WHILE shoppers bustled in Glasgow's Trongate at the weekend, all around them people were talking shop.
In the nooks and crannies around the Tron Theatre, and in the theatre itself, Scotland's future was being discussed, and if anyone still had lingering doubts over the impact devolution is about to have, they would have been dispelled by attendance at even a few of the myriad events.
The first essentials were a map and a degree of bravery. For example, a voyage of discovery down a wee lane and up four flights of stairs at around 10am on Saturday would have brought you to a room in which sat a dozen-or-so people earnestly discussing transport policy.
Round the corner and down the road a bit, you could take your pick from discussions on such matters as the Scottish legal system, the SNP after devolution, cultural identity, and Scotland in Europe, while in the main hall a bit later on they were warming up nicely for some earnest chat about football. The World Cup is never far away, only unattainable.
Of course the whole event was politically driven, as Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar discovered on Friday night when his speech was, er, interrupted by some anti-poverty demonstrators who interestingly called him ''Tory scum'', but it managed to squeeze in a fair bit of the media and the arts, not forgetting a nod in the direction of faith and morality.
It also would be silly and unkind to say something like ''even the Tories turned up'', because that would be to belittle the attendance at their session on a deeply dreich Sunday morning, where it was made abundantly clear by the likes of former MP Phil Gallie, Struan Stevenson, and Lord MacKay of Drumadoon that there is life in the bulldog yet.
The lasting impression from this 90-minute meeting was that they are determined to claw their way up the edifice and play a full and constructive part in the Scottish Parliament. The Tories may not yet have worked out exactly where they went wrong, but they are willing to learn and, in short, should be kept an eye on by the other parties.
Elsewhere, a session on film and television was enlivened by a woman who dropped two packets of cigarettes on the floor as she realised she was at the wrong venue and had meant to attend the discussion on ''A Healthy Scotland'', while the Liberal Democrats' colourful Sandra Grieve surprised some observers during ''Engendering New Politics'' by declaring that it was ''mince'' to say there was no sexism in her party.
She urged women to ''stop making scones and coffee and start making waves'', though they will clearly have to work harder if they are to capture the interest of the gentleman who unhelpfully fell asleep while the platform speakers were in full flow.
His performance apart, it was evident from the buzz of conversation in the bar/cafeteria area of the Tron, where the great and the good mingled with the merely curious, that the joint sponsors of the event, The Herald, the Fabian Society, and the New Statesman, had provided a useful forum at an important time.
Those in attendance seemed more than happy wandering from venue to venue either to contribute or simply to listen, and the Labour MP and former Minister Malcolm Chisholm was even kind enough to say at one stage that there were too many interesting things going on at the same time.
Politically one could sense from the event a growing feeling that, beyond the Scottish Parliament, Britain may well be on the brink of embracing a much greater degree of federalism, and that the threat or promise of Scottish independence, depending on your point of view, is lurking not so quietly in the background.
It was, as one speaker put it, a weekend for the chattering classes. True enough. Not all of Scotland was talking about it, but all of Scotland was being talked about and, as everyone knows, it's good to talk.
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