Braveheart's Blog

The Unravelling Begins.....

2012-01-25T10:04:00.004Z

Ever since the banks collapsed I have been arguing with Nationalists. I say it shows an "independent" Scotland would be vulnerable to big successful international companies which are headquartered in Scotland. Their collapse could bring down the economy. Nationalist say that it makes no difference. An "independent" Scotland would, for some unexpressed reason, not have its economy destroyed by the collapse of an over inflated economic sector.

Now oor wee Eck agrees with me....

It seems an "independent" Scotland would still want the Bank of.... wait for it.....

....wait f o r it..........

....England! ...

to pick up the tab, as "lender of last resort" to an "independent" Scotland. So if the banks collapse, lo! the English ride to our rescue....

Has there ever been such stupidity masquerading as "vision" in the history of our proud nation?

What this also shows is that, as you gently poke the Nationalist arguments, they fall apart.

Look for more unravelling.....

es ist eine komische alte Welt!

2012-01-16T18:34:00.001Z

A Nationalist MSP called Joan McAlpine made some twitter remarks about politicians who don't support the Nationalists referendum being "anti-Scottish" and then defended these remarks in the Scottish Parliament. (see here)..

Tom Harris, Scottish Labour's "twitter czar" , spoofed the events in one of the many Hitler/Downfall videos that have been popular on the internet this last year or two.

Funnily enough, it was Harris who lost his position over the spoof. McAlpine, whose "crime" is at least, IMHO, equally as egregious, stays in position.

You can judge for yourself how funny Harris's film is, but I have a rule, reinforced by Godwin's Law, to steer clear of Hitler and Nazis. No matter how bad you may think your opponent is behaving, calling him/her "Hitler" is on the road to losing the plot.

Of course, calling your opponent "anti-Scottish" is just as offensive (assuming your opponent is Scottish). It's just like calling them traitors or quislings.

In my experience, it's a trap that Nationalists fall into too often: in fact you get the impression that they don't even try to avoid it.

McAlpine's remarks are a good study in how they do it.

On twitter she wrote “Interfering in referendum is anti-Scottish as is refusal to compromise on popular desire 4 powers to Scotland.”

Then in defence of criticism of these remarks she said "..“I was criticising behaviour, I wasn’t criticising people. People from all sorts of political backgrounds can be proud Scots. The issue here is the behaviour of the anti-independence parties coming together to seek to stop Scotland having a referendum at a time of our choosing."

The first thing to note is that "interfering in the referendum" is not "anti-Scottish". If Ms McAlpine means the Prime Minister of the UK has no place in discussions about the UK constitution then she's just wrong. If she means that the referendum is sacred and no-one, not even Scottish politicians, has the right to question it, she's plain bonkers.

As for "a refusal to compromise" on devo-max!!! How can that be "anti-Scottish"?

Devo-max, or the idea of more powers for Holyrood, is a straightforward matter of policy. You might think it's a good idea, you might not. But neither position is treason. You have to conclude that the SNP MSP is conflating "Nationalist policy" with some unchallengeable Scottish interests. Needless to say, these are not the same thing and opposing the SNP is not treason. In fact it's common sense, IMO.

The "defence" is even more revealing. McAlpine says “I was criticising behaviour, I wasn’t criticising people."

How, I ask you, do you criticise behaviour without criticising the people who are behaving in the way you don't like? You can't say, "He robbed a bank. He behaved like a bank robber, but I'm not calling him a bank robber. It's just bank robberly like behaviour by his bank robbing gang..." Aye right.

It gets even more convoluted with ".... The issue here is the behaviour of the anti-independence parties coming together to seek to stop Scotland having a referendum at a time of our choosing."

So it's not people who are behaving like traitors, it''s "parties". But parties don't "behave", parties are made up of people and people behave. How can a party beghave in an "anti-Scottish" way, but none of its members?

As for "...seek to stop Scotland having a referendum at a time of our choosing.".. who pray is "Scotland"?.the SNP? Should that not be "the Scottish people"? In which case the sentence becomes "seek to stop the Scottish people having a referendum at a time of their choosing". The SNP is confusing SNP with Scottish people.

And whose is the "our" in "...a time of "our" choosing". Again what the SNP wants is being conflated with the interests of Scotland and the Scottish people.

To conclude. It is clear to me that Joan McAlpine was serious when she called her opponents "anti-Scottish". She meant it. She conflates the desires of the SNP with the interests of Scotland. From there it's no step at all to declaring opposition to SNP policy as "anti-Scottish). The idea of treachery is inherent in her rhetoric, which consists of weasel words in an attempt to conceal, but of which close analysis reveals, her real thoughts.

If you dare oppose the SNP, you are "anti-Scottish". That's the message. But still, she keeps her job and her tormentor gets the sack.

As Maggie Thatcher said, it's a funny old world!

How many questions...how many ??/?

2012-01-13T20:25:00.002Z

The Herald reports that Canon Kenyon Wright, a stalwart of the Constitutional Convention, wants a second question on more powers for the ScottishParliament on the referendum ballot because “a straight choice betweenindependence and the status quo disenfranchises a large number of Scots whowant neither”. In which case, logically and surely, there should be a third question toprovide for those “disenfranchised” Scots who may wish to vote for fewer powers.

That may sound ridiculous, but there is a seriouspoint to it. If there has to be a referendum then a straight “independence yesor no” is the only clear and coherent route to take. Including further optionsonly muddies the waters, making a clear and acceptable outcome less likely andincreasing the chances of the whole exercise ending in confusion, dragging onfor years, and being decided in the courts rather than by the voters.

Last night on Newsnight, the blessed Paddy Ashdown made the point that more options dilute any result. (it's about 35 mins in).

For example, Option A gets 45%, Option B gets 35%, Option C gets 20%

Option A is declared the winner even though 55% didn't support it.

If option A is "independence", should we become "independent" based on a minority vote?

If option A is "Devo max" (whatever that is... but that's a different matter), do we follow that course, although a majority doesn't support it?

If option A is the status quo, won't Nationalists argue that the majority is against it and demand another referendum?

It's obvious that multiple questions create unclear outcomes.

So the only acceptable, honest and coherent approach is to have a single in/out question.

Of course, acceptable, honest and coherent may not be what our SNP masters actually want.

*I've redrafted this after complaints that, in trying to show that a three question referendum created "unclear" outcomes, the post was, in itself, "unclear"....

I hope it's clearer now...

Alex Salmond, closet unionist.

2012-01-11T23:08:00.000Z

I've learned a few things in the last few days about the SNP's plan for a referendum on "independence".

The Nationalists want a referendum on "independence".

They don't want the Electoral Commission, a tried and trusted independent organasation, to conduct the referendum. Instead they want to for a "new body" responsible to the Scottish Executive. What this "new body" is or how it is to be constituted nobody knows.

They want to allow 16-year-olds to vote in the referendum, although they are not eligable to vote in other national ballots.

Their official position is that they want a single in/out question, but their public pronouncements make it clear that they also want a second question on devo-max.

They want to dictate the date of the referendum with no consultation with any other person or institution.

They want to dictate the question(s) on the ballot with no consultation with any other person or institution.

They accept that, legally, the referendum will only be "advisory", but they want, nevertheless, to treat it as mandatory.

They reject offers of coooperation from Westminster that would strengthen their legal position.

It seems that the Nationalists are positively welcoming, indeed deliberately causing and creating, problems and difficulties with their key policy. The SNP's own plan is littered with obstacles placed there by themselves. It's as if they really want it to be challenged. As if they want delays and obfuscations and difficulties to hinder progress and undermine public belief in the very referendum they claim to is the culmination of 80 years of Nationalist agitation.

Puzzling, intit?

There are several possible explanations that I can think of to explain of this approach. Maybe they know they will lose and are preparing their excuses... government obstruction, legal challenges, perfidious albion....etc. etc. etc. and blah blah blah...

Maybe they want to recreate the Quebecios and unleash the dreaded "neverendum" on the undeserving and long suffering Scottish people.

Or maybe, and most intriguingly, Alex Salmond is a unionist mole, an entryist, a unionist spy, whose long term aim is the destruction of the Nationalist project.

What better way than to design a messy mish mash of an illegal, easily challengeable, destined to be losing, consultative/mandatory/onetwothreeoption "referendum". ....

Sorry lads, I tried, we lost.

Arise Sir Eck.... Well thankyou, Maam.

Horrified Coda

After I posted this last night I saw young Torquil Crichton of the Daily Record on Newsnight Scotland. He agrees that Eck is inviting a legal challenge but suggests it's so that the whole thing can drag on past the 2016 elections... and be used in the campaign by the Nats... recalcitrant Albion, blocking oor path...it's no fair, michty me...

Help ma boab!

Child poverty -v- Referendums...what choice?

2012-01-10T22:41:00.000Z

Just seen the Scottish news on tv. The third story is that the Child Poverty Action Group CPAG (Scotland) has issued a report decrying the fact that levels of child poverty in Scotland, after falling, is now on the increase.

But what are we all talking about? What was the headline on the UK and the Scottish news? The bloody Constitution, that's what.

If there ever was an indication of the irrelevance of the Nationalist obsession with "independence" to the everyday existence of the real Scottish people, this is it.

Why oh why are we not working together to solve these real problems, poverty, unemployment, education, health... instead of being blown off course by bogus questions on abstract idiocies like "independence"?

The Quadrille Begins

2012-01-09T14:15:00.000Z

So David Cameron has finally made a move in the long and tiresome when/which/this-parliament/early/later/maybe eve-of-bannockburn/one/two/how-many-questions/binding/non-binding referendum on "independence"/Devo Max/status quo.

When I say "made a move" he has had, apparently, some "discussions in Parliament" about possibly passing constitutional powers to the Scottish Parliament to hold a "binding" referendum. He has also, so it is said, discussed putting conditions on the referendum, including a desire that it happens sooner rather than later.

This modest toe-in-the-water move has been met with roaring outrage by the Nicola Sturgeon. "How dare the elected Government of the UK interest itself in matters of the UK Constitution?" cries Nat Number Two. "It is", says Nicola, "an unwarranted interference by the UK Government in the affairs of....er...the UK Government". (clue; these are not direct quotes)..... you can hear Nicola's full intellectual writhing here..... and a thing of grace and beauty it is not....

Nicola Sturgeon insists that the SNP has a committed to hold a referendum in the second half of the parliament, but the SNP Manifesto only mentions that they will hold the referendum, and commits no timing to that act. Indeed their Consultation Document on the referendum, published a year ago, suggested that any referendum should be held "as soon as possible".

According to the Nationalists, the Constitution is their Constitution. If they want to hold their one/possibly two question referendum tomorrow, or next year, or 2014, that's up to them. The superior chamber in Westminster must have no say. It is, apparently, anti-democratic for Westminster to make the mildest proposal about a referendum in the UK, but not anti-democratic for the SNP to do the same....

This is a clearly ridiculous position. The SNP has, undoubtedly, a mandate for a non-binding, one question referendum on whether Scotland splits from the UK or not. It has a mandate to hold that referendum at any time during its term of office. But it has no need to wait until 2014 beyond its own calculation that it can manipulate the political situation to make a "break up the UK" vote more likely by its control of the political agenda in Scotland.

And the SNP is not the only party in power in the UK. The UK Parliament is superior in law to the Scottish Parliament and the UK Government has ownership of Constitutional matters across the whole of the UK.

It is sensible that both bodies have a say in matters pertaining to the referendum. The voters understand this even if Nationalist politicians would rather they did not. Reacting with shock-horror at the very thought that the UK Government might express a mild interest in constitutional matters within its own boundaries is to treat Scottish voters as the fools they most definitely are not.

One thing is clear in the interview, Nicola Sturgeon confirms that the SNP wants a single question, in-out referendum (it's at the end of the interview). That makes sense to me and it is as it should be. At least that's cleared up and we can now drop any second/third question nonsense.

A Doleful Anniversary

2012-01-08T12:51:00.000Z

On this day 8^thJanuary, in the year 1697 a Scottish teenager, Thomas Aitkenhed, was hanged atthe foot of the mound in Edinburgh and his body buried at the gallows where hewas killed. Aitkenhead’s “crime” was to oppose what he saw as the “fantasies”of religious belief.

The charge read that Aitkenhead

“... ... had repeatedlymaintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-inventednonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partlyof poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holyscriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop'sFables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, whichenabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he calledthe New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses wasthe better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad toChrist: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, andcontradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so longdeluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy ofrefutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.”

In truth Aitkenhead was guilty ofno crime other than talking loosely in the tavern to a “friend” who reportedtheir conversation to the church authorities. But in 17^th century Scotlandthe Kirk had its own laws and its own courts. Alarmed at what they saw as toomuch free talk and free thinking which upset and opposed their own prejudices,and having the power to do so, the Kirk elders were determined to make an exampleof the lad. He was charged with blasphemy and duly hanged in the hostilepresence of those who brought and prosecuted the accusation and who werereported to have tormented him even as the hangman’s noose was tightened aroundhis neck. The historian Thomas McAuley said that "the preachers who werethe poor boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, and. . . insultedheaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered."

Ten years later in 1707 the Scottishand English Parliaments were united and in the following century the ScottishEnlightenment, one of the greatest flowerings of human thought in history,blossomed in the newly freed atmosphere of tolerance (relative) and freedomthat ensued.

Fifty years after Atkenhead’skilling David Hume published his “Treatise on Human Nature”, a sceptical inquirywhich sought to explain natural phenomena from natural, not supernatural,evidence. Aitkenhead’s misfortune was to be born too soon, to be too free inhis expression in a religion-dominated society and, probably, to be too youngto think of the caution necessary in such an un-free atmosphere.

If ever there was a warning tokeep church and state separate, and to ensure that government is secular and unprejudicedas to the personal beliefs of the citizen, the sad case of Thomas Aitkenheadechoes that warning down through the centuries.

Alex Salmond and the love that dare not speak its name

2012-01-06T16:23:00.000Z

If there was a brass-neck championship of Scotland there's no doubt that oor wee Eck would be a prime contender. Taking advantage of the new released film in which Meryl Streep gives an "eerily accurate" (critics everywhere) impersonation of Maggie Thatcher, the First Comedian (FC) has been claiming that it was his interruption of a budget debate that led to Maggie's eventual downfall.

Which is rather strange since the same FC claimed a couple of years ago that "we" (that's us Scots, all of us, Eck speaks for us all, didn't you know?) didn't mind Maggie's destruction of the Scottish economy. This is a mystifying misunderstanding of the real Scottish fury and hatred at these policies. Coming from a supposedly mature politician, it is a level of misreading which leads to the suspicion that Mr Salmond himself "didn't mind" Maggie's feral politics and he has just projected his Maggie Love on the rest of us. An easy mistake to make, especially if you are, as Mr S seems to think he is, The Appointed (should that be Anointed?) Voice Of Scotland.

Certainly, of the "successes" that the SNP claim over the last few years the Council Tax Freeze is a straight steal from the Tories. The consequential weakening of Local Government and cutting teacher numbers by 4000 are outcomes to make any Conservative leader salivate. So Eck has no especial objection to Maggie's economic vision and he has no practical objection to stealing Tory policies and he has no apparent problem with the results and outcomes of these Tory policies......

You and I might think that there is a measure of contradiction in these claims that, on the one hand, Eck love Maggie economics, and on the other hand, he claims the credit for destroying her career. There is even a hint of Shakespearean tragedy: the bold young Eck loves his hero's economic policies but he also lights the economic fuse that brings about her downfall....

Anyways....

I always say "credit where credit is due". So all credit to Eck vis-a-vis Mrs T.... he admired her policies and doesn't mind who knows it.

As for "Eck Brings Maggie Down"..... as my young relatives would say .... puleeez.....

The Death of Consumerism

2011-12-31T18:15:00.000Z

The Silverburn shopping centre on Glasgow's south-side is the largest mall in Scotland, so they say. It's enormous. A huge cathedral-like structure of glass and tile, full of "units" and "outlets" and "franchises" and "supermarkets" and even just plain shops, with a Tesco at one end and a Marks and Spencer at the other, it's a vast modern bazaar with everything you might want, and all under one gigantic roof .

Yesterday I was diverted to the M&S shop at Silverburn to get some toddler food for my 3-year-old grandson, but unfortunately they didn't have what I wanted.

As I strode through the mall on my way back to the car it suddenly struck me that in all that corncuopia of goods and services, of clothes and hardware and software and printware and fast food and (for all I know) slow food, in all of it, there was not one thing that they could sell me that I really needed or even particularly wanted.

FREEDUM!! (as our nationlaist brethren are wont to exhale when facts and logic run out .....)

An Act of Existential Cowardice

2011-12-12T18:30:00.002Z

Or "Where's Wally", Parliamentary version....

If there is one policy, principle and philosophical stance that used to distinguish the Lib Dems from the other parties it is a firm attachment to Europe. But last week their coalition partner David Cameron pushed the UK dinghy away from the nearer European shores and drifted off on the long Eurosceptic journey to complete separation.Nick Clegg at first agreed and then demurred. "I'm for it.Oh no, I'm agin' it" he said of Mr Cameron's Euro brush off.

Today, when Mr Cameron came to attempt to justify his decision to the Commons, McAvity Clegg just wasn't there.

When Clegg and his party reneged on their cast iron promise to students to oppose rises in student fees it seemed that they had sunk as low as they could go. Not at all.

Now the Lib Dems have abandoned their keystone policy. The party of Europe is silent against the onslaught of the swivel eyed Tory right wing little Englander Euro-nutters. The same Euro-nutters who now believe they have won the day and have destroyed the Lib Dems raison d'etre.

And the leader of that party, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Nicholas Clegg MP, a man who has spent his political life in Europe and fighting for pro-European policies, was too cowardly to even attend the Parliamentary debate. Too afraid to face the well earned contempt of his peers and the derision of his colleagues. Too scared to give badly needed leadership to his party, he ran and he hid. Like a criminal. Like a fugitive.

