Dispatches from Paisley

The Shred Loses His Gong

2012-01-31T21:30:00.000Z

It's taken nearly 5 years, but there appears to be some very... very small comfort for people who were the victims of the collapse of RBS with the news that Fred "The Shred" Goodwin has had his knighthood taken from him. The common concencus is that this is the right decision, with Cameron saying "The proper process has been followed and I think we have ended up with the right decision."

Er... no, ther right decision has not been made.

As far as I'm aware, there are no criminal proceedings against either Goodwin, McKillop (the former RBS chairman who still has his gong), Andy Hornby, James Crosby (former CEO's of HBOS, Crosby again still has his gong) or Dennis Stevenson (former chairman of HBOS, who sits in the House of Lords). Indeed the closest that the FSA report comes to alleging criminal negligance is with their conclusion that "RBS proceeded (with the purchase of ABN Amro) without appropriate heed to the risks involved and with inadequate due diligence".

To date there is no equivilant report on the collapse of HBOS, let alone any sign of an inquiry into the collapse of Dunfermline, Bradford & Bingley or Alliance & Leicester. And there is certainly no sign of an inquiry into the purchase of ABN Amro, despite the questions surrounding both RBS decision and Barclays actions. Then again, this is Britain where we are soft on financial crime and soft on the causes of white collar crime - going back to Ernist Saunders.

Were we serious about looking at punishing those responsible, there would have been criminal charges brought against the responsable parties, we would have had trials and those responsible would possiably be behind bars. Instead we get ourselves in a frenzy about the removal of a discredited gong from a discredited businessman. We really must look like a laughing stock abroad.

We Are 5!

2012-01-24T10:00:00.000Z

They say that thepast is another country, but it is remarkable the changes that have taken placein the five years that this blog has been running.

Five years ago,Tony Blair was on his “farewell” tour, Jack McConnell (remember him?) was stillfavourite to retain his position as Scotland’s First Minister and the politicalestablishment were backing the Royal Bank of Scotland in their bid to take overthe Dutch bank ABN Amro. And five years ago last Thursday this blog appeared.

At the point that“Dispatches…” appeared, there was already a fledgling “MacBlogosphere”. I think Subrosa was there, maybe SNP TacticalVoting was months old and there was also Tartan Hero, I'm sure there were others butthose three are the ones that stick in the mind, probably because they were the first three blogs I discovered.

The Strange thing is that the first political blog appeared at the end of February, with a piece on New Labour casting around for a "Stop Gordon" candidate to... er... stop Gordon Brown from succeding Tony Blair.

Two stories have been rumbling along, and have refused to bugger off in this time. The first is the controversy surrounding Trump-town. Only last week, Trump was flapping his wallies once again, this time at a proposal to build wind turbines just off the coast from where Trump's carbuncle is being built.

The Second Story which is still with us is the unraveling of the global economy, which first featured on these pages with this piece of whimsy about Super Squirrel. The next piece on the economy focused in on what is now re-branded as the Autumn statement, but was labled the Pre-Budget Report so not to scare the horses - which didn't work as it scared the horses. As a result Brown's reputation took a battering, with the nadir being the Friday just after the Euro-elections when many of the council results were announced. He did make it to the General Election and took part in three "leaders debates". However a Rochdale granny was in the end the diference between Brown and Cameron, as the Tories wound up the largest party short by 19 seats formed a coalition and began an ill judged assault on public services which is constantly refered to on these pages as George's scorched earth policy.

As I said at the top, in January 2007 Jack McConnell was still favourite to retain his position as First Minister. In a close election, Alex Salmond came out on top and set about trying to stay in post untill the next election by trying to create informal alliances to get votes in parliament. While the I word was conspicuous by its absence during the SNP's first term in office, it has been all over the Scottish media since the SNP won their second term. While the SNP can now bring a plebicite (legal matters depending), the discussions have been lead by anyone but the SNP. Certainly the Economy will continue to be an issue, but it has now been joined by the forthcoming plebicite as a long term issue as the for and against arguments begin to rage.

5 years down, one wonders what the next five years will bring.

The Week Labour Lost The Next Election

2012-01-17T11:00:00.000Z

You know, my firstpost of the New Year was supposed to be one on Scottish Labour’s new leaderJoanne Lamont, the size of the task ahead of her and the things that she coulddo in the short, medium and long term to re-position “Scottish” Labour. Except that thanks to Cameron blundering intoissues he doesn’t understand, and showing that perhaps the pro-union parties dohave the capacity to blow the referendum all by themselves, the first post ofthe year was about Cameron blundering into issues he doesn’t understand. Oh and the disappearance of Labour from theconstitutional debate.

The reallydisheartening thing about last week was “Scottish” Labour clearly deciding thatthe default position of defending the Union while blithely belittling thelogical next step for Devolution – Fiscal Autonomy – was the route they shouldcontinue to make. At a time when theScottish people needed “Scottish” Labour to stand up for the people and callfor a radical half way point, Lamont decided to don a blue suit and side withthe Tory Prime Minister, his dark hearted Chancellor and the Lib Dem deputyPrime Minister. At least the Lib Demssupported the concept (dusted down from the history books) of Home Rule – eventhough they could not instantly define it and described it as “the second classoption” – next to Independence.

For Lamont, time ison her side. For her boss, last week wasprobably the week where a second term for Cameron became an almost certainty(usual caveats - barring something completely left field, etc… etc…). Milliband the Younger has made too manymistakes, and has not shown the necessary leadership skills. The lack of urgency in formulating andpromoting a credible and viable alternative to Osborne’s “Scorched Earth”policy was the first indication that Ed didn’t quite have what it takes - this mistake has seen Osborne's policy become conventional wisdom among the voters. His biggest flaw, pre election (and one heshared with his big brother David) was his inability to empathise with theordinary voter, to connect to the ordinary voter and to communicate to theordinary voter. Less kind people wouldcall this Milliband’s inability to speak fluent human.

Other than Labour’sstanding on the economy, the critical problem for Milliband is his weeklyperformance at Prime Ministers Questions. In more ways than one, Milliband hit the nail on the head when hestarted calling Cameron “Flashman” – as Cameron comes across as a public schoolbully. Milliband’s school swot act canonly fail to make an impact against Flashman – occasional performances apart. Apart from the prefect tendencies, Millibandis completely inflexible and unable to think on his feet – Cameron’s “at leastwe’re not brothers” quip showed that. The thing is Ed Milliband does have the capacity to really get underCamerons’ skin. It’s just that he hasfailed to do it on a consistent enough basis.

Last week thoughwas supposed to be the big relaunch, the launch of Ed Milliband 2.0. Instead, just as Cameron unwittingly endedthe Independencephoney war, then Salmond’s response pretty much put paid to Milliband’s chancesof gaining the keys to No 10.

Milliband’s bigre-launch was timed to occur on Tuesday, it was planned to focus in on Labour’sperceived Achilles heel of the economy, and to expand on Milliband’s theme of“Responsible Capitalism”. It alsocontinued the reconciliation with Conservative economic policy first laid outin Ed Balls speech to the Labour Conference in September. Admirable though it was, there were severalproblems with this approach. Firstly, itreveals too much of your own hand too soon before an election. As a result the bits voters respond to thebest gets picked up by the other parties and is re-fashioned as their own. Blair was adept at this with John Major’spolicy initiatives, while Cameron is already in the process of hi-jacking“Responsible Capitalism”.

Secondly the partsthat do not go down well gets brought up ad nausium until election day. Even things that go slightly pear shaped,like Miliband’s late arrival will be peculating itself into the nationssubconscious. The last problem is thatno matter the amount of planning that goes into these events, they are alwaysat the mercy of “events dear boy, events”. Like for example scheduling a big set piece speech about re-positioningyour parties economic policy and then watching a huge constitutional rowobliterate any chance your speech had of leading the news. Of course Milliband could have made somecomment about the plebiscite row, ensuring visibility and tieing his speech tothe news. Except Milliband carried onwith his speech, which again relates to the criticism about his inability tothink on his feet.

That inabilitycarried on to Prime Ministers Questions, where Milliband made two key blunders,and ones that I think seals his fate. Hisfirst three questions were taken up by attacking the rise in rail fares, riseswhich Cameron pointed out were brought in by the Brown government. Milliband’s considered and not very goodresponse was “You’re Wrong!” I suspectthat it was this beating (not helped by bad research) and the previous beatingwhich lead him to his position to stand shoulder to shoulder with Cameron overSalmond’s plan to hold a plebicite on Independence.

The correct stanceat that point would have been to question the tactics employed by Cameron whilepromoting their own support for the Union. Instead Miliband sold Scotland down the river to coverhis own shortcomings by agreeing unreservedly with Cameron.

The problem forLabour is that there’s not really an outstanding candidate to take over. Wee Dougie has been performing well as ShadowForeign Secretary, but his performances have not really been stellar. Jim Murphy has also been performing OK, but Isuspect that he may be keeping his powder dry for the aftermath of 2015. While Ed Balls is just a big no. There’s just no argument either for jumping ageneration either, with both Umunna and Reeves not ready in any way – and theywouldn’t be in 2015 either. This kind ofleaves us with Mrs Balls - Yvette Cooper, and most of the things that apply toher cabinet colleagues apply to her – except there has already been a piece inthe Independent arguing the case for Cooper and that she appears to be thecurrent favourite to take over should something happen with Milliband.

The way things are,Labour is going down to defeat in May 2015. History has shown that parties that do not act go down to heavydefeats. History also shows that Labourdoes not easily learn the lessons of history.

Lighting The Blue Touch Paper...

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000Z

I suppose that we should be thankful for the blundering intervention made by the Cambot at the weekend. After all, if it wasn't for Cameron, then the issue of Independence would have continued on its dull way and we would still be in the dark about the Scottish Government's "preferred" date for a plebicite.

In amongst all of the news and announcements (which have all had the air of the "war" episode of "The Day Today" about them) there's three things that stick in the mind. The first is that Cameron really could have produced the political own goal of the decade had he gone on with his original plan of insisting on a sunset clause for the referendum. Cameron's actions have I think really highlighted the effect that the SNP's majority has had on Holyrood polititians - by making them look like amateur idiots by leaving them to dig their own graves. After all, most of the people obsessing about the forthcoming plebicite are those people backing the union (and Willie Rennie, who seems to have indulged in some grave robbing. How else can you explain the resurection of the phrase "Home Rule" - a phrase that carbon dating has placed at originating in the early 20th Century)

The second is that the Coalition have talked about the Scottish Government generating uncertainty - uncertainty that Salmond has ended by announcing a more specific timescale for the plebicite. Yet can anyone point to tangible evidence of uncertainty? There may be uncertainty in the minds of Tory supporting businessmen in boardrooms around the City - who may well be the people agitating for Cameron to do something. Yet in the real world, life goes on.

Lastly, can someone tell me where Labour are, and not just Milliband the Younger? Young Ed will have been mildly annoyed at being obliterated off the front pageswith his own "bring it on" moment, but he had nothing to say about yesterday's events. Yet Milliband has been an everpresent compared to Johann Lamont, the new-ist Labour leader in Scotland. Lamont made a statement calling for the vote to take place soon and on a clear question, claiming "It's necessary for the people of Scotland to be given the opportunity to decide their constitutional future sooner rather than later in order that the uncertainty around the economy, around business and all the rest of it is addressed,".

That dear reader is Lamont's position, and all that she has said on the subject this week. Who'd have thunk it, Scottish Labour adopting the same line as the Tories. Does that make them the new Tartan Tories? The only thing that can be said with any certainty is that Labour appear to have vanished without trace on this issue. I would like to think that they have gone away to re-think their position. Labour prideed themselves as the party that came up with the radical policies, including Devolution itself. The logical extention of that version of Labour is adopting a line that pushes Devo Max or Fiscal Autonomy. Unfortunately, the prevailing thought at the top of Labour is akin to the wing who proved to be the roadblock to devolution in the 1974/79 parliament - the Scottish decendents of George Cunningham - the MP who proposed the 40% rule.

By accident rather than by design, Cameron has almost single-handedly ended the Independence phoney war. Except, as Cameron showed in Brussels last year, he doesn't do games involving strategy very well...

First Footing 2012... With The Best of 2011

2012-01-02T20:00:00.000Z

First of all can I wish all the readers of this blog a very Happy New Year.

2011 saw 56 posts, not bad considering I was out of blogging action for about six weeks in February/March time due to a defective hard drive. Looking at the top ten posts, the last post before the enforced hiatus - Butterflies & Hurricanes - does not appear in the top ten yet may still be the most precient, considering it makes the much ignored point about what became the Arab Spring began as a protest about economic conditions.

So what are the top ten read posts. Jointly at ten are two contrasting posts about news eminating from down south. The big news of the Summer was the daily revelations from the investigations into newspapers hacking into people's phones - in particular the revelations eminating from (at that point) News International. Getting Rid Of The Phone Hacking Scandal looked at where the scandal came from and where it was going (at that point). Also at Ten is one of those posts that does what it says in the title, dealing with the AV referendum that took place at the same time as the Holyrood Elections - Why I'm Voting Yes To AV.

At nine was a piece on the first stirrings of the obsession that has gripped the media, the opposition at Holyrood and looks to have gripped certain members of the Coalition government at Westminster. Let's Talk About Independence looked at the hype about the referendum. 2011 was the year that the Independence story arrived, and promptly refused to bugger off in the face of much more relevant stories. Like for example the Super-incunction story, that was the media storm story prior to Hacker-gate. The red-top tabloid obsession with gossip at the expense of the real news stories being covered up was the subject to No Sex Please We're British, the Eighth best read story of 2011. At Seven, another of those self explanitery titles - Tale Of The Tape: Scottish Election 2011.

Bubling under the top five is a post entitled The Miliband Drift - where I looked at the percieved post election drift of Labour under Milliband the Younger, warning that Milliband needed to get a grip on the direction of his party if another election defeat is to be averted. Despite a "Hacker-gate" bounce, Milliband is still in that place.

Into the top 5, and at 5 was my post on the Paisley hustings during the Holyrood Election campaign - The Paisley Hustings - The Derek & Stuart Show - with the title namechecking both the dominant personalities in the debate and the representitives of Labour and the SNP. At Four was a post looking at claims (by the victorious Labour party) that the outcome of the Inverclyde By-Election represented The End Of The SNP Bandwagon.

Into the top three, and at three is the only post in the top ten about the Euro-zone. Resisting The Urge To Say I Told You So is a reposte to those people, like Mary-Ann Sieghart, Bill Cash and er... Jacob Rees Mogg who have been attempting to re-write history to show that the Euro-sceptic "Bastards" that de-railed John Major's government were not little Englanders. Ohhhh no - they were visionaries you know. Aye right!

At two is the post with possiably the worst title of the year. Make More Noise was about the shockingly awful piece of election literature that bore Labour's name on it. When I posted this, I called Labour's 2011 campaign "unfocused (at best) and shrill... which has had nothing to say". In the post mortem of Labour's crusshing defeat, no mention has been made of the awful campaign which like an empty vessle had nothing to say.

In a strange way this segueway's into the number one post of the year. Just What is Labour Hame's Problem? is the most recient of the ten, and was one that highlighted why Labour still remain very much second favourites for Holyrood 2016. As I said in the post, I had hoped that the blog Labour Hame would be the "Scottish" Labour equivilant to The Orange Book - the book of essays that outlined the current direction of the Lib Dems (which was edited by David Laws and had chapters by Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg - all unknown at the time of publication in 2006). Instead we have silly attack piece upon silly attack piece about the SNP government, with no explanation of what a future Labour administration at Holyrood would do. Sadly, Labour's policy vacum looks like it will continue into 2012.

That's that for 2011. Blogging proper will probably resume next week, then there will be the fifth anniversary of this blog... untill then enjoy the rest of the holiday period.

Some Quotes on the EU Treaty/Treaty Amendment/Whatever it is...

2011-12-14T11:30:00.000Z

"I said before coming to Brussels that if I couldn't get adequate safeguards for Britain in a new European treaty then I wouldn't agree to it. What is on offer isn't in Britain's interests so I didn't agree to it." - Cameron just after deploying his "veto"

"Clearly the prime minister and I worked together on the request for the safeguards which we were seeking. Let's be clear. We were not seeking some great repatriation of powers from Europe back to Britain, we were not even seeking some great exceptional treatment for the City of London." - Clegg on Friday

"We have protected Britain's financial services, and manufacturing companies that need to be able to trade their businesses, their products, into Europe. We've protected all these industries from the development of eurozone integration spilling over and affecting the non-euro members of the European Union." - Osborne

"David Cameron asked for something that we all thought was unacceptable: a protocol in the treaty that would allow the United Kingdom to be exempt from a certain number of regulations on financial services. We weren't able to accept that because we consider, on the contrary, that a good part of the worries of the world come from the deregulation of financial services." - French President Nicholas Sarkosy

"I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last week's summit." - Clegg on Sunday

"We have an absolutely enormous opportunity here if we now stick to our guns. If the eurozone is going to go down this road towards more regulation and more union and more uniformity and higher costs, we should be the off-shore haven, we should be the Hong Kong to their China." - Dan "I Hate the NHS" Hannan MEP

"The Report concludes that RBS’s failure amid the systemic crisis ultimately resulted from poor decisions made by the RBS management and Board. But deficiencies in the global capital regime and liquidity regulations made the crisis much more likely. In addition, flaws in the FSA’s supervisory approach provided insufficient challenge to RBS." - The report by the FSA into the failure of the Royal bank of Scotland.

"As you know, one member state was opposed to amending the Lisbon Treaty. The United Kingdom, in exchange for giving its agreement, asked for a specific protocol on financial services which, as presented, was a risk to the integrity of the internal market. This made compromise impossible. All other heads of government were left with the choice between paying this price or moving ahead without the UK's participation and accepting an internal agreement among them." - Jose Mannuel Barroso, Head of the European Commission

"26 of the 27 states [had] shown responsibility... shared sovereignty is better than sovereignty taken over by the markets" - French MEP Joseph Daul

"Is this not the same Prime Minister who month after month has been castigating working people for not staying at meetings to deal with pensions?
"He has walked out, without using his veto; he has walked out, without getting a rebate like Mrs Thatcher; and he has walked out without a couple of opt-outs like Major. As Del Boy would say, what a plonker!" - Dennis Skinner MP

Independence From Europe

2011-12-13T09:30:00.000Z

Huh! Defending British interests my arse.

True,there was no way that any British Prime Minister would have signed thattreaty/treaty amendment (delete appropriate description). However no British Prime Minister would have willinglynegotiated that treaty, which involves amongst other things the placing of theEurozone members within a very tight financial straight-jacket. No British Prime Minister would have flouncedout of talks on the miniscule issue of regulation of the banking sector – not ashas been claimed in some sections the issue of the “Tobin Tax”. In short, Cameron did not show the necessarybehaviours befitting a British Prime Minister, putting the interests of hispaymasters in the City before the country.

However,what I want to focus on is not the treaty, but our dear leader’s negotiatingskills. Does anyone else think that theywere… seriously lacking? As 5 Live’ssport’s “discussion” show “Fighting Talk” pointed out, this is the second timein a year that Cameron has arrived at a conference, made his point and seenthings go against him. Last December, heflew to Switzerland to lobbyfor Englandto host the World Cup in 2018, only to see the Russians win the bid, with 1solitary vote backing the English bid – 2 less than the English FA calculatedthat they had in the bag before the last representations.

Thistime, Cameron left Belgiumwith 26 countries going ahead with the treaty amendment, leaving the UK behind. As Milliband the Younger put it, it’s not aveto when the thing you are aiming to stop goes ahead… that’s called losing. When attending the press conferences posttreaty, you could see the thought processes of Merkel and Sarkosy going onbehind their eyes – arrogant stupid British probably being top of those thoughtprocesses. Stupid though is probablybeing too kind a description for Cameron – they guy who has thrown away 40years of negotiating positions in one fell swoop. Cameron is probably too stupid to have eventhought about the full consequences of what happened on Friday – beginning withwhat impact his decision will have in keeping the union itself together.

Theboast, made by Labour politicians, that part of the union dividend is ainfluence on the EU via the UKhas been shot to pieces by Cameron’s actions. Writing in the Sunday Herald, Iain McWhirter hypothesised that the EU, possiblyas an act of revenge would offer enhanced terms to an independent Scotland – justas they would get shot of the problem English. All this is very interesting – the only truth of the matter is that at astroke one of the key arguments forstaying in the union has vanished overnight. If Salmond were to clarify that an Independent Scotland would only enterthe EU after a referendum, it would be doubtful even then that Cameron wouldrecognise how much of a precarious position this union is now in.

Thereis a worrying trend building up with Cameron appearing at conferences and eventsand coming away with nothing like what was expected. Brown, Blair, Major or Thatcher would nothave gone to that meeting and flounced out so spectacularly at 5am. Whatever you think of them, they would havegained some sort of quid pro quo before agreeing the treaty – or suggested keyamendments making it a different treaty. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Cameron just does not give the impressionof knowing how to get what he wants – just on how to spin this situation (whichis about the only thing he has done “right”).

OnFriday morning, Cameron looked every inch a political lightweight let loose inthe heavyweight circuit – with disastrous consequences. Only like everything else at the moment – it willbe us that pick up the pieces.

Independence... in Europe?

2011-12-08T20:59:00.000Z

Reparations.

Peter Schrank

It’s a word thatwould last have been heard in Fourth Year History when the subject of eitherthe end of the First World War or the seeds of the Second World War cameup. Yet this word that has connotationsof old Europe – of punishing (harshly) Germany for its role in the FirstWorld War. It sums up the opposite ofbeing magnanimous in victory. Yet thisis a word that cropped up in today’s I newspaper – who quoted a column in the Portuguesenewspaper “Publico” – in relation to the Sarkosy/Merkel plan to keep the Eurooff the rocks.

The quote in fullrelates to the Franco German plans to create closer fiscal union - “Germany is preparing to Germanise Europe…Even if we accept that we will have to “reinforce and harmonise” fiscal andbudgetary integration in the Eurozone, the Merkozy couple’s demands arereminiscent of war reparations. The defeated and afflicted will have to fulfillmore and more requirements, but there is no requirement for effort, money orsolidarity to help them.”

Of all the peoplewho should be apprehensive about the proposed treaty, it will be the countriesemerging as the “soft” Eurozone countries – countries that according to JohnMajor’s old Bette noir Jacques Delors (in a recent newspaper interview) shouldnot have been admitted to the Euro at inception. That Greece,Portugal, Ireland & Spain were not thought to be in anyeconomic danger until they were in economic danger seems to have been missed byEconomists desperate to re-write history to cover up the fact that they missedthis storm coming. Those countries willbe at the centre of any attempts to impose stricter fiscal regulations onEurozone countries. These countries havealso suffered from a lack of income from holidaymakers – mostly from the UK. This brings us to the position of our dearleader.

