Reid All About It

It's been announced today that the cost of the Scottish Parliament building has been finalised at £414m - £16m down on the most recent estimate of £430m. It might not be much, and it's still a far cry from the ridiculous £40m we were promised at first by Donald Dewar. Nonetheless, it's a piece of good news from a project which had threatened to become a millstone round the neck of self-government.

In many ways, the Holyrood project held up a mirror to Scotland, and truth be told, I'm not sure anyone liked much what was reflected back. It became a byword for waste, incompetence and mismanagement. Everything about it, from the cosy cronyism in the choice of architect and site; the indecent haste to begin Dewar's vanity project; to the inept political and administrative scrutiny of the project itself; emphasied all that was rotten about the 'old Scotland' and everything that a Scottish Parliament was supposed to change.

Let's be brutally honest - in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum, Scotland was served badly by her politicians. Too many MSPs of all parties, at key points where some sanity could have been restored to the Holyrood project, decided to press on with nary a pause for thought. The mindless happy-clappiness of 'New millennium, new Scotland, new parliament, new building' was allowed to steamroller over those who recognised a stitch-up when they saw one, and who were rightly sceptical that you could get the promised building for anything like the sums being bandied about.

This mattered. In a trice, the grass-roots home-rule project had been snatched away from those that had supported and nurtured it through its darkest days. Home rule now belonged to the new cadre of politicians rather than to the people who had marched, delivered the leaflets and turned out to vote in their droves for the new institition. It represented something of a minor betrayal of people's early hopes - whatever they had been voting for, it hadn't been for this.

And how the antis all laughed. The cretinous reportage of Martin Clarke's Daily Record and of Andrew Neil’s Scotsman may have said more about their own atavistic hostility to home rule than anything else. However, the speed at which previously strong voices for devolution turned against was surprising, even by the 'expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed' mentality of the Scots.

But there’s no point crying over spilt milk. This final cost reduction is a minor triumph for Presiding Officer George Reid. When he became Presiding Officer, he set the parliament a target of 'moving in, and moving on'. Given the thankless task of trying to land what had become a jumbo-jet already in freefall, he took the controls and managed to bring things back under as much of a semblance of control as it was possible to achieve by that stage.

As someone who had grappled with Ethiopian warlords during the 1984 famine in his time with the Red Cross, dealing with the notoriously litigious construction industry and the more unreconstructed elements of the Scottish press would have been a bit of light relief in comparison. Heads were banged together, and even hardened construction veterans cried foul as timetables were cut and their acute awareness of costs was finally reciprocated by the client.

Well, we moved in a long time ago, and I think that even if we haven't entirely forgotten, we've at least managed to move on. As a Holyrood sceptic from the outset, I have to say that it is growing on me, even if the working space and some of the IT facilities leave much to be desired. And even at £414m, it still came in at a lower cost than the Millenium Dome, or the new Wembley Stadium.

Maybe it did the Scots no harm to realise that with the wrong people in charge, we were every bit as capable of governing ourselves badly as was Westminster. But there is another, less well-known aspect to this story.

Perhaps predictably, back in 1999 the devol-unionist establishment wanted David Steel as the parliament’s first Presiding Officer. What is less well known is that it took a personal intervention from Donald Dewar before Labour backbenchers would even back Reid as a Deputy Presiding Officer, such was their desire to vote with the Lib Dems and the Tories so that the hated nats could somehow be dished.

For me, Dewar's fair-mindedness aside, that little vignette sums up all that is worst about the petty tribalism in Scottish civic society. For make no mistake, Reid is someone who could have done so much more for his country, but too often was held back for being honest enough to wear his support for independence on his sleeve.

From the outset, Holyrood needed a Presiding Officer of Reid’s calibre, who could be both a silky diplomat in public and a hard-nosed little bastard in private. Eventually, we got him, and Scotland owes him a debt of gratitude for restoring some sanity to Holyrood, and for allowing us to start talking about the political issues which should have been detaining our MSPs from the outset.

In having to resign his party membership to take up the post, I’m pleased to say that the SNP’s loss was Holyrood's, and Scotland’s, eventual gain. For that reason, no matter who governs Scotland post-May, I hope a suitable future role can be found for him. It would be criminal if someone with his experience, international contacts and record of service couldn’t continue to serve Scotland in some capacity.

Mission Impossible

It seemed like Mission Impossible, but I think I may have found a blogger who's views on the SNP make those of Cllr. Terry Kelly look nuanced and insightful. Take a bow, then, Lib Dem blogger James Graham, for your attempted defence of Jamie Stone's ridiculous 'xenophobe' comments.

Quoth the bold Graham:

"The bottom line is, nationalism is an extremely ugly thing, whether it is Cornish Nationalists “confiscating” English Heritage signs or Scottish Nationalists chucking faeces through English people’s letterboxes. Alex Salmond may like to pretend that nationalism has an “acceptable” face, but it’s fundamental features are a belief that your ‘people’ are both superior to another group and permanent victims at the same time".

I should warn you that it deteriorates considerably from here, with circular arguments and sweeping generalisations that seeking independence = nationalism = xenophobia = anti-Englishness. And the 'when did you stop beating your wife' approach to my growing incredulity towards the end of our exchange, as well as the advice to politicians to never apologise, has to be seen to be believed.

The silence from other Lib Dem bloggers suggests that anyone taking an interest has probably decided that discretion is the better part of valour. This tallies with George Lyon MSP on Newsnight Scotland last night, who while not apologising, at least had the decency to distance himself clearly from Stone on the issue. Anyway, strap yourself in, point your browser here, and admire the cynicism and simplicity, if not the quality, of this man's thought.

Nicol Stephen - the Arsene Wenger of Scottish Politics?

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen makes much of his party's 'positive' approach to politics, and of how the Lib Dems eschew the name calling and dirty tricks of all the other nasty parties. Now, anyone who's ever had any kind of involvement in politics, be they Labour, Tory or SNP, knows perfectly well that this claim is a load of pious, hypocritical nonsense. However, his party is cynical enough to play on the fact that you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. And up until now, it has tended to work fairly well for them.

How unfortunate, then, that following what was by all accounts a well-received speech by Stephen to his party's conference in Aviemore, Lib Dem MSP Jamie Stone decided to prove the adage that it's better to stay quiet and be thought a fool than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt. For in commenting on his leader's speech, in trying to take a pop at the SNP, he elected to scrape the bottom of the barrel by calling the party 'xenophbic'.

Accusing the SNP of xenophobia, or anti-Englishness, is usually the last refuge of a thick unionist who is losing the argument. However, the tendency to cock a snook or blame every misfortune on our English neighbours has a long and undistinguished history amongst all our politicians. Ian Lang, for instance, once ranted about the 'bloody English' when the government of which he was a member handed the refit work for Trident submarines to Devonport instead of Rosyth. And who could forget the outcry caused by Jack McConnell's ill-judged 'anyone but England' stance at last year's World Cup?

For the 'nice' party, we need only go back to 2002 when Ross Finnie, at a CBI function, was overheard referring to then Director General Digby Jones as an 'English Prat'. It wasn't big and it wasn't clever, but a fulsome and immediate apology from Mr Finnie was enough to save his career. That, along with the fact that he is generally well-liked helped him enormously, with even opponents realising that while his chosen adjective was as offensive as the outburst was out of character, it was difficult to fault the accuracy of his choice of noun.

Perhaps predictably, the SNP has cut up rough. But they are absolutely right to do so. This sort of language only cheapens debate and as Alex Salmond rightly points out, how can he be expected to sit round a cabinet table with someone who considers both him and the party he leads to be xenophobic?

Now, Jamie Stone is an obscure irritant, and in many ways a complete distraction from the fuss he has caused. He is regarded widely in Holyrood as a buffoon, being better known for his myriad references in debate to the family cheese factory than for any conspicuous political ability. While today's pitiful explanation of his comments falls well short of the apology required, it's probably only to be expected. What matters more is the deafening silence from his leader, Nicol Stephen.

This is a real test of leadership for Stephen. If he wants to show the statesman-like qualities that might get people to stop laughing when his cheerleaders talk him up as a future FM, he needs to distance both himself and his party from Stone's remarks and do so quickly. Then he needs to get Stone to apologise unreservedly for a set of remarks which were grubby, puerile, imbecilic and plain wrong.