While other Lib Dems stood and took defeat on the chin, and fought back with what spirit they could muster, their leader was in furtive hiding. He slunk out afterwards and tried to bluster his way through TV interviews without looking too shop-soiled, but he is damaged goods, no leader, and his party is, maybe fatally, wounded.

And what of the coalition? If it gets into trouble, will Nick Clegg stand up for it, for his Tory tormentors, for those who today called him and his party "lickspittles" while he, the brave party leader, cowered in the shadows, unable or unwilling to stand up for himself or his party or their, now tattered and torn, political principles.

Nationalist Crocodile in Tears

2011-11-29T17:20:00.006Z

The SNP likes to portaray itself as, and it's activists like to believe it is, a left-wing party. To listen to the Nats, the Tories are demons, Labour and the Lib Dems are just Tories in drag and the only real left wing party in Scotland is the SNP. This despite their embracing of many Tory policies and Alex Salmond's very public endorsement of Thatcherite philosophy. Somehow, despite all the evidence, the Nationalists like to pretend that they are somehow of the left, politically.

Anyway. Here, from the Caledonian Mercury, is more evidence in the argument. The Scottish Public Pensions Agency (SPPA) has revealed that the SNP asked for even more swingeing chnages to public sector pensions than even the ToryDem coalition dared to do.

Among the suggestions that John Swinney put forward to the Hutton Commission on public sector pensions are;:

Moving to a "defined contribution" scheme which would be much more like most private sector schemes and would leave many public sector workers considerably worse off as a result.
Increasing the contributions from employees.
Reducing the benefits available to pensioners, but not reducing the size of their contributions.
Introducing later retirement ages.

Tomorrow you might see some SNP politicians issuing statements of support for the strikers. "Every sympathy". "Disgraceful Tories attacking poor public sector workers". "Lib Dem Tory poodles". That sort of stuff. When you do, remember the truth: the nats want to cut public sector pensions even more viciously than the Tories.

Given the nats known previous behaviour, I'm not surprised.

I wonder what those decent SNP members who take comfort in their party's "liberal", "left wing", credentials, make of it, when the evidence mounts that they are anything but.....

Devolution-Max: a dangerous Red-Herring

2011-11-27T15:53:00.001Z

Devolution Max is a dangerous red herring for the country. Actually, looking at what I have just written gives pause for thought because I don’t actually know what is meant by the phrase, (should that be slogan?), “Devolution Max”. Do you? Does anyone?

According to the political pundits and its supporters Devo Max is “more powers for Holyrood”. But which “more powers”? And how powerful are these “more powers”? And why do we need them? And what would we do with them? And what would be the effect on Scotland and the UK of Scotland having these magical but still undefined “more powers”? I have to admit, I don’t really know the full extent of it - nor does anyone, least of all the Scottish people.

I do know that Devo Max is not Labour policy. In fact it’s not anyone’s policy. It has never been through the furnace of proposal, analysis, consultation, revision, refinement, explanation, clarification and commitment to manifesto and voter acceptance that any policy needs to gain support and legitimacy. There is no party or democratic mandate for Devo Max.

So that’s the first question: why embrace an idea that is not fully defined, which has never been in anyone’s manifesto, which has no democratic mandate, which is little more than a slogan and of which we know only the outline but which has the potential to take us far beyond anything we have ever voted for?

But of course we do know something of what its supporters want. They want “Full Fiscal Autonomy”. By that they mean that, broadly speaking, all taxes raised in Scotland will be kept in Scotland. By any analysis I have seen this would shrink the Scottish Executive’s income and the public sector even more than currently threatened by the coalition. They want to keep the Queen as Head of State and the British military as our national defence arm. They want other things, I’m sure, but that’s all I can really pin down from all the endless discussion of Devo Max and it’s suitability as a second question on the “independence” referendum.

And that’s the other thing the Devo Max brigade wants: they want it as a second question on a referendum ballot on “independence”.

Question: “do you want “independence”?

Answer: no fear!

“OK then, do you want “more powers””?

“More powers”! That sounds wonderful. How can anyone turn down “more powers”?

OK we’ll have “more powers” taverymuch”

Federalism has been a Lib Dem aim, quietly unspoken, never trumpeted, but lurking at the back of their policy locker for use in constitutional discussions when the need arises. Some Lib Dems are attracted to the possibility that Devo Max might be a Trojan horse for federalism. “We want change. Not more Devolution or “independence”. Federalism, that’s it”. And of course “federalism” has no democratic mandate either. And federalism isn’t Devolution or “independence”. Whereas Devolution is the enacted will of the Scottish people and while it could be argued that there is a democratic mandate for a referendum on “independence” (many legal questions still to be answered of course), federalism has no such justification.

So. We have “independence” which is sure to lose in any one-question referendum, and we have this slogan that no-one can (or wants to) define properly in any detail , that would make us worse off but is psychological catnip to the voters. Why on Earth would we want to muddy the waters by including it alongside the SNP’s losing proposition? After all it’s their ideal second prize. “Oh well, we lost this one, but look at the losing bonus....!! Almost everything we want and we didn’t even have to campaign for it, our opponents did that for us”. Quickly followed by: “Whit a buncha dopes”.

It’s even more bizarre that any of the major parties can contemplate offering Devo Max to the nats as a consolation prize when the Calman proposals for “more powers for Holyrood” are currently in the process of being enacted by Westminster. These are our “more powers”. We thought them through and campaigned on them. They are a sensible extension of the devolution powers that Labour and the other parties introduced against the opposition of the SNP. Why would we want another question on “more powers” with Calman on the stocks but not yet tested to see if the “more powers” included in the Scotland Bill actually work?

My old Grannie used to say “Cui bono, youngyin, cui bono”. And the cui who bonos from a second, Devo Max question on the referendum ballot, is one trader in oleum serpens who goes by the name of Eckus obesus. Imagine the grins on nationalist faces the day after they lose the “independence” referendum, but still walk away with a prize. And more importantly, the mood in the country: wily old Alex, he’s lost and yet still won and lives to fight another day. That Labour bunch, they know nothing.

Devolution Max is a dangerous red herring. It is ill-defined, it has no democratic mandate, its effects are unpredictable but very possibly dramatic, it drives towards a federalist position (something no-one wants), it will reduce the public sector in Scotland below even the current planned cuts, it has potential to cause much disruption within the UK, it opens the door to more possibilities for nationalist trouble making and it provides a nice “second prize” to the SNP for losing their referendum on “independence”

Apart from that....

A Manifesto for our Times...

2011-11-12T23:44:00.000Z

Am I the only one that thinks it astonishing that unelected Prime Ministers have been foisted on Greece and Italy by the Germns and the French?

Even more bizarre is the fact that at least on of these new and unelected PMs is a financier......

I thought the financial crisis was the failure of the banking system, but it seems it's really the collapse of democratic systems...

On a lighter note, this....smile inducing and containing a real truth...

Hat tip tax research uk;

Trust me, I'm a Tory....

2011-11-10T20:45:00.002Z

The Coalition Government has had a bumpy ride with its NHS "reforms". After campaigning as a lover of the NHS and eschewing "top down" reorganisations, David Cameron gave the NHS to Andrew Landsley, a man who had been planning for many years to commercialise (at least), and impose just such a top down reorganisation, on the NHS in England.

Whenever the question of whether they intend to privatise NHS services the Tories throw up their hands and roll their eyes: "Not me guv. Honest". Meanwhile American and other Healthcare companies slaver on the sidelines. The NHS is a plum they would very much like to swallow. If only the Government would let them...

Today it was announced that a company called Circle Healthcare has been awarded the contract to manage Hitchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire. Not quite a full privatisation but very possibly a rehearsal for it. A trojan Horse, the thin end of a gold plated wedge.

Politics Home has declared an exclusive on the revalation that Circle Healthcare has strong links to the Tory Party.

Individuals linked to Circle have donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservatives over the last few years and a Tory MP is revealed as an ex-employee.

To add flavour, The False Economy Blog claims that Circle has never made a profit.

In which case, what of their magical management capability? If you can't make a profit running your own business, how do you qualify to run anyone else's? Let alone a huge, locally vital, public health facility?

We couldn't be looking at an example of that old fashioned Tory sleaze, could we..... you grease my palms, I'll put business your way. With the added bonus of privatising public property.....

Would Eck's referendum be legal?

2011-11-06T23:13:00.000Z

Most recent discussion on the Nationalists' proposed referendum on "independence" has centred on when it will be and what the question(s) will be. TBH I'm beginning to doubt it will ever happen.

Lalands Peat Worrier has an interesting piece, linking to the UK Supreme Court blog by Aiden O'Neill QC, questioning the legality of any referendum launched from Holyrood (whatever the question) and its openness to legal challenge.

The basic premise is that no referendum from Eck can be legal and any such referendum can and certasinly will be challenged....

Interesting reading.

From the "Why?" to the "How?" of "independence"....

2011-11-03T19:52:00.002Z

Gerry Hassan has a post...here... with the headline "From the How to the Why of independence...."

Which is telling, IMHO.

Surely the sensible direction is the opposite "From the ‘Why’ to the ‘How’ of Scottish Independence"

Because, if there's no good reason "Why" then you don't need the "How".

As in;

Gerry: "We need independence"

Me: "Why?"

Gerry: "Because... (a whole list of compelling evidence)..."

Me: "Ok then, how do we get it?"

compare;

Gerry: "We need independence"

Me: "Why?"

Gerry: "Errmmm... don't really know..Urrrrmmm...it just seems like a good idea... Hrrrmmm kilts, bagpipes, London's miles away...Aaaarrghhh Alex Salmond told me...

Me: "Well, if you can't tell me "Why", we don't need to plan a "How" do we?

Which seems to me to nicely encapsulate the nationalist position so far...

The Wizard of Eck....

2011-10-27T11:41:00.000+01:00

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the USA, famously stated during his inauguration speech that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself". Roosevelt spoke in relation to the great depression and the political dangers of the prevailing situation. Many films of that era tended to reflect the political and social issues of he time. One such is the 1939 children's classic The Wizard of Oz, in which Dorothy from Kansas, transported to the land of Oz, has to challenge the fearsome and all-powerful Wizard of Oz who can help her to return home.

After many adventures with, among others, the wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy discovers the Wizard to be a small man with a big megaphone, enforcing his will by outshouting everyone else. Behind the impressive front, the Wizard is revealed as a pompous and bombastic wimp. In Scottish terms, the great panjandrum is really a toom tabard...an empty cloak.

Watching the events of last weekend unfold I could not help being struck by the parallels with current Scottish politics.

First, Alex Salmond claimed in a political magazine that only SNP politicians have the right to talk about "independence". His remarks were in the context of the decision by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee to investigate the implications to Scotland and the UK if Scottish "independence" was ever to be put in place. The FM declared that "there is no one on the Scottish Affairs Select Committee that has a mandate to say anything about a referendum, apart Eilidh Whiteford (SNP)....". The master of bombast and bluster shows a small part of his hand...... the SNP is legitimate, everyone else is illegitimate, therefore questioning "independence" is also illegitimate and the Nats aren't playing that game, thankyouverymuch.

On Friday Alex Salmond gives an interview to the BBC in which he promises to have a two-question referendum on "independence" and "devolution max", and in which he warns the Prime Minister to steer clear of calling his own referendum. "The time has passed when Westminster can dictate to the Scottish people", says the Great Eck, thus dismissing the Wicked Witch of Westminster.

The Great Leader's speech, to be delivered the following day at the SNP Rally in Inverness, was much trailed in the papers and on TV. Again, we were told, there would be warnings to Westminster to lay off and again there would be the commitment to a two-question referendum.

But come the speech itself: it had the usual nationalist tropes about wha's like us and hands of our oil and how they are "Scotland's Party" and nobody else counts and London's imagined baleful influence. There was a lot about "independence" and the promised referendum, but, interestingly, no direct mention of the second, "devo max", question. It's attractions were hinted at, but there was no open commitment by the SNP, the party which runs the Parliament and which wants the referendum, to actually formulating and including a question on "devo max" in their referendum.

So. What happened to the SNP's desire for a fallback, second question, on "devo max"?

Fast forward to Tuesday night. On Newsnight Scotland Alex Salmond, Alex Neill and Derek McKay of the SNP lined up to insist that there must be a second question but it must be set by the other parties! This bizarre argument is pursued with much illogic, by Mr McKay in particular, on this clip from the programme.

Now the Scottish Affairs Select Committee returns centre stage: Eilidh Whiteford resigns from the committee claiming that she was threatened with a "doing" by committee chair Ian Davidsom MP (Labour). She's so distressed that she cannot carry on. The SNP says it will not be represented on the committee until Mr Davidson resigns as chair. But Mr Davidson has apologised while denying any threat, and other members of the committee who were present at the meeting cannot recall Ms Whiteford being threatened at all. Whatever the truth of the matter, the Nationalists are seizing on it to uncouple and distance themselves from any public discussion of the "independence" question. When the Scottish Affairs Select Committee reports on the problems it finds with the SNP's main policy, the Nats will hold their hands in the air and say "Ah but, we don't accept it because we weren't consulted". Because they chose not to take part.....

For years now we've been told that Eck was the wizard of Scottish politics. Everyone was afraid to take him on because no-one could stand up to his scorn or match his rhetoric: he could win every argument by sheer volume of voice and he could blow away all opposition. One result has been that nobody, particularly the Scottish media, has questioned his position, or his policies, such as they are. The Wizard of Eck has megaphoned his way to domination over a fawning media and a bamboozled political class.

But is the very real Wizard of Eck any different in essence from the fictional Wizard of Oz?

The Wizard of Eck's strategy is revealed: bluster, bombast, megaphone politics, threats and warnings. If these don't work, then blame everyone else and, when cornered, run away or plead for special treatment. Just like the Wizard of Oz.

How very familiar.... the question now becomes....who is to be the Scottish peoples' Dorothy to prick the imposter's bubble?

Sublime...Ridiculous!

2011-10-26T09:09:00.000+01:00

The SNP won a mandate in May for their referendum on "independence". Since then they have been toying with something they call "devo max".... should there be a second question on the referendum form offereing "devo max"?

Problem is, they have no definition of their "devo max" idea.

Now they are demanding that the other parties define "devio max" and put the second question on the ballot....!!!

Lats night's Newsnight Scotland we had a succesion of senior nats: Alex Neill, Alex Salmond and someone called Derek McKay demanding that the other parties tell him what his second question should be!

Watch it here...

It's bizzare.

Relaxed about the stinking rich....

2011-10-24T18:20:00.000+01:00

When I was young the USA was viewed by one-and-all as the land of opportunity for the ordinary person. I knew a number of families, incuding relatives, who emigrated there in search of a better life: more jobs, better paid, a higher standard of living. And, importantly, a rising standard of living. If you worked you were better off every year, and there was no reason not to work. That was the promise of the USA to its citizens young and old, old and new.

And that was the message sent back but those who went there: a land of plenty where the working man could hold his head up and do as well as the next guy.

Which is why the graph below, (plucked from here) while not really a shock, carries a shocking message.

It shows that the vast majority, 90%, of US citizens have had no real improvement in their wealth in 30 years. But the top 1% has increased its wealth by 224% and the top 0.1% has increased its wealth by a positively gargantuan 390%!

The promise of the USA to its citizens is, and as been for thirty years, a lie. The working man, and indeed that mythical American cadre, the "middle classes", gets stiffed in the wealth stakes. The bottom 90% have been betrayed and left behind while the top 1% have lapped up all the benefits of growth over that time.

The betrayal aligns exactly with the neo-con era, Thatcher/Regan voodoo economics and the sick joke of "trickle down", the theory that it's all right if the rich get richer because we all benefit from their greed. Well it isn't so and it never was. And all of this in a era when those same 1% of the extremely rich have paid a lot less tax. Something stinks, IMHO.

Peter Mandelson was famously "relaxed about some people being filthy rich".. Up to a point, Lord Copper, says I. But when the evidence for such a cash-grab is so stark and so prolonged, it's time to call a halt. No wonder there's the stirrings of a left-wing resistance movement building up in the USA.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not jealous of rich people who work hard and who get rewards commensurate with their industry and their luck. Good for them I say, as long as the reward really is proportionate and as long as the rest of us do not get left behind.

Would a similar analysis in the UK would show a similar result? I wouldn't be surprised: maybe someone will do the work....?

Headlines, history and hysterics

2011-10-17T08:46:00.005+01:00

When is a story not really a story, and what do headlines tell us?

The Herald is running this story, under the headline;

"Independence warning after SNP ‘historic shift’"

The story starts....

"THE SNP Government is to renew calls for greater economic powers north of the Border after claiming there had been a historic shift in the public’s attitude towards the party. The Nationalists were given a further boost after a poll showed a rise in support across the UK for independence."

It goes on to report that a poll has 39% UK-wide "supporting" "independence" for Scotland.

But look again: is the result so astonishing? We've been here before with even notional majorities in Scotland telling pollsters that they would support "independence", an outcome not reflected in any subsequent electio result.

And who says that it is "historic"? Well nobody really. To quote;

"THE SNP Government is to renew calls for greater economic powers north of the Border after claiming there had been a historic shift in the public’s attitude towards the party."

And there's even more confusion. Even if more people across the UK support "independence", that's no reason to say they would support any specific new or enhanced "economic powers" for Holyrood. It is quite possible that people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland might support "independence" for Scotland for any number of reasons. That's no guarantee that they would support more (or even less) tax raising power for Holyrood. And even if they did, so what? Within the Devolution settlement, Holyrood is quite entitled to ask for more powers from Westminster, but Westminster isn't obliged to grant those powers, particularly without a manifesto commitment to do so, a commitment which none of the UK parties has made.

So. Do we have an "Independence warning"? No. We have a demand for more tax powers, the same demand that has been made often enough in the last few months.

Do we have a "historic shift". Not really. We have an opinion poll. The results are as interesting and important as most polls, but they are not in any way "historic".

