spurious narrative. It runs three suppositions. Firstly, it supposes that there is a universal entitlement not to work on a Sunday. Secondly, it supposes that relaxing Sunday Trading laws forces people to work longer. Thirdly, it supposes that forcing the majority of people to take their time off on a Sunday is inherently more valuable than to let them take their time off at any other time.

So let's deal with these in turn.

Not everyone can choose not to work on a Sunday. For our society to function properly and productively we need people working all the time. Criminals don't refrain from crime on Sundays. Ill people don't refrain from dying on Sundays. Fires don't put themselves out on Sundays. Electricity doesn't produce itself unattended on Sundays. The essential and pleasurable services we all take for granted that make our weekends so enjoyable and entertaining all rely upon other people working during those times. To open the cinema for that family unit to do something fun together. To have that meal out to celebrate mum's birthday that everyone's been looking forward to. To buy that crate of lager at short notice from the local supermarket before multiple generations sit in front of the tele to watch the football, or the bottle or three of wine to take in while playing Trivial Pursuit after dinner.

Nurses, doctors, offshore workers, Christian religious leaders(!) and many other workers, including those in the service sector, are needed to work on Sundays. Hell, it even includes workers in small supermarket stores! The claim that this rigid week structure is somehow an ideological universal entitlement is wrong by any objective measure. You have to explain why it is that this "universal" value does not have to apply to those working in the service sector, small shops, and jobs not involving trade. Unless you can do that, you cannot say with a straight face that Sunday Trading Laws emancipate workers.

Secondly, the idea that relaxing Sunday Trading Laws necessarily forces people to work longer. Note the use of the word "force". Presumably that's why it's bad, right? Well this just isn't borne out in evidence. Workers are not "forced" to work on Sundays in Scotland. Indeed, when the Sunday Trading Laws were relaxed up here, specific protections were put in place so that it could not be insisted that someone on a standard weekday contract would also work on a Sunday. Further, there are specific statutory limits on the number of hours someone can be expected to work in their regular working week (48 hours) under EU legislation. The idea that relaxing Sunday Trading laws forces the poor back into a Victorian dystopia is perplexing.

In any case, those who work on Sundays at the moment work an atypical working week. They might be part-time staff. They might be young single parents who can only get childcare assistance from the rest of their family at the weekend, and need the extra hours to pay the bills and provide for their kids. Sunday work is freedom for them! It gives them the flexibility, and the choice, to participate in the workforce on terms closer to their optimal preference, in a mutually beneficial arrangement with their employers. The sort of people who currently work on a Sunday for a supermarket will, almost to a man, be grateful for the extra two hours pay they're going to get for their standard 8-hour shift. What they lose is two hours in the morning. They still have their evening to enjoy with their family. Their lives are far freer than, say, those who work the nightshift or an off-shore two-weeks-on two-weeks off arrangement in the North Sea's oil rigs.

If supermarkets or similar large stores need more employees to stay open on a Sunday for longer: good. There are lots of people looking for work right now. An 8-hour shift is far more attractive to someone living hand to mouth off the state than a 6-hour one. More people in employment is generally a good thing.

Third, this idea that Sunday is still a special case from the perspective of employment rights and that having to take your day off on Sunday is better. This has been demonstrated above to be false, given then wide variety of demographics, personal circumstances and personal preferences of workers, families and consumers alike.

If Thomas was serious about protecting employment rights and an enabling function to quality family time, he would instead endorse my proposal, and something I think should be Liberal Democrat policy. Abolish the standard working week. End once and for all the idea that the typical worker must work Monday to Friday/Saturday and taking Sunday off. Instead, create a statutory right to two days unpaid holiday for every five days worked. Give the employee a statutory right to fix one of those days to a day of the week of their choice. Then give the employer a statutory right to fix the other. In the event the employer declines that right, the employee can choose the second day.

That would be more of a universal right, more empowering for workers, and give them the opportunity to shape their working week around the specific requirements of their family. We don't need to appeal to history and pseudo-religious cultural values to protect the workforce from exploitation.

3. Protect small businesses

Simply put:

"The effect of dismantling the remaining trading laws would simply be to erode the protection that small business owners and their employees have to spend time with their families and then destroy their business entirely. It would force the supermarkets to open full hours on a Sunday (and all the staff that entails) in order to stay in competition without any benefit to the consumer, apart from their own convenience.

