A year ago this weekend Scotland was in political meltdown. Voters had thrown out the Labour party, ending its 50-year grip on power, and put in the Nationalists but with nothing like a convincing majority. Alex Salmond had won but by just one seat and the election itself was a discredited debacle, not quite Zimbabwe but, with spoilt ballot papers and nearly 200,000 lost votes, hardly the model of a modern democracy. for more click here