So what's it all about? It's all about selling newspapers. Many a nat wandering into the newsagents and not yet decided which paper to buy will have his/her eye caught by this "historic" breakthrough and eagerly buy the Herald to lap it up. What they lap up, the content of the article, will be a lot less nutritious and falvourfull than the hysterical headline has promised.

But hey, that's showbiz, as Alex Salmond regularly responds at FMQs.

2011-10-03T08:37:00.000+01:00

The reported £800 million the UK Government is spending to extend the Council Tax freeze in England is almost an exact match for the amount of fees support removed from universities, thus enforcing a £9000 annual fee on new undergraduates.

In effect grateful middle class parents and grandparents get a tax windfall from the Tories which they then immediately divert to a subsidy for their university bound offspring. In this manner university fees are privatised and council services are cut, and we willingly pay up. How cunning is that?

And what is the SNP Council Tax freeze costing us north of the border?

Scottish Nationalist Police Force...

2011-09-09T11:10:00.002+01:00

I’m not aware of all the arguments in favour of a national police force, but surely those who say that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) wants to create a Scottish National Police force (SNP) so that the new Scottish National Police force (SNP) can drive along our streets and highways with its snappy new acronym above a brand new badge, probably containing the Saltire, a flag that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) seems to consider its personal property rather than the flag of the country, are being too cynical. Aren’t they?

Has you're Granny got a Heilan' Hame?

2011-08-31T20:55:00.000+01:00

A common theme of yer actual cybernat is the blind assumption that everyone is like them. If you're not a Scot Nat, you must be a "unionist", and if you happen to be English and speak out against Scots Nats, that's because you're an English Nat. Have to be. Stands to reason. How can anyone not be a Nat of some description?

Well...

I'm watching the T20 international between England and India from Old Trafford. And y'know, that little theory doesn't quite hold water.... The "English" team has no fewer than three South Africans, Pietersen. Keiswetter and Dernbach, and one Irishman, Eoin Morgan, in their eleven...

And young Dernbach is half-Scottish into the bargain.

Now that's what I call sensible. Not "Where were you born?" or "Has you're Granny got a Heilan' hame?", or "Can you wave a flag?", but "Can you play?". Quite right too.

And when the United Nations helped England beat the Aussies and win the Ashes, wasn't that a great victory for English cricket...? I watched it. I loved it.

Great thing about the English... they're not Nationalists.

Mind you, how many home-born Scots are there in the current Scottish football team? And the Tartan Army don't seem to care too much... good for them, I say.

You're 'avin' a Laffer....

2011-08-25T15:12:00.002+01:00

I'm no economist, but I do know that the SNP's plans to compete within the UK on Corporation Tax are flawed, as I blogged here and as Richard Murphy blogged here. A separate Corporation Tax in Scotland is contrary to the interests of the UK, it doesn't create new jobs but it does cause distortions in the market and any claimed benefits are not certain and will take years to appear... if they ever do.

Meanwhile the EU is moving towards harmonisation of business taxes, forcing Tax Pirate economies like the Irish to toe the line, and making the policy that the Nationalists want in a devolved UK, i.e.cutting business taxes in isolation, impossible to implement if they ever achieved their dream of "independent in Europe".
So it's already a dog's breakfast, a fact emphasised by John Swinney's incoherence when trying to defend it on Newsnicht.

Nevertheless the bold John yesterday issued this press release.....and now he seems to have swallowed the whole right-wing Laffer Curve nonsense... y'know the bit where Tea Party Republicans claim that lowering taxes always increases government revenues...

"There is clear evidence from around the world of the benefits from lowering burdens on business....Lower corporation tax is a vital source of competitive advantage in an integrated global economy, helping to attract new businesses and highly-skilled jobs. ......Corporation Tax has a significant influence on increasing the size, competitive strength, productivity and ambition of Scotland's business base. Lower rates of corporation tax boost incentives to invest in human and physical capital, and research and development, increasing firms' profitability and the ability to compete.....cutting the headline tax rate would not necessarily reduce tax receipts."

Proponents of the Laffer Curve are always willing to admit that it is counter-intuitive (translation "illogical") to believe that cutting taxes increases the amount of tax revenues gathered, but even they will only claim that it works if a country is "over taxed" in the first place. Say what you want about the UK, but it's not a high tax country for business in the first place. Corporation Tax is only around 26% and there are plans to reduce it, so the theoretical gain from the Laffer analysis wouldn't happen here (even if you believed in Laffer, which most economists don't).

Frankly, what a so-called "left wing" party like the SNP pretends to be is doing calling up neo-liberal mumbo jumbo to support an already discredited policy proposal is beyond logic and consistency. But then logic and consistency never were a Nationalist strong points.

Where's Gordon.....? Where's Gideon...?

2011-08-19T21:14:00.000+01:00

Yesterday and today global markets plummeted. Down like a stone... and no "dead cat bounce" to be seen. This particular cat is a dead cat and it ain't bouncing any time soon.... the outlook is bleak and the future is dark...

The economies of Europe and the USA are tanking. Confidence drains away like a summer downpour... not much left, it'll soon be gone...

And our leaders? How are they handling this dreadful situation?

Obama speaks words of reassurance. Merkel speaks. Sarkozy speaks. Merkel and Sarkozy speak together. They all speak in unison. But who is listening...? Not the markets. Not the investors or the financial analysts. The more our leaders speak, the worse the situation becomes.... (BTW, where's our Finance Minister in all of this? Gideon George Osborne is nowhere to be seen).

Here's a quote from Liberal England;

"For all Gordon Brown's faults, he was a considerable and reassuring presence on the international stage and would have been in his element in the current crisis. When it comes to international finance, our current prime minister has been the invisible man."

Halelujah! Absolutely true. If Gordon was in charge he would be calling summits, banging heads together, brokering deals, making a case, convincing markets, bolstering banks, exuding confidence, outmanouvreing hedge funds and, at least, attempting to control the crisis.

Where is he now? Well the UK public bought the Murdoch line that Gordon was difficult, Gordon was mulish, Gordon , the dour Scot, was somehow limited and not fit for leadership (unlike James Murdoch......).

And the public believed Murdoch, but not enough to vote for Dave, so the Lib Dems, when it came to the choice, chose Dave.... and his Bullingdon mate and economic illiterate, George

Where are they now that we need real leadership from really mature politicians? They are nowhere to be seen.

And where is Gordon when we need him....? Out of office and out of power.

Is that the real tragedy of the 2011 financial crisis?

Payback Time....

2011-08-19T13:54:00.003+01:00

Brian Wilson has an interesting piece about the political influence in the honours system, in particular the knighthood awarded to the SNP's main paymaster, Brian Souter, the bus and rail billionaire. Was it a straight reward from Nationalist politicians to the man who puts so much cash into their party? It's hard to avoid the suspicion that it was.

Today's Herald reports that Strathclyde Passenger Transport (SPT) is under threat of "review" by the Nationalist Administration. Is it a coincidence that SPT is a publicly owned transport organisation and that it has been calling for stronger regulation of the bus business, a regulation that might not be to the liking of Mr Souter or in the financial interests of businesses?

Call me an old cynic, but if a Labour or Tory benefactor was making such large contributions to the party and getting such obvious benefit from government actions, what would the average person think, never mind your cybernats?

The SNP's second most prominent donor is Sir Tom Farmer. What little gift can the Nats have lined up for him?

Open, Transparent, ...You kiddin?

2011-08-18T15:15:00.003+01:00

I recently posted this on the decision by the Nationalist Administration at Holyrood to go to law to block a number of Freedom Of Information Requests (FOI). They wanted to keep information on their proposed Local Income Tax from the public... the same public who would have to pay the tax if it ever came to fruition. It seemed to me that the SNP was deliberately delaying the information because of the Scottish elections which were ongoing at the time the FOIs were requested. Anyway, not very honest, open or democratic...

Today Catherine Stihler MEP reveals that she has raised an FOI asking about any legal advice the Nationalists have on whether an "independent" Scotland would be automatically accepted into the EU. The Nationalist Executive has refused to accept the FOI, and says that releasing the information would be "contrary to the public interest"!!! Honest! Contrary to the public interest! How can it be "contrary to the public interest" for the public to have the same legal information that the SNP has on such a key part of the Nationalist strategy?

Open and transparent are words which are obviously not in the vocabulary of our Nationalist brethren.

The Nats launched their attempt to get control of Corporation Tax this week. The aim is to reduce the tax in Scotland and give Scottish business a "competitive edge" against other British companies. it wouldn't work... see here for analysis.... but in any case, it's at odds with the EU's announcement that countries should harmonise and integrate business taxes, not the disintegration that the Nationalists seem to want.

P.S. I wonder which unfortunate SNP minister is (supposed to be) in control of the Nationalists EU strategy.....

Poor wee sowell, as ma grannie used to say.....

Unsafe is as Unsafe does.....

2011-08-17T08:51:00.002+01:00

Today is the second anniversary of Kenny McAskill's decision to release Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. Sky has an interesting piece about the circumstances of his diagnosis and release, with a prominent cancer specialist who gave his opinion on Mrgrahi's health showing his unhappiness at how his opinion was used in the decision to release Megrahi.

Today it is also announced that Nat Fraser has been charged and will face a retrial on charges of murdering his wife.

This coincidence prompts the thought: why is the Nationalist government happy to release Megrahi on doubts over the safety of his conviction but the same Nationalist government is incensed by the Supreme Court ordering a retrial of Nat Fraser over doubts about the safety of his conviction?

Does justice come into it all, or is it, like most things to do with SNP actions, explained by the usual Nationalist politicking and posturing?

FFA's sake....

2011-08-16T20:12:00.001+01:00

Devolution Max, It's the kite being flown by the SNP in the knowledge that Scotland doesn't want "independence". DevoMax would incorporate Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA), the idea that all taxes raised in Scotland would be held and spent in Scotland, and that such charges as Corporation Tax could be varied (i.e rduced) in Scotland so that businesses would move from England to Scotland to save money and increase profits.

Professor Arthur Midwinter has an interesting post here on the difficulties and general impracticality of FFA in a devolved Scotland. I have always suspected that FFA was independence in disguise. Prof Midwinter shows that it is inconsistent with devolution and with the UK's economic arrangements.

But it is also at odds with the SNP's other main policy of "independence in Europe" (itself a contradiction in terms, but that's another argument). Events in the Eurozone have resulted in pressure for much more fiscal integration, the exact opposite of the SNP's desire to be a tax haven economy, at fiscal war with its supposed partners in the UK and the EU.

As for the Nats desire to be corporation tax pirates, here's what the the BBC reports is the Euro Leaders opinion of that...

In another initiative to increase tax revenues, the leaders advocated harmonising corporate tax rates across the single currency - something likely to be strongly opposed by the low-tax Republic of Ireland.

That'll be the economically crippled Ireland that Alex Salmond thinks should be the model for Scottish economic management. And that'll also be the death knell of any Nationalist plans for an "independent" Scotland to undercut corporation tax rates in the Eurozone.

P.S. I've been wasting my time... read this by Richard Murphy....

The Plates Shift......

2011-08-12T15:42:00.004+01:00

Peter Oborne is the Telegraph's chief political commentator. He is an ex-editor of the Spectator and is still (I believe) a contributing editor to that journal. In other words he's a pillar of the right-wing journalistic establishment and great defender of the conservative (and Conservative) cause.

So it appears (to me at least) highly significant when such a figure as Oborne writes this sort of stuff in his newsblog;

"...there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington..."

There's a lot more in that vein...he attacks Richard Branson for hinting that he wants to move abroad to avoid tax, and Philip Green for already doing so.....

But such behaviour has been common among businesses and businessmen for decades, encouraged by the dominant neo-liberal economic philosophy and the "me-first" and "no such thing as society" politics of the right. And right-wing journals and journalists have attacked or ignored calls from the left for fairer taxation and for more vigorous pursuit of tax evasion and tax avoidance. Being successful was not just, as in the past, a reason for reasonable reward. It had become an excuse to maximise income and minimise contribution and the hell with those at the bottom. We have not quite reached the situation in parts of the USA with gated communities to keep out the undesirable poor, but morally and practically, it sometimes feels very similar.

And now? Can it be that the moral bankruptcy of encouraging the rich to be greedy, to take the rewards and demand ever more, and insisting that the poor remain honest, pay their taxes and accept what they get, is finally becoming untenable and undeniable? Even those like Oborne, of a naturally right wing bent, and who until now have questioned the very need for taxation and celebrated tax cuts and service cuts, have woken up to the consequences of the glorification of greed. Those who encouraged the increases in inequality and the increasing physical and psychical distance between rich and poor, are now beginning to question the moral and practical basis of such a policy.

Is the neo-liberal right finally in retreat? Is Peter Oborne the first unlikely cuckoo of a new, fairer, more equal, less divided and divisive spring?

*hattip Richard Murphy at the excellent Tax Research UK

David Discovers Broken Britain.....

2011-08-10T19:10:00.002+01:00

David Cameron invented the phrase "Broken Britain" to describe a type of social collapse that he supposed characterised the Labour years and which was an outcome of Labour philosophy.

Irony of ironies, it seems to have taken only a year of Mr Cameron's Premiership to actually break Britain....

Cutting jobs and services and police numbers is coming home to roost, as Nick Clegg predicted and Boris Johnson highlights...

London's burning... and so are Manchester, Salford, Birmingham, Liverpool........

Parts of Britain are indeed broken... and the chickens are coming home to roost for the inventor of the slogan....

Whither Eck's tongue....

2011-08-07T09:31:00.002+01:00

After the Sun won it for the SNP in May, Alex Salmond “had a celebratory dinner” with News International executives. This, and Mr Salmond’s four-year courting of the Murdoch empire, may seem to make him no better than any other politician with his tongue firmly attached to the Murdoch anatomy. But, in fact, the sin would seem to be worse for Mr Salmond. The man who constantly claims to be “standing up for Scotland”, and picking fights with far-away London, is in bed with a media company whose interests are not those of Scotland or the UK, but are firmly corporate with a United States bias, and with a wholly conservative political agenda.

Given the power-broking influence of News Corporation in the relatively large UK, one shudders at the effects on democracy of such power and influence in a smaller so-called "independent" country with fewer resources to withstand, and as Mr Salmond’s behaviour has revealed, no real will or wish to resist, the blandishments and threats of Mr Murdoch’s bleak hospitality.

Where are our "leaders"?

2011-08-07T09:16:00.000+01:00

North London goes up in flames, stock markets crash and burn and national economies burn to a crisp, while David Cameron languishes in Tuscany and George Osborne lounges by a pool in Los Angeles.

Imagine, just imagine, the media outcry and the opposition "fury", if Labour leaders - Gordon Brown say, or Alisdair Darling - were to behave in this lazy, not to say insouciant, manner in the middle of miltiple crises....

Scottish, British, Nationalist insecurity.....

2011-07-27T16:41:00.000+01:00

A previously unknown Scottish Nationalist MP, one Peter Wishart, has put the cat among the Nat pigeons with this post on Better Nation. Wishart attempts to define "Britishness", and to reconcile his Nationalism with some of the aspects of "Britishness" that he finds attractive.

Whatever the MP's intention - IMO he's softening up Nat opinion for a "dev max" vote in a possible three-question referendum - he has caused a stir. The post has been commented upon on other blogs and was even discussed on "Newsnicht" last night. And it's the comments that I find most interesting. On the Nationalist blog, Newsnet, the sight of a Nationalist MP going soft on Britishness has caused near apoplexy with some of the commenting cybernats.

Given the levels of abuse and outright rejection of the mere suggestion that there could be some aspects of "Britishness" that are not vile and repulsive, I can't escape the suspicion that the cybernats are furious at Wishart, not so much at his suggestions and ideas on the subject of national identity, but at their being forced to think about it in other than the usual "ah hate the English" and "ah luv ma cuuntry" banalities so beloved of the average cybernat.

The Ultimate irony.....

2011-07-24T11:52:00.000+01:00

Norway.

Open, modern, progressive, democratic, socially cohesive, free in association and liberal in attitudes with highly educated population and a relaxed approach to personal relations, race and religion. For many people a model of how a modern democracy can and should be organised.

But it seems there are people for whom a society can be too free ...

How can that be understood...?

SNP sleaze....

2011-07-15T10:51:00.001+01:00

Yesterday the SNP dropped its legal challenge which attempted to stop details of its so-called Local Income Tax becoming public. A total of £100,000 of public money has been wasted in the courts to prevent the Scottish people finding out that the LIT would create a shortfall of £400 million if introduced this year.

FOIs from opposition parties were blocked by John Swinney to prevent the information becoming public during the Scottish election campaign. Now the campaign is over he has cynically removed his objections to publication. But we still pay the bill for the Nationalists preventing us see the information in time to influence our votes.

During the Major administration "sleaze" became the media word of choice to describe any politically related misdemeanour. It grew out of the "back to basics" sloganeering of the Major government, and moved in meaning from describing personal/sexual laxity of prominent people to being attached to almost any dodgy moves by the Tory government in any sphere, including the spending of public money in inappropriate ways.

Does this cynical ploy to spend our money to stop us seeing the truth qualify as "sleaze" in the accepted sense? Mebbes aye, mebbes naw.

What I do know is that if a Labour administration behaved in this way the newspapers and blogs would be humming with the buzz of Nationalist fury at yet another example of the degeneracy and corruption the politics of the union. Will we see the letters pages and the blogs flooded with cybernat discussion of this particular piece of Nationalist corruption?

My advice: don't hold your breath.

John Major, Nationalist Icon...

2011-07-14T11:30:00.003+01:00

A recent speech at the Ditchley Foundation by John Major in which he appeared to endorse a sort "devolution max" approach to the constitution has been greeted with much excitement in Nationalist circles, and frenzied applause from nationalist bloggers and cybernats on the merits of Mr Major's arguments. "Look" they cry, "that wondeful Mr Major has come over to our side. How right and clever he is".