...

The message that it sends out is that "God helps those whom he has already helped". Supermarkets need no more help from us.

Where to start...

If a small business owner wants to spend more time with his family, they are completely free not to open his business premises during that time. That is their choice. If someone does not want to work on a Sunday, they can enter into an employment contract which specifies that they do not have to.

No supermarket will be "forced" to trade 8-hours on a Sunday. I'm sure most would anyway, but that's their choice. If they expend more money on the labour-force without increasing their profitability, fine. I thought you were fed up of the special privilege supermarkets have in the market? You cannot simultaneously say that this will be good for supermarkets and then say that they will be the ones forced to do more to cater to their customer's more demanding requirements.

The thing about retail and the ethos of supermarkets, is that convenience is king. With the advancement of these economies of scale, we've ended up with cheap, mostly good quality food, readily available to the masses when they want and need it, so as to increase the opportunities and choice consumers have in what they do with the rest of their time. As an idea it is fundamentally subservient to "wider society". This is what we call "progress".

This isn't about boosting GDP or solving the economic crisis. It's about looking for ways that the market can better meet the demand of its consumers. Convenience is a big part of that. It is something to be valued in and of itself and instrumentally. The target market for convenience isn't the high paid middle-class bourgeoisie, whose working hours are already comfortable and whose routines are already relatively decadent. This is about the modern family, in all its shapes and sizes, for whom time is a precious thing with no shortage and variety of demands upon it. It's about offering more flexibility to those who need to work at the weekend and those who need to buy things at the weekend.

For those who value Sunday, they can still choose not to work that day. They can still choose not to go to the shops that day. They can still choose to spend that day with their family and to say grace at the table. If there's enough of them, the supermarkets will probably respond accordingly by employing fewer staff for a quieter shift. If as Thomas says, people go to supermarkets because they are cheaper and more convenient, then perhaps these "small businesses" he says need protected are actually part of the problem. They're expensive and inconvenient for the consumer, and they don't value them any more. They don't need protecting.

And yes, supermarkets need brought down a peg or two. It shouldn't be straightforward for Tesco to monopolise a whole city by abusing the planning system. But telling them when they can and can't sell stuff on a Sunday doesn't stop them dominating the market, it doesn't empower their or other workers, and it doesn't help the single mum who can't find anywhere after 6pm within reach that sells Pampers nappies. All it does is serve as a sop to a pseudo-religious minority within our society who find the idea that people can do what they like on Sundays offensive.

Guess what. You don't have a right not to be offended.

To Michael Gove: Free schools? Yes. But free thinkers too please.

Prologue - Education from my perspective

First, a bit of disclosure. I went to two state primary schools (one in rural Fife, another in the suburbs of Aberdeen). I then moved to an independent (fee-paying, academically selective, coeducational) secondary school (also in Aberdeen). My (completely anecdotal) experience of state and non-state provision was that the independent sector was generally much more flexible to individual student needs, better disciplined, fostered a stronger sense of community and made much better provision for a range of extra-curricular activities for those who wished to pursue them.

I hazard all of the above with important caveats. I cannot say that my experience is necessarily typical, or that I am comparing like with like (primary v secondary). I would observe also that my experiences of rural state education was markedly better in most respects than at the suburban city primary, even though the former was, on reflection, far less well financially resourced. I would also point out that both state schools had some very good teachers, and the independent school some teachers that were frankly not. What I would say, though, is that my own experiences of a fairly broad range of education have left me relatively ideologically unattached to the idea of the state as the dominant force in education, and sympathetic to ways of bringing what works from the independent sector, where possible, to a wider audience.

It should, of course, be recognised that fees and the funding discrepancy across sectors is not insignificant. The cost of the 6 years of my secondary education would have been more than £10kpa in today's money. Private education is not cheap, and as far as fees go in both Scotland and England, this is pretty much the floor, rather than the ceiling. This compares to an average spend of £6.2k per pupil in England's state sector (2009-10), and an average spend of £6.65k per pupil in Scotland (2008-09). This additional expense (without rebate for not using the state sector) puts private educational provision ahead in terms of resources and facilities, but also puts it out of the reach of many families from otherwise reasonably comfortable backgrounds.