So far, it doesn't look good. The Arsene Wenger defence of 'I cannot comment because I did not see the incident', barely cuts it in a Premiership post-match interview - using the same tactic here is a spineless cop-out from someone aspiring to political leadership of their nation. The longer he stays silent, the more it will look like he condones Stone's intemperate idiocy.

Scottish voters are entitled to know before they cast their votes whether Stephen shares his colleague's view of the SNP. It's not overstating the case to say that how Stephen handles this over the next few days could determine whether his party remains in office post-May. As things stand, if the SNP emerge as the lead party after the elections, the temptation to try and find a means of keeping the Lib Dems out of government might prove overwhelming.

Lib Dems Show Their True Colours

Best comment on Menzies Campbell's soporific address this afternoon to the Lib Dem conference comes from Douglas Fraser of The Herald:

'It wasn't so much a standing ovation as delegates getting up to stretch their legs'.

Boom-boom!

Spot the Difference...

3 October 2006: 'We reject the bitter battles and name calling of the other major parties. While the other parties fight each other, we will fight for Scotland' - Nicol Stephen MSP

16 Februay 2007: 'The Liberal Democrats will mount an attack on their Holyrood election rivals as the party's Scottish conference gets under way' - BBC News

Pot, kettle, black, anyone?

AYE! fower

Sit back, relax and enjoy - saves me typing it out!

Politics Endures a Bleak Midwinter

There's been yet another kerfuffle over the past week regarding the economics of independence. This time, The Scotsman dragged out Professor Arthur Midwinter, an academic with well-known unionist sympathies, to accuse the SNP of fiddling the numbers on Scotland's fiscal position.

However, in a rare outbreak of fair-mindedness, the SNP got a right of reply in Monday's paper, the content of which seems to have got right up Arthur Midwinter's nose. Good - he's been quick enough in the past to dish out political barbs disguised as objective analysis, so to see his petulant reaction to having had shoddy assertions dismantled so comprehensively, was very satisfying indeed.

Anyway, you can probably imagine my delight to see a letter in today's paper from Professor Neil Kay, economist of this parish and briefly a tutor of mine at EBS. Prof. Kay has the rare gift of being able to take even the most complicated of subjects and cut out the crap, distill what's left down to its essence and explain the results in plain English. On this occasion, he doesn't disappoint...


'I am rather bemused by the coverage in The Scotsman and other newspapers describing Professor Arthur Midwinter as an "economist" and leading "expert", who has debunked the economic case for an independent Scotland. My understanding is that Prof Midwinter has a background in political science, indeed is a former professor of politics and a specialist in local government finance.

'It is, therefore, perhaps a step too far to saddle him with the label "economist", let alone describe him as an "expert" in the field. And, in fairness, I cannot recall him ever describing himself as an economist.

'If it is wished to have a mature debate on the economics of independence, I would sooner put weight on the opinion of Professor David Simpson, a qualified and highly experienced economist of the highest calibre, who cogently argued the economic case for independence in another newspaper this week. For what it is worth, I am pleased to second Professor Simpson's opinion that the economic arguments favour independence for Scotland.

'If we are taking a tally of professional economists' opinion, so far that makes two for and none against'.

(PROF) NEIL KAY, Department of Economics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Ouch... but if we're in the business of keeping score, then the numbers for independence are even better than Prof. Kay suggests. Perhaps this is something reflected by the decidedly lukewarm response given to Gordon Brown, as he attempted to drum up opposition to the SNP at a clandestine CBI meeting in Edinburgh a fortnight ago.

Anyway, it seems that on the economics of Independence, the last unionist bolt has probably been shot. Maybe that means we can replace the fatuous argument about whether Scotland could be independent, with the far more important debate about whether she should be independent. Bring it on!

Road Pricing - It's All Our Fault

On the two days a week that work takes me to Dundee, I often think that I must have one of the nicest commutes anywhere. I start by leaving my house and looking out over the Forth from Portobello Beach, before setting off through a UNESCO World Heritage Site on my way to the sweeping span of the Forth Road Bridge.

Looking right as I cross the Forth, I have the magnificent Rail Bridge and to my left, the Zeebrugge ferry. Then begins the long climb from North Queensferry, passing Loch Leven and the Lomond Hills, through Glenfarg and over Balmanno Hill, where the carse opens up below. From there, it's a fast, downhill bit of motorway across the River Earn towards Perth.

On a clear morning, the sun glints off the bare rock face of Kinnoul Hill and as you head over the Friarton Bridge, there's often just a little bit of mist hanging over the Tay hundreds of feet below. And from there, it's a 20-minute thrash along the side of the Tay and through some of the most fertile land in Europe until I reach the office, just off the Kingsway in the north of the city.

I suspect if I had to do it every day, the novelty would soon wear off. And being honest, despite the views, it is a bit of a trek, taking as long to get from my flat to the Forth Bridge as it does to get from there to Dundee. It was for that reason that a few months ago, in a fit of self-righteous middle-class greenery, I sat down and worked out how much it would cost me if I were to dump the car and take the train instead.

The results were surprising. In the course of my research, I found that the Edinburgh-Dundee route is about the only one operated by First Scotrail where you can't buy discounted tickets in advance. Since a season ticket would be no use to me, that would have meant buying a full-price ticket for each journey at nearly £20.

In fact, the only difference in cost between the two modes of travel was the annual depreciation on my car, for which I got in return the convenience of four wheels for the remainder of the week. But then came the time factor - the choice between spending 3 hours of my day in a car, or nearer 5 hours door-to-door on public transport. It was, in the end, a complete no-brainer.

Now, I don't think anyone could reasonably claim that the cost of motoring is too low. I pay £150 road tax each year, a 75% rate of tax on the fuel which goes in my tank, a tax on my compulsory insurance premium and at least one bridge toll (two if I come back by the Tay Bridge). Yet in spite of all that, the public transport option still ended up dearer. From that, the only conclusion you can draw is that the cost of public transport is simply far too high.

Trust Labour, then, not to come up with a way to improve our railways, but instead to come forward with their own gimcrack road pricing scheme, designed to clobber commuters like me. The scheme, we are told, would involve a 'black box' being fitted to every car, which would then feed back information to the authorities on where you were, where you'd been, how long you'd been there and how fast you'd been going in between times.

Environmental and economic concerns aside, just stop for a minute and consider the enormity of what this would entail. It means that the government and their employees, whom you may or may not trust to use such information benignly, would be able to track your every move around the country, and no doubt in time would be able to send out automated speeding tickets if it looked like you'd been making better progress than you perhaps should have been.

If this went ahead, it would represent a monsterous intrusion into our daily lives, which probably goes some way towards explaining why the e-petition lodged at Downing St against road pricing now has well over 1 million signatures. But according to my favourite New Labour cyborg on Radio 4 this morning, although it's great that so many ordinary members of the public are engaging with the political process in this way, there's been so much disinformation about the government plans that those taking part don't really understand what they are voting against! And once we have been properly informed and had a balanced debate, he's confident that the government plans will enjoy widespread support!

Move over Hazel Blears and Patricia Hewitt - learn at the feet of a graduate egregia cum laude from New Labour's Ministry of Truth.

Trouble Over Bridged Waters

At the moment, I've got an ear on the debate currently taking place in the Holyrood chamber on whether to abolish tolls on the Forth and Tay Bridges. Although I missed the start, my standout moment of the last hour has been Labour MSP Scott Barrie announcing that he's resigned as a Labour whip so that he can vote for abolition.

Good for him. However, it's a bit dispiriting to hear the likes of Iain Smith and Helen Eadie slam the SNP for being dastardly enough to agree with them that tolls should go. How dare the SNP put forward yet another motion to that effect? Shame on them! It might force us to put our votes in parliament where our mouths are at election time!

The Green argument against removing tolls seems bizarre in the extreme. They cite a FETA (if you're Mark Ruskell in the chamber)/Scottish Executive (if you're Mark Ballard on GMS this morning) report, claiming that the abolition of tolls would lead to a 20% increase in congestion.

Ah, yes... I can see how that scenario plays out. All these commuters sitting on the bus and the train thinking to themselves of a morning: 'You know, this public transport lark is all very well, but if only it cost £1 less for me to drive back from Edinburgh/80p less to get back from Dundee, that's what I'd do instead'. I wonder if I asked them nicely, whether they'd be kind enough to bag some of that up for my mum's rose bushes?

Anyway, the vote looks quite tight at the moment. The suspicion is that Fife Labour MSPs had been given special dispensation to vote against the Executive motion, on the grounds that the Green MSPs would support the Executive in their place. However, Mark Ballard refused to say on GMS whether the Greens would in fact support the Executive. I'll let you know if I hear any squeals of pain coming from the Labour corridors between now and 5pm...

