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

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...

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

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.....

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

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....

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....

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.