Since becomingConservative leader in 2005, Cameron has been making Euro-sceptic noises in anattempt to keep his right wingers on side- lest he thought of as a “Tory wet”as those on the left of the Conservative Party were dubbed under Thatch. This is his first “true” test of how much ofa Euro-sceptic he is and there are signs that he is beginning to twist in thewind. When asked at PMQ’s what his redline issues were, he blustered on about how he would resist any attempts forcloser fiscal union – without giving any details. It would be kind to think that Cameron waskeeping his powder dry, he did exude the air of a man with a lot riding on thenext 72 hours with all of the uncertainty that brings showing.

The backbenchConservatives see this as an opportunity for a referendum on the subject of Europe. Thanks totheir election pledge to put any further treaties to the public vote, they cansee something to beat the European Union with – and also the opportunity to“re-patriate” some powers from Brussels. This group are already in good spirits – dueto the belief that they were right about the Euro – so would love to see an endto what they see as the transfer of powers to Brussels. The strange thing is that politically and inother areas, the EU is closer to the Conservative viewpoint than they have beenfor a long time.

Sarkosy &Merkel are from the French & German equivalents to the Tories, and are moreright wing than their predecessors from those parties while we have seen a newright of centre government elected in Spain. The EU have taken a back seat with the listof terms relating to the Greek bale out – those terms not including reform oftheir tax system but including wholesale privatisation of variousservices. At the heart of drawing upthose terms was the pro-Friedmanist IMF and the European Central Bank. Both of those bodies being close politicallyto the Conservatives – Pro business, pro Market and pro Lasiz Faire/Light TouchRegulation. The European believers ofMilton Friedman (and indirectly Thatch) are coming into positions ofpower. Yet for some people, the thoughtof giving up power really can be a roadblock to any alliance.

One group whoreally should be paying attention to the happenings in Brussels is our own government atHolyrood. Tucked away in page 16 of theScotland Forward document, which was released last week, is this little snippet“Membership of the European Union ishugely important – not just to us, (heaven forbid!) but to the rest of the EU too. We own much of it’s oil and gas reserves (What happened to “It’s Scotland’s Oil”then?)… With independence we will remain part of the EU.” With the EU due todiscuss fiscal union, where exactly does that leave the SNP’s aim to controland set low rates of Corporation Tax? Ireland might have been one of Salmond’s economic role models for anindependent Scotland, but even he must have noticed how unpopular their policyof low Corporation Tax was in Brussels, Berlin and other “old European”capitals.

18 months since theelection that put Cameron into Number 10, we have probably come to the momentsthat will make or break Cameron. TheScorched Earth policy will affect lots of people, but whatever happensregarding the “Merkozy” plan will affect how Cameron’s relationship with hisparty and his coalition partners. TheSpectator editor Fraser Nelson tweeted that Cameron looked stunned at Labour’sEurosceptic line of attack at PMQ’s yesterday. A newly Eurosceptic Labour party wouldn’t just be “lethal” to Cameron’shopes for a majority come 2015, it would open up a front against the SNP’spro-Independence campaign.

A Country With Balls

2011-12-06T19:30:00.000Z

In these tough times with the banking elites hand in hand with the polititcians who baled out their mistakes, it's refreshing to see people stand up for not having to sacrifice their services and their livelyhoods to pay for the mistakes made by others.

You can imagine the panic in Downing Street and in the City if this began to take root in this country...

The More Things Change...

2011-11-21T10:30:00.000Z

Having been awayfor a week, it doesn’t look as if I’ve missed much. The Euro-zone is still on the brink, of whatI’m not sure. The UK economy is still tanking, withOsborne still intent on blaming all sundry… except his own insane debtreduction plans. Worse still, Osbornelast week decided to sell Northern Rock (or at least the half of it that isprofitable) to Virgin Money. If thetiming was somewhat amiss, then the price revealed the full extent of Osborne’smisjudgement.

Even if, as theTreasury suggests, there was a deadline for the sale of Northern Rock, thenthere was still over 2 years left until this deadline, 2 years to get a betterdeal than the £747 million (plus a possible £280 million). This is an issue worth returning too.

Building projects have also suffered in this recession, this project is in Golf De Sur.

One of Osborne’stargets has been the Eurozone countries, who he believes has been dragging Britaindown. Yet this blog has been making thecase that economic difficulties here have had an adverse affect on Euro-zonecountries. Greece,Portugal & Spain are allcountries popular with British holidaymakers. They are all also countries who would be adversely affected by the trendfor “Stay-cation” holidays. Assumingthat each plane holds about 250 people, and that each person spends €300, theneach plane brings €75,000 to that particular countries economy.

At street level,the similarities to Britainare striking. Prices have crept up,goods are becoming more and more expensive. As an example, when we went to Tenerife over two years ago we had afight with a restaurant (Pata De Ouro in San Blas) for charging €4 for a glassof Coke (on our previous visit in September 2008, this was €2.70). At the time this was by far the mostexpensive price for soft drinks we had come across. Last week, the average for a glass wasbetween €3-3.70, and prices for soft drinks were not advertised.

In Britain, thereseems to be a split between businesses who pass on price rises to customers,and businesses who freeze prices (or go for deals) to keep people comingthrough the door. In Tenerife,most businesses seem to have gone down the former route. There are a fewexceptions, but these are few and far between – with most going down the routeof catering to the masses (in terms of who their core market is – Britishholidaymakers). For people looking tosample Canarian food, the advice then is to bring plenty of cash or be preparedto hunt for a good restaurant. Oh and bewary of aggressive vendors.

The street marketshave become more aggressive too, with more chat from the vendors (“Lookey… Lookey… Lookey” added to the likes of “Cheep as chips” and “Asda price”). One look at an item will see a vendor speakto you and not leave you alone to decide whether to buy. Having said that, the most outrageous reactionto a non sale came from Tip Top Regalos in Los Cristianos – their reaction tous not buying the items they offered(as opposed to the items we were interested in) was spiteful and over the top,beware!

The economicposition of both countries might be similar, and rooted in similar causes. When looking at Osborne’s readiness to blameEU countries for our downfall, its worth reminding ourselves that there arepeople in Spain, Portugal and Greece suffering the same alarming erosion intheir standard of living that we are going through – at the behest of the EU,the IMF and other economic think tanks it has to be said.

Before we becomeall smug and pious about the debt position of various countries, we shouldcertainly remind ourselves of the policy which led to 125% mortgages, to bankslending without due diligence and to financial companies creating products withlittle understanding of how they work. We should remind ourselves of Light touch regulation and how we in Britain let ithappen.

Dodo's Voting For Extinction

2011-11-07T11:01:00.000Z

There are twothoughts that spring to mind with the election of Ruth Davidson as the new ScottishTory leader. The first thought was jeez political leaders are gettingyounger. I think that Davidson is nowthe first party leader anywhere in the UK younger than me.

The second thoughtthough was that this wasn’t so much as Turkey’s voting for Christmas butDodo’s voting for extinction. TheScottish Conservative’s have voted to carry on the same path that has kept themin the political wilderness in Scottish terms. I’d like to know what thoughtprocess made people vote for a candidate who believes that the status quo hasserved her party well. Make no mistake,Murdo Fraser’s policy to cut strings with Conservative Central Office wouldhave been good for Scottish Democracy. To re-position any new party to the centre-right in Scottish terms wouldfirstly have been a step away from the legacy of Thatcher – bloggers and commentatorsconsistently underestimate how much Thatcher poisoned the wells of right wingpolitics in the Scottish political landscape.

Removing thedesire, the impulse to follow the influence of her acolytes would have returnedthe new party to (in Scottish terms) a position on the centre right. This would make them more attractive tocentre right voters. It would also posea question to Scottish Labour, should they try to hold on to their currentcentre/centre-right position or should they try to re-position themselves onthe centre left – attacking the SNP from a left wing position. However this assumes that those voting havethought about all of this, and assumes that these people support and hold officewith the Tories have Scotland’sbest interests at heart.

History has told usotherwise. These are the people whobelieve that unemployment is a price worth paying for low interest rates. These are the people who believe that if itisn’t hurting, then it isn’t working. Itis those attitudes that still prevail in the Scottish Conservative party and itis those attitudes that will condemn them to more beatings at the polls.

Just What Is Labour Hame's Problem?

2011-10-31T12:01:00.000Z

“Scottish” Labour isin big trouble.

In the six monthssince the Scottish election they have been rudderless, visionless anddesperately in need of direction. Thelast time Labour were on the receiving end of such a drubbing at the polls,they elected the “dream ticket” of Kinnock and Hattersley within 4 months,before finding out how much of a mountain they had to climb to supplantThatcher and her Tories. There seems tobe no sign of any haste or speed emanating from the red corner of Scottishpolitics.

Ready or not here I come...

You would havethought that there would even have been some sort of discussion on the futuredirection of Scottish Labour – a discussion of sorts has taken place with the UK wideparty. Nope, nada, squid, whistling Dixie on that score. There was even some hope that with the advent of the cringetastic LabourHame blog (Tartan cringe that name if ever there was one) that there would be aserious debate about the future direction of “Scottish” Labour – in a similar fashionto the way "The Orange Book" seemed to provoke debate within the Lib Dems 5 yearsago. Should they re-position themselvesslightly to the left of the SNP, or should they try and take the SNP on in theposition that they occupy – which is as close to the Scottish equivalent to NewLabour as you can get. I personallythink they would get more millage from being slightly to the left of theSNP. Has there been that debate? No.

It’s a pity becauseScottish Labour doesn’t really understand the hole that it is in – and the contributorsto that blog are completely oblivious to the fate that their party is sleepwalking towards. It certainly doesn’thelp that most posts contain a deeply unpleasant streak – a sneering arrogantveneer directed at not the Tories… goodgod no not them I mean its not as if they are single handed doing seriousdamage to the country… but at thecurrent governing party in Scotland,the SNP.

There arecriticisms that can be made of the SNP government, a lot of them have appeared onthis blog. Almost every criticism madeby Labour Hame seems to be flippant at best. The post that inspired this post though includes the crime of notknowing Labour’s own economic policy. On 21 October, Jamie Glackin wrote:

“I’m fairly certain that most of the SNPwould believe that George Osborne’s economic policies are doing a lot of damageto Scotland.It’s now becoming obvious that choking growth through spending cuts are havingthe opposite effect on the deficit that they were designed to have.”

I didn’t post onecomment pointing out that Balls announced at the Labour conference that theynow went along with Osborne’s Scorched Earth cuts agenda – I posted three. All of them not published. My name wasn’t down, so I wasn’t allowed topost a valid comment. Maybe what got tothem was the realisation that Labour is no longer a left of centre party thatbelieves in Keynesian economics – New Labour believed in low personal taxation(with higher indirect taxation) allied to light touch regulation of thefinancial services – Thatcherism in all but name. Maybe my comments struck a chord. On the other hand, maybe they thought themirritating – how dare I come on to a Labour blog and criticise Labour.

While that post washaving a go at Salmond for bringing up Independence,the next post by a chap called Ian Smart was downright weird! This was a post that criticised Salmond, notfor Suprimecourt-gate or for lobbying for Corporation Tax powers, but for beinga bit crap at speech writing. Which isakin to saying Iain Gray, he’s a bit rubbish at hide and seek.

As discussed at thestart of this post, there are lots of things that should be on the minds ofScottish Labour. Making sure that theydo not make the same mistakes that led to May’s election defeat should beuppermost in people’s minds. Somehowthose mistakes are still being made, with constant criticisms of thegovernment’s policy on an Independencereferendum. Yet the constant focusing on the SNP government to the detriment oftheir own soul searching does not just let down the current members of Labourin Scotland,but everyone who still feels that they support Labour, thick and thin. Even though they are precisely the kind ofpeople left behind by New Labour.

TINA & The Slow Death Of The Union

2011-10-24T11:01:00.000+01:00

At the start ofSeptember, I did a post about the pro-Independence camp and the questions thatthey need to answer to win the Independencereferendum. Since that post, two thingshave happened that makes a yes vote possible.

The first is thatthere has now been two surveys published that show that more people support Independence that supportthe status quo. The first survey waspublished the week that my original post appeared, on September 5. This survey showed a lead for thepro-independence group of 1%. Variouspsepologists would point to this survey as being a rogue survey, with furtherpolling evidence required to see if this would be part of a trend.

A second pollarrived last weekend published in the Independence on Sunday, and showed that over the whole of the UKsupport for Independence for Scotlandretained that 1% lead. Looking at theScottish result of this poll – where the sample size was 176 – support for Independence sees a 12point lead. Maybe there is a new trend,maybe these polls are two rogues. Untilwe see any more polling evidence, the current position should be seen as anundetermined lead for the status quo camp – with a sizable minority in the“don’t know” camp.

The other thingthat has happened is that we have seen the party conference season come and go– with delegates for all parties trying to grapple with the huge economiccrisis that is unfolding. To try andshore up “New Labour” voters, Ed Balls had announced the acceptance of Osborne’sdeficit reduction agenda. Whatever the hoops that the two Edsfeel they need to jump through to make them look like a viable alternative tothe Cambot, I feel that this is a serious miscalculation.

Osborne’s ScorchedEarth policy is not popular here in Scotland, or elsewhere in thecountry. The only serious backer’s toOsborne are the bean counters and those who believe that the state has becomebloated and is ripe for trimming. While there are cuts that can be made – the wagesof council heads of service & the… ah… downsizing of the layer ofmanagement in the NHS. None of this ishappening, and worse none of this is being advocated by HM Opposition. Thiswould be criminal of Balls to ignore this in any case. Given that there is an unfolding scandalinvolving HMRC and their fondness of doing “sweetheart deals” with companies –deals which let them off paying their full tax liability in return for thedropping of charges and the payment of part of that tax liability – Balls lackof a prescience on this issue will certainly put off many left wing voters fromconsidering voting for Milliband the younger come the next WestminsterElection. However there is a calculationthat the two Ed’s (and come to think of it, the terminaly usless & infantile Labour Hame blog) have failed to take into account. That appearing to be more conservative thanthe Tories might win key marginal’s in Surrey, Middlesex and other parts of thehome counties, but this may well drive left wing voters in Scotland towards Independence.

The most repeatedphrase in the aftermath of the Holyrood election was something about the intelligenceof Scottish voters in recognising that this election was different to theGeneral Election & voting for a party on their record, and not as a protestagainst the Londongovernment. Yet there has been nodiscussion about whether those self same voters may make the calculation thatto see the policies they want enacted, that the three London parties are too similar to enact thosepolicies. Even more worryingly for thosevoters, Milliband has not seen the need to put enough clear red water betweenhis party and the coalition parties. Onthe other hand Balls has not been as vociferous about Osborne’s plans to relax tax avoidance as he should be. Therehave also been reports that Balls has been making speeches to the City thathave floated the idea of the return of the policy of “Light touch regulation” –a direct contradiction of his conference speech. Never mind being out of step with Scottishopinion, Balls is out of step with his own “supporters” – as we have seen withthe growth of the 99% movement.

During the inauguralHolyrood Election in 1999, Tommy Sheridan had a phrase he used to describe theother parties – “The red Tories, the blue Tories, the yellow Tories and thetartan Tories” – it was so good he used it again in 2003 (when the SNP – under Swinney- believed in Regan-omics and “trickle-down” economics). It was a phrase that encapsulated what manylapsed Labour voters thought of the political scene. Yet the perception behind that phrase couldbe the Achilles heel of the pro union parties. The calculation made by many Scots might not be “can we go it alone?”but “If you are all alike and there is no alternative, then what is youralternative to Independencethen?” If that is the case, then the Union has been sunk by Tina & Margaret.

Scotland's Greatest Album?

2011-10-11T09:59:00.000+01:00

Listeningto last weeks news coming from the Tory Party Conference was depressing anddispiriting. Rather than write a post,which will be re-cycled again and again in the months to come, I though I wouldwrite about something else that caught my eye. Last Tuesday, STV began a searchto try and find the 12 best singles/tracks produced by Scottish rock/popartistes, which is not as easy as it sounds and has the potential to stray intocontroversial grounds.

Lastweek’s show was centred on the best “Scottish” tracks of the 1970’s – and itdidn’t take long for the criteria to be set when the panel debated that mostScottish of Scottish acts – AC/DC. Ithink that they accepted what I dub the “Matt Elliott rule” – ie if you wereborn here or have members born here then you are in. Artists not born here, but like the originalMatt Elliott, have Scottish parentage must have been allowed in too – otherwisewhy was Rod Stewart on the list? However, I can see controversial exclusions in the weeks to come. Talking Heads (lead by Helensburgh born DavidByrne) were not discussed despite both “Psyco Killer” and “Life During Wartime”being released in the 70’s. Maybe either“Once In A Lifetime” or “Road To Nowhere” will crop up in the 80’s, it would bea shocking exclusion if they were not discussed.

Fromthe last decade, I suspect that there will be controversy surrounding two bandsin particular. In the angular heirs toTalking Heads/Magazine corner are Franz Ferdinand, the Scottish band who met inGlasgow and… er… only have one “Scottish” member (the drummer,Paul Thompson). In the beige mortgagerockers corner are Snow Patrol, the mystifyingly successful band who met andformed in Dundee who all hail from… er… Northern Ireland. “Take Me Out” or “Michael” are great lossesto this album, personally speaking “Chasing Cars” is not such a great loss.

Tonight’sshow is about the 80’s, which will be the toughest decade as this was thedecade that saw a flood of Scottish bands reach the charts – most of themheavily influenced by American soul tinged pop. I’d love to think that there will be some genuinely left field choices, I’dlove to see maybe the Cocteau Twins or maybe Goodbye Mr Mckenzie get a mention,especially with the self confessed former NME reader Pat Nevin in the panel. However I suspect that we will see thesebands edged out by the welter of Simple Mind’s, Hue & Cry’s and Wet Wet Wet’s.

Time on Cameron’s Side?

2011-10-03T09:59:00.000+01:00

The strange thing about this years party conference season is that all of the parties do not have their troubles to seek. While the Lib Dems suffered an electoral massacre in May’s elections, while Labour have been struggling to find a new direction post election defeat, The Tories have seen things begin to go against them. As a result, their conference at the G-Mex in Manchester provides an ideal opportunity to re-group.

The Tories were the clear winners in the May elections, they only dropped 3 seats at Holyrood (where they are at their lowest ebb anyway) but gained 85 councillors and won 4 councils in the local elections. The Icing on the cake was the defeat of the Lib Dems backed AV referendum. Yet since then, the Tories have not handled things as well as they could have. They were slow and ponderous in responding to the Phone hacking scandal and they were slow and ponderous in responding to the riots in English cities.Their reaction towards the current Euro-zone crisis shows the two stools nature of this government – they would love to say “I told you so” but saying so would not be appropriate real-politic.

Cameron’s biggest problem thought is to convince us that his, and his Chancellors, Plan A is working. The signs are not good, the economy is tanking due to decreased demand and to decreased liquidity in the economy. This has been compounded by the Tory Chairman of the Treasury select committee coming out and calling for “a coherent economic plan”. Yet both the Tories and Labour talk of the lack of growth as if it was a separate issue to the deficit reduction plans, and not a direct symptom of taking billions of pounds straight from the economy to plug the £1.2 trillion hole caused by baling out the banking sector. Interestingly enough, conservative activists believe that the best way to growth involve not cutting taxes at the bottom – which would stimulate spending at the bottom – but the reduction of business taxes and the reduction of regulations and “red tape”. One of the policies in this vein to be announced this week is a extension to tribunal rules – people will not be allowed to take employers to a tribunal unless they had been in their job for two years (the current rule is one year), this has its own issues regarding employment law.

Cameron’s other problem is that his party are becoming more and more convinced that Conservative values are becoming sacrificed at the alter of coalition government. He and his cabinet need to listen, vent some steam, but not antagonise either their coalition partners or the electorate, in much the same way the Lib Dem’s managed in Birmingham two weeks ago. One key flashpoint may very well be the attitude of both parties towards the Human Rights Act, Theresa May has indicated that she would like it to be scrapped.

Overall, I think the aim for the Conservative leadership will be to exude an air of calm, despite the choppy waters outside and on the horizon. With the next nationwide election (The Euro Elections) 30 months away, the Tories i think have time on their side. Yet with events beginning to cloud the Cameron agenda, the temptation is there to play to the party and adopt right wing positions on issues.

A Touch Of The Blair's

2011-09-27T22:00:00.000+01:00

Watching theMilliband speech today, two things struck me.

Firstly, Milliband,despite claiming to be his own man has touches of both his immediate predecessorsof him. He delivered his speech in akind of Blairesque fashion, all tactical pauses and hand gestures. Think of those thumb grasps that Blair usedto do all the time and you get the picture. Oh, and like Brown, Milliband is useless at telling gags – no concept oftiming at all.

Come to think ofit, there were two gags that were genuinely funny – both with Clegg as thetarget (“You know, the boundary review means his (Clegg’s) seat will berepresented by a Tory after the next election. No change there then.” And “But it wouldn't be responsible to makepromises I can't keep… that’s Nick Clegg's job.”). They certainly hit the markbetter than the nose gag’s.

The other thing wasthat for a speech supposedly left wing in tone, it was remarkably NewLabour-esque. The refusal to scrapTuition Fees, the refusal to reverse or to amend the governments scorched earthpolicy, the vow to cut VAT (“To put more money in people’s pockets” – ah socutting a tax on spending is going to put money in people’s pockets then?) and targetingBenefit cheats (“Where benefits are too easy to come by for those who don'tdeserve them and too low for those who do.” – true but are benefits cheatsworth more of a mention than certain companies who employ tax avoidance schemes)all had a New labour zest to them.

More worryingly,Milliband, like Balls, seems to believe that a lack of growth is not connectedto the governments Scorched Earth policy. A cut in VAT - a tax on spending - will not help, while extending theLib Dem’s policy of raising the tax threshold would be better suited to meetingMilliband’s target of putting more money into people’s pockets. What better way to vanquish the shamefuldecision of Brown to double taxes for the low paid in 2007. There was also no mention of the not fit for purposetax-haven policies of Osborne, or the not fit for purpose HMRC and it’s not fitfor purpose head Dave Hartnett.

Overall, firstimpressions are that Milliband has not done enough to stem the negativeperceptions of his stewardship. Not the game changer Milliband & Co need.