Champagne Supernova

I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow blogger Mr Eugenides last night for a couple of pints. The occasion, in as much as it could be described as such, was to hand over his winnings from the 'Song for Jack' contest.

The prize, on this occasion a bottle of champagne, was one I think I'd picked up as a 'thank you' from a gig I played at a few months ago. However, I'm not really a fan of the stuff, so I was glad to be able to give it away to someone who might appreciate it more than me (Don't worry Will - I can do non-alcoholic prizes too if the occasion arises!)

I think my general aversion to champagne dates back to the night of the 1997 election. Going into that election, there were 10 Tory MPs left in Scotland, and the SNP was defending the then Perth and Kinross seat which Roseanna Cunningham had won in a by-election. Myself and my pal Russell, both of us then students at Stirling Uni, decided to get 11 bottles of the stuff on 'sale or return' from Victoria Wine in Bridge of Allan, the idea being that we'd crack a bottle open for every Tory who lost his seat, and open the last one if Roseanna held P&K.

Well, at the beginning of the SNP party in the function suite of the Salutation Hotel in Perth, we thought we'd be opening about 5 or 6 tops, hence the 'sale or return' deal. Then Jim Murphy won Eastwood for Labour and our group went through the following roller-coaster of emotions in the space of about 15 seconds: 'Great! It's a wipe-out! Aw naw, Jim Murphy's an MP! Oh Jeez - we're going to have to drink all that bloody champagne...' The rest, as they say, is history.

And so, dear reader, this is how about half a dozen of the Federation of Student Nationalists' finest were to be found guzzling champagne on Perth's South Inch from about 4 in the morning until the sun came up. Since we'd already had a skinfull in the hotel, it didn't take long before we were incapable of swallowing any more booze - and so started the chamapgne fights with the bottles we had left...

It was great fun, though allied to the pints of 80/- I'd been skulling earlier it left me with possibly the worst hangover I've ever had in my life, and it wasn't exactly great for the bank balance, either. But you have to do these things when you're a student. I have happy memories of behaving like an eejit that night - and just think of the money I've saved by drinking lager instead of champagne since then!

More in sorrow etc...

As that great philosopher of our times, Calvin, once said to his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, 'Every day, I'm forced to add another name to the list of people who piss me off'. With regret, I've come to the conclusion that if I kept a similar list, I'd now be about to add Observer columnist Ruaridh Nicoll to it.

I've mentioned before that The Observer 'In Scotland' is possibly my least favourite Sunday read - that oh-so-patronising 'In Scotland' bit allied to its preachy London-centric bias sees quite admirably to that. Nonetheless, on the surface of things, there's no reason why such an apparently mild-mannered guy as Nicoll should provoke such a strong reaction in me.

After all, reading his columns, Nicoll comes across as thoroughly intelligent, articulate, insightful and cultured. He might not share my politics, but then as a wee look at the links down the right-hand side of this blog show, I read and enjoy the work of quite a few people whose views seldom accord with my own. No, what gets my goat is the way Nicoll chooses to write about politics - leaving us room to imagine that he's being even handed and fair, before dropping in the odd nugget of illogical prejudice which he fails to support with any kind of preceding argument.

For reasons best known to himself, as a self-proclaimed admirer of Gordon Brown, Nicoll seems to have little difficulty in writing columns which are broadly supportive of SNP standpoints. Yet despite this, he still finds himself able to try and belittle the party with lazy 'Braveheart' clichés and sly innuendoes about Anglophobia.

Both of these charges are ludicrously easy to brush off. However, what annoys me about these jibes is that they are, or should be, the preserve of the one or two cartoon Labour councillors we all know and loathe, who lack the intelligence to do anything other than sling mud at their opponents. Nicoll is so obviously better than this, yet more often than not fails to make any kind of constructive critique of the SNP.

According to Nicoll in one piece where he ventured up to the North East of Scotland, he found an 'unsettling bleakness' in the bars, where there took place "fiercely, intimidatingly nationalist" conversations. Well, he wouldn't be the first traveller in history to long for the refinements of home, as they squint up nervously from maps still marked with 'here be dragons'. But before we let him claim the moral high ground, here's an interview he gave the Evening News a couple of weeks ago, where he says: 'Like a lot of Scots, I grew up as a nationalist supporter, shaking my fist at England.'

Now put like that, he sounds like the sort of numbskull that any self-respecting SNP-er would cross the street to avoid. But old habits seem to die hard. Like many unionists, he sees no contradiction in biting the hand he claims feeds us by cheering against England during the World Cup, on the grounds “that there's something about the English football team that winds me up”. Yet returning to the EN article, he acknowledges that there is a huge amount of anti-Scottishness in England. “We have really pissed them off”, he says. Hmm... I wonder how that could be?

But then, consistency is the hobgoblin of the tiny minds of others. Witness: "We think that by splitting away from England we will protect ourselves from such follies as Iraq in the future, which is true, but we will have no influence". And there, in one sentence, you have the classic North Brit-left apologia for the UK's post-war foreign policy – ‘it's more important to be in the right gang than it is to do the right thing’.

Maybe I'm being unfair. Perhaps some of Nicoll's best friends are nationalists. But ultimately, what annoys me most is that while he has far more in common with the SNP on most economic, social and cultural issues than with any other party, somehow it is the SNP for which he reserves his harshest and least-justified criticisms.

Whether building from within or throwing a few well-aimed rocks from without, someone of Nicoll 's talents could and should be making a better contribution to the standard of unionist debate in Scotland. Yet for all his descriptions of Scottish Labour as being moribund and dead from the neck up, why do I get the feeling that, more in sorrow than in anger of course, he will magisterially come down on the side of Labour come May, 'cause big Gordy will make it all better'?

It's always sad to see erstwhile progressives end up standing in the way of progress. I do hope that doesn't happen to Ruaridh Nicoll.

Taxi for Alexander?

Anent this bizarre Sunday Herald article penned by Douglas Alexander - can anyone tell me what a 'pity party' is supposed to be? And more to the point, if wee Dougie turned up, would that make it a 'petit merde' party?

Two of the Good Guys

Instead of having a moan, just for a change I thought I'd post up two stories which have really cheered me up no end today.

The first concerns Reading and former Hibs player Ulises de la Cruz, who it emerges has been sending part of his wages back home each month to Equador. Amongst other things, his money has helped to bring clean running water and a community centre to his remote village, as well as providing books for the local school.

Second is the return to the (very) small screen of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond, after his horrific 300mph crash in a jet-car last September. We all know the story, but to have come through an experience like that and be back at work with no apparent ill effects, takes a level of guts, grit and determination which, frankly, leaves me in awe of the man.

As far as I'm concerned, they count as two of the good guys. Long may their respective lums reek.

And The Winner Is...

Time to announce the winner of the 'Song for Jack' contest. No gold envelopes, drumrolls, 'live' satellite link-ups, fake blubbing or tedious thank-you speeches, just the news that the prize goes to Mr Eugenides for his suggestion of Blur's 'Charmless Man'.

While I'm not convinced that Mr McConnell would know his 'claret from his beaujolais', a personal encounter I had with the wee man a while ago suggested strongly to me that he would quite like to have a touch of the Ronnie Krays about him. So on no more scientific basis than the fact it made me laugh and some of the lyrics hit a nerve, that's where the bottle of Moët is heading.

So congrats to Mr E, commiserations to everyone else, and a special mention for 'anonymous' - it's difficult to give someone a prize if they don't tell you who they are! Cue a Spartacus type scene where umpteen bloggers raise their hands to go 'I'm Anonymous!'. 'No, I'm Anonymous!'...

The Best of Both Worlds?

Labour's campaign spokespeople are fond of claiming that devolution gives Scotland 'the best of both worlds'. By that, they mean it gives Scots a say in our own 'domestic' affairs, while retaining influence in the UK and being able to use the muscle of a big country to secure benefits in Europe.

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? But what about this much-trumpeted influence? Let's consider two very recent stories which might help evaluate this claim, the first of which begins with the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights into Scots law.

The UK's prohibition of prison inmates from voting in elections was declared unlawful in a 2005 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. The Westminster government vowed to change electoral law to take account of the ruling. And that, you would be entitled to expect, should have been that.

Alas, despite the existence of a government 'action plan', it seems that the timetable was allowed to slip. The effect of this is that the required changes to electoral law will not now be made in time for the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May.