John Major himself must be a bit surprised by the praise, as he and other Prime Ministers, from whichever party, tend to be anti-Christs in Nationalist world-view. Mr Major is not as unpopular among Nats as Maggie or Tony, mainly because, until now, they wouldn't waste their energy having an opinion on the wimpish ex-PM, never nind envisage him as some sort of intellectual giant of the separatist movement. His fate has been to be not so much hated as derided.

Not now. Mr Major has, with one short speech, placed himself in the pantheon of Nationalist mythology as the Tory unionist who finally bought Nationalist separatism.

But has he? Mr Major's opinion on devolution is contained in this section of the speech;

"Devolution can also reduce the Westminster workload. But there is some groundwork to be cleared first. The present quasi-federalist settlement with Scotland is unsustainable. Each year of devolution has moved Scotland further from England. Scottish ambition is fraying English tolerance. This is a tie that will snap – unless the issue is resolved.
The Union between England and Scotland cannot be maintained by constant aggravation in Scotland and appeasement in London. I believe it is time to confront the argument head on. I opposed Devolution because I am a Unionist. I believed it would be a stepping stone to Separation.

That danger still exists. Separatists are proud Scots who believe Scotland can govern itself: in this, they are surely right. So they point up grievances because their case thrives on discontent with the status quo. But even master magicians need props for their illusions: remove the props, and the illusion vanishes.

The props are grievances about power retained at Westminster. The present Scotland Bill does offer more power to the Scottish Parliament. But why not go further? Why not devolve all responsibilities except foreign policy, defence and management of the economy?

Why not let Scotland have wider tax-raising powers to pay for their policies and, in return, abolish the present block grant settlement, reduce Scottish representation in the Commons, and cut the legislative burden at Westminster?

My own view on Scottish independence is very straightforward: it would be folly – bad for Scotland and bad for England – but, if Scots insist on it, England cannot – and should not – deny them. England is their partner in the Union, not their overlord. But Unionists have a responsibility to tell Scotland what independence entails.

A referendum in favour of separation is only the beginning. The terms must then be negotiated and a further referendum held.

These terms might deter many Scots. No Barnett Formula. No Block Grant. No more representation at Westminster. No automatic help with crises such as Royal Bank of Scotland. I daresay free prescriptions would end and tuition fees begin.

And there is no certainty of membership of the EU. Scotland would have to apply, meet tough criteria, await lengthy negotiations and would find countries like Spain – concerned at losing Catalonia – might not hold out a welcome for Separatists. And, even if Scotland were admitted, they would find their voice of 5 million is lost and powerless in a Union of 500 million."

The bold section is the bit that has the Nationalists excited. But it is a piece of rhetorical questioning to which Mr Major offers no detailed response, appearing only to see giving Holyrood more powers as a ploy to reduce the numbers of Scots MPs and the workload at Westminster. He follows it up with his opinion on "independence" which he sees, quite rightly IMO, as a bad deal all round. Not surprisingly, this part of the speech gets a royal ignoral from our Nationalist brethren.

So does John Major deserve his newly acquired inclusion on the Nationalist roll of honour?

Not IMHO. He may have placed a few rhetorical questions on the record, but he has no history as an envoy or forerunner for David Cameron, placing ideas in the public domain to road test them for popularity or viability. Nor is he a respected Tory "thinker" with a history of floating ideas that eventually become policy. He is not, as far as I know, particularly close to the present Tory leadership.

And crucially, his speech can in no way be interpreted as in support of the Nationalists real aims of breaking up the UK. In fact the speech shows an obvious and well expressed disdain for the notion that "independence" would be of any practical advantage to the people of Scotland or the rest of the UK.

So why have the Nationalists leapt on Mr Major with such alacrity? My own suspicion is that the enthusiasm has its roots in Nationalist self-doubt. Like a lot of Nationalist positions, "devolution max" is more of a slogan than a policy and they have no real conviction in it. When Nats promote devolution max, they describe it with the usual Nationalist broad brush..... nowhere is it explained in detail and nowhere is it shown that it will work at all, let alone be better than the current settlement. So they grab with glee the revelation that someone else has bought the idea. "Oh good", thinks your average Nationalist, "John Major understands it, even if I don't. Maybe it might work after all".

Whatever the reasoning behind Mr Major's speech it seems to that his co-option into the Nationalist hall of fame the sort of surprise elevation that is followed by a swift fall from grace as the real meaning of his position is realised, understood, absorbed and rejected by both parties.

Ed's victory, Dave's retreat, Rupert's Humiliation

2011-07-13T15:09:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I blogged that Ed Miliband was having a good hacking scandal. At that time he had taken on News International and forced David Cameron to do a number of flipflops in policy and position.

At PMQs last Wednesday David Cameron and then his Culture Secretary both insisted that the BSkyB bid was legally unrouchable.

Then Ed booked a day's debate designed to force Murdoch to drop his bid for BSkyB. Cue a swift realignment of PM and Tory Party.... "We're behind you Ed" The bid is no longer legally untouchable, came the Tory cry of retreat..

Just two minitues go, before the debate could get under way, News Corp announced it was withdrawing the bid!!!!!!

A palpable hit for ED and a black eye for Cameron and the Tory press. And a defeat of vast proportions for News Corporation and Murdoch.

All of it begging the question: if Murdoch is not a fit person to buy more shares in BSkyB is he a fit and proper person to own any shares in the company in the first place?

Indeed, is he a fit and proper person to own any influential media outlets?

What is Full Fiscal Autonomy ?

2011-07-12T13:28:00.000+01:00

In all the din about the upcoming (when?) referendum on "independence" and how many questions can/will be asked, one of the possible options being posited is something called "Devolution Max". Devolution Max, as far as I can tell, is co-terminus with the idea of "Full Fiscal Autonomy", the idea that all revenues raised in Scotland are spent in Scotland.

I have to say, I have never been clear how this idea was supposed to work. I have never actually seen a definition of the main elements, not least how we define the limits of the separate "Scottish" economy, what we should treat as "Scottish" income for tax purposes, and how the implied different tax structures in Scotland and England can be accommodated within a single UK fiscal and monetary framework.

Today there is a letter in the Herald by Prof. Arthur Midwinter, a seasoned and respected economist and commentator on Scottish economic affairs. He says, inter alia, that;

"....devolution max..... is a theoretical model, unworkable in practice. Devolving all tax powers is incompatible with the central management of the economy, and the principles of the UK’s fiscal framework..."

Which is what I always suspected.... It is not clear to Prof Midwinter how this theory can be lifted off the page and turned into a real-life, everyday, working economic framework.

I suspect if it is ever pursued, the result will be years of confusion and the divesrion of energy away from spending and investing the fruits of the economy toward arguments about frontiers between actual income streams, who owns them and to what extent, and who and how they were to be taxed and at what levels.

At the very least, it would provide fertile ground for conflict between Scottish politicians and the "English" Treasury and Westminster generally. So even if it fails, and Scotland's economy and political discourse hamstrung for years, the Nats would be quite happy at the outcomes.

News Values (?) of the Current Bun...

2011-07-12T09:56:00.000+01:00

I was in the newsagents this morning and I was struck by the unanimity of the front pages. All except one. Can you guess which one...?

Yes, it was the supersoarawaysun that somehow missed the story that newspapers had been hacking the phones of everyone and anyone in illegal attempts to generate "news" stories. The supersoarawaysun even managed to miss the fact that the supersoarawaysun had accessed and revealed the medical records of a sick child and published the story against the wishes of the child's parents, who just happened to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time....

Instead they led with a suggestive headline about about an over-the-hill footballer ... Says it all really: sleazy, nasty, cruel and cowardly and way off target in terms of news and information.

Ed's balls.....

2011-07-10T20:15:00.004+01:00

Ed Miliband has had a good hacking scandal..... His calls for Rebekah Brookes' resignation and a judge-led inquiry have captured the public mood and wrong footed call-me-Dave. Now it is reported that he will support a Parliamentary motion to refuse the News International takeover of BSkyB, another excellent judgement call which mirrors public opinion.

But it's not just his judgement and timing that looks good... it's his courage, both personal and political.

On Wdnesday's 10 O'Clock News, after Miliband had filleted Cameron at PMQs, Nick Robinson closed his report with quotes from unnamed NI executives to the effect of "if Ed thinks he can attack us and get off Scot-free, he has another think coming". Not so veiled threats from a source that carries out its threats.

But of course that's what makes this matter so important to our democracy and our society: the fact that the organisation under attack is the very organisation that is so used to attacking others, and using the threat of attack, and support, and withholding support, to keep politicians in line and on the side of the organisation.

There are very few people whose lives can withstand the sort of scrutiny that the feral tabloids can put you under, and threats from NI are usually enough to make politicians swallow their words, disguise their thoughts and censor their actions. Not so this week. Not so with Ed Miliband.

With his actions on the News International scandal, Ed has obviously earned his, ahem, spurs...

The Balloon Bursts....

2011-07-01T20:20:00.005+01:00

It's interesting how the media changes its angle to suit (its interpretation of) the facts......

From yesterday's Herald... Labour Jitters.... Alex Salmond was apparently, "homing in" on the voters of Inverclyde. Seven (or is it eight) visits to the constituency by the FM, (and even reports that yesterday he was touring polling stations as if he was the candidate), had woven that special Eck magic. The SNP was poised for another stunning victory, Labour was on the run and politics in Scotland would (for the umpteenth time) never be the same again....

Then, the actual result...... Labour takes 54% of the vote, the SNP challenge is respectable rather than sensational or even dramatic. The Herald opines Labour relief...SNP surge...

According to their report ....

".... the result allows Mr Salmond to claim the momentum of May’s Scottish Parliament victory is still behind the Nationalists. He will say the result strengthens his case for increasing the scope of the Scotland Bill and that there is a groundswell in favour of the additional powers he wants. It will also be a confidence-builder for his planned independence referendum..."

But that's not how I see it. Labour needed to hold to feel better about itself, but the Nats needed to come a lot closer to keep their momentum going.

Labour will take more from this result than the Nationalist Party.

People who voted SNP in May voted Labour in June, which tells me that, whatever their reason for voting Nationalist in May, it was not to give the SNP a carte blanche to do what they want. And in particular it says "independence" is not on the agenda.

It also says that the people may have intended to give Labour a bloody nose in May, but they never thought that the consequence would be an SNP majority in a parliament that was designed to ensure that no party would ever get a majority. They voted Nationalist for any number of reasons, an anti-Labour vote being one of them, but they didn't vote for a triumphalist Nationalist Party to attack the courts or to rush through and consequently cock-up anti-sectarianism legislation and they certainly didn't vote for "independence".

Cuts are coming and the SNP, having been in power for four years, can no longer blame everyone else for the outcomes. They're the government and they will have to begin to govern and take their share of responsibility for the state of the country.

The SNP may wish to take whatever encouragement they can from the Inverclyde result, and the Herald may wish to encourage them, but it was not a good result for the Nationalist Party and it signals, IMO, the bursting of the SNP bubble, or at least the first hiss of escaping gas.....

How many makes a majority...???

2011-06-23T16:32:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago I posted this ....One referendum, etc.... Including this statement;

"...you cannot change the constitution of any organisation (golf club, drama group, whatever) without a solid majority in favour. A 51% vote in favour of change leaves just too many supporters of the status quo feeling denied and frustrated. You have to demonstrate a solid majority if you want to take everyone with you. Freqently in these cases a two-thirds majority is needed to bring about radical change...."

Today the Herald publishes an article by arch-nationalist columnist Ian McWhirter in which he writes ....

"...Well, in Canada....the Supreme Court did indeed rule on the wording of the independence referendum in the French-speaking province of Quebec in 1998. ...in a landmark ruling now internationally recognised as a definitive statement on the rights of secession by disgruntled minorities, it ruled there was no right at all in international or domestic law for one part of a state to leave unilaterally. And even if independence were to be agreed by the other parts of the state, there would have to be absolute clarity over what the independence question meant, and a substantial majority in favour of independence, not just a simple majority..."

Earlier this month the Scottish Football Association (SFA) changed its constitution to allow a different voting structure. The change required a 75% majority. The SFA is an important organisation in Scottish life, and many people have an interest in its effective operation, but its governance is far less important than the governance of the state itself or the country.It therefore seems unacceptable that the currently effective governance of the country could be overturned by a simple majority of Scots voting in a one-off referendum.

If the turnout at a referendum was at the same level as recent elections, a 51% vote in favour of independence would need the actual votes of less than a third, maybe even a quarter, of the electorate. This is no basis to create a new country. If the referendum is to go ahead there must be a threshold - two-thirds of votes cast or 45% of the electorate, or some similar substantial proportion – that would secure the acquiescence of the minority in the upheaval implied by breaking up the UK.

After all, if a majority threshold is a necessary requirement to change the constitution of the SFA, or your local golf club, it’s not a lot to ask in respect of radical changes to the governance of Scotland.

Has Eck Finally lost it....?

2011-06-16T09:12:00.002+01:00

I've blogged previously on the SNP's attacks on judicial independence.

Last night I came across this. It's an article in Holyrood Magazine which has Alex Salmond saying some quite astonishing things about the eminent Scottish Judge Lord Hope and the Human Rights Lawyer, Professor Tony Kelly. The tone is nasty and querulous and shows Eck in a light you don't often see but which I suspect is a private mood he keeps hidden from his public persona.

I meant to blog on it, but it was late and other things were going on, so I left it for this morning to follow up......

Imagine my surprise to pick up the Herald this morning and read this "Leading Lawyer to sue First Minister". It appears that Professor Kelly has had enough of Nationalist posturing on the justice system and ad hominem attacks on people within the system and he has decided to take the FM to task, and to court, to enforce some respect.

We all know that Alex Salmond has a streak of arrogance a mile wide, and he shows no respect for Holyrood or people who disagree with him, at Holyrood or anywhere else. The question now must be: has Eck finally lost it? Has the real, arrogant, posturing, contemptuous Salmond finally ememrged from the behind the hail-fellow-well-met false bonhomie that he has been trying to cultivate as First Minister?

One referendum, two referendums, three referendums, four...

2011-06-08T10:13:00.001+01:00

One potato,
Two potatoes,
Three potatoes,
Four...

Five potatoes,
Six potatoes,
Seven potatoes,
more......

The old children's rhyme springs to mind at the Scottish Secratary's announcement that he wants two referendums on independence. One, from Holyrood, would be "advisory", and the other, from Westminster would be decisive or "binding" as they call it. The justification for this position is that Westminster has the reserved power on referendums, and that any binding referendum would have to originate from there. While Holyrood could ask the question, no-one would be legally bound by the answer.

All very well, but it ignores the politics. If the result is decisive (say above 60% in favour of independence) of those who voted, the "binding" refrendum, while legally justifiable would be just a waste of time. The same people who voted would vote the same way again, with maybe even some who felt enraged at being asked to vote again changing their vote the second time.

IMO, the way round this is obvious and sensible: you cannot change the constitution of any organisation (golf club, drama group, whatever) without a solid majority in favour. A 51% vote in favour of change leaves just too many supporters of the status quo feeling denied and frustrated. You have to demonstrate a solid majority if you want to take everyone with you. Freqently in these cases a two-thirds majority is needed to bring about radical change.

The solution is that any referendum which is considered as binding should have a built-in threshold: two-thirds of those who vote, or 50% of the registered electorate, or some number, must vote in favour of the change. That would help to ensure that the defeated side is convinced of the suppport for, and goes along with, the proposed change.

There should also be a condition in any accompanying legislation that, if the "independence" side loses, the vote will not be repeated for a long period of time, say 25 years. Scottish and UK politics has been dogged for too long by constitutional issues. If the Nats lose their referendum they shoud show some respect to the people and call it a day. Normal politics is, or should be, about schools and houses and jobs, not about constant worrying over constitutional details.

Adam Smith wasn't an economist...

2011-06-06T08:24:00.000+01:00

I liked this from Tax Research UK... "Adam Smith wasn't an economist"...

SNP Opposes "foreign control" of Media... mebbies..

2011-06-03T21:03:00.005+01:00

The current SNP war against the UK Supreme Court as described here and here is just the latest battle by the Nationalist Party to oppose anything to do with the UK, particularly anything that is an undoubted success. There has been a long running war against other British institutions, including the BBC, which is routinely accused of "bias" against the Nationalists. The underlying problem seems to be that any successful UK institution is a threat to the Nationalist obsession with trying to prove that the UK is a "failed state", a proposition so ridiculous that it defies all reason and all the evidence but which, nevertheless, must be proved.

Anyway, in their one-eyed obsession with trying to convince themselves that the BBC, a UK institution in UK ownership, is somehow "biased" against them, the Nationalists miss the point. Spectacularly. The BBC has a mission to remain "neutral" in its political coverage, a stance that benefits the Nats on many occassions when their position is treated with a respect it does not deserve or earn.

During the recent Scottish Parliamentary Elections Alex Salmond was never off the BBC. He appeared on Question Time (no other Scottish party leader did) in the middle of the campaign, on the UK section of Newsnight (no other Scottish party leader did) and he profited by blanket coverage of the sectarian bombs issue which was a national story and widely covered on the BBC with copious quotes from Eck at all times of night and day. No bias there, except against the other main parties in Scotland.

But what the Nationalists also ignore is that they newspapers which supported them in the latest Scottish Parliamentary elections, most eminently the "Scottish" Sun and the Herald, are both American owned...!!!

So we have the ridiculous position of the SNP complaining that the BBC, a British nationalised institution with a mission to report politics in a balanced fashion, and which offered their leader a highly visible platform in the recent elections, is "biased" against the Nats. But the same SNP is quite willing to accept the overt and covert support of American owned media outlets... no complaints of "bias" on that score.

I have to say that its a strange world where a British political party can complain about the (non-existent) bias and the British ownership of a British media outlet, while accepting with equanimity the bias (in their favour) of foreign owned newspapers, with a total lack of embarrassment or even comment.