Turning Around The Milliband Drift

2011-09-26T09:59:00.000+01:00

While the Lib Dem’s last week coped with their position in the eyes of the electorate of being Tory human shields by… er… ignoring the problem, this week Labour face a not too dissimilar problem in that they have a negative public image of their party to deal with.

That’s not an entirely fair assessment of the Lib Dems’ conference. The problem with their policy announcements though is that several of them do fly in the face of coalition policy. The announcement of the recruitment of extra tax inspectors, for example, is more an exercise in the shuting of doors after George Osborne let the horses bolt away with the deal with Switzerland. The idea of raising the tax floor to the level of the minimum wage though is a good idea. Politicians, economists and bloggers wax lyrically about the Laffer curve affecting businesses and rich people, yet do not think about the positive consequences of cutting taxes at the lower level. Especially when you consider that low wage earners are more likely to buy goods that have taxes like VAT & various duties levelled on them. It’s certainly a better Idea than the temporary cut in the VAT rate floated by Milliband the younger yesterday.

This brings us to a party which was a definite looser in the May elections. They won council seats at the expense of the Lib Dems, but for a party to have aspirations to be elected into office come May 2015 the results were not good enough. They did return to minority government in Wales, but the worst results were the ones for the Holyrood elections. It is this result which has given them a huge headache, as it looks as if there will be an independence referendum at some point from 2014 onwards (7th May 2015 anyone?). This has resulted in a review, conducted by Sarah Boyak and Jim Murphy, which has made recommendations on the structures of “Scottish Labour”, because obviously Labour lost because of their out of date organisation and not because of their lack of policies.
Remarkably enough, Holyrood is not Labour’s biggest problem as they gather in Liverpool for their annual conference. Their biggest problem is that in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the last one, that Labour’s lead over the Tories in the polls is between 4-6%, with polling on various facets of Labour being less welcome. Most of these polls are concentrated on the performance of Ed Milliband in his first year. His overall approval rating is at -33, while only 18% of people questioned think that he has provided an effective opposition. Tellingly, only 19% think that Milliband would be up to the job as Prime Minister.

Being the opposition has not immunised Labour from the problems with the economy, with people still blaming Labour for the crash of 2007/8 (rather than blame them for allowing the conditions that led to the crash to arise). Yet Labour have failed to take the coalition to task for their scorched earth policy, perhaps because the Tories have plot a course similar to the course a re-elected Brown government would have taken. Whatever is the case, this week is key for Milliband, Balls and a host of other names in their quest to regain power in May 2015. Providing a viable alternative to Osborne’s scorched earth policy is something that really should have emerged by now, and probably needs to come out in the weeks ahead. Today, with Ball’s speech would be an ideal opportunity for this. Yet the signs are not good, with as I said earlier proposals for a temporary cut in the VAT rates.

In June, I spoke of the Milliband drift – where I argued that Milliband and his team do seem slow at trying to change perceptions of them and their policies. This is still the case despite Hacker-gate. I said that Milliband had at that point six months to turn his parties, and his fortunes around. Nothing has changed. Milliband & co still have at least until next years Budget to show that they can turn things around. This makes this week’s conference a key starting point for that revival.

The Rise of TINA

2011-09-21T19:40:00.000+01:00

Came across this rather interesting post yesterday about TINA from the excellent documentry maker Adam Curtis (he of the excelent "The Power of Nightmares" and more recently "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"). It is about the rise of think tanks and how while choice is at the heart of political policymakers, in reality there is no choice...

(Hat-tip: Tax Research UK blog)

A Post About The MacBlogosphere

2011-09-19T09:59:00.005+01:00

Sorry about the blogging hiatus, been busy over the past couple of weeks...

Firstly can I say that the news about the closure of both Planet Politics and the Will Patterson Notebook is not really welcome news in the Macbloggosphere. To lose two insightful and interesting bloggers is a sad loss to the Macbloggosphere.

Secondly, both of those blogs touched on the Total Politics annual poll (which I had missed). I wasn't expecting an appearance for this blog in the list (I think my misbehaving hard drive put paid to that!). Even so, a couple of the results were slightly perplexing, and the whole polling process seems like, ah what's the phrase... a quick and dirty exercise. The culling of the Scottish list to 25 (from 50 last year) also seems unsatisfactory considering the "cottage industry" nature of the Macbloggosphere. Still, that shouldn't detract from the sucesses of the MacBlogosphere,hearty congratulations to those at Better Nation towers for making the top ten on the Left Wing blogs list.

All in all, an unsatisfactory couple of days for the Macblogosphere.

The Referendum & Where It Can Be Lost

2011-09-05T10:59:00.004+01:00

In the aftermath of the Scottish Election, commentators were beginning to hedge their bets on the outcome of the likely Independence referendum. Despite the polling evidence still showing a majority against Independence, commentators were now saying that Salmond could pull of a referendum win. In the 17 weeks since polling, despite the talk about Independence in the media and the Macblogosphere, the SNP have not seriously began to tackle the issues that will lead to a yes vote. This leads me to think that at the moment, the referendum will either result in a No vote, or will not take place at all.

The key battleground will of course be that well worn battleground of General Elections, the Economy. Conventional wisdom dictates that Scotland is reliant on the block grant that it receives from Westminster, it is reliant on money that flows here through employment and deployment of resources here. That deployment of government departments here in Scotland is what Unionists describe as “The Union Dividend”, and goes as far back as the empire building of Tom Johnstone from the 1940’s and 50’s up to the empire building of Ernie Ross in the 1970’s. Yet the unearthing of the Crone report from the 1970’s should at least plant the seed of doubt over this idea. Recent reports, such as the GEARS report should also have torpedoed this idea too.

Yet the Idea remains that Scotland cannot possibly exist outwith the Union. It’s not just this country that this Idea is seen as the truth, as has been pointed out elsewhere this idea pops up in Simon Kuper’s breakthrough book “Football Against The Enemy”. In a chapter dubbed “Barcelona and the Scottish Question”, the Catalan economist Jordi Torrebadella told Kuper “Catalonia is the most powerful nation without a state in Europe… you can’t compare us to Scotland because we’re far more powerful within our state than Scotland is in the UK. We subsidize the rest of Spain, whereas Scotland is subsidized by England”.

Yet the SNP’s lack of success in being able to spin these figures to their advantage highlights a serious flaw in the SNP armoury, in the same way that both GARL & the release of Megrahi was badly handled during their first term. You would have thought that undermining this orthodoxy would have been seen within the SNP as being crucial to the success of the referendum. Instead of doing this, the SNP has launched power grabs on more powers for the Scottish parliament (after pointedly ignoring the Calman Commission) and indulged in an ill judged attack on the UK Supreme Court, whether they were parking their tanks on the Scottish Government’s lawn or not, there was a valid reason for their judgement. This tactic will do the SNP harm further down the road to the referendum. Further down the road, I can see Labour’s attack dogs intimating that the SNP are against reforming Scottish law for the benefit of the poor & gaining an electoral benefit precisely because of this tactic.

The other area where the SNP may well come unstuck is the rather surprising area of sovereignty. The SNP’s policy is to take an Independent Scotland straight into the European Union, do not pass go and do not stop for a referendum on the matter. The irony of the SNP possibly taking Scotland from a union of 4 countries where we send 59 representatives to taking an independent Scotland straight into a union of 24 countries where at best we would send maybe 15 representatives to an assembly that is the very definition of Gravy Train. Stuart Winton’s excellent guest post for Better Nation (sort of ripped off on Labour Hame, and reiterated in his own Planet Politics blog) highlighted this paradox. Yet the SNP hierarchy seem either to be blithely unaware of this paradox, ignorant of it or intend to carry on regardless in the belief that they are right to take Scotland into the EU, and possibly into the basket case that is the euro-zone. A key argument for Independence is that Scotland is not too wee, too poor and too rubbish to run its own affairs – the jibe against unionists by independence supporters is that they believe that Scotland is too wee & too poor to succeed.

An independent Scotland in Europe would not have that much more powers than Scotland has as part of the United Kingdom, given that Ireland were given the cold shoulder for their aggressive corporation tax policy by the other European Union leaders. With the current Euro-crisis, closer economic union looks to be the preferred route to salvation with Sarkosy and Merkel talking about an EU treasury. Yet that would mean fewer powers retained by sovereign states. Any future finance minister in an Independent Scotland within the EU would be doing the job with one hand tied behind their back.

A way out of this cul-de-sac would be for it to be enshrined in the nascent Scottish constitution that any amendment to this constitution must be subject to referendum. Then again, given the humiliation suffered by Brian Cowen (the former Irish Taoiseach) at the hands of the other EU leaders after Ireland voted against the Lisbon Treaty, who would want that?

Sovereignty seems to be a double whammy for the SNP, for the other issue that will be troublesome for them is their policy of keeping Mrs Saxe-Coburg/Windsor & her family in their position as… ummm… well what do they do? Opinion polls show that Scotland is the most republican part of the UK, we do not like the privilege, the trappings and those other things that the Royal family represent, even more so in a time of supposed austerity. Yet Salmond is keen to retain them if Scotland becomes Independent and sees no need to dispense with their, er, services. This does not square with the ideal of a fairer Scotland, where the concept of a hereditary figurehead for the country would be anthemia for a large part of the country.

Again Salmond could promise a referendum on this subject further down the line. However, there seems to be no sign of this. This is an issue that could be brought up by republican Labour MP’s, it could also appear as a dog-whistle issue and crucially this is an issue that could gain traction within the still large left wing constituency within Scotland.

In the aftermath of the SNP’s election win, commentators were falling over themselves to claim that this win would lead to a referendum win, or at the very least a no vote was being talked down in the face of Salmond’s campaigning skill. Very little mention was given to the merits, or lack of merits, of Salmond’s opponents. Salmond will not be able to duck and dive avoiding the questions in the same manner come the referendum. The SNP will have to come out and tackle the obstacles and self built roadblocks before victory can be considered a possibility. Until that happens, a no vote remains a certainty.

The Crisis that Hasn't Gone Away

2011-09-02T02:00:00.000+01:00

We like justice,justice is good. Yet the sentences beinghanded out to the rioters do not sit right. Feel free to throw the book at them, though I don’t think putting peoplebehind bar’s is enough of a punishment. No, the real problem with the sentences is that whatever the governmentsays and thinks, whatever right wing commentators say, the rioters are beingpicked out and picked on.

Sure the riotersdeserve the sentences given. But askyourself this, why only five politicians have been prosecuted for fraudulentlyclaiming for expenses (I can think of at least three former cabinet ministerswho should have been charged for “flipping”)? More pertinent to the current news about Banking reforms is the questionof why Goodwin and McKillop have not faced charges of criminal negligence overthe take-over of ABN Amro.

To recap, the RoyalBank of Scotlandwon the race to buy the Dutch bank ABN Amro in 2007 to the acclaim of allsides, Salmond, McConnell and the prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown. Barclay’shas also shown an interest in the bank, but pulled out leaving the field clearfor RBS. No one questioned the haste ofthe deal, or the speed that the deal was being rushed through… at least until it was “discovered” that ABNAmro was swimming in debt, having been exposed to US Sub-prime debt. You would have thought that Goodwin &McKillop would have had an inkling of the debt problem that the Dutch bank had. Maybe Barclay’s did? After all, there was no clear reason for thempulling stumps. Then again, Goodwin wassomewhat engaged in what could be described as Ugandan affairs at the time.

Bankers and theevents of 2007-8 have crept back into the news with the publication next weekof the Vickers Report into the Banking Crisis, with the beginnings of askirmish about when to implement its findings. Also there have been leaks from the memoirs of Alistair Darling “Back From The Brink: 1000 Days at Number 11”. In it Darling confirms that Brown wanted tosack him in the post Euro-Election reshuffle of 2009, he described Brown as “Brutal& volcanic”. He also confirmed thatboth he and Brown wanted to sack the governor of the Bank of England, MervynKing, but couldn’t find a replacement. It is also alleged that Darling thought that "My worry was that they (the bankers) were so arrogant and stupid thatthey might bring us all down". So far, so rewriting of history. If they were worried about the bankers, why didn’t they take them on? After all Paul Myers did grant Goodwin hismegabucks pension.

The Lib Dems promisedto take them on at the last Election. Asa result of the coalition talks we have The Vickers Report, which is rumouredto be proposing the separation of “casino” banking from normal high streetbanking. While we do not know what thereport is going to propose, that has not stopped the debate into when thefindings should be implemented. The CBIclaimed that because of the slowdown in the economy, this makes it difficult toimplement these findings at that point, with their Director General JohnCridland saying “We're going to have amajor problem if growth stagnates, and at that point, my businesses being ableto get cash from their banks is critical. Anything which makes it harder for banks to keep the wheels of theeconomy well-oiled is not good timing."

This has promptedthe Banks to also ask for the proposals to be deferred, with Angela Knight theformer Tory MP for Erewash and current Chief Executive of the British BankersAssociation saying that banks should be allowed to "finance the recovery first, pay back the taxpayer next and only thenset about reform. If more regulationremains at the top of the list, then this will only have the affect of riskingthe recovery which is so essential to our future”. While this outlook will suit the Tories, whowould rather like these proposals to be kicked into the long grass, the LibDems would rather like these proposals to be implemented as soon as possible. As has been pointed out on this blog before,the failure of Gordon Brown’s time in government was the regulatory malfunctionthat was started when we was at the treasury. The current government are not showing any signs of knowing how tore-constitute the regulatory frame-work.

Of the three crisis’sto envelop British life in recent years, the crisis that engulfed British banksand the finance sector came first. Yetwhile we see the list of charged rioters from August mount, we see no sign ofany criminal investigation into the actions of the bankers. There has been no sign of a full inquiry intothe regulatory failures and there has been no sign of our politicians from anyside standing up to the bankers. Inshort, nothing has really changed since 2008. Ed Balls is even making speeches in the City promising a return to thedays of light touch regulation. Sorry,not good enough. Tougher regulation isrequired, preferably as quickly as possible. After all, our politicians face being tarred with the brush of beingsoft on financial crime and soft on the causes of financial crime.

How To Discourage People From Coming To Your City

2011-08-28T19:59:00.001+01:00

Watching Scotland’s three representatives in the Europa League fall before the competition proper started was depressing & dispiriting. Yet it wasn’t as depressing as the shockingly small minded and short termist decision made by Edinburgh City Council over the trams debacle.

To be fair to this lot, they have form with terrible decisions on this project. Whether it is their choice of contractor or whether it is the contract decisions, Edinburgh City Council have not covered themselves in glory with this project. Come to think of it, not very many of Scotland’s politicians have covered themselves in glory with calls for a public inquiry. The terms of which must look into how a local council made such a balls up.

What this cock up will do is put our leaders off of any kind of transport projects, unless it relates to roads. Rather than be put off of these kind of projects, Scotland needs more of these kind of projects. Take for example Glasgow. To the uninitiated pedestrian, it is not the most accessible place to get around. A certain amount of local knowledge is needed to get around Glasgow, what number of bus to get or where exactly the Underground stations are. Before the mishandled Trams project in Edinburgh, a route from east to west and a route from north to south would have been conceivable.

Not just Glasgow. It is shocking that a town the size of Paisley does not have a single transport hub. East Kilbride has a bus station, which is fairly easy to use and find busses that will take you to where you want to go. Yet Paisley, which is now struggling to hold on to it’s status as Scotland’s largest town has no such facility. With the added element of their busses effectively stopping after about 7pm, city – you’re having a laugh!

When I visited Manchester (above) to see Depeche Mode just before Christmas 2009, I was very impressed with how easy it was to get around the city. The trams were easy to use, there was a bus that took us from the train station to the Arndale Centre, and there were no sullen drivers spitting “Twoseventyfiiiivvve” at you. All in all, a very pleasant experience which is the way it should be. Yet I don’t remember headlines about how over budget the Manchester tram’s were, I don’t remember stories about how badly run the building of the trams were. Indeed the trams are undergoing an expansion programme. Go to places like Amsterdam, Munich or Berlin and it’s exactly the same thing. So what’s the problem Edinburgh?

For a country that relies so much on tourism, we show no desire to improve the transport infrastructure – which would attract more visitors & help those of us that stay here. Even the other project our politicians were very keen on – the Glasgow Airport Rail Link – showed a distinct lack of thought. Had it been a proposal to link up Glasgow Airport to Govan, Braehead Shopping Centre and Renfrew it would have been much more beneficial to those communities and to the West of Scotland as a whole than an express service between Glasgow & the Airport.

There are transport projects that are desirable that would help people to get around our towns and cities that little bit easier. Those projects are the true victims of Edinburgh City Councils ineptitude, as it will now be just that little bit more difficult to get those projects off the ground.

If It's August, It Must Be Time To Discuss Megrahi (Again)

2011-08-24T09:59:00.001+01:00

There are several key indicators that summer is coming to an end. The football is back, Scottish clubs have embarrassed themselves in European competition, the Oval test match, the silly season and, most of all, talk about how stupid/reckless/immoral/brave/honourable (delete where applicable) Kenny MacAskill was in releasing the man (left) convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The latest instalment comes with the background of the ongoing Arab Spring claiming the West’s favourite pantomime dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, as it’s latest victim. The latest flaring up of this uprising has forced that decision back on to the news cycles as Senators Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and the US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Mitt???) have all called for Megrahi not to be brought back to Scotland, but to be brought to the USA for trial.

While those noises continue to rumble from across the pond, a look at Lalland Peat Worrier’s post on the subject makes the point that this claim would contravene the fifth amendment of the United States constitution; our own government continues to dig a deeper hole with its scant mistrust of Holyrood. Hague, when questioned about Megrahi said “It was, of course, a matter for the Scottish executive (sic)... and so it's not a matter I can control, but if I was a Scottish minister rather than a UK minister I would be looking to urgently review the situation to see what I could do about it."

The utterly galling aspect of this is that all this discussion ignores the very large elephant in the room, that there are severe doubts about the veracity of the conviction. There is doubt about the route of the bomb into Heathrow, there is doubt about the identification of Megrahi and there is doubt about what type of detonator was used in the bomb. Wherever you look at the case, there is flimsy evidence against Megrahi creaking under the weight of evidence pointing to Megrahi’s innocence. There’s even room for MacAskill’s favourite legal tactic, the prosecution withholding evidence – in this case the break in at Heathrow on the morning of the bombing which was not revealed until September 2001.

It’s for these reasons that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission are rumoured to be set to release a report casting doubt on the conviction of Megrahi. The American politicians you would expect to be ignorant of this, however for Hague to not take this into account before opening his mouth does not seem like the actions of a senior cabinet minister. Then again, you can probably guess my opinion of this government.

However the fear is that Megrahi will not live to see his name being cleared. Not from the Cancer, but from zealous spooks keen to keep the truth from emerging. When thinking about this one should bear in mind the quote from the American senators speaking after a meeting of the British victims of Lockerbie “Your government and our government know exactly what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you”. One hopes that if a stable Libya emerges, that the day of truth also comes closer.

Some Quotes That Occured To Me About This Week

2011-08-11T20:30:00.000+01:00

“They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation” – Thatch, September 1987

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit” – Gordon Gekko “Wall Street” (1987)

“Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime” – Tony Blair, April 1994

“I only wanted something else to do but hang around” – The Pet Shop Boys “Suburbia” – September 1986

“Imagine you are 14 years old, and you live in a flat four stories up. It’s the summer holidays and you don’t have any pocket money. That’s your life… you hang about the streets and you look bored bored bored. And you look around you. Who isn’t bored? Who isn’t hanging around because they don’t have any money?” – David Cameron, July 2006

“The handwringing apologists on the left relish the opportunity to try to blame the violence on poverty, social depravation and a disaffected black youth. To blame the cuts is immoral and cynical” – The Daily Mail 10 August 2011

“No Future, no future, no future for you” – The Sex Pistols “God Save The Queen” - June 1977

Hackergate Comes to Holyrood for A Day

2011-08-06T16:59:00.003+01:00

This week saw the Scottish government attempt to distance themselves from the hackergate scandal threatening to engulf the government at Westminster. By disclosing correspondence & meetings, the SNP hope that this will put the matter to rest. With hindsight, it does not look particularly good for Salmond.

The disclosures revealed that Salmond first met the Dirty Digger in October 2007, with Salmond writing afterwards “I enjoyed our conversation and, as ever, found your views both insightful and stimulating”. Salmond also invited the Digger to the Ryder Cup at Kentucky as part of a Scottish delegation (Murdoch, probably showing more political nous than Salmond at this point declined this invitation) and also to The Gathering, the centrepiece of the Year of Homecoming events – in the hope of securing television coverage on BSkyB. Salmond also met the son of Digger, James Murdoch in January of this year, ostensibly to discuss “business opportunities for BSkyB in Scotland”. Whether this evolved into a conversation about what will happen during the election is anyone’s guess.

It’s wrong for SNP supporters to claim that there can be nothing suspicious about Salmond’s meetings with the Murdoch’s because the Scottish Government do not hold the same powers over broadcasting & culture that Westminster does. What the Scottish Government can do is pull limited economic levers in relation to business rates. We can also speculate that maybe a future Scottish Government could entice NI to move to Glasgow lock stock and barrel because of the “excellent” corporation tax rates that the SNP are keen to put into place. I’m not saying that will happen, it is just a possible scenario.

The difference between the SNP’s handling and Labour’s handling has been night and day, which shows that Labour haven’t learned from May. While the SNP have at least been proactive in trying to convince us that nothing untoward happened, Labour have invited us to think in cynical terms about the SNP. If we are to do this, let’s extend that cynical thought process to a party who enjoyed the support of the Digger for 12 years before the acrimonious split in 2009, who haven’t exactly been so forthcoming about their own meetings with Murdoch, NI or BSkyB. What meetings did Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell enjoy with the Murdochs?

Labour have been happy to throw the mud around, but have been less than happy to disclose any of their own meetings. If Labour are happy to ask us to believe that Salmond supped with the devil, to garner the approval of News International, perhaps we should ask what shape or form the pound of flesh took to pay for, say the noose front page from 3 May 2007? Or did the Blair government pick up that particular tab? After all Rebeckah Wade (as she was at the time) thought of the prime minister as “her Tony”.

Move Along, You've Had Your Fun

2011-07-26T11:59:00.001+01:00

I know that the Conservatives are keen on seeing the Phone-hacking story disappear from the news cycle, but on Newsnicht on Thursday Gordon Brewer looked like he was willing the Phonehacking story to disappear (ironically enough, he will have got his wish with the Norwegen terrorist attacks and another inductee to what Mrs Cobain called “The Stupid Club”). While the possible collapse of the Euro and the unfolding crisis in Somalia are weighty news stories, it’s still wrong for politicians and journalists to will us to concentrate on these matters, like stern teachers.

