THE NEWSDESK: What kind of image does the loss of documentary photography to Newport present of our city?

We published a series of photographs from The Newport Survey - a collection of images taken in this city by documentary photograph students in the 1980s.

Each year students were given a different topic ranging from education and religion to family and industry and were asked to take photographs which captured city life.

A book of the Newport Survey was then published every year and launched at Newport Art Gallery, John Frost Square, which contained a series of photographic essays.

The photographs provoked a huge response from readers.

Some saw themselves or their relatives in them.

Others saw the face of a city now lost to us, its people and places.

And we tracked down a number of people in those photographs who had a very personal reason to celebrate such a landmark.

The links between our city and some of the world's best photographers were forged over those 100 years.

The first photography class was introduced here in 1912.

Magnum photographer David Hurn established the first diploma course in Documentary Photography in Britain in 1973 in Newport.

Those who studied documentary photography in this city have received some of the most prestigious awards in the industry, and have gone on to work for some of the world’s most renowned newspapers and magazines.

Newport graduate Anastasia Taylor Lind won the Guardian Weekend Photography Prize in April 2006, with a comment from David Bailey comparing her image of a woman fighter from the Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas to the "classic portrait of Che Guevara”.

She is a full member of the exclusive Photographers agency VII Network, and had a photo-essay on China published in National Geographic magazine. Another project was featured both in the Journal of Photography and The New York Times.

Former Documentary Photography BA student Leo Maguire is a recipient of a Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography, and spent three years gaining unprecedented access to the world of bare-knuckle fighters in Britain’s traveller community.

His film Gypsy Blood was shortlisted for the Rockies awards at the 2012 Banff World Media Festival, in the Social and Humanitarian documentaries category. The film was shortlisted in the Best Newcomer category of the 2012 Grierson Awards. And Maguire was shortlisted for Cinematography on Gypsy Blood at the 2012 Bafta Craft Awards.

Will Hartley has won awards including the shots young photographer of the year 2008 and Ag Magazine Brilliant book awards 2010.

And they all honed their talents in Newport.

But that century-long link between the best image-makers and this city is about to be broken.

The University of South Wales last week announced plans to close its Caerleon campus, where the photography course is currently based. And it plans to transfer its photography course out of Newport to Cardiff.

The loss of 145 jobs and of a campus presence in Caerleon - which will be keenly felt there - is not the only loss if this move goes ahead. The loss to this city of one its most prestigious courses would also be an irrevocable blow.

I CAN'T help thinking that the first casualty of the Scottish referendum vote on both sides has been an ability to deal with a question with a straight answer.

Would I buy a second-hand car from either Alex Salmond or David Cameron after listening to their performances? Not on your life.

Salmond is a man who is using fears for the future of the NHS and a sickness with austerity to stoke up separatism. Yet, take a look at his plans to reduce corporation tax. He won't say by how much.

Does that jive with a "man-of-the-people" stance?

And Cameron has mishandled this whole process abominably.

From the framing of the question, to the refusal to allow "devo max" on the ballot paper, he has come across as complacent and, at times, supremely arrogant.

And, let's be honest, the reason we are here - with Scotland's voters split and the result too close to call - is the inability of his government to recognise that they have to govern for the good of all the people, not, cynically, for those who are likely to vote Conservative at the next election.

Ye gods, it says it all when Gordon Brown is the most statesman-like figure in the mix.

This debate may have engaged people in Scotland like nothing has engaged them in politics in a generation.

But for those of us outside Scotland, voteless, impotent, sitting on the sidelines, this debate does little to engage with the real democratic deficit in this country.