It seems that The Nationalists don't really oppose foreign control of UK media at all. They are quite happy with American control of Scottish media. In practice, they are only opposed to British control of British media...

Hypocrisy or what?

Supreme Idiocy

2011-06-01T19:17:00.003+01:00

The argument that the Nationalist government has stirred up over the UK Supreme Court has been given a lot of air time, mostly concentrating on the legal aspects of the case.

But for me the most interesting thing about the spat is the cracking of the veneer of tolerance that has disguised the SNP's anti-English heart for the past four years. Having spent 70 years stirring up anti-English feeling, and having been at last elected to power on the back of it, the newly "responsible" SNP decided that it didn't look good to the honest voters of Scotland, so the message has gone out to tone it down. And for the last few years, all has been quiet on that front: "Hate the English? No' me, laddie. Never did. How could you think that!!??" has been the Nationalist chorus.

Now the mask is slipping. The SNP doesn't seem to mind if Scottish decisions are sent to Brussels for French/German etc. judges to examine. But to London!!?? for English judges!!?? that's an ethnicity too far for our newly "tolerant" civic Nationalists. And the Brussels route takes 4 - 5 years, while the London route takes a few months. Why would anyone of sound mind make such a bizarre choice?

As for the actual case against the Supreme Court: I'm no lawyer, but I would think that any jurisdiction of any integrity would deem the withholding of evidence from the Defence as a good reason to allow an appeal in most cases. Or is it SNP policy to allow the Prosecution to try any dirty rick to get a conviction? Not exactly a great precedent for an independent Scotland, is it? "Vote for us and we'll fit you up, guilty or not"., and you'll have to wait 5 years for an actual foreign judge in an actual foreign country to hear the appeal... it's nuts, frankly.

Kenny McAskill has always been the SNP administration's weak link. From the Lockerbie bomber to the sectarion legislation fiasco, he has shown a lack of judgement and a poor grasp of the job.

Now he has lost it altogether. His anti-sectarian knne jerk legislation is on course to crash and burn and his rants against the judges (two of whom are Scots, BTW!), have left him looking silly, peevish and anti-English all at once.

He must be the favourite for the first minister to be dumped by this administration....

Promises promises....

2011-05-12T11:12:00.000+01:00

The nats made many promises to get elected. We'll see how many they keep this time, but among them is a reduced corporation tax to attract overseas investment.

Richard Murphy has an interesting post on his blog, Tax Research UK. It is primarily about the Irish desire to keep low corporaton tax (and the resultant tax-haven status), and the EU's competing requirement that the Irish ditch low tax as part of the deal for a financial bail-out.

As if the Irish financial fiasco, and the collapse of the so-called "Arc of Prosperity", wasn't enough evidence that beggaring your neighbour is a limited strategy, the SNP is still planning (or so they say) to follow the low tax/tax-haven route. So the blog has some relevance, and a warning, for Scotland.

It's not the panacea it seems and the EU won't stand for it..... and it doesn't work anyway.

Eck and the Currant Bun

2011-04-19T22:37:00.002+01:00

Today the Scottish Sun has come out in favour of the SNP. It's not a surprise, they've been edging towards the nats for weeks now, and have been soft on Eck and his colleagues for months.

The reason is obvious: the Tories want to damage Labour, the Sun wants to do what the Tories want and Rupert Murdoch wants David Cameron, his boy, to stay in power.

Rup wants Cameron and Cameron wants cuts. So, just like his UK buddy and his AmerAusie mentor, Eck wants cuts. It's as simple as that.

Today's Sun Editorial gave the game away, the Sun supports the SNP because the SNP is:

" ...... tackling the economic crisis head-on by cutting public spending faster than anywhere else in the UK...."

Tory cuts. SNP cuts. Whatever and whoever, it's the man in the street that suffers, whether the cuts are made by the Tartan Tories or the real Tories.

Is Government Debt "too high"?

2011-04-13T19:03:00.002+01:00

Listen to any Tory (including those Tories that used be known as The Lib Dems) talking about the economy, and they are bound to mention the "horrendous cost of paying off our debt..."..."simply horrendous old boy, never seen anything like it since Lord Poodlebody had to sell of the country pile top pay orff his gaming debts at Boodles...". ... "historic...".

But is it "historic"?

LabourList has a interesting graph showing Debt Interest as a % of Government Spending since 1997/98.

The figures are compiled from the Government's own statistics, from the Red Books for the chosen years. As you can see, debt interest on that calculation was considerably higher in 1997/8, when Labour took over from the Tories, than it is now.

So why the shock-horror? More germeine, why the cut-fast-and-quick strategy of the ToryDems? The debt burden is not "unprecedented", nothing like it. It has been higher for much longer and, more often than not, the Tories were to blame (if blame is he word).....

The cuts are being implemented "fast-and-deep", not just to pay off the debt, but to to achieve the idealogical aims of the Conservatives: they have always wanted to privatise the NHS and other public services. If they can fool the country that the situation is more desperate than it really is (and it is bad, no doubt about it), they can make their cuts and pretend that, in the immortal words of their patron saint, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, There Is No Alternative....

...obfuscate, prestidigitate, bloviate...

2011-04-08T23:35:00.001+01:00

The Daily Telegraph has received leaked information on the SNP's Local Income Tax policy that indicates that there is a £360-£400 million gap in what they say can be raised by a 3p levy and what the SNP's own Chief Economic Adviser says will be raised. The gap increases to £740-£770 million if the Westminster Government does not divert the money spent on Council Tax Benefit towards the LIT.

The document contains analysis from the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser to the Scottish government. It projects that around £2.2bn would be raised by council tax in this financial year, while local income tax at the 3p rate would raise between £1.46bn and £1.49bn, showing that the shortfall would sit between £366m and £396m if UK ministers gave Holyrood the £374m paid out in council tax benefit in Scotland. However, without this, the shortfall would increase to between £740m and £770m.

The Daily Telegraph has been trying to get the report released under an FOI Request, but the SNP has used public money to block the release in court, on the pretext that civil service advice must be secret in all cases.

Strangely enough, during the Iraq Inquiry, Alex Salmond demanded that such "secret" information from civil servants should be released "in the public interest".

Anyway, it's all part of the pattern: the SNP thinks up a super wheeze...LIT, SFT, abolish PPP, abolish Student debt.. whatever, it gets a few votes.

But in power, the chickens come home to roost... no policy exists behind the promise. So. Bluster, obfuscate, prestidigitate, bloviate. And spend public money to hide your embarrassment.

Surely the Scottish public will be intelligent enough to see through this nonsensical do-nothing party and government on May 5th...?

p.s.1 ... the Telegraph online had no copy of the doc, but you can see it here, at Nationalist Mythbusting... it's clear enough, the Nats have not put any thought into how they would have (but will not now) deliver yet another major promise, and now they want to hide the evidence

p.s. 2.... Must hat-tip Lalland Peat Worrier for the excellent "bloviate", a word coined 100 years ago that has been waiting around to meet up with and describe the pompous windbaggery of our esteemed Fat First Minister......

A Party Political Broadcast with hope and no lies!!!

2011-04-06T20:51:00.000+01:00

Pretty good after the SNP's bogus claims to have built 330 new schools and other guff...

I like it, what about you?

Ah Luv Ma Cuuntry...

2011-04-01T22:34:00.002+01:00

I was standing with a lady nationalist at the polling station a few years ago. I knew her slightly, and we got on quite well. We agreed on almost all policy areas: housing, schools, health etc. After a while I ventured the suggestion that, as we agreed on so much, it was silly that we were on different sides of the argument, and that we should be in the same party, cooperating to deliver the solutions we both evidently wanted. To which my new nationalist friend replied: "But ah luv ma cuuntry". The implication being that anyone who is not an nationalist doesn't love his or her country, and that somehow disqualifies the rest of us, the actual majority of Scots, from any political legitimacy.

Anyone who blogs on politics in Scotland has seen, may even have suffered from, the malignancy of the cybernats, those self appointed "luvvers o' ma cuuntry" who think if you don't agree with them you're a "quisling" (quisling is one of their favourite words). It's at its most blatant online, where the cloak of annonymity allows the vitriol to flow against traitorous unionists and other scum who don't think "independence" is the ideal solution to the problems of the people of Scotland. If you don't agree with them no insult is too extreme.

But the same attitude not unknown among terrestrial nationalists, if less honestly expressed. Prominent nationalists frequently imply that only they have care and concern for "Scotland". "Scotland's Party" is a common slogan from the SNP leadership and has been used for years, on and off.

Today I got my hands on the above SNP leaflet from the current Scottish Parliamentary Election campaign, and it continues the theme: "There's only one party that cares about Scotland" it says. The implication being that all the rest are traitors and quislings.

Is there any more graphic illustration of the arrogance of the minority SNP Party. At the last election they got less than 17% of the possible vote, but that's no barrier to their arrogance. If you are not with them, you don't have "Scotland" "at your heart", you are not a real Scot and your opinion is negligble and easly dismissed.

Heaven help us if they ever get round to actually running the country rather than living off the Union that they pretend to hate.

Apologies to my reader.......

2011-04-01T18:36:00.000+01:00

If you're still there, I have to apologise. For that last three weeks my time has increasingly been eaten up by the election campaign and I have been unable to blog with my previous regularity.....

Will try to get a few blogs out, but really stretched..... :(

Osborne's Moody Swings...

2011-03-24T13:59:00.007Z

George Osborne has now had three tries, in less than a year, at addressing the problems in the economy: the June 2010 emergency budget, the autumn statement and yesterday's full annual budget statement.

Whereas the economy that Osborne took over was clearly the legacy of Alasdair Darling and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor has scorned the efforts of his predecessors and progressively put his own stamp on the economic situation: the economy of today is George Osborne's, and no-one else's.

The economy that Osborne took over was going through a slow and halting recovery with some growth in activity and a slowing of unemployment. Osborne took control with the vow to concentrate on growth. But since he has been in charge growth has stalled and unemployment has increased. Osborne also used the fear of the UK losing its "AAA" rating from the credit agencies as a prime reason for "cut fast and deep" strategy. We were in danger of losing our AAA rating, Osborne warned, and that would severely hamper any recovery by making debt more expensive to service, said George, so we had to be ruthless..

It is therefore ironic in the extreme that both the main credit agencies, Moody's and Fitch, have chosen today to issue warnings about the forecasts for growth that accompany Osborne's budget.

Moody's is clear about the problem:

"Although the weaker economic growth prospects in 2011 and 2012 do not directly cast doubt on the UK's sovereign rating level, we believe that slower growth combined with weaker-than-expected fiscal consolidation could cause the UK's debt metrics to deteriorate to a point that would be inconsistent with a AAA rating,"

Yesterdays' budget was seen by commentators as being broadly neutral: in other words, there would be no noticeable stimulus to the economy and there were no identifiable measures that would provide that growth, and it came on the back of weakening economic figures and pessimistic forecasts.

Osborne told parliament on Wednesday that the UK economy would grow by 1.7% this year, and by 2.5% in 2012, predictions which are still more optimistic than the latest assessment from the OECD, which predicted last week that the UK would expand by 1.5% during 2011, and 2.0% in 2012.

Fitch, a rival credit rating agency, has already warned that Osborne may have to impose further austerity measures if GDP growth is slower than expected, or if inflation continues to run much higher than official targets.

Standards & Poor, the third main ratings agency, made noises in May 2009 about reducing the UK's credit rating, much to George's approbation.

Wouldn't it be ironic if all of George's efforts to appease the markets were to result in the very rejection by the markets that he has been using as the excuse for his extreme cuts strategy in the first place...???

What you mean "legal" Kemo Sabay?

2011-03-20T09:50:00.006Z

There's an old Mad Magazine* cartoon of The Lone Ranger and his trusty red indian sidekick Tonto surrounded by hostile natives. The caption reads as Tonto saying: "What you mean "we" Kemo Sabay?".

David Cameron is quoted over on Lord Ashdown's Politics Home blog as saying that the intervention in Lybia is "necessary, legal and right". The question is: what do you mean "legal" Mr Cameron?

There are so many moral and practical dilemmas in foreign intervention. What does "legal" mean in international law? What takes precedence? If an act is legal in your own national law, but "illegal" in international law, can you act anyway? If an action is not in the interests of China or Russia and they veto it at the UN, the veto makes it "illegal" (apparently), but does that make it wrong? And if the action in Libya had been merely "necessary and right", but not "legal", should we not intervene? Surely if an action is "necessary and right", we should act to address the necessity and right the wrong, and not be hog-tied by the interests of China and Russia?

According to some (not all) opinion, the invasion of Iraq was "illegal", and deeply controversial, because it did not have UN backing. But by the same definition, the Kosovo intervention which raised no such controversy was also "illegal", but it has been deemed a qualified success. And the actions in Sierra Leone were just below the radar: nobody asked if they were legal or not, but they have been effective (so far) in stabilising that country.

On the other hand the long period on Tory non-intervention (some would say indifference) in the Bosnian crisis (before Tony Blair acted on the Kosovo events) was perfectly legal. And the blind eye that the international community turned on the horrific massacres in Rwanda was totally "legal" but, in my view, was immoral and wrong, as well as being immensely cowardly. In Bosnia and Croatia, thousands died "legally". In Rwanda a million and more ( and echoes of the crisis are still reverberating around the region), all of them murdered "legally" according to international law.

So what guide does "legality" give us in this vexed arena? Few would disagree that Gadafi is thug and a menace to his people and the world. But then so was Sadam. And Milosovic. And Taylor. And many others.

Should we have to wait for the UN, which provides extremely unreliable and unpredictable leadership on many of the world's problems, which bends to the will of the world's largest dictatorships, to give us the moral permission to do things that are "necessary and right"?

* could my memory be playing tricks....

Biased BBC.....

2011-03-19T14:20:00.001Z

...is the call we frequently hear from the SNP and Tories.... A lot of lefties cry our Conservative friends, wet liberals preparing for a Marxist state..... you often get the impression that many Tories would like to see the back of BBC News and Current affairs... they ask too many pointed question, dont'ye know...

...Scottish establishment Labour stooges, cry the Nats. They're out to do us down at every opportunity and puff up Labour. It'a cosy unionist cabal....

I wonder what the Tartan Tories and the real McCoy would have said if their spring conferences were barred from live broadcast by the BBC? Would Eck speak only to the faithful? Would he heck! Would Dave travel all the way from Kensington to speak to the yokels if Live TV wasn't on offer. Yoiks to the oiks! he would cry, I'm orff!

Seriously, this is a strange decision by the BBC in Scotland. The excuse (that Labour's autumn conference was covered live) is weak. There wasn't an election campaign on in the autumn but there is now.

I knw that the BBC is committed to "balance", but to cover all the conferernces live, except for Labour, is an extraordinary decision and hardly balanced by any sane definition.

I can just hear Annabel and Eck phoning in their protests to the Controller Scotland: "Not fair my man. Hardly balanced and democratic.. we insist that Labour gets equal treatment with us...".

The Polls Narrow...or do they?

2011-03-19T10:40:00.005Z

The Herald reports a new ICM Poll for Scotland in which the gap between Labour and the SNP narrows, but with Labour still ahead. An ICM Poll shows Labour on 39% for the constituency vote with the SNP on 35%, and Labour 37%, SNP 34% for the list vote.

"The ICM poll of more than 1000 voters was commissioned by the SNP and shows the Nationalists just four points behind Labour’s 39% in the constituency vote and three behind Labour’s 37% for the list vote."

The Tories are at 12% and 13% for the constituency and list votes – while the Liberal Democrats are struggling on 10% and 9%. The Greens scored 4% and others 7% on the regional vote.

The poll would have Labour on 57 seats, with the SNP on 46.

According to the Herald, in another poll, conducted by YouGov, Labour were on 41% for the constituency vote, the SNP 38%, Conservatives 10%, LibDems 6% and others 5%. I can't find this poll online...UPDATE. Found it thanks to Lallands Peat Worrier.

Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the poll as showing that the SNP were performing better than the actual 2007 election result. But at this time in the 2007 campaign both ICM and YouGov had the SNP ahead by about 5 points in both the constituency and regional votes. Labour in 2011 is well ahead of its 2007 election result and also ahead of the polls at this stage of the campaign.

The poll was matched by a council by-election in Renfrewshire which saw Labour take the seat from SNP

Labour increased its share of the vote by 17 points. Labours Roy Glen won 49.3% of the first-preference votes, compared to the SNPs 32%.As a result, Labour is now the largest party on Renfrewshire Council (18 seats for Labour, 16 for the SNP).

So opinion polls versus real votes...this stage in 2007 versus today's polls...are the polls narrowing or are they not?

As I said when the previous exclusively Scottish Polls were announced, it's still all to play for and getting out the vote is crucial. That's still the case.....

Give us the chance....

2011-03-17T23:48:00.000Z

In 2007 the SNP's pitch was "give us a chance to show that we can govern properly...".

The question is: having been given the chance, have they taken it or have they blown it?

Alex Salmond would claim that they have taken the chance with both hands. The SNP decided to take on the challenge of minority government. They would, they pledgd, be different from other parties in government. They would deliver, and in delivering, they would show that they could be entrusted with power, and indpendence could and would bring a better Scotland.

Have they delivered? Well, they have and they haven't. And where they haven't they have they have made the excuse that they're only a minority, and the other parties have blocked their actions...stymied their policies.

So how do we judge? The obvious place to start is the 2007 campaign and Manifesto. What was the campaign fought on? What were they key pledges that the SNP made to get elected?

There were a number of major issues that the nats gathered votes on. One was the unpopularity of the Labour/LibDem coalition that preceded them. Another was the unpopularity of Labour in London and the prevalent anti-Iraq war sentiment.

The policies that dominated the campaign (at least the policies that I remember) were the NHS and the unpopularity of the Kerr/Kerr changes (which they sold as saving local A&Es and other local hospitals), the abolition of Student Debt, the abolition of "the hated Council Tax", the replacement of "the hated PPP" with a Scottish Futures Trust, class size policy, the promise of 1000 "new" police on the street and the promise to match Labour's school building policy "brick for brick".