Yet, last weeks events have signalled an end to the first phase of this scandal. It was right that after the Murdoch’s & Rebeckah Brooks appeared before the Media select committee and Cameron made his statement before Parliament that there should be an end of a chapter feel. We now await the police’s findings and any proposed prosecutions. Phone hacking itself will disappear back to the backburner, unless new revelations are unearthed involving NI or more likely from other newspapers like those under Trinity Mirror or the Daily Mail (who lets not forget according to the What Price Privacy Now report were the biggest clients for illegally obtained personal data).

The focus of this story will possibly now shift to the events surrounding the proposed buy-out of BSkyB by NI. Before the scandal broke, Jeremy Hunt was due to wave the bid through – giving NI the green light to bid for the satellite company. All that changed with the scandal and now attention has switched to what conversations went on between Cameron, Hunt & Murdoch since Cable was stripped of his role in December. At the debate on Wednesday, Cameron said that he had no “inappropriate conversations” in relation to this subject. Jeremy Hunt contradicted this by saying that “the discussions the prime minister had on the BSkyB deal were irrelevant”.

It is interesting to note that despite the rush to refer the deal to OFCOM, and the faith everyone places on that regulator regarding a “fit & proper” rule to holding a licence to run a television company. Private Eye have noted that OFCOM have not applied these “fit & proper” rules in the past – most recently in the case of the acquisition of Channel 5 by Britain’s pornographer in chief (and owner of the Daily Star & Daily Express) Richard Desmond. The suspicion here is that OFCOM would have waved this deal through as well

Cameron’s performance last week only really limited the damage to him. Had he suffered as he has done in PMQ’s of late, or had Miliband pitched his response a little better (been a bit more subtle), then the speculation about Cameron’s future may well have grown. As it is, Cameron should be safe until the Conservatives convene for their conference in Manchester, which makes conference season an interesting one. But to return to the point made at the start, yes there are stories that deserve our attention, it’s just that Phonehacking and NI’s attempt to pervert the course of democracy is one of them, and should not be dismissed so easily by people with vested interests.

Like A Twisty Spindly Thing...

2011-07-19T08:59:00.003+01:00

Hackergate just keeps on running & running. Just when I thought that the story would run out of steam after the resignation on Friday of Rebekah Brooks & the withdrawal of News Corporation from their bid to buy BSkyB, there came the twin resignations of Paul Stevenson & John Yates.

The strange thing is that both men, from the outside, didn’t appear under that much pressure to resign. Yes, there were issues surrounding both men’s closeness to News International (see the previous post), and the story that Stevenson had accepted “Thousands of pounds worth of free accommodation at a health spa” had not gained “traction” (despite the appearance once again of Neil Wallis). Despite this, the announcements on Sunday night and yesterday afternoon do appear strange in the circumstances to say the least.

This should make today very interesting to say the least. Both men are due up in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee, while both The Dirty Digger & little Digger are up in front of the Media & Culture Select Committee. What the four men say (Brooks is also appearing, but is fully expected to say “No comment” for sub judice reasons), may go a long way to determining the next direction this story will go in, maybe even in the direction of the Prime Minister.

Some Thoughts About The Passing of "The Screws"

2011-07-07T20:59:00.002+01:00

As predicted earlier, things have changed. As a result after this Sunday, the News of The Screws is no more. Murdoch has clearly sacrificed his biggest selling Sunday newspaper, in order to draw a line under this scandal. If it works, expect Jeremy Hunt to give the go ahead for the buy-out of BSkyB after the Summer recess. If it doesn't, Murdoch, Brooks, cameron & Hunt are in more trouble than they though...

However, the issues in relation to alledged police corruption have come to the fore. There are two interesting snippets that deserve to be picked up by the mainstream media, see what you think.

1) Both the Deputy Commissioner of the Metripolitan Police Paul Stevenson & Inspector Yates had dinner with the Screws deputy editor Neil Wallis in 2006, at the time of the first phone hacking investigation. Yates also dined with the current Screws editor Colin Myler & their crime editor Lucy Panton in November 2009, not long after the decision not to re-open the Phone hacking investigation was taken.

2) Andy Hayman, the former assistant commissioner to the Metrepolitan police was the main investigating officer for the first enquiry into phone hacking. Hayman left the Met in 2007 and now works for... News International as a columnist for The Times.

(Hat-tip: Private Eye issue 1286)

Getting Rid Of The Phone-Hacking Scandal

2011-07-07T09:59:00.002+01:00

It has taken four years to come to some sort of denouement but on Monday night the whole phone-hacking scandal exploded out of the Westminster bubble with the revelations that the private eye Glenn Mulcare hacked into the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, days after she went missing. Yesterday the banks burst as revelation came after revelation, with other victims of crimes finding that they too had their phones hacked by Mr Mulcare. The revelations have proved to be so shocking, that the News International Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks has a new nickname. Toast.

The sense that the red top tabloids are out of control, in particular the News of the Screws, is not new. We have been here before urging controls on the conduct of the press. Remember the days after the death of the Princess of Wales. The press acted contrite, and the mid market tabloids vowed to never use pictures from paparazzi again. Well that lasted didn’t it. This isn’t very different, remember the public weren’t interested when it was the likes of Sienna Miller and Hugh Grant being hacked. After all, they are celebrities, they are fair game aren’t they? They might have very famous jobs, but that does not make them fair game.

People have said that this is the product of a macho news-room mentality. Sorry, but all news-rooms have a macho mentality. Kelvin MacKenzie was no shrinking violet when he edited The S*n from 1981 onwards, while several of today’s editors have a reputation for being serious swearers. What this is a product of is the voracious appetite for flim flam & gossip dressed up as news, cleaned up and put out there in a very short space of time with very little time spent checking.

What is ironic is how this has blown up so soon since the controversy surrounding Super-injunctions was news. As we have discussed before, the stories being pursued by the red-tops were very much of the “no sex please” variety, the stories very much in the public interest were ignored. This mind-set is very much in evidence here, and does the case for greater press freedoms no favours.

The other great irony is that this has exploded just as deliberations are due to end regarding News International’s proposed buy-out of BSkyB. There are two on-line petitions running against this proposed sale (see the links below to 38degrees and Avaaz petitions). I think that News International have shown themselves to be unfit for full ownership of this company. However I think that when Jeremy Hunt announces his decision, he will announce that he has no objections to NI buying BSkyB. He’ll fluster and bluster his way through, but the real reasons are obvious. Cameron still owes Murdoch for The S*n’s support at the last elections. He and Hunt wrote columns in the summer of 2009 promising to curb the BBC and to abolish OFCOM. The BBC have been curbed, through cuts to funding. OFCOM however survives, so the Digger probably feels that this particular chip should be cashed instead.

Yet Milliband the Younger is also tainted by association. He has been on the attack for the past couple of days, but with all the conviction of a huffy teenager being torn away from his Playstation. Perhaps it was the influence of his Spin Doctor, the former News International employee Tom Baldwin. He was perfectly happy to attack Brooks – a fan of Blair – but pulled his punches today at PMQ’s.

Murdoch, Cameron, Hunt, Brooks and to a certain extent Milliband make up a powerful quintet. All more or less would like this to go away, Cameron has already announced an inquiry – a sure-fire way to kick the subject into the long grass. The Independent has said that this is the opportunity to curb Murdoch’s powers. Bearing in mind how much influence Murdoch still holds which is less than what Cameron & Milliband think he has, I suspect that those two will still try to keep the Digger onside. Things will change because of this, Brooks might be a casualty. But as the saying goes, the more things change the more things stay the same.

Sign the petition here, or here

Resisting The Urge To Say I Told You So

2011-07-05T11:59:00.001+01:00

"I told you I was good at Monoply"

Private Eye has several nicknames for politicians which over time have proved to be accurate parodies of their subject. The Grocer (Heath) and the Vicar (Blair) to go with their targets in Fleet Street Brillo-pad (Andrew Neil), Thirsty (Will Lewis, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph and News International executive who is rumoured to be Robert Peston’s source for NI stories) and Bighead for Mary Ann Sieghart. That last one, on her appearances on Question Time, I thought was a little unfair. Until yesterday when her column in the Independent was essentially a page saying I told you so about the Euro.

The true subject of her ire was those politicians who all thought that joining the Euro was such a good idea. Blair, Kenneth Clarke, Mandelson, Heseltine, Clegg, Huhne and Alexander (Danny?, Douglas?) were all in her sights as she asked why, since the Euro was such a disaster none of those mentioned had felt the urge to apologise.

Yep, the arguments for the Euro were sound ones. Conversion costs would be removed and costs would become more transparent. However, the arguments against the Euro overshadow any advantages to joining. Even more so since the wholesale failure of the banking system four years ago.

What is interesting though is that thinking back to the Major government, most of the prominent Euro-sceptics were on the right of the Tory party. The main argument against entry to the Euro was that it would be a loss of sovereignty, it would see the removal of economic levers and see them transferred to Brussels/Frankfurt. In short, we’re English we know best. I don’t remember the economic reasoning being very high up in the mix. The threat of monetary union being followed by political & fiscal union was being talked up (fiscal union is already with Eurozone members, witness Ireland’s treatment when they pursued their policy of aggressive Corporation Tax rates), however the arguments that bigger countries would bail out poorer countries and that some sort of external shock would hit smaller countries causing some sort of dislocation were not the arguments keenly pursued at the time.

This is ironic for two reasons. Firstly, the first act of the next government’s (ie Blair’s first government) leading Eurosceptic (even though he never came out as one) was to remove some of those levers and hand them over, not to Frankfurt but to Threadneedle Street. Brown was perfectly happy to remove political influence from decision making on Interest rates.

Secondly, the promoters of the Thatcher vision of Freedman economics cannot be found in the various parliaments across Europe, or in high offices. Nope, the keenest promoters of Thatcherism in Europe are working for the European Central Bank and for the EU. How else can you explain the list of terms & conditions attached to the Greek loan, including privatisation of their public services on a more radical scale than that attempted by Thatcher, Lawson & co in the mid 80’s, with no clause forcing tightening of their tax laws. The Shock Doctrine is alive and well in Europe.

Sieghart’s closing shot – “How dare they sneer at us for being little Englander’s or xenophobic when we could just see that the economics were so obviously wrong” shows how much of the pre-Blair era has been forgotten. Most of the right wing Euro-sceptics, the much praised Jimmy Fishpaste (to use another Private Eye nickname, for James Goldsmith) were perfectly happy to use rhetoric that made them look like little Englanders. The people espousing the economic argument against entering the Euro were Tony Benn and Peter Shore, Euro-sceptic members of Harold Wilson & James Callaghan’s cabinet from 20 years previously.

Parallel to all of this is of course that the arguments about sovereignty have been re-ignited here in Scotland because of the Independence referendum, with the SNP favouring entry to the EU for an independent Scotland. If the economics were “so obviously wrong”, no one has told the SNP. Yet those same independence supporters who are pro-EU should really take note of what is happening across the water, not just in Greece or Ireland, but in Portugal and Spain. The real paradox is that an independent Scotland fully signed up to the EU and the Eurozone would be too wee and too helpless to deal with the current crisis, while a fully independent Scotland outwith the EU could conceivably survive & flourish.

The End Of The SNP Bandwagon

2011-07-02T16:59:00.008+01:00

Labour won the Inverclyde By-election on Thursday by 5,838 votes, down from the majority of over 14,000 David Cairns won by 14 months ago. It was a bigger win than was anticipated, even though there was a swing of under 9% to the SNP. Turnout was 45%, down by under 18% from the General Election (not great but not as bad as other By-Elections). However once again the SNP have failed to capitalise on an opportunity presented to them by their opponents.

The centrepiece of the campaign was jobs, and both of the main candidates were promising to campaign on the platform of trying to provide jobs for a severely deprived area. Yet the Labour candidate, Iain McKenzie ducked and dived over the activities of the Council he (now) previously led. For he failed to give any concrete assurances that there would be no redundances at Inverclyde Council. I suppose it's someone elses problem now.

Had this been a Holyrood by-election, I think the SNP would have won this election hands down, like they did last month. The problem for the SNP, and this has been a problem for them since Devolution, is that they don't really have a diferent narative for Westminster elections. They ran a good campaign, focused on job prospects of the area, and put pressure on the Labour challenger. Yet Anne McLaughlin (or the blogger also known as Indygal) lost by a larger margin than I think she deserved.

I think what this result emphasises is that Labour have the well worked out narative that play's well in Westminster elections, and that the SNP have still to work out how to play Westminster elections. The mantra of "It's only Labour that can stop the (evil) Tories" still resonates in terms of sending representitives to Westminster. For Holyrood elections, the exact reverse is true, that the SNP have worked out a winning narative and Labour are left floundering (as has been discussed ad nausium).

Of course, this might all be bunkum. That what this result has told us is that despite Salmond's claims of a new nation, when it comes to Westminster elections people in the west coast former working class areas still cling to their favourtie comfort blanket. Rather than indicate the end of the SNP bandwagon, as McKenzie and other members of the Labour heirarchy indicated, it might have given the SNP a rather timely reality check.

The Miliband Drift

2011-06-30T15:59:00.001+01:00

I am currently reading Andrew Marr’s “History of Modern Britain” book. During the most recent part there is several pages given over to a figure that most Scots will have forgotten, or have been completely unaware of. Yet had he not died of a massive heart attack on the morning of May 12 1994, it might well have been John Smith striding up Downing Street just under three years later rather than his (at the time) Shadow Home Secretary.

I mention Smith because I seem to recall that he had a horrific baptism of fire as Labour leader, with a series of underwhelming performances in the House of Commons. I think that despite the unpopularity of the Major government, Smith did not really put behind him and the party the disappointment of the 1992 General Election defeat until he won the vote to adopt One Member One Vote at the Labour conference of 1993. So we had a party leader struggling to make an impression despite the government enacting unpopular policies. Sound familiar?

It’s not as if the Coalition government are particularly popular, its just that Milliband the younger (above) and his colleagues seem inept at changing people’s perceptions of what has happened. As a result the perceived wisdom has been that the deficit has been caused by Labour overspending, and that this is the reason for Osborne’s Scorched Earth Policy, where nothing is immune from cuts. This perception has resulted in public support for Osborne’s Scorched Earth policy. Of course, the truth is slightly different in that there is the absence of the estimated £1.2 Trillion in spending on baling out the failing banking sector. New Labour used to have a unit to combat this kind of spin, the rapid rebuttal unit. It looks to have gone to seed if this kind of untruth has become perceived wisdom.

That’s not the only problem with the current positioning of Labour. While I can understand their reasoning, their stance on the public service strikes taking place today is somewhat puzzling and a little worrying. Yes, there is an element of picking the fights that will cause the coalition damage, and yes there is public disquiet about “Gold Plated” pensions (© Nick Clegg 2010). However, there are a lot of people who will suffer because of the way these reforms have been structured. New Labour’s tactic of sitting on their hands will not go down well, and shows an element of fear. Fear of “Swing” voters and fear of what the New Labour/Blairite constituency will think of politicians siding with the troublesome Unions.

There are other examples of the Miliband drift as well, the one that is most deserving of exposure is the attitude of his shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, that “Light Touch Regulation” is an ideal to return to. Balls, it seems has been making speeches intimating a return to the policies that led to the credit crunch/financial shocks of 2007-09, and the subsequent recession. These speeches are mostly to city insiders, but it does seem that lessons have not been learned.

This is not a critique of Ed Miliband himself, more one of the Labour hierarchy and the schoolboy errors they have made since the election. To go back to the comparison with John Smith, Milliband the younger is incredibly fortunate not to have someone as formidable in his team as Gordon Brown, Tony Blair or Robin Cook. I suspect that if he had, then his position would be much more precarious than it currently is. As it is, the next six months are crucial to Labour’s chances for 2015.

Never Again

2011-06-23T10:30:00.003+01:00

“In 1983 the United States of America went to war against the tiny Caribbean island of Greneda. This, however, was a far more equal battle than the British General Election of the same year. It was said that the Labour campaign started badly and then fell away, but this is being generous. It was the worst campaign in electoral history, and it hurt to watch it. There are various things that can lose a party votes in elections. You might have a leader who does not look like prime ministerial material, you might have a manifesto that alienates many of the electorate, you might have a hostile media, you might appear hopelessly divided as a political party, or your campaign might be poorly organised and unfocused. Or, like Labour in 1983, you might manage all of the above” – extract from “Things Can Only Get Better” by John O’Farrell

Yep, the events leading up to June 9 1983 is something seared into the consciousness of every Labour supporter, so much so that they vowed never again. So why did it happen again last month with the Holyrood elections? Leader that didn’t look First Minister material – check, though Grey was a dab hand at jumping into sandwich shops. Manifesto that alienates many of the electorate - well what manifesto apart from the pledges stolen from the SNP. Hostile media - are you kidding! Yoda that resides in my bookcase is more hostile than most of the political “interrogators” within the Scottish media (Isobel Fraser apart). Hopelessly divided – I don’t think any of the shadow cabinet has the intelligence to voice a different point of view from their leader. Poorly organised & unfocused campaign – check. In spades.

Labours rank performance has returned to the public consciousness as a report has been published looking into the details of who voted for what party on May 5. It showed that the SNP hovered up working class voters and voters from all religious groups, with more “Catholic” voters opting to vote SNP than Labour for the first time. Working class voters & “Catholic” voters were previously seen as the bedrock of Labour support. What this survey also showed was that the lie being peddled by Labour on election night, that the SNP were beneficiaries of a straight swing from the Lib Dems and that their vote held up, was that. According to the report, half of that drop switched to the SNP, while the other half made its way to the other parties. This means that the Labour vote dropped by more than the final figure of 17,766. Presumably those votes went straight to the SNP. All of which brings us back to the analogy with 1983, which presented that Labour party with similar problems.

In 1983, the parties taking votes from Labour were Thatcher’s Conservatives and the fledgling Social Democratic Party that came within 650,000 votes of supplanting Labour from second place in the popular vote. In Labour’s way this time were the Scottish National Party, who alongside being a competent government gunning for their second term have developed a successful Scottish take on Clinton’s “TheThird Way” and New Labour – ironic considering that many of the influences for New Labour policies came from the old SDP – many of the advisors of New Labour were originally SDP people while Roy Jenkins was a friend and influence on Tony Blair.

This defeat has led some to call for Labour in Holyrood to go down the New Labour route. In a post for the Labour Hame blog, New Labour loyalist John McTiernan outlines this route –

“Where do they start? With tone – and Tone. From first to last, from “A new dawn has broken has it not” at the Royal Festival Hall to “This is the greatest nation in the world” in Trimdon… Scottish Labour should start there. And for Blair, it was always about values.

Start with education. This is core to our sense of self; we are known worldwide for the quality of our education. Except that’s just not true now… Or take law and order. You can’t go far wrong with tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Labour’s knife crime policy was one of the most popular single policies of any party at the election. They should stick to it. But they should brigade it with a prevention strategy. The restoration of the Future Jobs Fund was one leg of that, apprenticeships another. This is a key battleground… And then there’s health. At the core of Nicola Sturgeon’s health strategy is an opposition to hospital reorganisation…

The future not the past. The many not the few. Leadership not drift. There’s life in the old songs still… Who dares wins”

The problem with that synopsis is twofold. Firstly, currently parked on the New Labour part of the political spectrum are the SNP – a party currently advocating Corporation Tax cuts and investment in public services in the same breath. A party not afraid to do business with the most famous capitalist raider on the planet and simultaneously not afraid to pledge to keep Scottish Water within public ownership. In short, the SNP have read the New Labour handbook (itself adapted from the prototype SDP, Clinton’s “The Third Way”) and adapted it to Holyrood. Scottish problems for Scottish solutions.

Allied to this is the second problem facing Labour, that they are a party bereft of any vote winning policies. The SNP had their policy on freezing Council tax, the policy on retaining funding for the NHS, their policy on free education. All policies that would have been advocated by a past version of the Labour party but were either derided by this version, with no alternatives put forward, or shamelessly stolen and re-packaged immediately before the election. Because of this, the impression given at the election was that there was no alternative but a second SNP term, which is what we have.

So where next for Labour in Holyrood? There won’t be any lurch to the left, as the current Labour group do not strike me as firebrand socialists in the best traditions of Jimmy Reid or… er um… nope can’t think of anyone else. The problem may well be a lurch to the right, which would take Labour further away from the “Scottish Sensibility”, thus leaving the SNP with more space to pick their ideas from.

While Iain Gray remains as leader, Labour in Holyrood have time to assess where they want to go, and to try and work out viable positions to take over the next five years, and to mull over possible replacements. With this in mind, their choice as next leader needs to be a viable candidate for First Minister come 2016. Whoever it is must recognise that the bar for First Minister has been raised since the position was held by Dewar, McLeish and McConnell. They must develop a vision, and yet be consistent enough not to come across as opportunistic. It’s a tall order, and a task that in 1983 Labour did not totally get to grips with until one of the new intake took the reigns himself 11 years later. To paraphrase another of Blair’s slogans, time for the Scottish party to reform or die.

More on Supremecourtgate

2011-06-17T10:30:00.001+01:00

Not content with helping his justice secretary to dig a hole, Alex Salmond appears to have taken over full hole digging duties.

To recap, a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court – the successor body to the Law Lords – asked the Scottish courts to look again at the conviction of Nat Fraser for the alleged murder of his wife. Alleged because Fraser was convicted without the presence of Arlene Fraser’s body, though that wasn’t the issue. The Issue was that the prosecution held evidence that may have influenced the trial against the prosecution. This practice might be ingrained into the fabric of Scots law, but there is no place for this in a post-human rights country.

The trial of Nat Fraser is not the only prosecution where the withholding of evidence by the prosecution teams is not the first case – this practice is one of the many issues surrounding the conviction of Abdelbasset Al Medgrahi. However, it is the first case to be taken to the Supreme Court, which quashed his conviction on this technicality.

However, rather than accept the verdict and look at ways to modernise Scots Law, Salmond has decided to lash out at the Supreme Court, arguing that “Scotland's distinct legal system, including our criminal law, has served our country well for centuries, ensuring justice for victims while also protecting the rights of those accused of a crime. We believe the UK Supreme Court should have no role in matters of Scots criminal law - a view supported by Scotland's leading legal figures.” Except, Scots Law has not served our country well, and as we have established above it does not protect innocent people accused of a crime. In the race to criminalise many parts of society, the proof threshold has fallen to dangerous levels, only two witnesses are required for a successful prosecution.

