Ahoy! My name is Andrew Tickell, but most of you will know me as the Lallands Peat Worrier. By day, I research and teach public law and human rights; by night, I don a frock coat, a Marie-Antoinette wig, and blog excitedly on the latest developments in Scottish law and politics.
I could do with a hand.
2014 is a big year and the last three months of the independence referendum campaign promises to be an critical and exciting time. I love writing. I haven't yet found
a way to make it pay to any remotely sustaining extent, but few
pleasures compare to firing up the blog and unleashing a thought or two
in print about the affairs of the day. Those pleasures have been
heightened by the independence referendum, and the profusion of stuff
to be thought and scribbled about, but the pressures of other duties
and concerns have to a great extent limited the time I can judiciously
commit to it.
I've particularly enjoyed the opportunity to try my hand
at a different sort of writing in the latest two editions of the Drouth, the first being an account of aNational Collective meet up, the second a surreal conversation with a lushed-up Old Soldier about the positive case for the Union. It'd be splendid to be able to do more.
Term
is over, the doctorate is essentially done and dusted, and I'm in the
market for more permanent, remunerative work. This is, as countless
other folk have experienced, a joyless, harrowing endeavour punctuated
mainly by setbacks and failures, but I'm not downhearted. I am,
however, at a loose end and must try to keep body and soul together
somehow over the next few months.
My first order
preference would be to be able to use the time to give the #indyref the
attention it deserves, and to be able to write more considered, Drouth-style
pieces for the blog about how the campaign is unfolding and being
experienced. The conversation in the media has become so
unrepresentatively shrill, that I'd like to expand the sort of
discussions Michael Greenwell,
our guests and I have been having to include more folk who disagree
with us on the constitution, exploring some of the ambivalences of both
sides of the debate which the aggressive binary vision of the referendum
consistently elides and suppresses.
This was one of the charms, for me, of Derek Bateman's recent return to the microphone. As a first stab in this direction, I'm hoping to record a discussion with arch unionist professor, Adam Tomkins,
over the next few weeks, with respectful but not unchallenging dialogue
being the watchword. People do politics better in this country than the
ongoing stramash portrays. We should all do our best to reflect that much more civilised and thoughtful reality.
Which is where you come in, or can come
in, if this vision appeals to you. As it stands, it doesn't look like
I'll be able to afford to take that time away to do the referendum
justice. This is bad timing, but it's as simple as that. I am not,
however, a man of great needs and wants and have tried to work out the
minimum extra income I'd need, to make it possible to supercharge the
blog over the last three months of the campaign, instead of offering only a skeleton service and the very occasional comment piece.
By my reckoning, it is
about £750 to £1,000: not an insignificant sum of money, but the
least required to keep the show consistently on the road. So that's what
I'm pitching for. What's to lose? If you value the occasionally
oddball, but independent and open-minded legal and political commentary
I've undertaken here since 2009, I'd very much appreciate your support
at this key time in Scottish politics.
As the journalists rightly reminds us, if you want to invest in quality journalism, buy a paper.
The same goes for quality blogging. There is something a bit mortifying
about this -- but I'll choke it down. Fear of failure is remarkably
debilitating. If you've enjoyed my work on the blog, and would like to see much
more of it over the final push towards the referendum, making the case
for independence and rooting out some of those overlooked Scotlands
fizzing away in this campaign, whatever your views on the constitution,
I'd very much appreciate any contribution you might feel moved to make.
If not, I'll see you over the pint I'll be pulling.