On the NHS the SNP kept its promise and abandoned the Kerr/Kerr changes. Whether that was wise is not known, but it was delivery and Nicola Sturgeon has improved her reputation. And the 1000 police looks as if it will be delivered, although the peak numbers will quickly shrink in the next year, so it will bea promise met, but not for long.

But of all the other big promises, they have not delivered on most. They didn't abolish student debt as it turned out that they hadn't done the sums and it was far too expensive. They froze the Council Tax, but didn't abolish it, because their replacement policy of a Local Income Tax was not thought out properly and was never credible. They didn't replace PPP because their replacement policy of a Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) was never properly thought out and was never credible. The class size policy was not delivered because it was never properly thought out and not credible. And the promise to match Labour's school bulding programme "brick for brick" was never met because they wouldn't use PPP and the SFT (see above) was never a credible replacement.

What all of this shows is that the SNP gained protest votes from the unpopularity of its opponents. And also from unpopular policies which it promised to replace, but largely did not. These were, by and large, "policies" which it used to get votes, but which were never going to work, because they were no more than a line in the Manifesto: "You don't like PPP? Neither do we. You want a Scottish Futures Trust? All right, we've got one here, on the back of this fag packet. Sure, it'll work... trust me, I'm a politician...".

There is one way that I can see to make some sort of judgement. The SNP has a page on its website showing all of its achievenements, and Labour has a page detailing what it calls the SNP's "100 broken promises.

Compare and contrast what the SNP claims as achievements with what Labour claims as broken promises. The decision is yours: do the achievements outweigh the broken promises? Did the SNP take its chance to show it could govern....?

I know what I think, but the lists give you the chance to make up your own mind....

Could this be significant?

2011-03-15T22:54:00.000Z

Labour has held a pretty steady lead for the last few months on the YouGov daily poll. The lead has fluctuated between 4% and 6%, recently moving to 6%-8%.

But last week there were two days when the Labour lead stood at 11%. Todays poll puts the figures at 45% Labour, 35% Conservative, Lib Dem 9%, giving Labour a 10% lead.It's the first time there has been a sustained consistent 10%+ gap between the two big parties since last year's election.

The Government's approval rating is at -29%.

Allied with the recent Europe-wide poll showing that the UK was the country with least support for big economic cuts, this is bad news for the coalition. When oppositions start to do this wel in polls, governments start changing tack. Look for policy u-turns and cracks in the coalition.

SNP Delusion..

2011-03-15T11:38:00.000Z

....or should that be lies?

There have been two SNP party political broadcastss in the last two weeks. One is an all-women presentation and another features a "what has the SNP ever done for us" skit based on the Monty Python "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene from The Life of Brian. In both of these broadcasts the claim is made that the SNP has built 330 new schools in the last four years.

Common sense tells us that cannot be true: in my own area, after having built five new schools between 2003 and 2007, there have been no schools built in the last four years.... Surely, if hundreds of schools were being built, we would have been allocated at least one... and surely if hundreds of new schools were being built we would not have the employment problems in construction that we do have?

From 2001-2007 Labour (and Lib Dems) at Holyrood provided matching funds to councils to build schools. Holyrood supplied 60% of capital costs of these projects, with councils raising the other 40% usually (I cannot swear for all of them) using PPP.

Under that dispensation, hundreds of schools were built and contracts for signed to design and build new schools .

In the 2007 manifesto Labour promised to build 100 more schools using the same mechanism. The SNP opposed PPP, but promised to match Labour's programme "brick for brick" using the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT). SFT is a proposed new mechanism that the SNP would create for funding and managing large capital projects. It is necessary because the SNP hates PPP, and refuses to use it to fund and manage new contracts.

However the SFT never materialised. There is no new funding mechansim for large capital projects. It never really existed other than an empty manifesto promise. So three years pass and, as the SNP refuses to use PPP and they have no SFT, no matching funds are available from Holyrood and therefore no new schools are commissioned from Holyrood. None. Not one. In all of Scotland.

Any schools "completed" since 2007 already had authorisation and/or funding and/or contracts in place before the SNP came to power, or some may be financed by councils out of their own capital funds. But none are due to the SNP at Holyrood.

In 2010 Holyrood says councils can put 14 secondary and 21 primary schools (approximately, I don't have the exact figures to hand) in their capital plans. That's a total of 30 odd schools for all of Scotland. The matching funding will only be 50% and will not include extraneuos items such as new road formation, school crossings etc that were typically included in the previous allocations.

In December 2010 councils which had been planning to start a school got a letter from the SNP administration saying that the money would no longer be in their capital budget, but instead would be allocated from revenues. And, btw, you have to use PPP to design, build and maintain them!!!!

Councils are still not clear what the switch means, what impact it will have on design and build timetables etc.

The result is that only one (that I know of) schoool has been started with Holyrood money authorised by the SNP administration (remember brick for brick?). And none will be completed before the May 2011 elections.

The question is: were the 330 schools that the SNP claim to have "completed" (weasel word) since 2007 all authorised before the SNP came to power? I.e. did the prevous administration authorise the schools, authorise the funding and the contract mechanism, have the project in place and started or ready to go before the SNP stopped all new PPP contracts? It seems likley that this is that case.

It is clear that none of the 330 schools that have been "completed" since 2007 have been due to anything the SNP at Holyrood did. There was no matching funding from Holyrood between 2007 and 2010, how can there have been new build?

The SNP might say that their claiming to have "completed" these schools is sort-of true. Some of them have been getting built while the SNP has been in Holyrod, but in claiming the credit for "building" these schools, it becomes, in my opinion, a direct lie.

Of course I might be barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the SNP has built 330 schools since 2007. Maybe the evidence is just not clear and they're too shy to put it into the public domain. Who knows?

So if anyone out there has a list of these projects, their timeline and funding, then maybe they could send it, or point us to the source. Then we could get to the bottom of the mystery of the mysterious "330 new schools completed" claim. That'd be nice.

Labour ahead in Scottish polls.

2011-03-13T13:02:00.000Z

The Press Association is reporting a poll in the Scottish Mail on Sunday by a group called Scottish Progressive Opinion (of whom I have to confess, I have never heard).

Of those certain to vote, 43% backed Labour in the constituency vote, with 37% for the SNP, 11% Tory and 5% LibDem, Scottish Socialist 2% and Greens 1%.

In the list vote, Labour polled 44%, with the SNP on 37%, Conservatives 11%, Liberal Democrats 4%,.

The results mean Labour would end up with 63 seats - up by 17. The SNP would have 49 seats, the Lib Dems would be reduced from the current 16 down to five and the Tories would lose five seats - leaving them with 12 MSPs.

These figure compare with a YouGov poll on 27th Feb which had;

Constituency: CON 15%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, SNP 32%

Regional: CON 15%, LAB 40%, LDEM 7%, SNP 26%, GRN 6%

Giving Labour would get 59 seats.

And an Ipsos/Mori poll of a month ago, which had the figures at 36% SNP, 35% Labour, giving the SNP a narrow lead at Holyrood.

The SNP has had it's conference this weekend. Maybe we will see some surge of support for them and their promises from this.

In any case, the polls are close enough to ensure that neither party will become complacent. As I said before and I say again: it's all about getting out the vote.

We're all in this together....Scottish Version

2011-03-10T16:44:00.002Z

Those who have read my profile on this blog will know that one of my great regrets is the fact that the SNP has split the progressive vote in Scotland. I know a number of nationalist activists and voters who are good people, well intentioned and generally left leaning in their politics, but they have swallowed whole the idea that all of our problems are caused by being part of the UK and if Scotland was "independent", all of our problems would be solved. Magically. Over night.

The result is that we, people who should be on the same side in delivering better solutions to the people of our country, are wasting most of our political energy in fighting each other. It's most frustrating.

I was reminded of this attitude when a blogger called McGonagall expressed a similar view from a nationalist perspective here. Then I came across a much better argued post by Stuart Winton on Planet Politics. This led me to a post by Lallands Peat Worrier, one of the more cerebral bloggers (at least he uses long words) who is, I believe, of the nationalist persuasion.

Stuart Winton eleoquently makes the point that nationalists tend to see independence as an aim in itself, with no clear picture of what will follow, what the problems of transition will be, how they will be addressed and how independence will make a better society. LPW uses language which I find interesting. He asks:

"Some might well suggest that SNP claims that we're for Scotland lacks ideological definition. Surely the vital question is, what sort of Scotland are we for?"

Which is where I find a real difference in my approach. If I was posing the question it would be;

"Surely the vital question is, what sort of society do we want to deliver for our people? And what is the best way to do that within existing resources and within a reasonable time frame"

The real difference in emphasis here is not on the type of society we wish to deliver, (I don't think that there is much difference beween the society I would wish to see and the society your average SNP voter would wish to see), it's on the fundamental thinking used as expressed in the language used.

I find it interesting to look at how nationalists frame every question around the concept of "Scotland". What they mean by "Scotland" is never defined. "Independence for Scotland" "A better Scotland" and too often, I'm afraid, their opponenets are "traitors to Scotland". Whereas I would rather that politics concentrated on the people. "A Scotland which is better for the people to live in" is for me a much better objective of politics than vague ideas about an undefined concept. After all what is "Scotland"? It's a plastic concept, it means different things to different people. Its very vagueness is a strength for those who wish to emotionalise debate and shrink from argument and evidence, never mind hard decisions.

I would rather work for the people, a simple and recognisable entity. And I would rather work for them now. When you do that, it becomes much clearer: no need to wait for "independence" before we deliver Utopia. Indeed no need for any Utopia. We can work together, in the here and now, to deliver real solutions in the real world. Of course it won't be perfect, but neither will "independence", if it ever comes. But at least we will be working now, and addressing real problems now. We might fail or be only partially successful, but at least we will do it now, not in some unspecified period of time, after god knows what sequence of events, or the costs of those events.

And we will do it for ourselves and our people, not for some undefinable entity called "Scotland" which means anything, everything or nothing, depending on how you feel at any particular time.

Tory Military Cuts. Media Silence. As for the Chiefs of Staff...

2011-03-09T17:56:00.004Z

Sherlock Holmes* famously identified "the dog that didn't bark" as the key clue in the solution of one of his more puzzling cases. Dogs bark when dogs are expected to bark, and when they don't bark, you must look for a reason. So it is with that other pack, the media pack, which raises a clamour when a big story breaks or there is a signifcant development in a major news story......they just love the scent of blood, and oh! how they bark when they smell it!

Except, there is a very big news story which has been going on for months now but the media pack hasn't so much as growled. That story is the neutering of the UK's defence capability and it has hardly raised a ripple.

Jim Murphy reacts to the latest cuts Tory here, but you don't have to take the latest cuts into account to see that the Tory Party is effectively dismantling the British military machine.

What interests me is the question: what if it was the Labour Party that was decommissioning ships, ordering aircraft carriers with no planes on them while, at the same time, sending newly built planes costing £millions each, to the knackers yard before they have even flown a test flight? If it was the Labour Party that was destroying our ability to rescue our own citizens from dangerous countries and sending in half-arsed James Bond-style missions to Lybia to be captured by peasants with pitchforks, meanwhile sending P45s to soldiers srerving in Iraq and Afghanistan, what would the media be saying then?

You don't really have to ask, do you? The media would be exploding. Think of the Mail or the Express, and the unholy righteousness they would unleash on any Labour minister making even a tenth of the Tory cuts to the army, the navy and the air force. The Sun! What hyperbolic headlines would they invent to vilify the cowardly pinkoes who are betraying "our boys"?

Whitehall itself would be like a war zone, with unhappy politicians ducking and diving to avoid the missiles launched by the Tory press.

But it's not been like that. Yes, the cuts have been reported, and the numbers are a matter of record, but the fury, the indignation, the outright outrage at the extent and depth of the damage being done to the countries defences: where is that? Where are the stentorian editorials and the hysterical headlines? Where is the sound, where is the fury?

It seems the right wing media is quite content to give the Tories an easy ride on this one, (which should be no surprise, really), but there are other silent dogs......

.....the military chiefs.

In the dying days of the Labour Government you couldn't open a newspaper or watch the TV news without being blinded by the light gleaming off a row of chest medals as one or other of the chiefs of staff or senior generals railed against Labour's crimes. Not enough helicopters, the wrong armour, ill fitting boots, radios that didn't work. All serious matters, and the more so if you're the one with pinching boots in a scorching desert or the squaddie withstanding enemy fire while trying to radio for a rescue helicopter. But aircraft carriers with no planes on them!!! Come on! And newly built aircraft scrapped before they can take flight!! And perfectly serviceable and much needed boats sold off to the Argentinian and Australian navies at a fraction of their real value. In the annals of defence cuts these are the cuts to beat the band (the bands are being cut as well of course).

Meanwhile our (presumably Tory) defence chiefs sit back and say damn' all. They can swallow anything, endure any humiliation, fire any number of Tommies and Jack Tars, take anything the government can throw at them. As long as it's a Tory government.

* Sherlock Holmes is of course a fictitious character...... I know that.... the incident of the dog that didn't bark is from Silver Blaze, a short story published in The Memiors of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

SNP Demands Councils use PPP

2011-03-07T19:10:00.000Z

I have been having a few comments published on the Universality of Cheese website. The subject being how wonderful the SNP has been for the people of Scotland.

I raised the question of why no new schools had been commissioned by Holyrood during most of the SNP's reign, but got the usual blank looks from the nat contributors. So I have decided to post a simple narrative.

Here it is;

Before they got elected, the SNP attacked PPP relentlessly making much of the costs of PPP contracts.

The SNP promised that, if elected, that they would abolish PPP.

The SNP said that, if they were in power, PPP would be replaced by a Scottish Futures Trust.

The SNP said that the Scottish Futures Trust would be a new method of financing capital projects such as schools.

The SNP also said it would use the Scottish Futures Trust to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".

The SNP gathered lots of protest votes against PPP. They also gathered votes on the promise to build many new schools (as Labour had done), matching Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".

When the SNP took power, it stopped all new school funding from Holyrood because it refused to use the hated PPP to fund new schools. The SNP wanted the new finnacing mecahnism, the SFT, to provide the funding mechanism for the programme to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".

Unfortunately, after 3 years of faffing around, the SFT was still not defined. It had no substance and no shape. It was a blob of fantasy: nobody knew what it was, what it meant, how it would be funded, how it would work.... It transired that, although the SNP had promised the SFT in its manifesto, nobody in the SNP had actually thought out how the SFT woud work! And all the effort over three desparate years had produced nothing. It was a mess.

In 2010 the Education Minister was sacked and a new one appointed. Some money was, at last, released from Holyrood funds to councils to help build schools (the SNP administration provided 50% matched funding rather than the 60% that Labour had, but it was something...).

14 new secondary schools were identified for the whole of Scotland. For comparison, 3 new secondaries were built in my own council area between 2003 and 2007, so 14 for the whole of Scotland was pretty miserable. Still it was something......

Meanwhile an organisation called the Scottish Futures Trust was established. It had no money in any "trust" nor any method of generating money. It was not a method of financing new projects. It was, in fact, that old chestnut, "free" money from pooling purchasing efforts and standardising requirements. It was, to be frank, two men and a Microsoft Project software package. Tried before, failed before.

Although, to give the so-called Scottish Futures Trust its due, it is Scottish....

Then it emerged that a condition of getting access to the funding from Holyrood was that SNP MInisters were insisting that a PPP method of funding had to be used to finance and run the new schoools projects.

So. The whole sorry saga..... the SNP builds PPP into some sort of ogre, getting protest votes on the basis that the SNP will scrap the hated PPP. Then, in power, SNP refuses for idealogical reasons to use PPP to fund new projects. Then the SNP fails to produce the promised Scottish Futres Trust, or any other financing mechanism for capital projects. Then , in desparation, the SNP ressurrects PPP and insists that councils use it!

Incompetence. Ideaological rigidity. Ignorance. And straightforward lies.

And the upshot is: no new government funded schools in 4 years.

A complete and utter fiasco and disgrace.

The Wisdom of the ages.....

2011-03-06T12:09:00.000Z

I don't know how long I have been reading William Keegan in the Observer and the Guardian: all my life, it seems, and he never fails to hit the mark. Keegan is an economist who understands that economics is nothing without social, historical and political context, a thinker who views events from a wide perspective. He also has a phenomenal memory for precedent and example. When you read Keegan you don't just get the dry statistics of GDP and GNP and OECD, or judgement of current situations in isolation. You get a lesson in economic history, political precedent and personal anecdote. All of it highly relevant.

Today he has an article in the Observer which revisits the economics of 1952, revives the ancient ghost of "Butskellism", and makes acute comparisons between the situation then and the current policies of George Osborne. In doing so it highlights the eternal and important differences between Labour and the Tories which too many people dismiss and deflect.

Listing Gaitskells' criticisms of the then Tory Party's economic policy, he notes;

"1. Breach of [electoral] promise. 2. Pandering to vested interests. 3. Reactionary social policy. 4. Gross incompetence and muddle."

As Keegan comments "plus ca change..." The list is the same as Ed Balls has been levelling at the Cameron government and its Lib Dem poodles.

I won't plagerise any more of Keegan's article. It stands for itself and you should read it here...

Another Tory Myth Bites the Dust

2011-03-02T22:24:00.001Z

In recent years there's been a lot of comment about the apparent lack of social mobility, and whether the demise of grammar schools has closed a route to an upward trajectory for working class children.

There's an interesting story in the Guardian today covering some research done at the universities of Oxford and Bath Spa. The researchers used data from the National Child Development Survey, which has tracked thousands of adults now aged 53, since they were born. One conclusion was that Grammar schools had no real impact on socal mobility for working class children. The few working class few kids that benefit is outweighed by the number that lose out from going to secondary modern schools.

So another right wing myth is scorched. There has been no disadvantage from the Comprehensives, and the reintroduction of selection would in all probablity have a detrimental effect on those who lose out, and would have no compensating beneficial effect on social mobility.