Salmond’s plan though has nothing to do with human rights or modernising Scots Law. His pledge to hold an Independence referendum will not be fulfilled if the polls continue to show that a majority of people are still against Independence. Rather than combat the drip feed of pro-union stories (the New Labour term for it was “rapid rebuttal” – except the SNP despite reading most of the New Labour handbook look to have ignored the chapter on media relations.), Salmond has decided to go on the attack on Independence related subjects. Hence his new found enthusiasm for the findings of the Calman Commission – which is currently going through Westminster, and his two footed tackle on the Supreme Court.

Salmond’s latest bout of digging coincided with the publication of an interview with the Holyrood magazine were Salmond said

“All I would say to Lord Hope is that I probably know a wee bit about the legal system and he probably knows a wee bit about politics. But politics and the law intertwine, and the political consequences of Lord Hope's judgements are extreme and when the citizens of Scotland understandably vent their fury about the prospect of some of the vilest people on the planet getting lots of money off the public purse, they don't go chapping at Lord Hope's door, they ask their parliament what they are doing about it.”

Which completely ignores the issue at stake here, that of modernisation of the Scottish Law System. Salmond was again unrepentant today at First Ministers questions, continuing with the line that the Supreme Court was undermining Scot’s Law and that he “think(s) it's a real issue. The integrity of the criminal law of Scotland is a matter of public concern.”. Again, the Supreme Court would not quash this case if fundamental technicalities were followed. As a result of these practices, the criminal law of Scotland is already compromised.

How Salmond gets out of this hole is anyone’s guess. I would suggest a tactical retreat would be the best option. I don’t think that this will happen though, which is why I think that this will rumble on until some sort of stalemate emerges. However, why the Pro-Independence camp see this as being beneficial to their cause is anyone’s guess as I think that more harm than good will come of it.

An SNP Voter Writes...

2011-06-14T15:59:00.004+01:00

Last year, I posted about Labour’s ability to read the mind’s of people who voted Lib Dem at the Westminster Election. In particular, their assumption that Lib Dem voter’s were disappointed about their jumping into bed with the Tories. This year’s post election Mystic Meg award winner is Alex Salmond who seems to think that he has a new mandate to contribute to the current Scotland Bill and to propose extended powers for Holyrood.

The SNP won on a ticket of freezing Council Tax for the next five years, free education and protecting investment in the NHS. All laudable policies, which were more than the other main parties were offering (though I did like the look of the Green’s property tax – which is why they got my “list” vote). The SNP were proposing to hold a referendum on Independence, something the other parties were fearful of, and the SNP had a decent in the circumstances kind of a record in government. Grey, Goldie and … um… you know the other one really failed to make themselves look remotely First Minister material. Yet since the election, the SNP’s judgement has been questionable to say the least.

Before we come to Salmond’s mind reading act, we really should touch on Supremecourtgate. Salmond’s criticism of the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Nat Fraser case was wrong, and was a rare sighting of the most unsightly thing in Scottish politics – Salmond the Smirk. Instead of Salmond & MacAskill’s gracelessness, they should have pledged to look at the irregularity within Scot’s law that lead to this verdict. Scots law is not fit for purpose, and this was an opportunity lost not to reform it.

Since the Election, the SNP have pushed for further extensions to the current Scotland Bill. In pushing for control of the Crown estates, for control over alcohol duty and, controversially, control over Corporation Tax rates, the SNP have claimed that they now have a mandate to push for these measures. Having looked again at the election literature received during the campaign, I can’t see why this claim is being made. There is no mention of pushing for these powers. There is mention of “Win new job creating powers for the Scottish Parliament”, which is pretty vague and at the bottom of the leaflet – not a huge priority then!

I don’t quite understand the claim of a new mandate, as I’m sure that a lot of people voted SNP for reasons other than constitutional issues. That’s not to say that the SNP are wrong in pursuing changes to the Scotland Act, after all the Calman proposals are flawed and continue the disincentive to tax raising powers that the current powers have. The SNP have exactly the same “mandate” to push for change as they had on May 4th. They could have commented on Calman as it was being drawn up. It’s just that they had no desire to contribute to the Calman Commission in the last parliament.

Meanwhile Back In The Real World

2011-06-09T10:59:00.002+01:00

A Friend on Facebook posted the other day that Jools Holland striding towards his Piano was the most depressing thing about television. I responded with a post intimating that there were lots of things depressing about British television (quoting the BBC’s love of Jane Austin). After a bit of thought, last night it occurred that currently the most depressing thing on British television is BBC Scotland’s own Paxman-lite Gordon Brewer introducing yet another discussion on Independence on Newsnicht. Nothing against Independence, but there won’t be very much of Scotland left after nearly 5 years of Gorge Osborne’s scorched earth policy.

While the Scottish media have been obsessing over Independence, the economic indicators just get worse and worse. GDP has been bumping along at around the 0% mark since the election, with the last set of figures showing the economy growing by the huge amount of 0.5%. The rate of inflation is currently at 4.5%, with the Retail Price Index at 5.2%. The squeeze on peoples finances is well and truly on, and this is before the next set of cuts hit home.

One wonders then what planet the IMF are living on. No really what planet are they living on. Their… um… spokesperson John Lipsky gave Osborne the thumbs up by saying that "The current slowdown in our view is temporary and the current policy mix is appropriate." Osborne is of couse dining out on this little pat on the back, his response being "I welcome the IMF's continued strong support for our overall macroeconomic policy mix, including our deficit reduction strategy. The IMF have publicly asked themselves the question 'whether it is time to adjust macroeconomic policies' - in other words, is it time to change course? And they have concluded definitively that 'the answer is no'."

The problem with this endorsement is that the IMF’s reputation is not entirely as bullet-proof as people would make out. They failed to spot the credit crunch, and endorsed the Brown government’s stance. They failed to spot Greece’s difficulties before they happened, and have been key drivers in pushing for bale outs in Ireland, Greece & Portugal. None of the bale outs have worked, as reboots to their respective economies. Also the IMF are not really a neutral arbiter of people’s economies. They see things through a monetarists eyes, hence the countless caviats and conditions to any loans, mostly involving privatisation. These conditions have to be applied to the IMF’s appraisal of the UK’s tanking economy.

Not that the IMF’s approval will have touched people’s lives the way that Scottish Power’s intention to put up Electricity & gas prices has done. Scottish Power’s price rise is immoral and unjustifiable for a company that is posting profits in the region of £1.2 billion. Even more immoral when you consider that wholesale gas prices fell below break even price around September 2008, as this graph demonstrates…

While the media have been obsessing about Independence and the proposed roadmap, while the Macblogosphere has been indulging in collective navel-gazing, the world has moved on. People are seriously struggling. The economy is failing. This may seem like heresy to some people but compared to the struggle to survive in tough economic conditions, and the real need to promote a viable alternative to torching public services, Independence is not a hot issue. By next spring, there’ll be blood on the hands of the IMF, Scottish Power (and any other power company that raises its prices), and Osborne.

No Sex Please, We're British

2011-05-23T11:59:00.002+01:00

The super-injunction argument took another turn yesterday when the Sunday Herald published the name of the Welsh footballer at the centre of Saturday’s twitter-storm. Their argument is that they believe that it is wrong that this individual should hide behind the injunction especially as his name is now all over the Twittersphere. They also believed that the injunction does not have any jurisdiction here in Scotland, and that the person has so far not taken out an equivalent interim interdict (the Scots law equivalent to an injunction).

While the Herald has a very valid point over the creeping damage to the public interest, it does their argument no good whatsoever to jump on the bandwagon regarding what is in effect flimsy gossip. The ideal story to voice their concerns about the rise of the Super-Injunction would have been the Fred Goodwin story, which is more in the public interest than what a Welsh footballer gets up to.

To recap. It emerged last week that Fred Goodwin was involved in an affair with a senior executive. What has not come out, and if the Herald were really serious about freedom of speech they would have published this, is when this affair occurred. Did it happen at the same time as the purchase of ABN Amro? Was this the distraction that caused Goodwin to press ahead with the purchase before the necessary debt reports were published, and what kind of an influence did he/she hold over Goodwin?

There are other super-injunctions in force, designed to prevent from public eyes information deeply in the public interest. The “private” information that an MOD advisor passed on to an unknown person, the financial arrangements of a chief executive of a global company while it was in financial difficulties and information from a number of criminal cases, where anonymous figures have been accused in court of attempted blackmail. All of these instances are occasions were someone’s right to privacy has been deemed to me worth more than the public interest.

Yet, rather predictably, outrage has focused on the story of Imogen Thomas, who had an affair with our anonymous (to people in England) footballer. The outrage comes from the red top tabloids who fear that a privacy law would put an end to the decades of celebrity tittle tattle & flim flam masquerading as news. At a stroke it once again shows up the deeply immature attitude towards sex that we Brits hold. An attitude rooted somewhere around 14 years old. It is this attitude that feeds peoples appetite for stories about the private lives of footballers, soap stars and other people in the spotlight.

There is a serious issue regarding the use of super-injunctions to block information being made which ties in to London’s reputation as the Libel capital of the world. The Sunday Herald’s headline grabbing act yesterday I think is counter productive, considering that there is better examples that are a lot closer to home than an English Championship winning Welsh Footballer.

Let's Talk About Independence

2011-05-18T09:59:00.006+01:00

One of the many things Labour said about other people’s policies was that the SNP would be obsessed about Independence. Too obsessed to bother with anything else. So much so in fact that they would take their eye off the ball. They would be, we were warned, just obsessed man.

Since the election, the SNP have been happy to talk about Independence. I’ve seen Linda Fabiani on the news a couple of times, Nicola Sturgeon got to appear on Newsnight to find out what a real interview is and of course First Minister elect Alex Salmond has been on The Politics Show a couple of times. Yet, the SNP in themselves have not been the drivers of this sudden interest in Independence. For unforeseen by Grey, Kerr et all, the people who have become obsessed by Independence have been the Scottish media and the “Dead Tree Press” (© Guido Fawkes 2006).

There was apparently a report in the Sunday Herald at the weekend, the issue has been on the Politics show and has refused to bugger off from Newsnicht Scotland. We’ve heard about Calman, Independence and something called Devolution Max (which hopefully won’t be advertised by Gottee wearing smartarse snowboarders like something else with Max tacked on at the end) and Independence-lite (which really sounds like some sort of soft drink). How to confuse the voters, number 7.

I’m not sure what they all mean, and I suspect a lot of this is SNP kite-flying, Calman excepted. Trying to determine which step meets with most approval among the proles. As I said, the public are not familiar with the above terms, and really have much more pressing things to concern them. It’s the economy stupid, with very real concerns about jobs & rising prices. Running alongside this is the public’s (lack of an) appetite for Independence, with a recent poll suggesting support for Scottish independence is more popular in England & Wales than it is in Scotland. But then again, the pro independence and anti independence groups have never really put their cases properly.

The media are, as usual, running away with themselves by focusing on what is on offer and what will happen and gosh isn’t it all so exciting… There are two points to bear in mind though. Firstly Independence is not inevitable, indeed there was a thought before the SNP’s election win that they might attempt to put off any referendum. It looked like it when they said that any referendum would take place in the second half of this term (7th May 2015 anyone?). Any referendum campaign needs to really be on form and to provide good solid arguments for or against, in short not a repeat of the recent AV referendum which was marked by half baked truths and poorly put truths.

The second point, and one that follows on from the first, is that in all probability Salmond really has to kill the “myth” that Scotland needs to be part of the Union. Conventional wisdom dictates that Scotland would go bankrupt if it became independent, and it is a “truth” that is repeated far and wide – it even popped up in “Football Against The Enemy” when Catalans were discussing the differences between Scotland and Catalalonia. Salmond has to prove that Scotland can be self sufficient and make it in the world. Perhaps the wait is solely down to that, Salmond is trying to make his sums work. Either way, while I am happy that there is going to be (we assume) a referendum (shame on you the other three parties for being so undemocratic), it remains to be seen whether this independence sceptic can be won over by the arguments.

250,000 v 350

2011-05-16T10:05:00.003+01:00

As Bill Hicks would say, lets look at those figures again because at first glance they may look a bit confusing at first.

On 27 March, an estimated 250,000 made their way to London to march against the coalitions scorched earth policy of cutting public services and preparing these services to be provided in future by both private companies and charities (that last part is the real meaning of the Big Society). Sure a lot of people marching were vested interest groups, like union members, public sector employees and people who would lose out if public services were destroyed in the manner set out by Gideon Osborne.

Picture: http://politicalscrapbook.net/2011/05/rally-against-debt/ - Count 'em

On Saturday an estimated 350 people came out of their Chelsea townhouses and made their way from their country piles to show their support for Gideon Osborne’s scorched earth policy of cutting spending on public services. In fact, so deluded were these people that they called for faster and deeper cuts. Sure these people were probably Tories who’s only experience of a demonstration was the Countryside Alliance marches

Saturday should really have been a humiliating experience for Guido, those Tax-dogers people, and the other right wingers who think that this government are not going far enough in their debt reduction plans. Except these people will still think that they are right, despite the fact that approximately 249,650 less people came to support their opinions.

This confirms two things. Firstly, any semblance that the so called Tax-Payers Alliance in any way represents normal tax payers has now been thoroughly disproved. Secondly, this also proves that those who support any combination of a slowing of the cuts, selection of different targets for cuts or a tightening of corporation tax rules need to really step up the media battle.

A lot of people are still convinced of the case for cuts, the alternative point of view has not been convincingly put yet. Any new campaign to convince people that the cuts are misguided, too fast and too deep needs to use Saturday as a starting point to win popular support.

Tale Of The Tape: Scottish Election 2011

2011-05-08T19:59:00.002+01:00

The votes have been cast, the announcements have been made, and at the end of the day history has been made. At around 2:30pm on Friday, the SNP won their 65th seat, which meant that they had a working majority of 2 over all other parties.

They finished with 69 seats, which means that they will enjoy an overall majority of 10 seats over all the other parties. A total of 902,915 people (238,688 more than 2007) voted for the SNP in the first past the post seats, this helped them towards their total of 53 FPTP seats. In the process, the SNP gained 32 FPTP seats on a swing of 6.25%. The factor that pushed the SNP into majority government was the way the list seats were allocated. Here the SNP gathered 876,421 votes which translated into 16 additional seats. That amount of votes is a record for the list system in Scotland.

Labour fared badly. They gathered 630,461 votes for the FPTP seats, down by 17,766 on their 2007 performance. Yes, the Labour vote did go down. You might have missed that on Friday with Labour figures saying that their vote held up, but not only did it go down, but it continued the trend stating in 2003 that has seen the Labour vote drop at each election.

Labour’s Vote in FPTP Seats for Holyrood
1999	908,392 (53 Seats)
2003	659,879 (46 Seats)
2007	648.227 (37 Seats)
2011	621,821 (15 Seats)

The second list vote fared no better shedding 71,856 votes on their 2007 performance. Again the point needs to be made that the Labour vote has gone down here. The second point to be made about the argument that “our vote held up” is that the comparison is being made on another poor performance by Labour, 2007 is the election that Labour lost power and finished behind the SNP. In short they failed to pick up in significant numbers any disillusioned Lib Dem voters.

The Tory vote also fell, for FPTP seats by 58,901 and for List seats by 38,038. This translated into a loss of 5 seats on their notional position. However the Lib Dem’s were the part of the coalition that fared the worst. Over half of the voters who voted Lib Dem in 2007 deserted them on Thursday, as they shed 9 FPTP seats. For the Labour figures who claimed that the Lib Dem vote transferred straight to the SNP, the swing away from the Lib Dems was 4.1% - less than the swing to the SNP. For the list seats they fared worse, with 127,199 voters deserting the Lib Dems.

For the SNP, they have a little bit of prep work before the Scottish Parliament re-convenes & Alex Salmond can formally begin his second term as First Minister. For Labour and the Lib Dems they have an awful lot of work to begin if their shattered parties are to be rebuilt. The Tories, despite the drop in vote can be quite happy. They did not suffer like the Lib Dems did here, or in the Council Elections in England – indeed they made modest gains. They even saw the AV referendum vote go decisively their way (67.9% to 32.1%). Make no mistake, at a UK level, the winners were Cameron & his Tories. Which makes me wonder whether we will see a Westminster Election sooner than we think?

First Past The Post

2011-05-06T16:15:00.001+01:00

Amazing, astonishing, incredible. All descriptions of the SNP’s stunning Holyrood win, which means that they are the first party to win an outright majority at Holyrood. They are projected to end up with a majority of 6 when the final results have been announced.

The magnitude of this win was just not forecast. The contest was thought to be tight… until the first couple of results came in. When it became clear that there was a large swing in support to the SNP, with the SNP taking East Kilbride, Clydesdale & Hamilton. It was clear that the SNP were going to end up as the largest party, with a swing in the constituency vote of around 6.25% to the SNP. However even I am staggered to see Paisley elect an SNP MSP.

The Inquest has also begun on what happened to the Labour vote. Several Labour figures were saying that their vote held up, and that it had looked like the Lib Dem vote had switched straight to the SNP. The truth is far more complicated. The amount of votes Labour gathered is marginally down on 2007, however 2007 also saw a reduction of Labour votes from 2003. In short, Labour’s poor performance four years ago caught up with them.

That’s all the reaction you are going to get from me just now, I’m off to party.

Imminent Superlatives Alert

2011-05-06T02:20:00.001+01:00

Just about to turn in, 4 seats in and all the indications (usual caviats... available so far) show that the SNP are on course to consolodate their position as the largest party in the Holyrood Parliament.

Each of those results have shown a drop in support for Labour, coupled with a rise in the support for the SNP. In the first result Labour held Rutherglen, but with a reduced majority. The swing to the SNP was a remarkable 7.5%. The next two results announced were astonishing, with the SNP unseating the shadow Finance Secretary Andy Kerr (in East Kilbride), and the former cabinet minister Tom McCabe (in Hamilton). Kerr was unseated with a swing of 6.6% to the SNP while McCabe was ousted by a huge swing of 11%.

In keeping with this trend, the SNP have taken Clydesdale on an 8.9% swing. With these kinds of swings, it looks like Salmond will have his second term as First Minister. It also looks like, not so much of a bad night for Labour but a disasterous night, even though the share of vote is currently about 2% down. The only question left to answer is whether the SNP will supass Labour's record of 56 seats (that they won in 1999).

The Chase For Seats

2011-05-05T22:18:00.000+01:00

One of the inaccuracies trotted out for this election is the one put forward by Alex Salmond that the second preference vote is the one used to vote for your preference for First Minister. Rubbish!

A cursory look at the results of the previous Holyrood Elections will show that it’s the First Past The Post seats that if not win you the election, certainly provide a solid foundation for victory. In 1999 Labour won 53 FPTP seats, a huge number which only meant that Dewar only picked up a further 3 list seats. The SNP’s failure to pick up enough constituency seats did for them here, as they finished behind the Lib Dems after the constituency votes were counted. Four years later it was the same story as Labour lost 7 seats but still won 46 FPTP seats. The SNP did pick up a couple of constituency seats, but nowhere near enough required. Especially as the second preference vote was split between the SNP, the Greens & the SSP.

Four years ago was a different story. The SNP picked up 21 FPTP seats, a solid platform for them to take a further 26 list seats which enabled them to become the largest party by one. There are two morals here for the SNP. Firstly the constituency vote is THE significant battleground. The second moral is that they need to continue to retain a huge percentage of the constituency vote into the list vote.

In sharp contrast, because Labour had relied on the constituency vote in the past, they have not paid as much attention to the list vote. As a result, their list votes lag badly behind the constituency vote. In 1999 the difference was 121,574 votes. In 2003 the difference was 98,500 votes. In 2007 the difference was 52,813 (gathering 3, 4 and 9 seats respectively).

Results are expected to begin to be announced around about 1am tomorrow Whatever happens, we can say about tonight is that any SNP gains will spell trouble for Iain Gray.

The Other Air War

2011-05-04T21:30:00.008+01:00

So with hours to go untill the polls open and hundreds of man hours spent convincing us to vote for a particular party. The question just now is not who will win, but how well did our broadcasters manage?

Both the BBC & STV organised leaders hustings within the past couple of days, it is interesting to contrast both events as they are somehow symbolic of both companies approches to this election. The BBC held their event in Perth Concert Hall. A big grand building, which brought out sober vibes. Unfortunatly the event was dull, limp and lifeless. It wasn't helped by the choice of Glenn Campbell as host, who always seems like a newsreader promoted above his grade. The nearest there was to a spat was when Tavish Scott was asked about a possible coalition with the SNP. "Deal or no deal" Campbell chided as Scott cracked a facial expression for the first time this campaign.

From Private Eye dated 29 April 2011

In sharp contrast, the STV event was hosted in Glasgow, using what looked like cast offs from ITV's 15 to one styled leaders debate set. One wonders if they came as part of the £18 million settelement agreement. Bernard Ponsonby hosted the event, as a result it was a more combatitive event, where the audience had a go at the participants. Not that Ponsonby stood by and watched, he asked a lot of pointed suplimentery questions, which were either ignored or talked over (hello Mr Gray). It also produced the one moment where Salmond looked marginally rattled, when Ponsonby pressed over the referendum and what shape those "negotiations" would take. Salmond muttered something about the referendum for the Scottish Parliament and proposals not being in any place then and precident. Except that the shape of the Scottish Parliament was already known and discussed thanks to the Scottish Constitutional convention. Salmond might have forgoten this fact, after all the SNP snubbed the convention.

The STV event was a good lively debate, compared the BBC event. It was well produced and scheduled at peak time, no charges of being disrespectful to voters for STV. As there is only hours before the polling stations open, there is at least that amount of time for both networks to hone their results programmes. Let battle commence.

A Policy Vaccum

2011-05-04T10:59:00.012+01:00

Or Leaflet-watch part 4 (and depending what comes through my door today, the final part).

One of the gripes that certain SNP bloggers have had about the Lib Dems is their tendency to put “Only The Lib Dems can win here…” or words to that effect on leaflets where they might be second. They have ditched this for their leaflet for this election. Wise choice as they finished behind the SNP in third four years ago, and sank to fourth in last years General Election (obviously winning my vote was a curse…).

The theme to this address is “Who is speaking up for you”, yet in a similar vein to Labour’s leaflet vague promises are flagged up with no detail. For a party who’s selling point has been their pledge to fight against the merger of Scotland’s 9 police forces, crime features third in their list. To quote “We will keep your police local – no national police force! We will make offenders pay back the community for the damage they have done to our neighbourhoods.” There are similar vague pledges concerning jobs and education.

Over 4 pages, there is astonishingly little. Even more astonishing is the thought that the Lib Dem’s potential vote winner this time around – opposition to the proposed merger of Scotland’s police forces – is relegated to the above 3 lines on page 2. Once the post mortem on the Lib Dems projected poor showing tomorrow begins, it should start not with Nick Clegg, but with the vacuum that is the Lib Dem’s piss poor manifesto.