Parallels with a Minister

Indeed if it wasn't for an extensive bursary scheme, I could not have gone to my independent secondary school. I was the beneficiary of an organisation set up to widen access to one of the highest performing schools in Scotland. I was not the only one. By coincidence, the independent secondary school I attended was also attended by a certain Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove. He too relied on assistance of this kind to be able to access independent education.

Almost regardless of political persuasion, people have looked to the independent sector to see how state schooling might be improved. We've seen numerous approaches tried and tested, from academically tiered local authority schools, to grant maintained schools, to academies and, yes, ultimately to free schools. The latter is an idea which is not alien to other countries, with the likes of Sweden and the USA having equivalents of state-funded but relatively administratively autonomous schools, given less stringent requirements to comply with in respect of the National Curriculum or equivalent document. Even in Scotland, the hyper-state-comprehensive nation, has an anomaly or two, including Jordanhill School in Glasgow, which is funded directly from central government and not subject to conventional local authority control.

For many liberals though, Michael Gove, in his Education brief, has proved infuriating and intriguing in wildly varying measures. One the one hand, he talks the talk on academies and free schools, forcefully arguing that they provide a credible alternative for those who are not satisfied with the alternative provision. All too often the state education system is seen as increasingly centralised and bureaucratic, either to the local authority or to central government itself. The freedom to innovate and come up with new, more interesting and effective ways of teaching young people skills is stifled by an overly prescriptive National Curriculum and an obsession with teaching to the test in a way which only serves to promote mediocrity. His expansion of the academies scheme and introduction of free schools has served to challenge an educational establishment which has otherwise become too comfortable with its pre-existing structures.

Gove's (religious) conservative streak

On the other hand, Gove has courted some of the most blindingly idiotic (if not *that* significant) policies of this government that remind you why he's a Tory and not a bona fide liberal reformer. First there was that infamous vanity project in which he sought to deliver a King James Bible to every English primary and secondary school under the disingenuous guise of its "contribution to our language and our democracy". But now this has been supplemented by the approval of three free schools by organisations which hold creationism to be scientific fact and have stated their intent to teach it as such.

Case for the defence

Now some may (correctly) point out that religious organisations already run a lot of schools. The Church of England run a considerable number, and in Scotland a great number of state schools are designated Roman Catholic. Even our notionally "non-denominational" schools typically have a Church of Scotland minister attached to them as a chaplain. So in some respects the Department of Education's decision to allow these groups to open schools is only an extension of the status quo. Indeed the official Department of Education advice specifically states that they "do not expect creationism, intelligent design and similar ideas to be taught as valid scientific theories in any state funded school." Indeed none of these groups maintain that they will teach creationism/ID in the science classroom as alternatives to evolution.

Creationism, Faith Schooling, and the State

However, there are principally two problems with this. The first is that an education is not compartmentalised. Just because a non-evolutionary theory is being taught as fact in an RE class or an assembly, does not mean that it somehow exists in an immunised bubble from what pupils learn in the biology or chemistry lab. Something that is science fiction (and let us be clear, creationism is every bit as science fiction as Star Wars) is being propagated as an institutionally recognised truth to impressionable young people at the same time as they are being introduced to ideas of scepticism, the scientific method, and testing assertions against an evidential burden.

By sending mixed messages under the big tent of a school, you are saying that contradictory claims are simultaneously true, or worse still harming their ability to rationalise and develop critical thought in their approach to their academic studies. A less scientifically literate population is more likely to hold on to these palpably ridiculous ideas like that the world is 6000 years old. They are even going to be less likely to develop critical approaches to present scientific paradigms, slowing human progress by leaving society to waste its energies on a battle long since resolved for just about anyone who has paid any attention.

But actually, the greater harm isn't creationism in schools. It is the reality that state funding for schools run by or with involvement from religious groups is tacit institutional approval of their belief system and a licence to proselytise the impressionable. When the state lets the Church of England run a school or the Scottish education system assigns a Church of Scotland parish minister to a school, or designates a state school as a Roman Catholic one, or when the state provides funding to an educational establishment pushing creationism over and above other belief systems, it is saying something important.