Mervyn King blames the banks....

2011-03-02T13:40:00.002Z

Almost every time you see PMQs or any other ministerial statement, you hear the "it's all Labour's fault" Tory mantra. According to the ToryDems, the financial crisis was all Labour's fault and the cuts are all Labour's fault.

Until now I have suspected that Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, had quietly endorsed that view and backed up his Tory masters in their repititions.

But, in today's Guardian, King blames the problem squarely on the financial sector. In the article, King;

"...told the Treasury select committee that the billions spent bailing out the banks and the need for public spending cuts were the fault of the financial services sector."

"...King has repeatedly pointed the finger at the City since the crisis erupted in 2007, but this was the first time he blamed bankers for the coalition's spending cuts."

The Governor also remarked that;

"The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it," he said. "Now is the period when the cost is being paid, I'm surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has."

So the next time we hear a ToryDem minister assert that it's all Labour's fault, we should immediately point him to the Governor's evidence.

It was the bankers wot done it and the public should be revolting....

interesting piece by Ben Chu at the Indy

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/03/02/george-osborne-the-bankers-friend/

NHS Privatisation....

2011-03-02T09:57:00.002Z

Just after the New Year, at PMQs, Ed Miliband asked David Cameron about the 18 week waiting time for an operation within the NHS in England. Cameron could not give figures because, as the Tories promised, the target had been dropped. "Targets are evil and we don't need them" being the libertarian Tory mantra. The problem being, if there's no target, no commitment can be made. The patient is left at the mercy of the system, and if it delivers, well and good. If it doesn't deliver, there is no comeback.

Today, amid warnings that patients could have to wait longer for treatment, the head of the NHS in England, Sir David Nicholson, has written to all staff asking for "vigilence" in delivering the commitment. It seems, as was predictable, the moment the Tory Government removed the need to report on the target, it was quietly ignored by Health Trusts.

So if you are waiting for an operation and you think it will be delivered within a stated time, think again. You no longer have any guarantee that it will be.

An even more disturbing story is in the Guardian. To quote;

"...The government's health service reforms could lead to GP practices being partially floated on the stock market, it has emerged...... GP consortiums will begin to control £80bn of NHS funds to commission healthcare from 2013.... in documents obtained by Channel 4 News and passed to the Guardian, one private health firm, IHP, proposes that the commissioning budget for patients be handed over to a private company in which family doctors would own a 20% stake..."

This goes far beyond any "marketisation" of services or purchasing: it is the outright privatisation of NHS services. If you GP's loyalty is to the stock market, how can he also answer to you?

It has been much commented on that Andrew Lansley's "reforms" to the NHS were not in the Tory manifesto nor in the coalition agreement. In fact the promise was that there would be "no top down reorganisation" of the Health Service.

So there you have it: when the Tories carry out their promises, the NHS suffers and when they do something that was never in their manifesto and for which they have no mandate, the NHS suffers.

And when the NHS suffers, the public suffers, sometimes literally.

As ever: we expect this level of lies and treachery from the Conservatives, but where are the Lib dems in all of this? Why are they silent? Why do they vote for these real cuts to the National Health service, and where is their conscience?

ps. EtonMess has a revealing graph showing that the NHS is good value for money and performs well against international competition and a reasonable cost.

The worst Health Service is the most privatised, i.e. the USA.

Many a slip....

2011-02-27T21:58:00.000Z

Last week I published this post, showing that an IPSOS/Mori poll revealed that the SNP had caught up with and passed Labour in voting intentions for Holyrood.

Today there is a new YouGov poll of Scottish Parliamentary voting intentions, commissioned by the Scottish Greens. Topline figures are;

Constituency: CON 15%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, SNP 32%
Regional: CON 15%, LAB 40%, LDEM 7%, SNP 26%, GRN 6%

Labour would get 59 seqats and be in a position to form a coalition with the Greens (according to some).

So. All is right with the world. Labour is back in a healthy lead, the SNP is languishing and the election is in the bag.

Not so, IMHO. The SNP has loads of money from Brian Souter and (I would predict) Tom Farmer, the religious lobby working for a Nationalist victory. Labour and all the other Scottish parties are struggling for cash.And, as Lord Ashcroft and the USA elections show, money buys votes.

There's a long way to go and many a slip to be encountered. If you ask me, the election will be close and getting out the vote will be the key to victory or defeat.

SNP U-Turn on Education Cuts

2011-02-22T11:18:00.006Z

SNP-led Renfrewshire Council has dropped its planned dilution of teaching staff.

The local authority had planned to hire more than 100 part-time non-teaching staff to work with classes for 2.5 hours each week to cover such issues such as healthy lifestyle, citizenship, sport and culture. The proposal was designed to help save £1.1 million a year, with teacher numbers being cut through redundancy and fewer supply teachers being used.

Last week at FMQs, Ian Gray challenged Alex Salmond to intervene to stop his party carrying out these education cuts in Renfrewshire. Salmond responded with typical bombast and bullying bluster, shouting and bawling and waving his arms to such an extent that the Presiding Officer had to cut off his microphone.

But today, lo and behold, the policy has been dropped.

One up for Gray, I would say.

The BullShit Clarifies...

2011-02-21T07:42:00.005Z

The BBC is reporting that PM Dave has written yet another article clarifying what he means by his Big Society (BS). And this time, there actually is some clarity, although not a lot of reassurance.

David Cameron says his vision for public services is an important part of his Big Society agenda

"David Cameron has promised to....end the state's monopoly over the public sector......the prime minister described his vision of "open public services"....and promised to release public services from the "grip of state control.....Mr Cameron added the initiative was was an important part of his Big Society agenda....The prime minister said he wanted an automatic right for private sector bodies to bid for public work, decision-making power to be given back to professionals, and people to have more control over the budget for the service they receive.... public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service.... there are some areas - like national security services or the judiciary - where this wouldn't make sense. But everywhere else should be open to real diversity....Cameron....insisted the state still had a crucial role to play in ensuring fair funding and access.The government hopes the plan will reduce bureaucracy, improve quality and save money....."

Let's interpret the PM's words.....

"an automatic right for private sector bodies to bid for public work"

= straightforward privatisation.

If any big international business can undercut the current provider, they can take the contract. And how would the undercut? By paying less and having fewer rights for the workers (that'd be the workers recently sacked from the local authority who were previously doing the work...). That's what happened in the '80s and that's what would happen again if this "plan" is ever put into action.

"...public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a better service...."

= cost cutting and quality reduction.

Contracting out has always, in the past, led to cheapest contracts being accepted and standards of quality falling. Think about it: we never had MRSA in our hospital wards until the Tories insisted in contracting out cleaning services. In recent years we have spent millions and had "cleaning task forces" and "emergency cleaning teams" in our hospitals to attempt to put that situation (which should never have been allowed to happen in the first place) right.

"there are some areas - like national security services or the judiciary - where this wouldn't make sense."

= the police and the judges are generally Conservative, but don't worry lads, we'll protect your jobs.

There are actually lots of other services (see hopitals above) where it doesn't make sense either, but we have to keep the police and the justice system onside (ref. Miners Strike 1984) in case the oiks get uppity.

"Cameron....insisted the state still had a crucial role to play in ensuring fair funding and access."

= we, you and me, the mugs, still pay....

You continue to pay, it's just that you no longer have any real democratic control over service delivery...

"reduce bureaucracy, improve quality and save money....."

= cut jobs, cut quality, cut taxes for those still able to pay them...

So the Big Society isn't really Bull Shit. Dave wasn't being vague because he wasn't clear about his own ideas, he was being evasive, because he knew fine well the real implications of the Big Society (BS). This version of the BS is revealed as a return to Thatcherite privatisation, job cutting, the run down of services and the weakening of local democracy.

It's a Thatcherite dream and it's coming to a school or a hospital or care home near you. Let's hope it's not the one your kids go to or your elderly relatives are in....

I'll cut the NHS, not the deficit...

2011-02-18T20:28:00.002Z

The most famous poster from last year's election campaign was this...

"We can't go on like this, I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS"

In many interviews since then, Cameron has insisted that his government will protect front-line NHS services.

And Cameron's old Etonian mate, the A-list promoted Zac Gldsmith, promised to resign if his local hospital had to cut front-line services.

Today a number of hospital trusts have announced that they are cutting front line NHS jobs.

But, surprise surprise, Zac Goldsmith has backed the Kingston Hospital cuts. He said: "Hospitals around the country are having to find savings, and ours is no different."

Kingston hospital - visited by David Cameron during the election campaign with a promise that its maternity unit would not be closed - is to lose 500 jobs. The news comes as Unison secretary Dave Prentis condemned a further 500 job losses at St George's Hospital in South London as a "devastating blow".

Health minister Simon Burns said: "We are protecting the NHS with investment which Labour opposes. But this doesn't mean that the NHS can't become more efficient."

So "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS", and "I'll resign if my local hospital has to cut front line staff", becomes....

"We are protecting the NHS....".

And the band played believe it if you like...

Meet the Precariat.

2011-02-17T14:36:00.001Z

I posted this yesterday...it showed Tory MP John Glen attacking his own consituents, working people who had difficulty making ends meet and therefore had to live off food parcels from local charities. According to Mr Glen, his constituents were "chaotic" and, by implication, undeserving.

Today I came across this video and article on the guardian website. It's by John Harris and John Domokos and it puts real flesh on the idea of how anyone can be in work, earning the minimum wage or slightly above, and still be achingly poor.

It introduces (to me at least) the idea of a section of society who might be termed "the precariat", i.e. people who live on a precarious balance between working poverty and absolute destitution, and who seem unable to find a way out of their predicament, no matter how they try or what avenues they explore.

Tory MP attacks working poor in his constituency....

2011-02-16T23:01:00.003Z

Channel 4 News had a report on working poverty. They visited Salisbury. Amid scenes of people who were in paid employment, but who had to rely on food handouts from charities, the local Tory MP, John Glen, showed how out of touch he is by claiming that thse who are in waged poverty are to blame for their own position and that they were living a "chaotic lifestyle".

You can see it here,

...the MP comes in about 5 and half minutes in.

The Holyrood Gap Narrows

2011-02-16T15:28:00.000Z

There's an interesting Ipsos/Mori poll today, commissioned for the Times, which has the SNP catching up, and on some measueres, passing Labour in Scotland.

Resurgent SNP take narrow poll lead as Holyrood election draws closer.

The headline suggests that the SNP is ahead, but the figures are a bit more complicated than that.

"With the Holyrood election now under three months away, the latest poll from Ipsos MORI reveals a significant reversal in fortunes for the two main parties, with the SNP now holding a slight advantage, having been 10 points behind Labour in November 2010. Among those certain to vote on May 5th, the SNP’s share of the vote now stands at 37%, up by 6 percentage points since November 2010. In the same period, Labour’s share of the vote has fallen by 5 percentage points and is currently at 36%, while the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Liberal Democrats are largely unchanged at 13% and 10% respectively. This is first time since February 2010 that an Ipsos MORI poll has shown a lead for the governing SNP."

The figures quoted are from those who say they are certain to vote. But if you take all respondents, Labour is on 38% and the SNP 36%.

Even so, to close a ten point gap in three months is a remarkable result. The question is: is this an outlier, a rogue poll, or does it really reflect the voting intentions of the Scottish electorate? Unfortunately there are not nearly as many exclusively Scottish polls as there used to be, so we'll just have to wait for the next one...

In the meantime, the SNP will take heart and Labour will take the lesson that complacency won't win the election. If this poll is an accurate reflection getting the vote out is going to be key....

79% of Republicans think Obama not legitimate President...

2011-02-15T23:33:00.000Z

Sometimes you despair for democracy, civilisation, logic, common sense and, in particular, the USA.

A poll by an American polling orgnisation, Public Policy Polling, shows that, of the registered Republicans who can vote in next year's primaries, a breathtaking 51% believe that Obama was not born in the USA. Another 28% "don't know", which is the logical equivalent of questioning his legitimacy to be President. That makes an unbelievable 79% of registered Republicans who doubt the legitimacy of the President.

How stupid do you have to be to be a Republican? Given the support that Republicans have given to religious creationists and Sarah Palin, it seems that the Republicans are the party of illogic and non-reason.

How can such a level of paranoid idiocy have got hold of the Republican party, one of only two parties that can realistically hope to provide government for the USA? They are ahead in the polls, control the Senate and are dictating economic policy to a weakened Democratic administration. How can the greatest deocracy on the planet hope for sensible goverence from such a group of evidence-denying morons? And what sort of society is the USA, which gives such a level lof support to such perverse, idiotic and outlandish opinions?

Francis Maude stumbles on how much volunteering he does....

2011-02-15T15:00:00.002Z

Francis Maude is the Cabinet "face" of the Big Society (BS) the Tory plan to have us all volunteering to run public services for free. This audio of Eddie Mair asking Mr Maude how much volunteering he dates is from last summer, but still relevant as Dave continues to relaunch his pet BS project .....

And funny, of course.....

Relaunch....yawn..

2011-02-14T12:20:00.000Z

I have just watched David Cameron try to "relaunch" the "Big Society" (again...). I listened as closely as I could to the PMs words, but still it did not form any shape in my mind. It still comes across as a silly amporphous "let's all hold hands and help each other" non-sense. And, that being the case, it is anathema to what we know of Tory philosophy and politics in action. Mrs Thatcher put it most succinctly....."there is no such thing as society".

Which begs the question: if Tories believe that there is no such thing as society, how can they convince us to believe that there is such a thing as a "Big Society"?

The Guardians's Steve Bell has a v. funny take on it here...

Francis Maude gets booed on QT

2011-02-10T23:51:00.003Z

Just watched an interesting moment on BBC Question Time. On a question about "The Big Society", Francis Maude went into the usual spiel about how Labour left all that bebt...

....hardly were the words out of his mouth when a huge BOO! went up from the audience!

It's here ......and it's astonishing.

It's not so long since the same sentence would have got a cheer or at least a clap.

Are people getting sick of it already....?

Bad news for the coalition. Good news for those of us that want the government to have a sensible economic strategy based on the facts and not on blaming someone else for their own decisions....

From those who have not....

2011-02-10T12:13:00.003Z

I have commented before on the hidden (although becoming increasingly revealed) Thatcherite nature of David Cameron's Conservative Party, in its tendency cut without mercy and to take from the poor to give to the rich.

Last night I watched Mark Easton's BBC news item on the way council allocations have been calculated. It showed how poorer council areas get bigger cuts and richer council areas get smaller cuts, the specific examples being Hackney, an inner city council, which gets £210.19 per head cut from its allocation and Wokengham, a leafy suburb, that gets £2.86 per head cuts.

Now you might think that this is not justice: why should rich people get more money to deal with their (smaller) problems than poor people get to deal with their (presumably bigger and more persistent) problems?

According to Eric Pickles, the Local Government Minister, giving richer people more money is actually "fairer" because Hackney has, in the past, been getting a greater allocation (to deal with local poverty), so wealthy Wokingham needs to "catch up"!

So, one big difference with the '80s is that Dave is smarter than Maggie in his use of rhetoric: his taking from the rich and giving to the rich is all in the name of fairness!!!

It's a twisted logic I have to say, although it is prefigured in the saying:

...to those who have, more shall be given; and from those who have not, what little they have will be taken away.....

I had always thought that this was an underlying foundation of Conservative philosophy. I have to say, this is the first time I have heard it expressed so openly as policy and admitted so brazenly.

Lord Oakshott, a political obituary

2011-02-09T22:31:00.000Z

Hear lies Lord Oakshott
Himself in the foot
and the
Coalition in the gut.

Watch the pipsqueak Danny Alexander deliver the coup de gras on Channel 4 News.

Point of Order Mr Speaker...

2011-02-09T19:04:00.001Z

Today at PMQs, David Cameron denied that the money for the Sure Start programme had been cut. The denial was puzzling because the point has been made on numerous occassions that Sure Start is being cut. It's not a matter of any controversy, in fact Sure Start is in danger of being decimated and Tories seem happy about that.

Even so, David Cameron said the programme had not been cut. He even insisted in coming back with another denial after Miliband persisted in the accusation.

Tonight Andy Burnham, believing that the PM had got his facts wrong, attempted to raise a point of order with the Speaker, John Bercow, asking that the PM be censured for misleading the House. The Speaker refused, but could he be as wrong as Cameron?

Channel 4's factcheck website has looked at Miliband's accusation, Cameron's denial and the facts of the matter, and comes up with the verdict

"Cameron misled the House of Commons".

"Cathy Newman's Verdict

David Cameron slipped up today by confusing the Sure Start budget with the broader early intervention grant. On that, FactCheck believes he misled the Commons.

But he was also less clear than he should have been by omitting to mention that this year’s early intervention grant has been cut by 11 per cent – choosing to focus instead on the very small increase in next year’s figures.
And that’s even before we get into the fact that none of the money in the early intervention grant has to be spent on Sure Start.

Councils have been given a free hand to close as many centres as they wish. The Prime Minister may find himself having to clarify all this before too long."

Seems clear enough. David Cameron displayed his usual detached attitude to fact and evidence. He tried to win the argument by presenting fiction as fact, and he has been found out.

I see an abject Prime Ministerial apology approaching.....

We're all in this together (part the 97th)

2011-02-09T10:41:00.002Z

The Guardian has a very nice story today about how the Tory Party is funded. Essentially, they get their money from the City of London: 51% of their money to be precise.

A cynic might ask: how can they Tory Party be expected to be firm with the banks and hedge funds when the party gets most of its money from banks and hedge funds...?

A cynic would have a point, as the reaction to yesterday's piffling £0.8bn levy showed. "The banks are livid", reports the BBC. Aye, that'll be right. Lividly laughing up their sleeves, more like.