Make More Noise

2011-05-03T10:00:00.002+01:00

So far the election addresses can be split into two camps. Those who list some policies, but leave enough off the leaflet hoping that some sort of interest will be piqued (The Green’s & the SNP) and those that trade on brand recognition, past experience, just something to get the message across (The Tories & Richard Vassie). At the start of last week came another address, and one that falls into the latter camp. Except that right now just brand recognition won’t get New Labour out of the hole they appear to be in.

The leaflet itself is about a quarter of the size of the SNP’s. Yet crammed into its 10cm by 5 cm surface is quite possibly the most patronising and clichéd leaflet you will ever see. On the front is supposed to be a normal family. If this family exists, sorry, but the pictures look directly out of central casting. Oh and this family would not look out of place on a Conservative leaflet. All of which takes away from the veracity of the statement “We trust Labour (sic) to focus on the economy and schools and the things that really matter”. Overall, it lacks a certain… truth.

The back page features the extended quote – “This is a difficult time for families with all the cuts and with the price of everything going up so much. At times like this, we trust Labour…” It kind of makes you wonder where these people have been for the past four years. Remember it was Labour who doubled income tax for the low paid, it was Labour who wanted to scrap the Council Tax freeze, and it was Labour who wants to keep the unfair Council Tax. Also remember that it was New Labour that introduced the fuel escalator, worth remembering when Gray promises to “Campaign for cuts in VAT on petrol”. Interestingly Labour do acknowledge that they oppose the SNP’s LIT proposals, but do not say if they object to say the Lib Dem’s own LIT proposals or the Greens Land Valuation Tax.

Gray (& Labour’s) primary target in this leaflet is still the evil dastardly Tories – “Now the Tories are back…” which is a strange statement considering that the Tories will struggle to reach 20 seats (their only influence is as a possible supply & confidence partner to the SNP). They have started to target the SNP, but on independence (a policy the SNP appear to be somewhat lukewarm about) rather than any policy failings that the SNP have.

This leaflet is an awfully patronising piece of literature, akin to having an annoying yes man leave you notes. Not the best tactic in such turbulent times. Somehow though, this is befitting of a party that has ran an unfocused (at best) & shrill campaign which has had nothing to say. You know what they say about empty vessels…

Why I'm Voting Yes to AV

2011-05-01T10:59:00.001+01:00

David Cameron, George Osborne, William Hague, Jeremy Hunt, Daniel Hanan (MEP), Matthew Sinclair (Founder, Tax-dodgers Alliance), David Blunkett, Dr John Reid, John Prescott & Margaret Beckett.

You know, I can’t personally think of 10 better reasons to vote yes to AV than the knowledge that the above people favour the status quo. All of them favour first past the post, not for fine upstanding reasons but because all would retain their electoral advantage/influence. The 5 Tories would be happy because, well every post war General Election win was obtained with a share of the vote under 50% (with the wins in 1955, 59 and 70 seeing the share of the vote creep over 45%). Their 8 post war wins have all been based on vote for us because we will keep the other lot out. To be fair though, Labour also revert to that line of campaigning – if you’re not voting for us you must be a Tory.

This is the main reason why both the Tories & certain New Labour figures are pro FPTP. The idea that there is no alternative to the other lot is a powerful one and one that kept the brothers together when Blair was pushing through some pretty Thatcherite legislation. But it is one that is loosing its power, both with the growth of the Liberal Democrats at national level, and the continued professional performances of the SNP in the Scottish Parliament. Interestingly, John Reid talked about the fairness of the FPTP system, Reid would know all about fairness having helped to hound the fair Elizabeth Filkin out of her post as Parliamentery watchdog.

AV means that parties will have to try and gather votes from people who would not put their X in the box for that party but might be prepared to vote for them in a preference system. It means that candidates have to try and poll (through 2nd and 3rd preference votes) over 50% of the vote to be elected. No more MP’s elected with under 40% of the vote. Yes, its not as proportional as say STV (used in council elections here), but it is a step in the right direction.

What has marked this campaign out though is the number of untruths in circulation about AV. The leaflet received last week here contains at least one lie and several facts that are dubious to say the least. The lie is that only three countries in the planet use it. It is used here in the UK, with council by-elections using AV – I voted that way in the recent council by-election. Both Cameron and Ed Miliband were elected to their positions as Party leaders by AV.

The leaflet quotes the figure of £26 million to explain the voting system to voters – it also rather patronisingly says “do we really need to complicate things with another?” – but there is no explanation as to where this figure came from. There is also no explanation as to where the figure for “electronic vote counting machines” – put at £130 million – has been arrived at. This seems to have convinced at least one blogger. Yet if we are in the realms of cutting things back because they cost money, then how much did Friday’s show of royal largesse cost? The leaflet also says “AV would give the Lib Dems more seats. That would mean more hung parliaments…” Well why shouldn’t they, when they gathered 6.5 million votes at the last General Election, 2 million less (and about 200 seats less) than Labour. Most Psepologists though seem to think that under AV, every Westminster election would have produced the same outcome, with the Thatcher win in 1983 and Blair’s win in 1997 producing bigger majorities. The only election that would have produced a hung parliament would have been the 2010 election… which of course produced one with FPTP.

I think that AV is a step away from our tired FPTP system that forces people to vote against a party, not for a party. That the No to AV camp feels the need to scare, to put unsubstantiated figures into the public domain and to spin its alleged complexity & obscurity shows the hollowness of their arguments. Unfortunately the polling suggests that they are winning.

And They All Come At Once

2011-04-27T10:00:00.003+01:00

Or if you prefer, leaflet-watch part 2.

To recap, to date one election communication had been received at Dispatches towers. At least that was the case until Thursday when 4 leaflets came through the door. One of them was in relation to the current referendum about changing the voting system, this leaflet I will return to in a later post.

First up is the leaflet from the SNP. Last year their pitch was “More Nats, less cuts” – which fell on its arse here in Renfrewshire when people realised that it was an SNP/Lib Dem administration doing the cutting. This time the pitch is “Re-elect a Scottish Government working for Scotland”. This leaflet has at least got some policies attached. What is interesting is the phrases that are capitalised on the middle pages. “WORKING HARD TO MAKE SCOTLAND BETTER… FREEZE COUNCIL TAX… FREE… NO TUITION FEES… REDUCE CRIME… +… 25,000… PROTECT INVESTMENT… 130,000 JOBS… NATIONS FUTURE” In the age of the soundbite, this picking out of key phrases highlights the policies that the SNP wish to promote. Looking underneath the soundbites, one will see problems with these policies. There’s no mention of a replacement to Council Tax (were your sums wrong Alex?). “PROTECT INVESTMENT” refers to protecting investment in the NHS. A better pledge would be to look for value for money for the NHS, especially as there has been no removal of the level of management in the NHS, and to look to plough these savings/cuts into improving treatment and care (some interpersonal skills for doctors would not go amiss). For example, the RAH (the nearest hospital to here) is managed by 3 managers, 1 suffices – that is a target for cuts straight away.

As you might have gathered, this leaflet is light on where the preference is for cuts. Health is out, you would think that Police cuts would be out (“Maintaining the extra 1000 police on our streets - REDUCE CRIME”), except the SNP are apparently minded to follow the Labour policy of merging all nine police authorities into the one large unwieldy organisation. Strathclyde is ill equipped as it is to tackle crime properly, what makes the prospective politicians think that cutting police budgets will improve detection rates. Education might be in for cuts (as there’s no repeat of the class sizes pledge from 2007). However Scottish education is struggling and would struggle with further cuts (thanks to Labour’s expensive second mortgage on every school in the country - £400million per year folks!). Overall a good leaflet, but one that poses more questions than answers.

Next up is the leaflet from the Scottish Greens. The key selling points here are “No Fees… Fairer Taxes to invest in public services… Cut Fuel Bills – Insulate every home.” While some of the aims are welcome (looking to restore bus regulation, a renationalised Scotrail and a version of the GARL that is not New Labour’s fait accompli version), there is surprisingly little mention of the Greens flagship policy of the Land Value Tax.

While the phrase is not mentioned in the leaflet, it has been mentioned by their Co-Convenor Patrick Harvie. The prospect of tax rises is raised here, thus eliminating the game of where’s the cuts. So the game becomes which taxes are to rise? Like the SNP leaflet, the Green leaflet poses more questions than answers.

Last up is the election leaflet from Richard Vassie, the former SNP councillor who (alongside fellow former SNP councillor for Glenburn Bill Martin) was ejected from the SNP before the 2007 elections. Unlike the other two leaflets, there are no policies just a promise – “I’m on your side fighting for the issues which are important to you. Fighting for you” – which post expenses scandal isn’t really a viable election pitch. Except the way things are going, this will be the template New Labour will go down. Vote for us because… well because.

A Spot Of Common Sense

2011-04-25T17:00:00.002+01:00

One of the sure signs that an election is on is the proliferation of election leaflets. Though there was a lack of leaflets for the European Elections two years ago. Last years election did see rise in the amount of leaflets coming through the postbox at DFT towers, though it did not reach the peak year of 2007… It has taken some time but the first election address came through the post last weekend, just before I headed off on a camping trip. Quickest off the block this election was the Scottish Tories (see below).

The front page urges the voter to “use your regional list vote to bring common sense to the Scottish Parliament”. They list policies that they pledged 4 years ago – “Action on Council Tax bills”, “More police on our streets” etc etc. Buy some sheer trick of fate – or rather their ability to support SNP policies that enable these aims to be put into practice (1000 more police officers, the four year freeze of Council Tax bills – after the collapse of the SNP’s LIT policy), these aims can be claimed to have been met.

Regarding the Scottish Conservatives aims for the future, there is no mention of the much vaunted plain speaking anywhere on the leaflet. No mention of their policies on Higher Education, or any other policy. In fact their selling point is their past actions. Not a common sense move for a party still not forgiven for their actions over a period of 20 years from 1979 onwards.

Interestingly they have decided rather than to promote their policies, they have decided to promote their top two regional prospects – Parliamentary leader Annabel Goldie and Jackson Carlaw. Rather like the campaigning that has happened so far, there is a feeling that any negatives are just not being spoken about (as you can gather, there is no mention of the Tories stance on Tertiary Education funding). On the evidence of this leaflet, there is no evidence of either the common sense or plain speaking.

The Paisley Hustings: The Derek & Stuart Show

2011-04-22T09:59:00.004+01:00

Paisley Methodist Hall: Tuesday

This is the second of these hustings meetings that I have attended. I have asked a question each at these meetings. Do you know how many of those questions have been answered – none! It was a valid question too, about where the cuts are to fall. So why do I go along?

In today’s election campaigns, the door knocking and leafleting seems to be diminishing. Meetings like tonight’s are a throwback to what democracy should be like – as opposed to the glossy election broadcasts we get nowadays. And tonight’s meeting was a heated one. Speaking to one of the participants from last year on the way out, it was put that last years event was much more heated. Last years was a picnic, compared to this years event. The main reason was the presence of Renfrewshire Council’s leader, and the SNP’s candidate for Renfrewshire North (& Gallowhill) Derek MacKay.

MacKay’s stewardship of Renfrewshire council hasn’t been great, there have been unpleasant cuts to services, school closures, and inflation busting price hikes to leisure services with the latest being an inflation busting price rise for use of council run football pitches. There were also a crowd of people intent on asking about the removal of the Death in Service benefit for council workers. There was also Gary Pearson, a local candidate who is campaigning against “Renfrewshire Council’s Illegal housing policy”. The first half, it has to be said was a Holyrood free zone.

MacKay actually handled himself rather well, and looked eager to answer any questions relating to the council (much to the annoyance of the chair and the gaggle of SNP supporters at the front, who wanted to press on with Hollyrood related issues). In this respect he did impress – though he did ignore the shouts about the inflation busting rises in pay for Heads of Service – which with the above cuts is a bone of contention. I can certainly see why friends of Malc rate him highly.

The strange thing is that most of the panellists are not standing in the Paisley seat. Representing New Labour was Stuart Clark, their candidate for Renfrewshire North. He talked about his upbringing “here in Renfrewshire” (actually, here in Glenburn – I think his sister was in my class in school). He talked of the SNP’s cuts against the background of those inflation busting wage rises for the heads of service, and also of the spectre of unemployment, which as a percentage of the population is higher than the UK average (8.1% to the average of 7.8%). When the first question came along, Clark became unstuck when he talked of needing an “energy mix – we cannot afford the lights to go out” in relation to nuclear power. Mackay got a rare cheer with his commitment to no nuclear power stations in Scotland – “The lights will not go out”.

Of the others, probably the best performer was the Lib Dem Andrew Page, again standing in Renfrewshire North. When responding to the Solidarity line about the deficit and it being larger during the Second World War, he quipped that he “does not want to spend 60 years paying the debt off”. That aside, he did not come across as being from the Orange Book wing of the party. Alistair Campbell (no… not that one!) was representing the Tories. Just to show how Scottish he was, he turned up in a kilt and declared that he had “Scottish leanings”. He did concede during the closing statements that he thought Fred Goodwin “should come back to Paisley to apologise”. The 2 for the price of 1 parties were represented by Jim Halfpenny (for Solidarity) and Jim Bolland (for SSP). Both made interesting statements. Halfpenny mentioned the £120 million tax avoidance bill (actually, according to the Red book, the estimate for tax avoidance from companies is around £90 million), while Bolland advocated the scrapping of VAT, which I think is actually illegal under EU law.

The second question, about the cuts in DLA, had all of the parties in agreement. Clark trotted out the Labour line that “We need to be the first line of defence against the Tory attacks (on the poor)”, and with stunning perception told us that “the problem is the Conservatives”. MacKay – “The Westminster Government has the balance all wrong” – thus contradicting a certain blog that has been running a campaign against MacKay (who apparently said the cuts were “about right”). MacKay did disclose a rather interesting piece of information during questions on health & education. Renfrewshire Council pay £15 million “and rising” to service their PFI debt (on a capital valuation of £195 million remember). Considering this, Labour really has a cheek to claim to be the defender of public services – the total estimate of the 2010/11 PFI bill for all councils is £800 million. Money that rather than going to those services is going to various management consultants and fat cat contractors. No wonder Scottish education is going down the drain.

That’s not to say that Clark was defeated in this debate. He held his own, and came across as a left of centre Labour candidate. Whether he is a genuinely left wing candidate, or was pulling the trick that Gordon Brown was a master of (that of appearing more left wing than he was in the company of comrades) remains to be seen. Page clearly thought Clark was on his way to Hollyrood as winner of the Renfrewshire North seat.

The last word though should go to the bold Mr MacKay. When ruminating on Clark’s Send a message to Cameron & Clegg” argument, MacKay replied “Why don’t we have a proper coalition (between Labour & the SNP), one that would scare the Tories”. I’m just off to see if that was a flying pig that just went past.

Vote For Me, I have No Manners!

2011-04-13T15:59:00.003+01:00

So, for my 250th posting, will I write about how swimmingly informative the Hollyrood election has been, will I write about how the banter has flowed to and fro. Of course not!

Manners in debates is something that has been on my mind for a few weeks now. Watching various Tory MP’s and cabinet members on Question Time, you can see them itching to have a go at anyone who dares to question them and pulling back for fear of the negative headlines that would follow. Decorum though does not hold back right wing political commentators. Two of the nastiest and vitriolic exchanges have involved Conservative supporting panellists, who have just been downright rude to anyone who disagrees. With a track record like Kelvin Mackenzie’s, you would expect him to be, well not the most pleasant to anyone who disagrees. But his defence of Nuclear power was just an exercise in rubbishing the opposition.

The other person who has been totally rude on television recently was the historian Niall Ferguson, who seems to have been taking tips from David Starkey. Ferguson might be one of the most influential people on the planet, but that does not give him a mandate to be rude to people with opposing views, as he was when appearing on Question Time. He shouted over Ken Livingston when discussing Libya a couple of weeks ago, and tried to belittle anyone who did not conform to his view that Labour were at fault for the deficit (which is true, but there was no tub thumping condemnation for giving approximately £1 Trillion to criminally negligent bankers).

Tempers have really frayed since the set of elections set for 5 May have hovered into view. I can see the AV referendum campaign becoming more fractious – in no small part due to the tetchiness of Sayeeda Warsi, and others within the No camp. It is here though that campaigning has become really bad tempered. Iain Gray’s ramrod refusal to talk to members of the public was compounded further by his performance in Sunday’s Leaders set piece on The Politics’ Show. His arguments consisted, from what I could hear of them, of the Tories are bad, the SNP are pally with the Tories, the Lib Dems are in Government with the Tories so vote for me. Shockingly, Gray was not the worst offender.

Annabelle Gouldie appeared to take her lead from her English colleagues by starting to talk down to her parliamentary colleagues, the interviewer (on a tangent here, but isn’t Isobel Fraser having a good campaign so far), and anyone who hadn’t turned off in disgust. Gouldie & Tavish Scott had several heated exchanges, while Tavish brought up the controversy surrounding LIT. Unfortunatly Scott was so intent on getting at Salmond that we didn’t quite make out Salmond’s response. As a result, Sunday was as perfect an advertisement for not bothering to vote that I have ever seen.

If, by some sheer trick of fate any politician is reading this, then ask yourself this question. Do you want my vote? Well, do you? When turnout falls once again on May 5th, perhaps those seeking election should think about what they did to engage with voter at large, rather than just the one way conversation that seems to be going on just now. With three weeks to go, time to pull your fingers out folks.

Report Card For The SNP Government 2007-11

2011-04-11T10:05:00.006+01:00

Well, we made it to the end of this government without the sky falling in, or anything else disastrous happening, well at least nothing that can be laid at the door of the SNP minority government. While there is a sense that the SNP government has been a step up in terms of devolved government, a lot of the policies espoused by the SNP have fallen by the wayside.

"I heard a rumour..."

The three big policies that remain unfulfilled from 2007’s manifesto are the Independence referendum, the replacement of the Council Tax and the cut in class size for Primary 3 and under pupils. These fell by the wayside for different reasons. The Independence referendum fell victim to the bayne of the SNP government’s life this parliament – parliamentary arithmetic. With a rainbow unionist coalition against any referendum proposals, Alex Salmond decided against bringing it to the floor of parliament. This blog has argued that it may have been in the SNP’s electoralinterests to bring this piece of legislation to parliament to see it voted down. The time this was scheduled to appear coincided with the SNP suffering from their equivalent of mid–term blues and the announcement of two unpopular decisions that have shaped the second half of the Salmond premiership.

Local Income Tax fell by the wayside when the SNP could not agree with the Lib Dems, the Greens and Margo MacDonald on proposals, while being up against their foes this parliament – adverse parliamentary arithmetic. While the Council Tax freeze is a popular policy – so popular Ian Gray has half stolen this policy – literally. The abolition of such an unfair tax system should have been much more of a priority, with compromises made with the other pro-LIT party. The passing of this opportunity seems to have given Council tax a stay of execution as no party is proposing its abolition for this election. The cut in class sizes for pre-Primary 3 pupils has fallen by the wayside for a number of reasons. The fact that councils are hamstrung with outstanding PFI re-payments is a factor, while the recession has been another.

So what have the SNP government done. Well they stopped the mooted programme of Hospital closures and went on to abolish prescription charges, the latter much to the chagrin of the Tax-dodgers Alliance. There has been that Council Tax freeze and also Tuition Fees were abolished for Scottish Students studying at Scottish universities, the latter much to the chagrin of university chancellors who refuse to look at their own £200,000 wages. They have invested in re-newable energy and snubbed attempts to build nuclear power stations in Scotland, much to the chagrin of the pro nuclear lobby and their friends in New Labour. Even with that list of achievements, there has been a sense that minority government has been a steady hand on the tiller.

The SNP government will be defined though by two events. There has been a lot said about the release of Ali Basset Al Megrahi, including some lies by certain Tory cabinet ministers. The fact remains that he remains the only person convicted of the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103, which might not have been the case had his appeal proceeded. The other event, which Iain Gray tried to highlight before he was “ambushed”, was the axing of the proposed Glasgow Airport Rail Link that the media, prompted by Labour, seem to think would have been a popular service vital to the Scottish economy, as opposed to a vanity project for Glasgow. However it was the SNP’s failing media management skills here that have let Labour away with this untruth. Certainly this project is not so popular here in Paisley, where the link was due to be built (wow, adding the link, Stephen Purcell, whatever happened to him?).

They could have done better. They could have been blown off course. They could have been engulfed by controversy – over Trumptown and Snowgate. They could have been engulfed in scandal – their lack of action over Transport Scotland’s controversial decision to renew First Group's Scotrail franchise. At the end of this parliament they were still in government. As I said earlier, the SNP were an unspectacular, but steady, hand on the tiller. More tellingly they have provided an alternative to perpetual New Labour rule.

A Big Girls Blouse!

2011-04-08T19:59:00.001+01:00

You know that sound this morning, you know that sound around quarter past 8 this morning that woke you up. Well that was BBC Scotland's politics elephant Brian Taylor harumphing about the protests that curtailed Iain Gray's plan to campaign in Glasgow Central yesterday. Taylor didn't appreciate people's right to have their say, especially during an election. Oh the cheek! Politicians, like comedians, should be big enough and ugly enough to take any flack that comes their way.

What no one has said is that yesterday was an unexpected opportunity for Gray. It was an opportunity to stand firm, to listen to people's concerns and to (attempt to) put his case. After all (New) Labour policy is now that there should be less cuts with repayment of the deficit over a longer term. Not a million miles from the aims of Citizens United Against Public Sector Cuts. In short it was an opportunity for Gray to look First Minister material... and he and his possee flunked it! He instead chose to run away from a debate and hide in the nearest cubby hole he could find, like a big girls blouse.

Not First Minister material.

A Good One to Miss?

2011-03-31T11:21:00.002+01:00

Tuesday night, ah just pottered about a bit, made dinner, watched a bit of the England friendly and headed up to my beloved's after her choir rehearsals had finished. Leader's debate? Ah… what leaders debate?

The first indication I had that a televised Leaders hustings had taken place was listening to "Good Morning Scotland" heading into work the next morning. From what I gather, Salmond kinda coasted it, Gray was like a nippy dog that probably lost votes because of his aggression and his faux pas over Council Tax. While the other two were… well the other two. All in all, and with no policies to attack, much ado about nothing. If there is a way of seeing some of it (as it does not appear to be available "On-Demand") I'd like to know where it is available.