It is not, as others have suggested to me, simply saying that parents have the right to choose a school for their children, which educates in accordance with their beliefs (and to be clear, it IS the parents' beliefs). It is saying that these people have a right to insist that the general taxpayer (including atheists, agnostics, ignostics, theists of other creeds etc) contribute towards, and facilitate the goals of that organisation. This is not morally acceptable. Religion is rightly a matter of deep personal sincerity and importance and no one should interfere with your right to hold your beliefs and to live your life in adherence to them (so long as it doesn't harm others). But it is precisely because of this that we should not allow free schools to become a back-door for religious organisations to take state money.

The purpose of state education is to provide a minimum standard of teaching, according to established criteria of critical thinking and skills development. There are different ways to achieve that, and free schools definitely provide an opportunity to set-up competing modes of teaching and learning environments to help the state sector work out which ones are most popular and which ones are less effective. Genuine competition on quality of provision does improve standards and could help shift power from educational institutions to parents, teachers and pupils themselves.

State education does NOT exist to maximise the capacity for parents to have their beliefs approved of and institutionally normalised around their children so as to make them more likely to accept those beliefs in later life. There are other ways these views can be communicated to their children, through out-of-school education within religious communities, or even, "God forbid", by the setting up of a religious independent school. If these organisations truly have a demand for such faith-based schooling, there is no good reason why they need state approval or support to set-up schools with wide access, including through philanthropy for those who could not afford any "fees".

Now I'm not saying that I'd personally approve of private faith-based schools; I'd hold them in as much contempt for a degree of indoctrination of the impressionable just like a state school. But at least they don't have anything like the same degree of institutional approval or endorsement. They would live and die on their merits; not muddle by regardless on their government block grant.

Religion and education were historically linked, and no one is denying that religious orders were important in the development of the idea of education as a public good. But we are not a Christian country any more. We are not a religious country any more. We live in an increasingly secular society and our state has to reflect that. Our values are not as reliant on our religious history as we once thought it was and most of the religious institutions in our society are playing perpetual catch-up with society's attitudes. It is despite rather than because of their institutional privilege that we have changed our views on homosexuality, women's rights, abortion and many other issues besides.

It wouldn't be a post this long without a reference to The West Wing, so I'll finish by paraphrasing the views of the irreligious Republican Senator Arnold Vinick of California:

Our state education system can teach our children many things from science to the humanities and the arts, but if you want to teach your child about religion, please... go to church.

In (partial) defence of the Pasty Tax

In the last few weeks we've seen the Pandora's box of national tax policy rear its ugly head again. In a couple of posts, one tonight and one tomorrow, I intend to address three issues. First there was the u-turn on what is now better known by its twitter hashtag "#pastytax", then stories of, among other things, a number of high-net-worth French citizens considering moving to the UK in response to the Eurozone's economic climate and tax policies of Francois Hollande. Finally, we've had the hysteria, hyperbole and hypocrisy abound when it was revealed that Jimmy Carr had been exploiting the K2 EBT tax loophole.

It seems as though, in this country and further afield, tax policy is no longer about what constitutes simple and sound economics for effective provision of public services and more and more about what particular stakeholders think others should be forced to pay. It creates a particularly pernicious form of corporatism, based on warped conceptions of fairness that are utterly impossible to pin down and harder still to give effect to by any sort of state mechanism whatsoever.

Take Pasty Tax. This is just the tip of the iceberg in a very messy way we, and the rest of the EU, attempt to tax consumption of goods and services. To retain high revenue while protecting the poorest from potentially regressive effects, we create exceptions. For example, we decided that residential energy provision would attract a reduced rate of 5%.

We also created an exception for food and drink, because that accounts for a significant part of family budgets, especially for low earners. But then we recognised that not all food and drink are essential in this way. So we created exceptions to the exemption. Alcohol was considered non-essential, as was chocolate, and catered food. The rationale behind the latter-most was you're not just being given a good, but a supplementary service. Either you were served food in an eating establishment or had food heated up for near immediate convenient consumption elsewhere that could not otherwise be consumed.

