I spent an interesting hour or two at a business-focussed head-to-head independence referendum debate at the headquarters of Thorntons solicitors in Dundee earlier this week.
The two speakers, Iain Gray of Better Together and the Yes Campaign’s John Swinney, traded verbal blows as they pushed their respective cases for the retention or dissolution of the union.
The duo’s views were sought on business confidence, employability issues, uncertainty over cross-border investment, the financial framework supporting the energy industry, interest rate setting and the pound.
Both speakers gave a good account of themselves but for my money the most interesting contributions of the night came from the floor rather than the stage.
I have said before in this column that the voice of Scotland’s business community has been posted missing in the early exchanges of the independence debate.
There are a small number of companies and high-profile business people that have shown their hand and declared for one camp or the other.
However, the vast majority have intentionally stayed on the fringes of the debate or declared themselves out altogether because of a fear of alienating customers and clients whose views may differ from their own.
But the Question Time-style debate gave an audience of more than 100 invited guests from the business community the opportunity to loosen the shackles for a short time.
And perhaps surprisingly the most pressing question business people were looking for answers on was the vexed issue of the relationship with the European Union both in the event of a Yes vote next September and in the context of the wider EU membership debate currently raging.
I do not expect any great changes to the low-key nature of the debate within the commercial world in Tayside and Fife as a result of this first-of-its-kind event.
But given the turnout on a dreich Monday night, the chance to debate the myriad issues thrown up by next year’s referendum in an open and frank forum with some of the key decision-makers involved was one that the business community obviously found helpful.
So kudos to Thorntons for putting their head above the parapet and organising such an informative and instructive event.
* It is simple. When Sir Ian Wood talks oil, people listen.
And when the mega-rich Scottish businessman says that £200 billion of additional crude could be recovered from the UK Continental Shelf over the next two decades simply by beefing up the regulatory regime governing North Sea exploration then there can be few sounder arguments for change.
At the behest of Energy Secretary Ed Davey, Sir Ian has spent the past months investigating the regulatory backdrop and has found it wanting.
In interim findings at least, he has described the regulator as under-resourced and too thinly spread to function effectively across the constantly shifting North Sea landscape.
The oil and gas sector is too important from a national economic perspective to dilly dally. Sir Ian’s report simply cannot be kicked into the long grass.