According to Lord Abernethy, sitting with Lords Nimmo Smith and Emslie, "...the action plan makes no mention of the Scottish parliamentary election in May 2007. We cannot refrain from commenting that it is unfortunate that the urgency of the situation was apparently only appreciated so late in the day". So where, while all this was going on, was our strong voice at Westminster?

The Scottish Executive said nowt. The Department of Constitutional Affairs, the Westminster department in charge of electoral law, as might be expected, overlooked the Scottish dimension entirely. But even the Scotland Office, with a Secretary of State sitting in the Cabinet and now part of the DCA, said nothing either. Result? No Scottish influence in Whitehall at all, and the unsavoury prospect of either no election in May, or whopping big payouts from you and I to every convict unable to cast their vote.

Ah, but we're stronger in the world as part of the UK, bleat the unionists. Really? Then how to explain the leaked report from Michael Aron, Head of the Scottish Executive office in Brussels, which sets out how Whitehall civil servants keep their Executive couterparts "out of the loop"? And worse, how to explain the way that Scottish ministers are left out of EU council meetings, being left to sit instead in another room where they can listen, but not take part, in the horsetrading between member states?

So, there you have it - our political 'union dividend' is as much of a sham as its financial equivalent. I'm fed-up being a second class Brit. Wouldn't it be far better to be a first class Scot instead?

A Song for Jack

I woke up this morning to the dulcet tones of Jack McConnell being interviewed on Radio Scotland's 'Janice Forsyth' show. However, about an hour or so on, about the only thing I can remember from the interview was his choice of music - 'Silver Machine' by Hawkwind, 'Somewhere Only We Know' by Keane, and 'Midnight Train To Georgia' by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

Fair play to him - his list looks genuine and unspun, even if it wouldn't exactly get my pulse racing. At least he didn't try to get down with the kids by revealing an unlikely admiration for, let's think now, the Arctic Monkeys.

However, I can't help but feel that the BBC missed a trick here. If they'd let their listeners choose a song for the First Minister, just think - we might have had 'Part of the Union' by The Strawbs, 'Hit the Road Jack' by Ray Charles, or even 'Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye' by Gracie Fields.

Anyway, the comments section is open for your suggestions. A bottle of champagne awaits the best one, although I reserve the right to just drink it myself anyway! Over to you...

Good News for Scottish Tories!

Never mind the obscure Tory candidate calling for a change of leader before the election - the number of Conservative parliamentarians in Scotland has nearly doubled overnight!

What a shame those numbers will half again when Cameron's Shadow Cabinet end their Scottish day-trip to head back south...

Progress!

The Scottish Executive has admitted that there are significant difficulties with their GERS report on revenue flows to and from Scotland, not least the small matter of this half-billion pound error in the Treasury calculations they use to compile Scottish spending figures.

Raindrops on roses

There’s a rather worrying story over on Nick Robinson’s blog. It seems that as part of the bid to make the Conservative Party appear nice, cuddly and ‘in touch’ with the voters, some of David Cameron’s policy wonks are considering how market forces might be used to tackle ‘social bads’.

Enthused by how carbon emissions trading is being advanced as a panacea to global warming, the party’s ‘Social Responsibility Summit’ has apparently come up with a similar wheeze. This time, it’s to ‘enable’ a trading scheme for companies which make alcoholic drinks or fatty foods and so restrict our consumption of said goods.

According to Dave, “It's still at quite a conceptual stage, but clearly emissions trading is working very well at putting a price on carbon, and reducing carbon emissions. So, the argument goes, well why not try and do this with some of the social bads as well as the environmental bads?" We are also invited to contrast this ‘market-oriented’ approach with Gordon Brown’s addiction to ‘state-control’.

I thought New Labour had taught us all there was to know about how to remove personal liberties in the name of freedom. However, it seems that here, in all its foulness, is the equivalent Tory verbal trick. Cameron might be all ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens’ at the moment, but the desire to meddle in people’s lives seems to be as alive and well in the Tories as it is in New Labour.

I’m never entirely happy with the tendency in politics to try and legislate or ban things whenever a social problem rears its head, and that applies to my own party as well. However, trying to restrict the types of food which intelligent grown adults choose to feed themselves is an intrusion too far in my book.

Give us the facts about a healthy lifestyle by all means. But Dave, once we’ve made up our minds for ourselves, regardless of whether or not you approve, please just go away and leave us alone.

If only he'd studied history

Here's a splendid, if slightly depressing article by Edward Pearce on 'Comment is Free'. Well worth a couple of minutes out of the day.

French Leave

Listening to 'Good Morning Scotland' as I headed onto the Forth Bridge this morning, I had cause to crack up into my take-out coffee. I concede that's not an unusual occurrence when Douglas Alexander, or as FM Jack McConnell is alleged to refer to him, 'Le petit merde', is being interviewed. This time, though, it happened a good 20 minutes after his interview had finished.

What caused these splutterings of incredulity and nearly led to another dry cleaning bill for my suit? Well, as usual, wee Dougie had been banging on about 'the modern case for union' and how independence supposedly runs against the spirit of the age. This time, though, he went so far as to say that the multi-national UK served as an example for the rest of the world to follow, or somesuch other hubristic claptrap.

Total nonsense, of course, as the shortage of countries queing up to form similar unions with their neighbours shows. But then came the bombshell that nearly led to me losing my coffee, in the form of a trailer item for a new series of 'Document' on BBC Radio 4.

It seems that documents from the National Archives show that back in 1956 on a visit to London, the then French Prime Minister Guy Mollet raised with the Prime Minister of the day, Anthony Eden, the possibility of a political union between the United Kingdom and France. If approved, this would have led to common citizenship, and Queen Elizabeth becoming the nominal Head of State in France.

The idea, naturally, was dismissed out of hand in London, and France went on to become a founder member of the much looser union arrangement of the EEC. However, the thought occurs that if wee Dougie means what he says about the British union serving as an example to others, he should maybe tug on Gordon Brown's sleeve and try to get him to dust down Monsieur Mollet's proposals for union with France. After all, as Brown and Alexander never tire of saying, 'stronger together, weaker apart'...

We still love you

Any budding entrepreneurs out there fancy running up some t-shirts in time for the next Scotland game?

'SCOTLAND - WE STILL LOVE YOU... EVEN IF WALT DISNEY'

I'll get my coat...

Lib Dums (Part MCXVIII)

I simply had to laugh at the antics today in Holyrood of everyone’s favourite opposition/government (delete according to circumstances) party, the Liberal Democrats. For quite simply, in today's debate on government spending, they proved for all time the wisdom in the old adage that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Deciding on this occasion that they were government rather than opposition, they decided to accuse the SNP of having uncosted spending commitments. This they did in the time-honoured fashion of saying that ‘if you’re going to spend this amount on doing that, where’s the money to do it going to come from?’.

Tee-hee-hee - how clever. Sadly for the Lib Dem speakers, though, the SNP’s Alex Neil was on the case, and managed to intervene to ask what spending the Lib Dems planned to cut in order to fund their proposed cuts in income tax. Three times Alex intervened on three different speakers, and each time answer came there none. The sound of rapidly escaping air was deafening…

Jeremy Purvis also took to his feet, and used his time to claim that SNP figures in a document called ‘Scotland in Surplus’, were wrong because they didn’t take into account the party’s proposed cut in corporation tax. Sadly for Jeremy, the SNP figures to which he refers represent an analysis of the revenues and expenditure which take place in Scotland in the current year, and not a dynamic budget showing what the SNP would do in government.

This is something the document explains very clearly – that lack of attention to detail won’t do your ministerial chances any good, Jeremy!

However, to spare Mr. Purvis’ blushes, the ‘chump of the day' title must be split between Argyll MSP George Lyon and his equally irascible colleague for North East Fife, Iain Smith, both of whom claimed that the SNP had hacked out £750m of defence spending between the party’s July ‘Scotland in Surplus’ paper and its December update.

Whoops-a-daisy! That correction for the government’s overestimated defence spending in Scotland was in the July document as well. For future reference, boys, it’s in the bit about ‘Expenditure’ under the heading ‘Defence’. There’s also a dirty big Appendix on page 12, ‘Appendix 1’ as it happens, which explains the figure more fully.

Still, it’s not my fault if you can’t be bothered to do your homework properly. Now, if only I could find some way to get the theme tune for ‘The Muppets’ out of my head…

ebay auction

Be sure and get your bids in fast to avoid disappointment :-)

Protesting too much?