Which brings us to the curious question of why? Last year's "Leaders" debates were well publicised, were scheduled at peak time viewing and were scheduled during the Westminster Election campaign – the first one was just before the mid point of the General Election campaign. So why was the first debate scheduled for a Tuesday night, up against an England friendly, will little advanced warning and at a time when campaigning is barely luke warm? STV surely should have done a better job of promoting the programme and they should have done a better job of scheduling the debate.

Surely this far out, the broadcasters aren't a little embarrassed at the quality of the candidates. If the Scottish based media are embarrased, what will the London-centric one's be thinking? Apart from Salmond, and Tavish Scott's beard (which sadly has disappeared), none of them really portray a sense of identity or personality. As for a vision on how the next four years are going to pan out for Scotland, forget it. It does bear thinking about, that an election as crucial as this one, and already the Glasgow based broadcasters are showing a slight disinterest. Still, the campaign proper hasn't started yet, plenty of time to get the campaign up to luke warm.

The Day Boy George Turned Into Bob Flemming

2011-03-25T10:56:00.001Z

You may remember when Saint Vince (when he still had his halo) inadvertently pricked the image of Gordon Brown with his "Stalin to Mr Bean" quip, well Wednesday's budget sounded as if it was read by the Fast Show character Bob Fleming. You know, the gardening presenter that finished every sentence with a cough that got steadily worse as the skit went on. Well Boy George was that man on Wednesday.

The general rule of thumb is that when you are in a hole, you stop digging. Osborne signaled that he intended to continue digging by carrying on with his "Scorched Earth" policy of destroying public services in the UK. The cuts will continue despite the growing evidence that continuing to take of money out of the economy to plug the gap exacerbates the dire economic situation in this country.

Services are not the only thing Osborne cut. He cut Corporation tax by 2% - taking effect at the start of the 2011/12 tax year, and in an act which must have been influenced by Gordon Brown, announced a whopping 1p cut in fuel duty (the other thing Brown used to do was have very short budget speeches, Osborne's lasted just over an hour). The other tax cuts will not have helped the ire felt by many, and may well put an end to the little untruth propagated by the soap-dodgers alliance. There is to be a 5.75% tax rate on "the treasury functions" of companies based in tax havens, while there is to be tax cuts for businesses with foreign operations. A quick read of the Tax Research UK post will reveal the scale of Osborne's treachery towards the British people. A quick look at the successive post is also required reading, as it outlines the estimated amount lost in Tax Avoidance/Evasion schemes (like the ones perpetrated by Vodaphone, Tesco & Alliance Boots to name but three).

Osborne has a plan though, and he is determined to follow it. Unfortunately it is a plan that has already been adopted by another EU country. You remember at the 2009 budget, when right wing commentators were imploring the UK to follow the lead of Ireland in slashing public expenditure. Well lets look at Ireland now, with it's mountain of debt that can't be paid because no one has any money, and those people with money are just sitting on it. Ireland, like Iceland and the other countries quoted in Salmond's "Arc of Prosperity" quote all believed in aggressive corporation taxes to entice companies to come to their countries. Did stuff all for their public finances, but hey Ireland did have a Dell factory, till they buggered off to the Czech Republic. The announcement this morning that WPP are to return to the UK is good news to Osborne's ears, but it's the only good news at the moment.

Milliband the Younger taunted Osborne by calling him "Lamont with an I-Pod" and calling the budget "Del-boy economics". It is unfortunately a lot more serious than name calling. At the moment, it is just scrabbling about for money. When the cuts come (all in the wrong places protecting management positions, of course), we will then see anger. This budget has not put liquidity into the economy, it does not help those at risk to cuts (like OAP's – who have seen their winter fuel payments cut), and it will not promote the growth required to offset the fallout from Osborne's Scorched earth policy. It may be treble's all round in the boardrooms and corporate offices up and down the country, but don't be surprised by the reaction to come from further down the food chain.

Now Where Was I…

2011-03-15T12:00:00.000Z

So the last time I posted, it was about the situation developing in North Africa, particularly the situation surrounding Tunisia and Egypt. Since my hard drive threw a hissy fit, what have we seen?

Well…

Tunisia, having got rid of a president has now seen a Prime Minister leave his post while elections are expected… at some point. Egypt has seen Mubarak deposed, only to be replaced by the same anonymous military types who initially installed Mubarak as Egyptian President 30 years ago. Elections are promised… at some point… probably in September. Anyone see a trend here.

Thankfully along has come Libya. I say thankfully because at least the facade of change is something that is not going to happen. If the Gadaffi regime falls, then change is a going to come. Unfortunately we are going to have the sight of an incredibly bloody, bitter and violent civil war before we get to the end of Gadaffi’s reign. We have already seen the beginings of that war, as it dominated the news cycle up until the tectonic plates violently jolted just off the coast of Japan.

The most distressing sight though is not the humanitarian crisis, as the aging dictator turns on his own people, but the view expressed by the USA, the UK and France that they can stick their oar where it is not wanted. It’s as if Iraq and Afghanistan never happened. Those countries would not be interested, were Libya not oil rich and run by the American’s favourite pantomime dictator. The sight of Cameron floating the idea of “no-fly zones” at a time of economic hardship warrant's another asking of the question. Exactly what planet are these people on.

Any intervention in Libya must be strictly confined to aid. We have no right to any military involvement there. After all, after Iraq our name is still various shade’s of mud in parts of the World. Our, and the American’s, rehabilitation has barely started.

We Apologise For The Break In Service...

2011-02-17T23:30:00.003Z

Due to technical differences, I have been unable to blog. Normal (?) blogging service will resume, as soon as possible.

In the meantime, please insert your own acid jazz moment here.

Butterflies & Hurricanes

2011-01-28T15:00:00.002Z

Of all the twists and turns this recession has taken, the collapse of a government in sub-Saharan Africa is surely a twist no-one saw coming. Ireland, and the house of cards that is the Cowen regime, that one was coming. But the collapse of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia?

Sousse Medina in 2006

Tunisia is an interesting and curious country. An Islamic country which has retained a lot of the French influence, Tunisia can’t be easily described as one thing or another. Street vendors sell crepes & Sharma's. Yet the image of Ben Ali is, if not everywhere then is seen in most places. I suppose an element of dictatorship is a requirement, especially as Tunisia was the least troubled by hard-line Islamasists of the Arab countries. Possibly as a result of this, it, alongside Morocco and Egypt, Tunisia was a popular destination for holiday makers looking for something a wee bit different. I visited in 2006 and certainly would have recommended a visit.

The unrest in Tunisia came out of the blue, sparked by a young unemployed man who set fire to himself after being deprived by town officials from selling vegetables. Initially the protests were limited to Sidi Bouzid – a town who’s economy is based on agriculture – but these then spread before reaching their logical conclusion last week. Similar unrest has occurred in Cairo over the past couple of days, as Egyptian protesters have similarly looked to topple their dictatorship. The reason for these outbursts has been pinned on the frustration at a lack of freedom, and the excesses of the ruling classes. I suspect that there is another reason. It’s the economy stupid.

Greece, Portugal and Spain all found themselves in difficulty last year, with Greece forced into a bale-out from the European Central Bank. All three were popular destinations for British people to go on holiday, and to put money into their economies. Assuming that each couple spends £300 when they go abroad, then each plane would bring £60,000 for the local economy. Being another popular holiday destination, Tunisia was always going to struggle with the lack of visitors to it’s country, and a diminishing flow of money into the country. Hotels have to cater for people, so less people means less food to buy which brings us back to our unfortunate vegetable seller.

It’s now becoming clear that the lack of liquidity in the British economy is now having an effect on the countries that sees an influx of visitors from these shores. Glasgow Airport reported a drop in passenger numbers of 30,000 for July last year, the lowest figure in four years. The lack of liquidity is already having an effect on the UK economy, with poor growth figures showing that the Britain is tottering on the brink of a second technical recession when the hangover from the first technical recession has not abated. The problems with the British economy have shown that Boy George’s scorched earth policy is simply a non starter, and that’s before the cuts really bite.

Just A Thought

2011-01-27T21:30:00.003Z

With the media's scrutiny rightly on whether BSkyB should be bought by News International, and whether that proposed take overshould be refered to the OFT. Can someone remind me why the purchase of Channel 5 by Britain's pornographer in chief, Richard Desmond, in July last year somehow managed to garner less interest, and somehow evaded the regulatory bodies despite Desmond's record of OFCOM inforced fines?

Just a thought...

AJ Not for Shadow Chancellor Then.

2011-01-20T21:00:00.000Z

Regular readers of this blog will know that the charms, the talent, indeed the sheer bonhomie of the former Home Secretary Alan Johnson is something which seems to have passed me by. Which is why i was perplexed by the AJ4PM campaign which started to gather some sort of pace in the Autumn of 2008. Just being a safe pair of hands never seemed to me to be the best qualification to be Prime Minister or leader of your party.

Being a safe pair of hands has been exactly what Johnson has proved not to be when Ed Milliband appointed him to shadow Gideon Osborne as the oppositions main finance spokesman. Speaking out against the 50% tax band was not a good start – especially as this was a policy that Milliband the younger wanted to pursue. Making a series of gaffes was precisely what Johnson & Milliband did not need to look competent. Johnson admitted that he would need to do his homework, but to make gaffes about NI rates seemed to show that Johnson was not on top of his brief. His resignation avoids a potential headache for Milliband the younger down the line, with stories circulating that Johnson & Milliband had several disagreements over policy – tax and over Higher education funding. Johnson, in short, was looking more and more out of his depth. He was the present once…

Johnson’s replacement is Guido Fawkes favourite Labour politician, Ed Balls. I wonder if his combative style might be best suited to shadowing Osborne (as opposed to being Chancellor), as I think that Osborne has had too much of an easy ride since the election. It is worth noting however that those with the top jobs in Labour are all former Brown acolytes. Balls and the new Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander both worked for Brown before the 1997 General Election, while Milliband also worked for Brown, while he was at the Treasury. I can’t see the Blairite sect being happy.

A New Year and a New Start…

2011-01-19T15:59:00.000Z

Firstly, can I say a happy new year!

2010 was one of those Fin de Siècle years where there were changes. David Tennant’s Doctor gave way to Matt Smith, Jonathan Ross quit the Beeb, Gus MacPherson left the Buddies but the biggest changes came as a result of the Westminster election, which saw the last hurrah of Scottish Labour’s big beasts that emerged in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Smith, Dewar & Cook all no longer with us, Robertson & Reid now enjoy life outside politics while in May Brown lost the General Election.

This air of change continued a couple of weeks ago with the re-design of the Sunday Herald. The papers last change was when the paper downsized to a tabloid, just after most of the English based broadsheets did something similar. This change however is a change that I don’t think has worked. It is now essentially a 92 page “news magazine” – however there are several things that don’t work.

Firstly, because there are 92 pages, some things do not have the space that they had before. Sport has been reduced to about 10 pages, political comment has also been reduced, and scattered around the 92 pages. The letters section has also been reduced, not by much but the perception of a huge cut is there, this gives the impression of a views-paper who wants to talk but not to listen. Television has been reduced from 16 pages to about 3 pages, Music reviews have been cut, while I am still to locate Theatre reviews. Thankfully Joanna Blythman has been cut to just the restaurant review. Rather mystifyingly the resident grump of the Herald newspapers, Iain Bell, sees an increase in his space (if last week is anything to go by).

The other thing that i think doesn’t work is the “quality newspaper” angle. Subconsciously or otherwise, i think that the Journalists have began to produce journalism which is rather full of itself, a tad egotistical, and a bit snobby. In short totally against everything that the old Sunday Herald produced. I don’t think that you produce “quality” if you think about it,to use the old advertising slogan – “Just Do It”. Subconsciously I suspect that the journalists have started to analyse whether their writing will appeal or not. Rather bizarrely the most difficult articles to write are ones for the red-top tabloids, it is more difficult to write an article to explain things in an easily understood manner than it is to write an article full of jargon and obscure words. I get the impression that in the race to give the veneer of “quality”, some of the writers have forgotten this.

The editorial on Sunday was ecstatic about its initial sales figures for a couple of weeks ago. If Sunday was anything to go by, i would imagine that the sales figures would look less good. I went down to the local shops late, and was surprised to find lots of unsold copies left – i normally struggle to get a copy after 11:30am. 2011 looks to be as turbulent as 2010 was, the media and the blogosphere are already gearing up to the forthcoming Holyrood elections. Unfortunately one of Scotland’s national newspapers has decided to do the print equivalent of the self indulgent 5th album. Not a good move at a crucial time for Scotland, and sadly not the brightest note to enter the fifth year of this blog.

The Victimless Crime?

2010-12-29T05:59:00.000Z

For a crime that many people were claiming has no victims, the conclusion of the Tommy Sheridan trial has a queue of people claiming to be victims. Unfortunately there was a lot of BS being spoken by those claiming victimhood.

We can now say that Tommy Sheridan did visit swingers clubs, and we can say that Sheridan was unfaithful to his wife. Sheridan claims that he is the victim of a vast conspiracy to bring him down, where in the future films will be made starring Kevin Costner. The truth is that Sheridan was the victim of a conspiracy by his party to oust him from his position, and was a victim of his own vanity. The film of that will star a couple of guy’s from River City. Sheridan let his vanity take over when he began his libel case.

Had he not launched the case he might have been able to laugh it off and make a comeback a couple of years down the line. Instead of which, Sheridan adopted the same moral high tone of Cecil Parkinson and David Mellor and painted himself as an honest man with family values. Were this a certain kind of blog, I would be speculating about exactly what kind of relationship the Sheridan’s have. After all Sheridan’s career is now dust because of his desire to keep his extravagant sex life out of the public eye, and more importantly from his wife.

First in the queue for victimhood are the SSP. If memory serves, they ousted Sheridan from the leadership and started to brief against Sheridan from the off. Not exactly the wronged stance they have been attempting to re-write in recent day’s. Unless i am very much mistaken, adultery, sex clubs are not illegal. After all, this is the UK not Iran. Yet the SSP took the puritanical line, that this kind of behaviour was not acceptable and that Sheridan should be removed from his post. I should point out two things here. Firstly I don’t think Sheridan’s behaviour was acceptable, but secondly i don’t think he had the full support from his party. Which is why i think his ousting as SSP leader is the only conspiracy on show here. I think that winning 6 seats at the 2003 Holyrood elections went to some people’s heads, maybe Colin Fox’s, maybe Carolyn Leckie and maybe people thought that we don’t need Sheridan, and oops here’s an opportunity to get rid of him.

Not that this post is the only one gunning at the pious positions taken up by the anti-Tommy camp. The rival party set up by Sheridan, Solidarity, has backed their man and attacked the SSP hierarchy for taking the side of Rupert Murdoch in this argument. Conveniently ignoring the fact that Sheridan “slept” with a News of the Screw’s columnist.

The truth is that the real victims of Sheridan’s conviction, and the events surrounding it, are voters of a left wing persuasion. At a time when a right wing government (wearing a red rosette) has been replaced with an equally right wing government (wearing a fetching blue/yellow combo), politicians from the Solidarity/SSP camps have shown themselves to be selfish, duplicitous, sneaky, untrustworthy, and perfectly at home in adopting Tory family values. They have preferred to train their fire on each other than on the enemy. In short they have made themselves un-electable.

Pressing The Nuclear Button

2010-12-21T18:01:00.000Z

In amongst the heat and fog surrounding Vince Cable’s comments regarding the Dirty Digger, there are two things that strike me.

Firstly he did not say “I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win” – the quote is the very definition of taken out of context with the full quote being “No, he has minority shares and he wants a majority - and a majority control would give them a massive stake.

"I have blocked it using the powers that I have got and they are legal powers that I have got. I can't politicise it but from the people that know what is happening this is a big, big thing. His whole empire is now under attack... So there are things like that we do in government, that we can't do... all we can do in opposition is protest."

I am picking my fights, some of which you may have seen, some of which you may haven't seen. And I don't know if you have been following what has been happening with the Murdoch press, where I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win." .

I might be alone in this but I think that Cable meant that the News International perception was that he had declared war, by referring the bid in the first place (as opposed to waving the bid through as has been the precedent for the past 30 years). Had he not opened his mouth, i suspect that “we” would have won.

The second point is about the impartiality issue. News International owns “The Bun” and the “News of The Screws”, both of which are influential among key voters. For this reason, politicians have been bending over backwards to accommodate the requests from News International, starting with the purchase of The Times and The Sunday Times in 1981. New Labour were just as bad as the Tories when in office, so it is sad, but not a surprise, to see the Blairites John Denham & Hilary Benn rush to suck up to Rupe by sticking the knife in so quickly. It’s hardly consistent for the comentariat (those who have taken the Murdoch shilling in the past or now) to bleat on about impartiality.

Cable has blundered badly by revealing his thoughts and views to two strangers. We shall see whether Cable will remain in post and for how long. However the bigger punishment though will be paid by a broadcasting sector that will see a further strengthening of a dominant player. Remember as well that Cameron & his then shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt were happy to shape their policies to the Diggers wishes – they advocated the scrapping of OFCOM and the reigning in of the BBC in columns penned for The Sun. I think that we will now see News International given the green light to buy the rest of BSkyB, especially as it looks like Hunt has been given the decision over BSkyB. Impartial huh!

More Toothlessness From the FSA

2010-12-17T11:30:00.001Z

One of the news stories that I missed while I was away was the FSA announcing that they had cleared the Royal Bank of Scotland of any wrongdoing, quantifying their judgement by stating that RBS had made “a series of bad decisions” that “were not the result of any lack of integrity by any individual and we did not identify any instances of fraud or dishonest activity by senior individuals or a failure of governance on part of the board”.

It is worrying that the FSA, above everyone else, has failed to grasp the accusations levelled at RBS. The charge against Goodwin, McKillop and everyone else is not that some sort of fraud occurred. It is that in the course of events, the board of RBS did not show due diligence when approaching the takeover of ABN Amro. In short the charge against RBS is that of criminal negligence. What the FSA have done is akin to investigate a murder and found no charge of murder, when manslaughter had taken place. Not that the FSA were able to uncover any smoking gun, with Adair Turner saying in his letter to Andrew Tyrie that “We find that, while there are undoubtedly instances of highly questionable judgement, there was not behaviour which could be subject to a successful enforcement action.” I have said before that the RBS board were very keen to push the takeover of ABN Amro through, before seeing the key debt reports.

It is interesting though that RBS have blocked the publication of the full judgement. The FSA have in response to this written to the chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie requesting help to resolve this impasse. The FSA in the letter are looking to publish by March of next year. Interestingly, in Robert Pestons own post about this, he reminds us that in the US, RBS are in the middle of a lawsuit involving investors who believed that they were misled by the bank’s directors. Peston makes the point that this is the equivalent to taking the third amendment. Critics would argue that this is RBS trying to hide evidence. Their actions here do make them look guilty. Of course in this country, only the rich can afford law suits, this is the reason why RBS are not in trouble here.

The letter to the Treasury Select committee raises the issue of the constraints that the FSA are tied into, constraints which hamper the regulatory processes. Unfortunately as the financial sector continues to try and wind the clock back to 2006, the FSA have shown themselves to be ill equipped to go after the main culprits. This does not bode well for their investigation into the collapse of HBOS.

The Perfect Storm?

2010-12-11T22:01:00.000Z

NB: This post was written before the resignation of Stewart Stevenson, which as this post argues was overdue.

For many years, we have laughed at the south of England for their inability to cope with snow fall in winter, and how any kind of snow fall brings the south east of England to a stop. Ah the schadenfreude!

That joke is now on us, thanks to the inaction of Father Jack lookalike and Transport minister Stewart Stevenson. There were weather forecasts on Sunday predicting that there would be heavy snow showers on Monday morning, there was even a weather warning for that time. Our pilot even said that heavy snow showers were forecast for Glasgow around the time we were due to arrive. So why were the gritters not working the streets?

It was supposedly raining just before the snow started. I do remember that the weather was calm, if very cold as we made our way through a deserted Paisley at 6am on Monday morning. With not a gritting lorry in sight.

Stevenson might have got through Monday or Tuesday with little damage. Any hope that he would have escaped any serious damage though will have sank with the series of interviews, culminating with his infamous interview on Newsnicht Scotland – where he claimed that no snow was forecast. The BBC and the Met Office soon countered the lie, by re-playing weather forecasts from Sunday. More curious was the interview with Salmond on Wednesday morning where he talked ad nausium about the forecast for Monday at 08:01, at which point snow was already falling.

Stevenson should have been formulating plan B throughout Sunday evening in preparation for “The Perfect Storm” – as Salmond put it. He should have been in contact with AMEY (who hold the contract for maintenance of Scotland’s motorways) and the local authorities (who have been even more remiss with their winter weather programmes – large parts of Glenburn & Foxbar were still untreated up to Thursday morning). His inaction has made Scotland even more of a laughing stock than it is already. Does it not occur to our politicians to seek expert advice from countries who deal with these conditions on a regular basis?

What is clear though is that by seeking to blame the lack of any accurate forecast, Stevenson, Salmond and the rest of the SNP have left themselves exposed as being inept and incompetent. With the Holyrood election’s now under 5 months away, an old phrase springs to mind – a phrase often repeated in the Sunday Post. Oppositions don’t win elections, Government’s lose them.

Time To Name & Shame

2010-11-23T16:59:00.001Z

With the cuts about to hit the fan, the blame game is in full swing. The unions blame the Tories, the “Left” here in Scotland blames the SNP, the Lib Dem’s blame, well everyone but themselves, while the Tories blame the last government, despite agreeing with everything it did, untill the Westminster Elections came into view. So, for everyone, including “the left” who seem to have found some sort of money tree which hands out free money (why else do you explain their osterich like Anti-cuts campaign?), here’s a sort of cut out and keep guide as to why UPplc is in such a hole.

Brown: Tending the Garden,

When New Labour took office in 1997, New Labour decided to keep with Thatcherite economic policy, despite having a mandate to change direction. This put in place the foundations of the current recession in two ways. Firstly, when Gordon Brown announced the new tri-partite regulatory arrangements, primarily in the Mansion house speech of June 1997, he directed the new Financial Services Authority to adopt a “Light Touch” to the regulatory process. Whatever the intention, this sent the message that financial companies could do as they pleased when they pleased – essentially that it was business as usual. The second mistake that Brown made was in relation to closing the small black hole that the Tories had left New Labour to deal with. Instead of putting up the top rate of income tax from 40% – this would have put a brake on consumer spending and on house prices. Brown taxed the shares & managed funds ie pension funds. As a result, this destabilised pension funds up and down the country, causing them to lose value.