On a related issue: the relationship of the Tory Government with big business and how big business refuses to be taxed, there was an interesting exchanges at Treasury Questions yesterday. From Tory MP David Davis;

There is a lot of public disquiet about alleged enormous sweetheart deals done with major public companies-Vodafone and others-in the last five years. Three or four months ago, I tabled a question asking how many of these deals had been done, costing more than £100 million at a time. The answer I received was that the information requested was "not readily available" and could be provided "only at disproportionate cost". I received a similar blocking answer this morning. When is the Minister going to tell the House what HMRC has been up to?

To which the Minister replied;

"The National Audit Office has investigated and examined that as a matter of course. There is no question of sweetheart deals. The reality is that HMRC is seeking to recover as much tax as is due. That is what it has done in a number of cases. I am not going to comment on individual cases. That is a matter of confidentiality; I do not get to see the details. None the less, I think wild allegations have been made against HMRC, for which there is little or no evidence."

So. There are no sweetheart deals and anyway it's all secret and confidential so even if there were, I wouldn't tell you. Very open government....

Let's paint the picture:

CompanyX tries to dodge £3bn of tax liabilities. The revenue calls them in....

"Ah", says CompanyX, "We're admitting nothing of course, but we've made it very difficult for you to find out how we did it. On the other hand, we don't want a prolonged investigation or bad publicity, so let's agree we'll pay £0.5bn?... No?... £0.8bn then. That ok? ... Good. Of course this all has to be secret, or next time we'll just hide the money completely and you'll be baffled. Nice doing business with you...".

Meanwhile, all over the country care centres, charitable institutions and libraries close.

And the Conservatives mantra in these impoverished times? "We're all in this together"... It's enough to make you weep.

Big Society Brass Neck....

2011-02-08T12:59:00.000Z

Last Thursday I blogged about Lord Wei, the Tories' "Big Society Tsar", and his pressing need to give up voluntarily working for The Big Society and earn some dosh to put food on the table. The ironic humour inherent in the situation was side-splitting.

Now the same Lord Wei has posted on his blog that public sector workers should go part time... to support The Big Society....!

"The second action local authorities can take is to have a serious look at their core costs – not just the salaries of middle management and their CEOs but also what hours they do. One of the major surprises of the recession in the private sector has been how low unemployment has been given the severity of the downturn. One reason is because many firms invited staff to go part time."

Translated: why are local authority workers so selfish? Why do they need full-time work? Why don't they (unlike me) go part-time to help me meet my targets....?

Really, the twists in this story are enough to furnish a whole series of Tales of the Unexpected...

The Big Society is about volunteering at a local level but the man who runs The Big Society can't afford to work part-time to support The Big Society, so he demands that everybody else should work part-time to support......The Big Society!!!

Truly, you couldn't make it up. But then, you don't have to if the Tories are making the rules....

Can Glasgow Host Question Time?

2011-02-04T16:26:00.000Z

The Herald reports that Ed Havard, the editor of the BBC's Question Time programme, has quit over the proposal to move the production of the show to Glasgow.

The show's host, David Dimbleby has been reported in the past as being unhappy with the move. Today the Guardian says he is "furious" at losing the "brilliant" editor, who was apparently hand-picked by Dimbleby to do the job.

Mr Havard is free to work in any city that he wants and which will have him, but TBH, I have not been over-impressed by QT in recent years. It seems that the reppeated appearence of "controversial" contributors such as the historian David Starkey (the so-called rudest man in England) has been programme policy. The result is more controversy and more attention given to the programme at the cost (IMO) of a higher level of debate.Since the editor makes the choice of contributor, I would doubt his acclaimed "brilliance".

In any case, I can see no reson why Glasgow cannot produce the show as well as London: the programme travels all over the UK, the production centre is, or at least should be, irrelevant.

The Big Society -v- The Real World

2011-02-03T13:28:00.002Z

Lord Wei, David Cameron's "Big Sociey Tsar", has had to reduce the time he gives to the voluntary work of encouraging other people to take up voluntary work through the Big Society to return to real work. He can't afford all the voluntary work involved in the Big society and needs to earn a living (through the usual Tory toil of more directorships etc.)....

Really. You couldn't make it up....

Update;

It's worse than I thought....

It now turns out that Phillip Blond admitted that the idea was in trouble in the Sun. And Liverpool's 'Big Society' champion, Phil Redmond told the Local Government Chronicle that the project had made little progress over the last six months become “subsumed” by the cuts agenda. Now Joe Anderson, the leader of Liverpool City Council, has written to Dave withdrawing from the project, saying that government cuts have threatened the future of many local volunteer groups and he can no longer support the initiative.

Was there ever a more woolly, ill-thought-out, meaningless statement of personal or political philosophy than Dave's foolish championing of "The Big Society"?

Nobel Winner says UK Austerity "Disastrous"

2011-02-02T21:21:00.003Z

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel winning economist ..

..has hit out at the austerity hysteria affecting European economies.

Criticising the "excessive austerity" that seems fashionable in Europe, he says;

"...There’s this disastrous policy that even in the countries that don’t need to have austerity...such as the U.K., ....are going for much more excessive austerity than they need ......We are already seeing around Europe the consequences of this austerity. The clear implication is that growth will be slower...."

Pointing out the effects of austerity in Ireland and Greece he says....

"While both those nations had “no choice” but to tighten fiscal policy, measures adopted by some other countries such as the U.K. aren’t justified...... Britain, where the economy contracted in the fourth quarter, is already seeing the fallout....".

Stiglitz, who is a highly respected and influential practicing economist and comentator, contrasts the position in Europe and the USA, where austerity is less fashionable and growth seems to be more established.

2011-02-01T15:26:00.004Z

The BMJ has an interesting article by John Appleby, Chief Economist of The King's Fund, on Tory lies in the NHS debate: specifically the Tory claim that England has twice as many deaths from heart disease than France.

The attendant graph shows that in 2006 this was true but that the trend in England is sharply down and on current trends, England will perform better than France on that statistic as early as next year.

The Tories also forget to mention that France has the lowest rate of heart failure in Europe and that France spends 11.2% of GDP on health, while in the UK it is 8.7%, and that the Conservatives plan to cut funding, not increase it.

In other words, under Labour this illness was addressed and is being solved, the NHS in England is at least as efficient and effective as its French counterpart, and the Tories' changes will do nothing to help: indeed there is nothing to suggest that they will not, in fact, make matters worse....

Mr Appleby also questions the analysis of statistics on mortality and survival rates, and claims that they are not as bad in comparison with European statistics as some people claim.

Worth a read

2011-02-01T11:19:00.002Z

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has produced a paper entitled;

"Why did growth slow in the second half of 2010?"

And they don't blame the snow! (well not entirely).

By their analysis it was...

Not a weakness in the global economy.

Not the banks imposing tougher lending conditions.

Not a strengthening exchange rate.

Not higher interest rates.

Higher oil and food prices played a part.

What did change dramatically during 2010 was fiscal policy.

Osborne's cuts led to a decline in consumer and business confidence

Turning confidence around now is going to prove very difficult.

And rising inflation has also raised the spectre of an early increase in interest rates

The need for action (on growth) is all the more apparent now....

So Osborne's cuts and the lack of a plan for growth are the real resons for the drop in GDP. Unfortunately we will have to wait 'til the March budget to see how the Chancellor plans to address these matters....

We're Agin' it!

2011-01-27T15:44:00.003Z

There's a story about the old time minister of religion who, when asked his opinion on sin, replied "I'm agin' it!".

Older readers (not so old actually) will remember when the SNP was agin' Devolution. They said it wouldn't work, and it wasn't what the people wanted. Only after everybody else had worked through the Constitutional Convention for ten years, preparing the ground and grinding out the detail, creating the consensus and writing the bills and laws that enabled Devolution to go ahead, did the Nats deign to come aboard the Devolution train.

Even the YesYes campaign divided the SNP, with some SNP politicians and members campaigning in favour and many not (they were agin' it!). Once everyone else worked to make it a fact, the whole of the SNP accepted it.

Well, now the Parliament in Holyrood is due to get more powers in the Scotland Bill which is getting a 2nd Reading today. And you know what? The SNP is agin' it!

They have tabled a motion that states the new powers are unacceptable.. the Commons Order Paper reads;

SCOTLAND BILL: Second Reading

Angus Robertson

Stewart Hosie

Pete Wishart

Mr Mike Weir

Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil

Dr Eilidh Whiteford

That this House, while recognising the need to further enhance the powers of the Scottish Parliament, nevertheless believes that the measures the Scotland Bill seeks to devolve are inadequate to meet the ambitions of the Scottish Government for the people of Scotland; considers the measures relating to air weapons, road safety and drink driving to be incomplete; regrets that the Calman Commission’s recommendations to devolve the aggregates levy and air passenger duty, and to devolve responsibility for the marine environment to match the Scottish Parliament’s responsibility for fisheries, as well as its proposal for a Scottish role in welfare benefits, have all been abandoned; regards the proposals for the Crown Estates Commission as inadequate; deplores the proposals in the Bill to re-reserve already devolved responsibilities; concludes that the tax varying provisions would embed a long-term deflationary bias in Scotland’s budget and that the proposed borrowing powers remaining subject to HM Treasury controls and limits render them insufficiently flexible; and therefore considers the Bill as a whole to be unacceptable.

For the life of me I cannot understand why we put up with this bunch of chancers. The SNP adds nothing of value to Scottish politics, they oppose everything that anyone else suggests and, when there is actual work to be done, they let other people do it. Even when they get hold of power, as they did in 2007, they manage to achieve virtually none of their main manifesto pledges. They are intellectually and physically lazy and monumentally incompetent. On top of that they blame everybody else, Westminster, Labour, Tories, Lib Dems, for any problem they can't solve (quite a lot of problems in that category BTW).

The bet must be that, when this bill passes into law, when others have done the work and laid the foundations, the SNP will be queuing up to use whatever powers it transfers to Holyrood, and criticising any other politician that doesn't meet their "exacting" standards....

They won't be agin' it then.....

More Bad News for Ed?

2011-01-27T10:05:00.000Z

Ed Miliband has been the butt of criticism from Conservatises and their press poodles. Too young, lightweight, not up to the job, go the jibes. Not to mention "Wallace and Grommit" (not sure which he's meant to be the eccentric inventor or the genius dog).

But Ed is having, if not the last laught, at least a quiet smile to himself as the ToryDem government ploughs into problem after problem.

An Ipsos/Mori poll for Reuters News Agency has;

Labour at 43% (up 4),
Conservatives at 33% (down 5)
Lib dems at 13%.

That's a ten point lead for Labour. And, as the poll was conducted before this week's GDP data showed a dramatically shrinking economy, pessimism could now be even worse than shown in the survey's findings.

If this is bad news for a weak leader, I'm sure that Ed would welcome more of the same.....

A Stitch-up in the Sky....

2011-01-25T22:14:00.002Z

The other big story today is the sacking of Andy Gray from his job as football commentator. Lot's of speculation as to why, and why now?

My analysis, which may not be absolutely correct, but it fits the facts....

Gray sued the NotW, not popular within NewsCorp.

He then made a faux pas just as ole Rupe swaggers into town, under pressure from the phone hacking scandal.

Bad timing. Rupe wants to look tough and clean, needs to find an example, take some action...Gray makes his mistakes at the wrong time...

Too bad. Heaveho Andy

Why did these things leak from Sky? I have seen not one, but three pieces of film and audio. Somebody released it.

Coincidence? mebbes aye mebbes naw.

Am ah right or a meringue?

He told you so

2011-01-25T17:44:00.003Z

Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, published this prediction in the New York Times in October 2010...

Entitled British Fashion Victims, it decried the fleeting fashion for austerity that was so enthusiastically embraced by the UK government and it predicted some dire outcomes.

"The British government’s plan is bold, say the pundits — and so it is. But it boldly goes in exactly the wrong direction. It would cut government employment ......at a time when the private sector is in no position to provide alternative employment. It would slash spending at a time when private demand isn’t at all ready to take up the slack.

Why is the British government doing this? The real reason has a lot to do with ideology: the Tories are using the deficit as an excuse to downsize the welfare state. But the official rationale is that there is no alternative......

....... Never mind that British debt as a percentage of national income is actually below its historical average; never mind that British interest rates stayed low even as the nation’s budget deficit soared, reflecting the belief of investors that the country can and will get its finances under control. Britain, declared Mr. Osborne, was on the “brink of bankruptcy.”

What happens now? Maybe Britain will get lucky, and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it."

I haven't seen the NYT blogs today, and anyway it's a bit soon for Mr Krugman to have composed a gloating reprise of his October epistle, (indeed I'm sure he's to nice a man to gloat openly), but I would not be the least surprised to find, in the next few hours, some gentle comment from the Nobel laureate to the effect of "I told you so"....

The wrong type of economic snow..

2011-01-25T11:18:00.000Z

Just saw George Osborne on TV tryng to explain away the 0.5% shrinkage in the economy over the last quarter. If he had mentioned the weather one more time you would begin to believe he was Thomas Shafernacker.....

A few years ago the management of Railtrack had much derision heaped on it when it tried to explain away train delays by claiming that "the wrong type of snow" had fallen...

It's a ridiculous excuse for a rail company, but for the Chancellor to claim the economy shrank because of "the wrong type of snow.."

The mind boggles...

More a warning than a model......

2011-01-24T17:13:00.002Z

I know that, in the past, the SNP has lobbied for a lower rate of business tax in Scotland "to attract inward investment". I presume that's still their policy: that an independent Scotland would have very low rates of Corporation Tax, and that would bring more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

Unfortunately for the SNP, the evidence would seem to be to the contrary. In June 2010 the coalition announced a stepped reduction in UK Corporation Tax from 28% to 24%. This analysis of FDI in London has a few telling points to make, including the info that...

"...60% said the lower tax rate would not change the attractiveness of London as an investment destination, 13% said it would make them more likely to invest, but 22% said it would make them less likely to invest. Therefore a net balance of 9% said lower corporate taxes would make London less attractive to investors!..." (my italics)

"...US and Japan have business tax at 39%. Germany has a 30% rate. The lowest rates are in Iceland (15%) and Ireland (12.5%), which should be more a warning than a model!..." (my italics).

So the survey of potential foreign investors has shown that they are less likely now than before the tax cuts to invest in the UK, and those countries that adopted a lower business tax to attract investors (the erstwhile "Arc of Prosperity") are the same countries that are now chin-deep the an economic mire and in danger of defaulting on their debts. Which rather leaves this particular SNP strategy in tatters, don't you think?

BMJ calls NHS changes "mad"

2011-01-23T20:18:00.001Z

Mark Twain said, expressing the view of many when faced with changing their modus operandus:

"I'm all in favour of progress, it's change I don't like"

The British Medical Journal has an entertaining and trenchant editorial analysis on this theme of Andrew Lansley's NHS changes. In short, they think that Lansley and/or his proposals are "mad".

Under the heading: Dr Lansley’s Monster

and the sub heading: Too soon to let it out of the lab

the authors ask:

"What do you call a government that embarks on the biggest upheaval of the NHS in its 63 year history, at breakneck speed, while simultaneously trying to make unprecedented financial savings?"

Their reply is succenct:

"The politically correct answer has got to be: mad."

I have I say: I agree. Having spent much of my working life in managing change, and knowing that a cultural and organisational change of this magnitude is the most difficult challenge for any management, I know that they will fail, and that there will be serious collateral damage along the way. Changes such as this have to properly handled, planned for and managed carefully through the many sensitive stages of communication, organisation and implementation.

The pity is our old Etonian masters, never having had a real job and having practically no experience of how change is resisted and frustrated in all organisations, have embarked on a monumental change to a huge organisation with no planning, no piloting and no preparation. And, crucially, no mandate.

The BMJ is right: it really is mad.

There's much more from the BMJ in the same vein here

The Small Society

2011-01-22T20:48:00.003Z

There's an extraordinary item in the Guardian today, claiming that senior civil servants are having grave doubts about the ToryDem government's plans for government. Or more accurately, they fear that the ToryDems' plan to do away with government as we know it and abolish the principle of ministerial (and hence governmental) accountability.

The article claims that ....

The head of the civil service has ordered an inquiry into the government's localism reforms amid growing concerns that its "big society" plans risk eroding the basic democratic principles of transparency and ministerial accountability.......

.....parliament's fundamental right to hold the government to account for its actions is being tested by the scale of the coalition's ambitions to devolve power from the centre to local communities and outsource services to charities and the private sector.

....the head of the civil service, has asked a senior colleague to investigate the democratic impact of the government's localism bill, which is intended to end Whitehall's domination of the political system and devolve power to local people.

I have always harboured a suspicion (but thought it too ridiculous to really believe) that deep within the Tory heart their lurks a lack of comfort with universal democracy and a hankering after simpler times, when we all knew our place in society, and that place was not to question our betters. They have never fully accepted the fact of 100% franchise, the assumption that we are all equal before the constitution and that we all have the right to be governed in the way we want and to challenge government if we believe that we are not being properly governed.

If the suspicions of senior civil servants in this matter is borne out, I have not been far wrong.

The most interesting thing about this article IMO is the lack of attention it seems to have received in the other newspapers and broadcast media. These are astonishing revelations (if true). They amount to an accusation that the ToryDems are trying to undermine democracy in this country as it has operated for over 300 years.

Surely, if the very foundations of our democratic structures are in danger being undermined, our "independent" press and the nuetral BBC should have something to say? And if senior civil servants are so concerned that they are ordering investigations into the perils of "The Big Society", then shouldn't we all be aware and discussing and judging these concerns?

The Spirit Level Part 2

2011-01-21T23:31:00.001Z

In September last year I posted this about a book called The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Katie Jarrett, a book which presents firm evidence that every citizen, regardless of level of income, benefits greatly and in many ways from living in a more equal society.

The Institute for Public Policy Reaserch (IPPR) has posted a web page and a PowerPoint presentation by Richard Wilkinson to download.

I think the ideas in The Spirit Level are political dynamite, and would suggest, if you haven't already done so, you should have a look at the IPPR data and then buy the book.