On its own, each rule makes some degree of sense. The problem is, it creates a culture of exceptionalism and with it perceptions of arbitrariness. Whether it's Jaffa Cakes claiming exception from VAT because they harden rather than soften when they go stale (meaning they're not a chocolate biscuit), or bakeries claiming exemption for their goods because they aren't necessarily sustained above ambient temperature right up to the point of sale, we get people trying to carve out their own little privileged position. And because of lobbying and special interests, we end up with absurd positions where a bacon roll gets charged VAT but a pasty doesn't.

And who benefits from this convenient little exemption? Not the poor. The prices of catered food are already punitive for them because of business rates and profit margins, especially for small firms. No. The real beneficiaries are Greggs. In what must have been one of the most successful instances of corporatist lobbying since Bernie Ecclestone's tobacco advertising exemption for Formula 1, they've been given a state sponsored piece of special privilege that shuts out competition from caterers of other foodstuffs. And what does that do for healthy eating among the low-earners? It leaves Glasgow with about 8-10 Greggs within a 2 mile radius of each other, entrenching a culture of heart disease and obesity.

But let's be clear, it's not Greggs' fault that our politicians are fickle, that our public consciousness is so bound up in the notion of vested interests as a good thing. It's not their fault that political lobbyists crowd around a special case like Cornish Pasties, undermining the cause of free trade that has otherwise served Europe so well. But make no mistake: their tears hail from a corporate crocodile and there's more out there ready to bite the electorate that feeds them.

The lesson of Pasty Tax is not that of a vindictive government looking to screw the Northern poor. It's about a feckless government riddled with decades of vested interest and completely unable or unwilling to defend the basic principles underpinning its own tax system. If you're going to tax hot food you have to tax it all. The "whatabout" exceptionalist and corporatist mentality is precisely what has made our tax code one of the longest, most convoluted, and inefficient instruments of government design in the world.

One of the biggest arguments for sales taxes is how easy they are to operate. We've even negated even that.

Nozick, Hayek and a little dose of Kant

Having initially been quite enthusiastic for Robert Nozick's ideas in Anarchy, State and Utopia, the prospect of taking a politics course at University focusing on precisely the issues of fairness, the role of the state and the justifications for equality (on different levels) was something I really looked forward to. I was surprised then, to come to the conclusion that I'd been somewhat too keen on Nozick's ideas, with which there are a number of obvious problems. I found particular difficulties reconciling Nozick's jump between a Kantian notion of the rational agent and self-ownership. Though largely a sceptic of utilitarian-type arguments, it certainly left me feeling more receptive towards the pragmatic justifications for an emphasis on the individual in society like those posited by Hayek.

Being at Glasgow University I didn't expect an environment to be receptive to libertarian ideas, but all things considered, discussion was far more constructive than one might expect. There were a few moments where I simply switched off (such as when someone suggested that the Poll Tax brought down the last Conservative government even though they, you know, won again in 1992) but the level of critical engagement, rather than simply fawning hysteria you come to anticipate was pleasing.

I'll probably refine my thoughts on this over the summer and beyond, but if you want to see my initial thoughts, you can find them in the link below:

Click Here

Here Comes the Summer

It's been quite a while since my last post, but now the exams are out the way, third-year is done and the summer weather is here! Plenty news and much to look forward to.

First up I managed to secure a placement at a law firm in Aberdeen over the summer. Having fired off countless applications for summer work it was brilliant to be able to secure something. I was hoping to find something for a fortnight or so but really struck lucky as this placement will run for six weeks and it's being paid to boot.

Not long after that's over I'll be heading off to Belgrade to take part in the European Universities Debating Championships. I eventually got involved in Uni debating this year and wish I'd done so much sooner. After a couple of competitions and internal trials I secured my place and will be debating with Michael Gray (@GrayInGlasgow) who's a smart lad and great lateral thinker. He's also somewhat a perennial blogger on all things Scotland, including on the important constitutional and social questions facing us. Take a look here. In any case it will be an adventure heading to Serbia and with the GUU funding our teams there'll be more Serbian dinars for refreshments...

As soon as I get back from Serbia I'll be going straight into a two week placement at the Law Department of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh. I did a school work experience placement shadowing a few people with the General Trustees a few years ago so it will be good to go back in a more active capacity.

So that's what I've got lined up for the summer. It will be busy but looking forward to it.