Well, well, well. If today's 'Sunday Herald' is to be believed, it seems like one of Labour's Scottish MPs is in talks with the SNP about crossing the floor.

The MP, whom it is claimed has had several discussions with SNP bigwigs about joining the party, is said to be unhappy with the decision to renew Trident, as well as with the current situation in Iraq. If it does come to pass before next May, it will represent a body-blow to Labour's chances of re-election in the Scottish Parliamentary elections.

I'll say here and now that I'm too far down the SNP food chain to know whether this is true or not. For that reason, I would have been inclined to file it under the category of 'I'll believe it when I see it'. However, that was before I read Labour's denial on the BBC News website.

Describing the story as "Fundamentally untrue", a Labour spokesman said: "These talks are so secret that no Labour MP has been involved in them". He then went on to bluster about imaginary black holes, before making a silly remark that perhaps "Alex Salmond is so keen to speak to Labour MPs because Labour is the party with ideas for Scotland's future that will unlock the potential of every Scot, and SNP MPs are fighting like ferrets in a sack."

Does anyone else think this denial might be just a little too spirited, a touch too vehement? It would have been enough to dismiss the story as untrue, but to describe it as 'fundamentally untrue' before launching into an unusually vigorous version of his party's standard ad hominem anti-SNP diatribe, suggests that a nerve might have been touched.

No smoke without fire? Who can tell. One thing's for certain, though. With discontent over Blair reaching a crescendo and Labour about to lose a large chunk of their local government base thanks to PR, their internal cohesion is likely to be tested over the next few months as never before.

Computer says no. Cough.

OK - I'm going to do something now which I vowed never to do on this blog - complain about my bank (Lloyds TSB) and its inept, incompetent and spectacularly unhelpful overseas call centre.

I'm not proud of myself. I know that after house prices this is probably the most hackneyed subject on earth. However, after my experiences over the last hour, I really need to share my anger. Specifically, my anger at the complete disconnect which there is between the actions of people who think they are doing a good job and the service which they end up providing.

I might be a misanthropic git at times, but having worked in call centres myself before reaching the dizzy heights of 'Assistant Customer Relations Manager' at Scottish Widows, it genuinely takes a lot to turn me into a complainer. Having dealt with more than my fair share of minging, whining, bad-tempered customers down the years, I'm now probably the most patient person in the world when it comes to dealing with underpaid and under empowered customer service staff.

There have been exceptions. Arriving a day late at Dulles Airport after Air France had lost my baggage, a spectacularly obnoxious American Express representative caught the brunt of my ire, when she refused point blank to tell me how much luggage insurance I had with which to buy a change of clothes. 'Since the British Office is closed and I am not authorised to tell you, I can not help you, Mr Thomson'. 'Righty-ho... so here I am, stranded in Washington DC after a 10-hour transatlantic flight, already one day late, with no luggage and no change of clothes since I left Edinburgh 36 hours earlier, and it's my fault you can't help me because I was stupid enough to lose my baggage outside UK office hours? Gold Card service my arse'.

But for sheer, bone headed obduracy, today's episode takes some beating. It started with my trying to use the LTSB internet banking service to pay my friend Elaine for my share of our New Year jolly (see previous post). Not remembering off the top of my head what my banking ID number was, I lazily clicked the 'Forgotten your ID' link, expecting that it would be emailed on to me.

Fool. That was my mistake, since it gets sent out by post. A 5-minute rummage through some paperwork yielded the original letter with my ID number. However, this user ID now failed to work, which a call to a Glasgow call centre confirmed was because the 'old style' ID numbers were being purged. The only way I could pay over the money today was by phone bank, to which I would now be transferred.

One transfer later and following an overly flowery and frankly irritating 'assurance' that the call handler would be most wonderfully delighted to help me, I failed to answer correctly what my overdraft limit was. I had to guess, since I no longer get paper statements, relying instead for that information on internet banking (!). But sadly, the call handler was now most terribly sorry no longer to be able to help me.

Not wishing to call back if my access to the phone bank service had been frozen, I asked whether this was the case. 'I cannot help you Mr Thomson'. 'Yes, I know that you, personally, can't help me now, but if I call back, will I find that my access has been frozen?'. 'I can assure you your account has not been frozen, Mr Thomson'. 'That's not what I asked. If I phone back, will someone still be able to help me?'. 'Someone will be able to speak to you as I am speaking to you now, Mr Thomson'. 'That's what I'm afraid of. Is my access to phone banking frozen or can I call back and start again?'. 'I understand what you are trying to say Mr Thomson...'. 'I'm not trying to say anything - I did say. Now, please answer my question - is my access frozen or not?' SILENCE. (Me) 'Oh for heaven's sake' CLICK.

10 minutes later, and suitably fortified with a cup of coffee, I tried again. Yes, my phonebank access had been frozen and I would need to go through the process of setting up another account. I got the overdraft question right this time (hooray!) and we got to the part where I had to confirm my address.

I moved into my own place 3 years ago, but despite informing LTSB of my move and even taking out the mortgage with them, they somehow never got round to updating my details. It's never been a problem, because I just pick up their letters from my folks' house each time I'm round. However, after some supervisorial consultation, the fact I had given them an 'incorrect' address apparently meant that they could now no longer proceed with my registration.

By now losing the will to live, I told the call handler that after my desperate experiences with the bank today, I'd decided that grown up life was far too complicated and that as such, I was now going to sell my house and move back in with my parents. Since that was the address they already had on file for me, surely we could proceed with my registration on that basis?

After what sounded suspiciously like a sotto voce curse from the call handler, off she went to consult the aforementioned supervisor. After a few minutes on hold, in best Little Britain fashion, the answer came back that 'Computer (and supervisor) says no. Cough.'

To be fair, like most things, overseas call centres work fine when everything is going to plan and established procedures make sense. My gripe is that when things do go off the rails, in my experience, staff for whom English is clearly a second language often fail to grasp the nuances of what is being asked. They then get wound up, the customer in turn gets wound up, and the whole thing gets mired in an unsatisfactory stalemate, leaving an unhappy employee and an unhappy customer. Although everything I described could (and no doubt has) happened in a domestic call centre, sadly, it seems to happen to me far more often when the call centre I deal with is based overseas.

So Elaine, if you're reading this, I'm afraid it might take a few days for you to get your money. In fact, the thought occurs that since an Indian call centre doesn't like either my new address or my old address at my parents' house, in the interests of protecting my security, they might not be able to send me any mail ever again. If that's the case, there'll be no internet or phone banking for me ever again, or at least until I can speak to someone who has both common sense and the inclination to use it.

There's a Royal Bank in Portobello as well. If LTSB redeem themselves when I kick off about this on Monday, I may just resist the urge to pick up the change of account forms next time I'm passing. Frankly, in my current state of mind, they are lucky that it's a Saturday and I don't have the option of doing it today.

Merry Christmas

Urgh. It's Christmas morning and I feel like crap - streaming nose, streaming eyes, the shivers and what feels like a kazoo band playing in my chest ever time I cough. If I suggested at any point last week that Jack McConnell might have been 'at it' by phoning in sick before last week's Trident debate, then I repent entirely!

I suspect last week was the final straw. Out on Tuesday night; 2 receptions - BBC and SNP - on Wednesday night, followed by a late dinner and more beers; the SNP researchers night out on Thursday, with me doing my best Frank Sinatra impression and a 5am finish; and on Friday, an all-day session with my old pals from Scottish Widows, which a protesting body forced me to bail out of around 8pm. I guess I just can't hack it any more...

At least being stuffed full of paracetamol makes it easy for me to be the driver this year. I'll head over to my parent's house in a bit, then we'll meet up with the rest of the family at my cousin Hazel's house. It's perfect for everybody because Hazel 1) has a big house with a big kitchen and 2) with the help of partner Eric and sister Lesley, manages to cook the sort of extravagant, beautiful food that always makes the day really special.

In the eyes of my little cousin Lorimer, I've always in the past had the special role on Christmas Day of being his Lego builder-in-chief. However, he's getting older now, so sadly, this might be the last year that he gets something which he needs the help of his big cousin to build! I'll just need to find more creative ways to avoid the annual horror that is the family game of Pictionary.

It's always men vs. women, and with a father who was an engineer and and an uncle who was a signwriter, you'd think we might actually be quite good. Alas, the perfectionist in both always comes to the fore, as does my Dad's infuriating habit of staring at you as if you're an idiot, just because you can't work out what his painstakingly composed drawing is supposed to be!