Thanks to the lasiz faire attitude to financial companies, as long as the money continued to roll in, no one cared where it came from. As a result, companies started to offer 100%+ mortgages, with minimum reference & financial check’s, and little adherence to salary multipliers. Northern Rock were chiefly involved in this market, but others moved into this area too. However, Northern Rock became the symbol of “Sub Prime” mortgages in the UK.

The guy who broke “The Rock” was the BBC’s business reporter Robert Peston (left), who reported that Northern Rock had asked for a loan from the bank of last resort. This seemed to send millions of people in a panic, as they worried about their savings – causing the first run on a bank in living memory. The report would have been fine, but for the two vital bits of information which was missing. Firstly, banks had received loans from the “bank of last resort” in the past – it was used to alleviate a shortage in liquidity in the banking system, so The Rock were not in as bad a situation as they would be. Secondly other banks had money loaned to them at the same time as “The Rock”, Barclays were rumoured to be one.

This data protection breech meant that banks and financial institutions were now going to be more reticent in lending to each other. Which meant that financial institutions that had bought into the supposed financial goldmine of “sub prime” were finding that it was now a mine field. One such company was the Bank of Scotland, who had become exposed to Sub Prime in the US as well as here, through it’s merger with Halifax.

Another company exposed to Sub Prime was the Royal Bank of Scotland. However what brought RBS down was the aggressive programme of takeovers overseen by their CEO Fred Goodwin (pictured right (on the left) with his chairman Robert McKillop). In 2007, Goodwin saw the takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro as crucial to the growth of RBS, and was very keen to land the bank, especially as there was a rival to win the bank, Barclay’s (with rumours that Santander were also monitoring the situation). Scottish politicians were also particularly keen to see RBS land ABN Amro, despite the growing awareness of sub prime and doubts surrounding ABN Amro’s exact debt position. Goodwin & RBS won the race when Barclay’s pulled out of the race (did they find out about ABN Amro’s position, or did they already know?). However Goodwin had not read his debt reports, as ABN Amro was heavily exposed to US sub-prime, and as a result was heavily in debt. With liquidity drying up in the wake of Northern Rock, RBS found itself on the critical list, alongside HBOS, Bradford & Bingley's, Alliance & Leicester and Northern Rock.

By September 2008, the situation had become so serious that the government had to act. Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley, RBS and the newly merged Lloyds TSB/HBOS group were either fully taken into government ownership, or majority government ownership, as Alistair Darling baled out the banking sector, thus creating the current government debt. Interestingly, at no point did Her Majesty’s opposition query the course taken by the government. They did not question the lack of regulations, the bank bale out, the “nationalisations” of the bank’s, or did they press for criminal action against the heads of the banks that were brought down. Indeed, George Osborne was pressing for even less regulation in 2007, and Osborne was nowhere to be seen when Paul Myners gave Goodwin his pension. Since the start of 2010 though, the Tories & the Lib Dem’s have decided that New Labour caused the deficit with their policies and that it should be tackled. Tosh, utter tosh. New Labour caused the deficit by not reigning in the financial sector in this country. The real legacy for Gorgon Brown is that he created the conditions for the current government to come along and turn the clock back 50-100 years, and let others take advantage of the diminished conditions many people now, and will, live under.

Person Gets Engaged Shocker!

2010-11-16T21:30:00.000Z

So let me get this one right, we are maybe going to see the beginning of the end of the Euro, or the beginning of the end of Ireland as an independent economic country, less capable of taking economic decisions than… well Scotland. We are still in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, which our government have taken as a sign to enact the scorched earth policies they strenuously denied they would enact pre-election – egged on by the Lib Dems. So what has been dominating the news today. Why today’s the day that the engagement of William & Kate was announced.

It is good news, if you are a fan of the Royals. For the rest of us (who think that the most real depiction of the Royals is a cross between “The Borgia’s” and “Spitting Image”), any goodwill will have evaporated within five minutes of hearing the news with the already unbearably awful fawning coverage. For fear of loosing my DAB, I switched off the radio at lunchtime after 10 minutes of the stuff.

And what about all that “Bringing the Nation together” rubbish, what nation exactly are you talking about? It shows an ignorance of the make up of the UK when “The Nation” is normally wheeled out, normally at World Cup time. When it was wheeled out at lunchtime, it showed an ignorance of the deep grindingly black pit many people face regarding their future and their families future thanks to the scorched earth policy pursued by the current government and their cheerleaders.

I do hope that, on a personal level, William & Kate do enjoy their time together. If only because I would imagine being at the centre of the sort of media scrutiny they are about to be put under, will not be pleasant. Particularly with The Firm as the in-laws.

After Minimum Pricing…

2010-11-11T20:45:00.001Z

Minimum Pricing finally hit the wall yesterday as it was voted out by the Holyrood parliament. While the fallout & acrimony continues, there are two points to be made.

While Minimum Pricing was undoubtedly the flagship policy of the SNP’s Alcohol bill, a policy which deserved to fall because it wouldn’t work (as has been discussed here & here). There were two other proposals which deserve closer scrutiny, partially because they too failed to make the Alcohol Bill (Trebles all round Scottish Labour!!!), but also because i think they would have had more chance of working than Minimum Pricing. The Tightening of Licensed premises would have set a higher standard for public houses, while the rise in the age where alcohol could be purchased from off-licences would be able to give shop owners a better chance to assess whether someone was over or under age. Of course this regulation would be nullified if underagers got an older adult to buy alcohol for them, however some sort of sanction against this act should be looked into.

The second point is that Scotland’s alcoholism is talked about as a disease to be cured. However there is another point here, that the love of Mr Booze is a symptom of something else. Whether it’s an inability to cope in our dark, damp (and currently very windy) country, our need for a “prop” after working long hours or just that… well there’s nothing else to do. Our Booze culture is very heavily ingrained into Scottish culture. Right down to the lack of coffee shop’s open late into the evening, public houses & king Booze dominate the Scottish mind-set. Perhaps a way is to provide alternatives, to incentivise restaurants & coffee shops to open late on into the night. For young people, the alternatives would be to provide amenities and places to gather. As well as that, and this is a local point, public transport could be made an awful lot more accessible at night (try getting around Paisley at night).

Or is Scotland’s booze culture so ingrained that any attempt to dilute it is doomed to failure? The Chewin’ the Fat sketch (“Gauny have a drink”) is spot on about the relationship many people have with alcohol. Minimum Pricing might have been stifled at birth (which some of us think is a good thing, even if the motives are nebulous to say the least). It does look to have started a discussion on how best to proceed.

Every Little Helps: How Labour Could Still Loose Next May

2010-11-09T15:59:00.001Z

In our corporate world, brand trust is everything. Companies & organisations fight for trust. In Scotland if the last Westminster elections are anything to go by, Scottish Labour is the most trusted organisation in Scotland. It looks as well, if the (single) poll is correct that Labour will be in the box seat to set up the next government of Scotland.

Reservoir Dogs, schemie style

Pollsters believe that the SNP are now clearly second favourites to retain power next May. While the SNP have their own problems, which if they iron them out could still put the SNP in the mix. Scottish Labour might have sown the seeds of their own downfall next year. And not just with the robust/offensive attitude shown towards their political opponents (“Ginger Rodents” and calling Salmond’s life story “Run Fat Boy… Run”)

The highest profile policy announcement at their conference in Oban was the commitment to scrap the Council Tax freeze. You may remember the high profile campaign by COSLA and by the leader of Glasgow City Council Gordon Matheson a couple of months ago to have this measure scrapped by the current administration. Scottish Labour have committed themselves to scrapping this measure, but have said that they will put a cap of 2% on council tax rises. In a funny way Iain Gray (above, right) has produced a policy which pleases no one. Hard pressed people will see their council tax rise by 2% for every year of the next parliament, at precisely the moment where the Scottish economy needs people to spend money to put needed liquidity into the economy. Scottish Labour councillors are not happy either, they did not want a cap – it cannot have escaped their notice that Council Tax for Band D homes is 20% lower here than it is down sarf. The argument will be that this is to ensure the survival of frontline services, but surely there are enough examples of Labour largesse to torpedo this idea (just please let it not be the Tories supporting TPA that exposes it). The recurring theme of Grey’s ideas is that they really do not go far enough and smack of being stuck between two stools.
A classic of this stance is his pledge that he and his ministers would take a 5% pay cut if he was elected. While a cut of £5000 is not to be sniffed at, the First Minister still takes home around £130,000, which in Recession Scotland is somewhat exorbitant. If Gray really wanted to make a statement, he should have announced a cut of around 20-25% in his and his cabinet’s salary.

While the proposed cuts to the amount of Police services looks good on paper, this is a proposal which will cost money in the long run… as will the proposal to amalgamate all of the health boards. A much better proposal would be to get rid of the majority of middle management of the NHS. And what of “Education, Education, Education”. There are pledges to help to deal with illiteracy and numeracy problems, and to re-employ teachers “thrown on the scrapheap”. However there are no proposals as to how to pay for this. The last time Scottish Labour were in power, councils up and down the country signed up to renovate their school buildings using PFI. Today, PFI repayments take an estimated £800 million out of education budgets up and down the land. I would think that would have more relevance to our ailing education system than the current government.

Gray’s pledges do not have the look of the next Scottish government, and they still have the legacy of Jack McConnell about them – do less better. The policies do appear plausible enough to the hard core Labour voter, who will trust Labour more that they trust the SNP. However they have given something for the SNP to attack, particularly on Council Tax. They have also given un-costed pledges on Education & Health. They may well be favourites to win on May 5th (and I think that they will win) but they have given the SNP several lines of attack. Let the spinning commence.

The Assassination of Consumer Focus by The Taxpayers Alliance

2010-11-01T10:59:00.001Z

*before starting, can I make a declaration of interest. My Beloved is a board member for Consumer Focus Scotland….

One of the casualties of the so called “Bonfire of the Quango’s” is the consumer organisation “Consumer Focus”, which was the offspring of the merger between Postwatch & Energywatch (the Scottish organisation also incorporated the old Scottish Consumer Council). It costs the tax-payer £5.2 million a year, it produces policy initiatives, It has the right to demand commercially sensitive information from the companies they are investigating (thanks to an Act of Parliament) and has secured high profile victories against Npower (securing a refund of £70 million) and on ISA’s (securing a refund of £15 million). It’s communications have been clear & concise (TCF anyone?), and generally Consumer Focus looks like a success story in protecting consumers from bad business practice, having been set up 2 years ago, but with a long, credible, evidence based history of looking after the interests of consumers.

So why has the Tax-Payers Alliance mounted an ultimately successful attempt to have this organisation scrapped?

The TPA believes that “it duplicates the work of many companies, charities and campaigns who advise and represent consumers.” Which companies exactly does it duplicate? The TPA is also guilty of not doing it’s research. Consumer Focus encompasses the sterling work of the watchdogs Postwatch & Energywatch, and the wide spectrum of work carried out by the Scottish Consumer Council. The new organisation was given statutory powers to be effective in their new position as a ‘consumer champion’ Where exactly are these powers to go? They cannot be given to a charity. How can you get an advice charity to do the work of a quango? And no offence to Citizens Advice, but they are seriously stretched as it is. How will they be able to take on the sheer magnitude of work currently carried out by Consumer Focus? I have no experience of using Citizens Advice, mostly because it was impossible to actually contact the Paisley office (there was a voicemail message to contact them in office hours – not the best message to leave in todays timeshift society). CAB must be having the same doubts, there are rumours that they were reluctant to take on their new role before being “persuaded” to by the government.

This is not the first campaign built on poor research, as Subrosa mentions here with TPA’s ignorance of Devolution and the concept of Holyrood running the NHS independently of Wesminster – while complaining about free prescriptions. Then of course, there was this campaign where TPA couldn’t wait on the facts before getting the boot into lobbying.

The ‘modus operandi’ of the TPA though is “Together we can save taxpayers across the country millions of pounds.” – they are essentially a body standing up for tax-payers. So how can they effectively torpedo an organisation which has saved consumers (tax-payers) millions of pounds, and has an extensive evidence base of the many ways in which they have made things better for consumers! Of course the question which should occur to everyone is who asked them to stand up for me or you? I am glad that someone is standing up for us poor repressed tax-payers, but have serious concerns about this less than transparent organisation. The TPA somehow doesn’t quite go after the targets that it should.

While targeting an organisation which only costs overall between £5-12 million to run, where is the TPA campaign against the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which has been revealed by Private Eye to be a deeply corrupt organisation, more concerned by the enrichment of it’s own backers. Oh and where are the howls of protest over the inept HMRC, who failed to protect people’s personal data, who’s computer systems were giving people inaccurate tax-code’s and who recently dropped their court case against Vodaphone over the takeover of Mannesmann (which people were protesting against this weekend), and have not to date, started any litigation against Tesco. As well as depriving the country of the use of £6 billion, the dropping of the Vodaphone case gives the red light to tax avoidance from big business, squeezing even more the hard working honest tax payer. So much for standing up for the ordinary tax payer.

The jibe about the TPA is that it has always been a front organisation for the Tory party. It is notoriously reticent about publishing where they get their money from, publishing abbreviated accounts since 2006. Yet this is an organisation which has gained a reputation for being fair and standing up for ordinary tax payers, even though one of it’s directors refuses to pay tax to HMRC, preferring to live in the Loire instead.
I may be wrong but i remember during the 2004 US Presidential elections that organisations that kept their political allegiances quiet while taking part in the hustings began to gain traction in the media across in America. The success of the Tax-payers Alliance has shown that this is one trend which has made it’s way across the water. The challenge for the general public/the blogosphere/whoever is to challenge the voracity of these organisations, and to uncover their motives as quickly as possible. Perhaps it is time to seriously scrutinise this organisation, and see what skeletons they are hiding, and at the very least advise them to do proper research before they shoot their mouths off about things they are ill-informed about? The fact that the Tax Payers Alliance has gathered credibility among the UK media so quickly with so little scrutiny of their arguments should really be a lesson for us all.

The SNP: What Went Wrong In May & How They Can Win Next Year

2010-10-15T10:59:00.000+01:00

Whoa!, that’s a big title…

The most depressing thing about the night of May 6th (apart from the prospect of a Tory election win, remember they were only about 160,000 votes short of an overall majority – with many UKIP votes denying the Tories that majority) was the glacial movement in the political landscape in Scotland. This weekend, the SNP will gather for the first time since that election, perhaps to mull over May, but also to make plans for retaining their tenancy of Bute House.

The SNP went into the General Election with high hopes of a breakthrough. However as the campaign went on, they became more and more sidelined. They became pre-occupied about the Leaders debates, and the effect the increased exposure for the big three was having on the exposure of the SNP and their policies. As a result of their attempts to get Alex Salmond on to the podium (who lets not forget, wasn’t actually standing for any form of office at this election), the SNP came across as surly. Having said that the debates were a poorly structured attempt to Americanise our much more complex democracy. I would hope at the next Westminster election, that more flexible structures can be agreed.

The main problem with the SNP in May was simply that they had not worked out their narrative for this election. This is not a new problem for the SNP, there has not really been a reason to vote SNP in General Election’s since the inception of the Scottish Parliament. As the pro independence party, you would have thought that devolution would given the SNP the opportunity to push the case for independence at Westminster elections, and the opportunity to push for government/policy ideas in Holyrood elections.

Yet the SNP have not gone down this route. For this election the SNP went with an anti-cuts agenda, with the slogan “More Nat’s, Less Cuts”. As a result, Scottish Labour massacred the SNP, with their variants of the “Ripped-off-Glasgow” campaigns. That was before a bunch of parents drove a coach and horses through the SNP’s slogan by bringing up the cuts implemented by… er… the SNP led Renfrewshire Council.

Until the SNP choose the narrative for future Westminster elections, the Holyrood elections represent their best chance of electoral success. With an OK under the circumstances parliament behind them (with a lot of popular policies being postponed due to adverse “electoral arithmetic”), the SNP should be looking forward to a second term. However, the Ripped-off Glasgow campaign has hurt the SNP’s chances, while Labour has resurrected their vanity project – the GARL –pledging to build the project as was designed (regardless of affordability) in the hope that this will be as popular as they seem to think it is. The release of Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi has also hurt the SNP in the polls.

So how can the SNP win next May? They have made a good start by re-affirming their policy of the Council Tax freeze. Despite Scottish Labour claims of a 3% cap, the Municipalist wing of Scottish Labour will be looking to close the 20% gap between Council Tax rates in England & Scotland. I also think that they should have been more flexible in their attempt to get LIT off the ground, I think that this should come back on to the table.

Whatever policies the SNP formulate & announce over the course of this weekend’s conference, they must also attack Scottish Labour’s spin. The inability to combat Scottish Labour spin cost the SNP the Glasgow North by-election and also cost it momentum in the West. Scottish Labour have gone on the attack by claiming to protect front-line services, in their arguments for the scrapping of the Council Tax freeze. The SNP should not be coy about flagging up to the Scottish electorate, the general largesse which Municipalist Labour are accustomed to. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that Ed Milliband needs to employ his version of Alastair Campbell. The SNP would be best advised to do likewise as this will be a nasty, spiteful,vindictive election battle, with no prisoners taken.

Boredom Causes Boozing

2010-10-09T18:59:00.001+01:00

This is a letter published in the Paisley Daily Express, dated 8 October. It is in response to a letter published on October 1, which was written by Andy Doig, the SNP's Parlimentary candidate for Paisley at the Holyrood election.

Dear Editor

I write with regard to the letter's published in the Paisley Daily Express dated 1 October 2010 relating to underage drinking.

In Mr Doig's letter he states that local authorities are "at the front line of defence against the scourge of underage drinking rather than Holyrood", he goes on to praise the current administration for their hard line on this issue. While I am sure that they are, the actions taken do not appear to be making a difference as there are still groups of young people out at weekends congregating around areas of disused ground drinking. The evidence of a hard night's drinking can be seen with the broken bottles & discarded cans which litter the landscape of our schemes.

Mr Doig also attacks Mr Henry for his stance on Minimum Pricing. The Labour stance on this policy is that they disagree with it because it will put money into the pockets of the supermarkets, with estimates in the region of around £140 million. While this is a mute point, Mr Henry should have objected because this is a measure that will not work. When people want to drink, they will drink. Minimum Pricing will not act as a deterrent to alcohol consumption. Its effect instead will be to create a spiral of debt and despair, with people maybe resorting to crime to "fund" their habit. Rather than "save another generation in Renfrewshire from the social devastation and family breakdown caused by cheep drink", it will re-enforce the social devastation and family breakdown caused by alcohol addiction.

So how do we solve this problem? Alcohol dependency is a complex issue which cannot be resolved by simplistic measures like Minimum Pricing. As regards to underage drinking, there is something our council can do to help. They can provide a cheep alternative to hanging around derelict ground drinking cheep booze. They can put themselves in the position of so many of these people and ask themselves the question "What is there to do on a Friday/Saturday night in Paisley?". Maybe then they will understand that boredom is the main driver of underage drinking.

Yours faithfully

Another Blairite Speech?

2010-10-07T20:59:00.000+01:00

Having only seen selected highlights of Cameron’s “wonderful” speech yesterday, I was wondering if the following points were made but somehow failed to make it to the 10 o’clock news.

While saying that we are all in this together, and using military language to express this. Did Cameron explain why his Chancellor and HMRC dropped their case against Vodaphone, over taxes not paid when Vodaphone bought Mannesmann in 1999?

Did Cameron explain why, even though they are against tax avoidance, they are soft on big business avoiding paying tax? They wrote off £6 Billion by dropping the aforementioned Vodaphone case, while no action appears to have taken place against Tesco.

Did Cameron announce a full inquiry into everything surrounding the Lockerbie bombing? After all, the unsafe verdict of three Scottish judges has done more harm to the standing of Scotland and Scottish justice than the sight of an ill old man leaving Greenock Prison ever could.

Did Cameron give a rebuke to irresponsible members of his own party who want to remove human rights for workers, and who seem to relish a fight with the unions like football casuals relish a “ruck”?

Did Cameron show that he has put that private education to good use, and show one again that he knows his history by showing off his undoubted knowledge of the two World Wars?

Nah, thought not. It was another Blair mark 2 speech wasn’t it?

Still Toxic After All These Years…

2010-10-06T09:59:00.000+01:00

Phah, you leave a comment on Better Nation, and it’s disproved within 12 hours with the appearance on Radio Scotland of, shock horror!!! a blogger (OK it was the Dalemeister, but still it is still a rarity for a member of the blogosphere to appear in the mainstream Scottish media). Dale was appearing on GMS as they were discussing why the Cameron effect stopped in Dumfriesshire.

There are several reasons touted for the Tories electoral failures here in Scotland. Little fresh talent breaking through, with the same old faces holding key positions at the top of the party. These are exacerbated by the fact that, in the Central belt, and in particular in the West of Scotland, the Conservative party is still seen as the nasty party. For many people, the years when Thatcher's Conservatives destroyed Scottish heavy industry and cut a swathe through the manufacturing sector were years that will stay in the memory. Some people though that memories would recede with New Labour in power. Far from it, the Thatcher years have become something of a folklore, like the dragon that resides in the wood’s. Ready to awake at any time. Many people did not forget, and were unwilling to forgive.

Not that there was a lack of people queuing up to remind the Scottish voters. Labour’s campaign seemed to consist solely of reminding people about the Tories, how ghastly they were and what happened the last time they were in power. Which i suppose was as potent as the Tories reminding businesses up and down the land about 1979 and all that. Except the Tories probably don’t need candidates opening their mouths and putting their foot in it. Gordon MacCaskill put his foot in it several times during the General Election (and will probably do so again, as he has been picked to fight the Paisley seat for the Holyrood elections). Today has also seen another Holyrood hopeful open his mouth and let his belly rumble. With friend’s like these…

The interesting thing which no one seems to have mentioned is that while the Tories seem to be failing in attracting votes, this does not, as some commentators suggest, mean that there is a vacuum on the right. The Tories place as the natural party of the centre right has been usurped, in the Scottish political landscape at least, by Scottish Labour. It is they who are pursuing the Howardesque line on crime with their policy on Knife possession, as well as their former rising star pursuing a policy of part privatisation of council services. It is also they who have the current monopoly on “Back to basic’s” style sleaze thanks to said former rising star.

If the key to winning elections is to find that populous middle ground, the Tories have failed to do this with a Scottish electorate which has not forgotten and will not forget the 1980’s. Jeez they even failed to take the hint when Tory became a stick to beat the SNP with for nigh on 20 years after the collapse of the Callaghan government. What is it they say about addicts being the last to become aware they have a problem? With Holyrood elections next year,and Annabel Goldie offering the olive branch in an attempt to carve out some influence after the elections, the Tories need to learn the lessons of the past 30 years.