Anyway, I'm off now until the 8th, and the chance to do nothing is extremely welcome. I've got a pile of books, which I may or may not get through, but the highlight after today is going to be New Year, where myself and a few friends have booked a log cabin up near Torridon.

It should be idyllic, but rather worryingly, we've just found out that there's no mains electricity and that running the generator for more than 70 hours in a week is Verboten. I guess that means hillwalks during the day, and wind-up radios and candles at night. Just so long as the heating isn't electric too...

Give the man a peerage

I caught the tail-end of what sounded like a very bad-tempered debate on Trident in the Scottish Parliament this morning. However, amidst the general hooting, hollering and tyre-swinging in evidence on the Labour benches, one contributor shone out like a beacon. Step forward John Home-Robertson, backbench nark extrordinaire and soon to be ex-MSP for East Lothian.

Choosing to ignore completely the subject at hand, Home-Robertson decided instead to embark on a treatise on an SNP defence policy existing nowhere except his own imagination. The worrying thing was that on the fleeting occasions when he did manage to look up from his notes, he looked like he genuinely believed the rubbish he was spouting.

An independent Scotland would have to introduce conscription, we were told, to overcome the unemployment that independence would bring. There would be no shiny new Eurofighters for the Scottish air force, which would presumably be left flying Sopwith Camels. And the Labour government had been making great progress, oh yes, when it came to multilateral nuclear disarmament. Just so long as you pretend that India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran don't exist, you understand.

Such a parliamentary talent should be preserved in perpetuity for the nation, immune to the slings and arrows of public opinion. The man surely deserves a peerage for years of tireless service to partisan party hackery and the advancement of nonsense arguments. Lord Home-Robertson of Balderdash has a certain ring to it, don't you think?

Revealed - Labour's Election Posters

Thanks to Holyroodbelle for these :-)

Forewarned is Forearmed...

Ho-hum. Tomorrow (Monday) will see the discharge of the latest fusillade designed to convince us all that the Scots are too wee, too poor and too stupid to be Independent. Yes folks, its time for the Government Expenditure and Revenues in Scotland (GERS) report once more.

There's a number of problems with this report, not least to do with the fact it's always out of date by the time it is published (this one will be for 2004/05). However, the biggest problem is its tendency to both exaggerate spending and underestimate revenues raised in Scotland.

Nowhere is this more blatant than over North Sea oil and gas. Even though 95% of these revenues would accrue to Scotland, GERS leaves them out entirely. In calculating a Scottish budget 'deficit' (the figure we are invited to believe is the amount of subsidy coming north), it also overlooks the fact that the UK as a whole is running an even larger (and real) deficit. This alone would render impossible any kind of domestic UK subsidy to Scotland.

One of the other arguments heard most often from unionists is that since Scotland gets more in 'identifiable' spending than the UK average of £7,000 per. head, we are therefore being subsidised by English taxpayers. This is twaddle, so please bear with me while I explain why:

1. The figure has nothing to do with whether Scotland is 'subsidised' or not, since it only deals with spending levels, not the amount of tax revenues raised in Scotland to cover it.

2. It excludes £74bn of 'unidentified' expenditure, most of which actually gets spent in London and the South East rather than Scotland.

3. The differences in English regional identifiable spending per. head are actually pretty big as well:

NORTHERN IRELAND - £9,084.
SCOTLAND - £8,265.
LONDON - £8,037.
WALES - £7,666.
North East - £7,689.
North West - £7,368.
Yorks & Humber - £6,829.
East Midlands - £6,248.
West Midlands - £6,676.
Eastern - £5,864.
South East - £5,959.
South West - £6,634.

With 1/12 of the UK population spread over 1/3 of the landmass, it should not come as a surprise that Scottish ‘identifiable’ spending is above the UK average. However, since London gets £1,000 more per. head than the UK average and the East Midlands £750 less, does this mean that the East Midlands is subsidising London?

Of course it doesn't, and for exactly the same reason that the figures tell us nothing at all about Scotland. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Here, in quotes, is what some prominent Scots have had to say about GERS since Ian Lang brought it into existence during his unlamented Viceroyship:

GERS – In Quotes:

‘I am disappointed that both you and the Chancellor have reservations about publishing the booklet I have had prepared and printed setting out the details of the government’s expenditure and revenue in Scotland. I judge that it is just what is needed at present in our campaign to maintain the initiative and undermine the other parties. This initiative could score against all of them'. Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Lang, in a letter to the Prime Minister dated March 3, 1992.

‘Caution should be applied in the interpretation of the fiscal deficit. This is the difference between two large numbers, both of which are estimates and subject to large margins of error’. Dr John Rigg, Scottish Office Senior Economist, Autumn 1996.

‘The SNP claims the Scottish Office figures are distorted. The party has a point.’ The Economist, 26th October 1996.

‘Nationalists have a point when they allege the whole GERS exercise was designed to engender fear’. Alf Young, The Herald, 21/1/03.

‘Nationalist or Unionist, whether you trust GERS or not analysis to date reveals a budgetary balance that is not wildly out of line with contemporary experience in other economies in Europe’. Alf Young, The Herald, 21/1/03.

‘It tells us nothing, I would argue about the situation under independence’. Dr Andrew Goudie, Chief Economist, Scottish Executive, The Times, 21/1/03.

You wait ages for a post...

...then 3 come along at once. Check out this news report on Labour's plans to replace Trident:

'Watch as Labour First Minister runs down a corridor to hide from journalists wanting to ask why he supports spending billions on nuclear weapons of mass destruction.'

The best bit comes around 1'30" into the clip, as a press officer tries to prevent the TV crew from filming the FM as he disappears away down the corridor. Somehow, I'm not convinced this is the sort of statesman-like image he would want to project to the world...

Nantucket Sleighride

A shrewd, perceptive and wise article on the BBC website today from Brian Walden. Well worth reading.

Organised Behaviour?

I've been a bit lax over the last week or so when it's come to updating my blog. It's not as if nothing's been happening worth commenting on - it's just I've been a bit preoccupied with studying for the latest instalment of my MBA - the Organisational Behaviour exam.

I should have sat it back in winter 2003 when I first started the course. But despite going to all the lectures, the exam clashed with a Caribbean cruise I was booked to do on P&O with Alan & Jan Roy (it was a dirty job, etc). Then what with job changes and some accompanying financial woes, the whole project kind of went on the back burner for a while, until I could get things sorted out.

Anyway, the deed is done, and there's nothing left to do except wait for the results, enjoy the festive season, and of course await the voluminous text for the Accounting unit which is bound to come my way early in the new year. Doubtless that will herald another few weeks of chasing the cat off my knee and trying to convince myself that the pub will still be there after the exam has finished!

Alex Salmond on St Andrew's day

London Calling

One time Revolutionary Communist NUS apparatchik turned New Labour luvvie, David Aaronovitch, has an amusingly bile-filled article in today's Times. I really can't be bothered to take his argument to bits (too easy), so here instead is an article I did for last month's Scots Independent newspaper, which kind of preempts his clumsy intervention into the debate.


'Over the past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying the BBC series on Suez. I’m not usually a fan of docu-drama, but this has been superb, bringing home how General Nasser brought the post-imperial delusions of the British ruling classes back down to earth with an almighty crash.

'In the SNP, we tackle daily many of the delusions that live on when making the Independence case. ‘Scotland’s voice would be puny’, it is said. ‘Being British is the only way to retain influence in the world’. At this we can laugh, setting recent abject failures in British diplomacy and the brittle posturing of Tony Blair against the positive roles played by much smaller European states.

'Something I find much harder to thole, though, is the faux-sophisticate sneering of the London-based left when it comes to the SNP. Perhaps this is because otherwise, we might have a fair amount in common with them when it comes to policy. However, I disdain utterly their self-proclaimed monopoly of concern when it comes to internationalism, social justice and the vitality of our civic society.

'Their dislike of the Conservatives just about allowed them to stomach devolution. A historic wrong was being righted, they told themselves around Hampstead dinner tables. Anyway, surely it will bring us closer together and what with Europe becoming more powerful and everything… sorry, I’m being terribly rude here. Shall I open another bottle of Chianti?

'And that was about as much thought as most ever gave it. However, with the unpopularity of Scottish Labour and the apparent momentum behind Independence, Hampstead has awoken. It seems discombobulated, neither understanding nor liking what it sees in the SNP. Perceiving a threat, instead of engaging with the debate it reaches for the comfortable and familiar anti-nationalist clichés so beloved by the 57 varieties of Brit left.

'Thus, we are now being treated to a series of articles telling us how Scottish nationalism is backward looking and exclusive, unlike the ‘given’ opposites of Britishness. Being British lets us share a greater destiny, we are told, instead of being isolated little Scotlanders, festering in the petty resentments of narrow nationalism.

'As a credo, it’s marked by fuddled thinking, rampant double standards and fraudulent assertions of conceptual superiority. It’s amazing how cosmopolitan citizens of the world, who would no more consider themselves isolated from Paris than from Pinner, can still somehow see Scottish Independence as isolation. ‘Britishness good, Scottish nationalism bad’ bleat the sheep, in an attempt to drown out any dissenting voices.

'Hugh MacDiarmid referred to the contradictory aspects of our character as the 'Caledonian Antisyzygy’. Perhaps its time to consider the Metro-Left Antisyzygy: the home of diversity which sees cultural difference as a threat. The force for good which undermines international law. The upholder of non-proliferation shaping to replace Trident. The guarantor of economic prosperity headed for a £700bn national debt by 2010.

'Devolution, Blairism and ‘Cool Britannia’ were the last roll of the dice for Britain. But far from killing the SNP stone dead, devolution has for many made Independence easier to contemplate. Blairism, meanwhile, is now being seen for the ephemeral cult of personality it always was. And as for the latter… despite the best efforts of Blairite thinktanks, it died an agonizing and lonely death somewhere between Noel Gallagher’s champagne glass and the fatuity of the Millennium Dome.

'With his sweeping majorities, Blair had the chance to reinvent Britain by introducing a written constitution, a bill of rights, scrapping the Lords, reforming the voting system and encouraging regional government in England. Instead, he seized the levers of centralised executive power with a Gollum-esque glee. Having enjoyed almost a decade of absolute power, Labour can hardly complain in future if the Tories decide to play by the same rules.

'An even vaguely competent Cameron leadership will surely see New Labour smashed on the rocks of English public contempt. Normal service will be restored, and the whine will resume once more that we need to stick together so we can return Labour to government.

'Well, I'm a democrat. If England votes Tory, as far as I'm concerned, that's who should govern England. No ifs, no buts. If the Metro-Left don't like the idea of the tyranny of the minority, they should be clamouring for PR to be introduced while they still have the chance, then buckle up tight for the kind of realignments we have already seen in Scotland.

'Approaching the 300th year of union, we find ourselves shackled to a decorative and decadent power centre increasingly irrelevant to the people it tries to govern. It is insulting to suggest that either England or Scotland needs the other as a bolt-on accessory to ensure its good conduct and high standing in the world. I’d like to think that in the SNP, our sights are set higher than that – would that these modern day Habsburgs could say the same'.

Away and Foulkes Yourselves

Well, that was the Labour conference in Oban. Anyone tuning in to hear what the party had to say about health, education, the economy – the ‘real issues’ which Labour always used to tell us were the ones which mattered – would have been sorely disappointed. Instead, rocked by a series of opinion polls which show the SNP in contention for next May and support for Independence at high levels, Labour’s leading lights treated us to a series of vitriolic set-piece attacks about borders, barriers and bogeymen everywhere.

What a contrast with the SNP conference, where there was a palpable sense of a party putting policies in place for government. Maybe that’s why the SNP had over 1,200 in the Perth Concert Hall to hear Alex Salmond set out his stall, while Labour had to bus in schoolchildren and tame trade unionists to make the 500 seat Corran Halls look full for the TV cameras.

First up was the egregious George Foulkes, who always reminds me of ‘Squealer’ from Animal Farm – the pig sent out by the other pigs to explain away why they are becoming ever more like the humans they replaced, and to question the loyalty of anyone who harbours the slightest doubts as to their good intentions. And when that order comes in, whether from Tony Blair now or Vladimir Romanov as in the past, wee George always springs fearlessly into action.

Leaping excitedly from trotter to trotter, no contention is too ludicrous, no argument is too facile for him to try and advance. However, even as his bluster reaches levels liable to endanger shipping round our coasts, I find it hard to dislike him. An object of ridicule he may be, but he’s a completely laughable and peripheral individual, worthy more of our pity than our dislike.

One person I have no such difficulty with is Douglas Alexander, a man of such ability and charm that he is still to date the only person ever to drive me into any kind of agreement with Dr David Starkey. Similarly with John Reid, a swaggering little thug who clearly has the intelligence to engage with the Independence argument, but conspicuously chooses not to do so.

In claiming that the SNP is not ‘fit for purpose’, Reid makes the spectacularly trite point that international terrorism, organised crime, mass migration and the environment do not stop at the border. Of course they don’t, but then neither do the consequences of his government’s misguided policies on these challenges. The actions of this government in Iraq have unquestionably made the world a more dangerous place. However, to use that new danger as justification to continue the union is like the defence used by the little boy on trial for the murder of his parents, when he begs the court for clemency on the grounds that he is an orphan.

But despite that strong late contender, the prize for the most nauseating piece of self-serving hypocrisy must go to Tony Blair himself. Blair flew in to Oban from Belfast, having spent the morning urging accommodation with those who had waged an armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. After basking in delegates' appreciation for only the briefest of moments and with barely a pause for breath, he then spent the rest of his speech lambasting the entirely peaceful and democratic nationalist movement in Scotland.

Does he think no-one will notice the contradiction? As a politician who has placed himself in the vanguard of the global ‘war on terror’, just what sort of message does he imagine he is sending round the world with this latest intellectual contortion? I know it’s all about securing the ‘legacy’, but does he not feel even slightly ridiculous breaking off from a group hug with Sinn Fein and the DUP to try and knife the SNP’s peaceful, inclusive and moderate ambitions?

Anyone looking to Gordon Brown for a positive endorsement of Britain would have been left waiting in vain also. Independence was a 19^th century concept and interdependence was where it was at, he told us. Families would be ripped asunder and our global universities and businesses would wither on the vine without benign government from London. Globalisation would be something for an independent Scotland to fear, we were told. Something only to be embraced from behind the walls of fortress Britain.

Maintenance of power for power’s sake is the unspoken mantra. The question is, are we prepared to allow Labour to subject us to another 4 years of drift and complacency off the back of their tribal dislike of innovation, or do we give the SNP a chance and consider Independence in a mature and thoughtful manner in a democratic referendum?

By opting for Independence, maybe we can find better ways of representing the things that do genuinely unite people on these islands. I’ll bet that in the battle of values we are being promised, the dignity of self-government and nation-building offered by the SNP will prove a damn site more enduring than the self-interest and infinite self-absorbsion offered by Labour's 'Scotia Nostra'.

Dave Cameron's 'Outer Tosser'

Oh dear... I know that unsecured personal debt is a ticking timebomb for the whole economy, but is this really the way to try and get people to face up to the problem?

Still, who am I to complain if the Tories want to call Scotland a region and insist that their potential voters are tossers? :-)

Olympic sized overspends - coming to a tax bill near you

I don't normally bother to read The Observer. The Guardian I can usually tolerate (the outstandingly dreadful Polly Toynbee excepted), but the insufferable, hand-wringing, self-satisfied London-centric view of the world held by its Sunday stablemate, can almost always be relied upon to spoil what's left of my weekend.

That said, yesterday's feature on the train wreck that threatens to become of the London Olympics, was worth the cover price alone. Marking a change in tone from their previous sycophantic coverage of the bid, it exposed what many critics of the games have been saying all along: namely, the benefits will be confined in their entirety to London; the 'maximum' £2.4bn price tag had all the integrity of a Labour party fundraiser; and that Lottery Funds will likely end up being plundered to try and plug the gap.

In addition to the howler of forgetting to include VAT in the projected costs, the estimated cost of buying and decontaminating land has tripled from £478m to £1.44bn. The cost of building 40,000 new homes has also risen from £0.5bn to around £1.5bn - another tripling of the original estimate.

£1bn was set aside originally for this 'regeneration', which included that £478m for buying and decontaminating the land. This would in turn have left a balance of £522m for those 40,000 houses to be built, equating to a construction cost of just £12,500 each. Now, I'm no surveyer and I'm certainly no builder, but even I know that you can't build a house for £12,500.

Therefore, even if the £478m purchase & decontamination costs were solid, it should have been blindingly obvious that there wasn't going to be enough left over for the housebuilding to follow. With the overall £1bn figure for regeneration being so obviously wrong, shouldn't it have encouraged someone somewhere to probe a little harder into the quality of the other forecasts?

Brian Coleman, Chair of the London Assembly, now estimates that the cost of the project could rise as high as £10bn and beyond. However, while some of these cost rises can be put down to straightforward sleight-of-hand and others to simple incompetence, one further figure deserves our attention. Namely, the security budget, which has increased from £190m to £850m following, we are told, the 7/7 attacks on the London Underground.

Now I'm sorry, but they can't be allowed to get away with this. The Atlanta bombing in 1996 showed that there were those prepared to target the Olympic games. And in the aftermath of 9/11, the government did not miss an opportunity to remind us how British cities were also under threat from terrorist attack. All 7/7 did was confirm that thesis, so why the sudden need to increase this element of the budget by a factor of 4.5?

Were those costing the bid unaware of the security threat, did they simply underestimate it, or is there perhaps another explanation? Surely no-one would be brazen enough to exploit public fears over terrorism to pad the security element of the costs, just so the other cost increases look a bit more reasonable, would they?

Scottish Politician of the Year - Update

Well, the votes are in... many congratulations to all of the winners:

Best Scot at Westminster - Angus MacNeil MP (SNP)

Donald Dewar Debater of the Year - Tavish Scott MSP (Lib Dem)

The Committee Award - Justice 1 Committee

Free Spirit of the Year Award - Karen Gillon MSP (Labour)

The Johnnie Walker Award for Progress - The Green Group

Public Campaign/Campaigner of the Year - Sakchai Makao Campaign

Scottish Politician of the Year - Andy Kerr MSP (Labour)

Special congratulations are due to Angus MacNeil, who earlier in the day was announced as the winner of the Spectator magazine's Inquisitor Of The Year award for his initiation of the inquiry into cash-for-peerages. As he himself asks, after receiving such a great political honour: who does he have to pay?

A vicious rumour...

It's the Scottish Politican of the Year Awards tonight. However, with Mike Watson now safely ensconsed in the House of Lords, I'm told that there's no truth in the rumour that all leave for the Lothian & Borders Fire Brigade has been cancelled for this evening.

The ceremony is back at Prestonfield House tonight, after spending a year at the Royal Museum in Chambers Street. That one year's no claims discount has obviously made all the difference to the insurance premiums for the organisers.

If there was any justice in the world, Nicola Sturgeon would win the top award for the way that she manages to skin, gut and fillet Jack McConnell on a weekly basis. However, with months to go until an election, and Angus MacNeil surely a shoo-in for 'Best Scot at Westminster' for his work in exposing 'Cash for Honours', will the judges have the courage to give both these awards to nationalists?

Time will tell. Here's a full list of the nominations:

Best Scot at Westminster
Angus MacNeil MP (SNP)
John Reid MP (Labour)
Mohammad Sarwar MP (Labour)

Donald Dewar Debater of the Year
Patrick Harvie MSP (Green)
Alex Neil MSP (SNP)
Tavish Scott MSP (Lib Dem)

The Committee Award
Environment Committee
Finance Committee
Justice 1 Committee

Free Spirit of the Year Award
Fergus Ewing MSP (SNP)
Karen Gillon MSP (Labour)
Tommy Sheridan MSP (Solidarity)

The Johnnie Walker Award for Progress
The Green Group
Dennis Canavan MSP (IND)
Stewart Maxwell MSP

Public Campaign/Campaigner of the Year
Shetlands Sakchai Makao Campaign
Families Against Corporate Killers
Clydeside Action on Asbestos/Clydebank Asbestos Group

Scottish Politician of the Year
Ross Finnie MSP (Lib Dem)
Andy Kerr MSP (Labour)
Nicola Sturgeon MSP (SNP)

The bin doth runneth over

In to Holyrood today and find, somewhat unusually, that I'm first into the office. The in tray is spilling over with the morning's mail, so I decide to deal with it before it gets any bigger.

There's a fair amount of important stuff, like constituent letters, ministerial correspondence and invitations to briefings, all of which is dealt with ASAP. However, by far the greater part seems to be PR puff for various organisations, some (but by no means all) in receipt of public money, trying to convince you what a fantastic job they are doing, and no doubt why they should be allowed to continue doing it.

Since no-one has the time to read through the avalanche of brochures, most go straight in the bin. It all represents the most grotesque waste of money and paper. While it's great for the burgeoning glossy brochure industry and waste management companies, I can't help but feel that actually trying to speak to people in person would be a more effective way of getting a point across, instead of sacrificing acre upon acre of forest and increasing incidences of lumbago amongst postal staff.

That said, the odd gem does come through. 'The Parliamentarian - Journal of the Parliaments of the Commonwealth', arrived, along with a list of contacts for the various legislatures within the Commonwealth Parliamentary Agency. For Holyrood, George Reid is described as the 'Presiding Officer' and Jack McConnell as 'First Minister'. Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, luxuriates in the title of 'Leader of the party not represented in the Scottish Executive with the greatest number of Members in the Parliament'.

It hardly trips off the tongue, does it? I bet the Master of Ceremonies for Commonwealth dinners lives in fear of the day she turns up and etiquette demands that she be introduced as such...

Just a bit of fun...

SNP 90% Lib Dems 75% Greens 65% SSP 55% UKIP 20% Tories 15% Labour 10% Which political party in Scotland should you vote for? created with QuizFarm.com

I suppose it's validation of a sort, but where on earth did that 75% Lib Dem come from? I didn't think I sat on the fence all that often!

Try it yourself at http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=263114 . Let me know on the comments section how you score.

US Elections Latest

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/54918

Class!

Gordon Brown - the enemy of free speech?

Some interesting stuff in the papers this morning. allmediascotland has an opinion piece from former political editor of The Herald, Murray Ritchie, on the current state of the Scottish press. In a wide-ranging sweep of the current travails of the market, Ritchie retells the story of how Gordon Brown and his representatives on earth withheld advertising revenue from the Herald in 1999, for their temerity in trying to be even handed when covering Labour and the SNP.

But that's all in the past, isn't it? Well, it seems that these gangsterish habits die hard. Scotland on Sunday carries a piece on how Cardinal Keith O'Brien has provoked Brown's wrath for his comment last month that, if it was the wish of the people, he would be "happy" to see Scotland become independent. According to 'Labour sources', the talks were designed to 'pressurise' the Cardinal over his comments on independence. "There was a question of whether he [O'Brien] had really thought it through," the insider said. The suggestion that the talks were 'more offensive than charm' also appears...

It's desperate stuff from desperate people, who are finding that there's nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Meanwhile, over at the Sunday Times, Ben Thomson from Noble Group, rubbishes the idea that either greater fiscal powers or Independence would not be good for Scotland. Oh dear. Can he expect to find a horse's head in his bed now as well?

Scotsman poll puts unionists in a flap

Yesterday's Scotsman poll showing 51% support for Independence and the SNP ahead of Labour for next May's election, seems to have really put the cat amongst the Holyrood pigeons.

The Labour response, delivered by David Cairns MP in today's paper, is right up there with the (probably) apocryphal Pravda headline of 'Good news, Comrades! The bread ration has been reduced again!'. For rather than admitting that the poll demonstrates some progress for the SNP and Independence, Cairns invites us to believe that gap between those supporting Independence and those voting SNP means that the party is 'unattractive' to voters.

As Sir Humphrey would have said, as explanations go, that one's a consignment of geriatric shoe-makers - a load of old cobblers.

Whatever people's views of the SNP might be, Scotland is a multi-party democracy where Independence has considerable cross-party support, even amongst those parties which are officially opposed to the policy. For that reason, Labour might be better to reflect on why, if Independence is such a rotten idea, do 45% of their own voters say that they would like it to happen?

We're going to have all sorts of promises of constitutional beads and knives from the unionist parties in the run-up to next May's election to try and shore up their support. A wee change here, a little tweak there, commissions, conventions - anything to give the impression that Scottish concerns are being taken seriously, without actually having to do too much about them.

All of which goes to show that a referendum, where people are freed from party political loyalties, is the best way to decide Scotland's future. However, if recent Scottish political history tells us anything, it should be that a strong SNP presence is the only language which Westminster understands. In the 'noughties', just as in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties, if Scotland is to make progress, it will only happen off the back of SNP successes.

Iraq Vote

The government won narrowly this evening's vote in the Commons over whether an inquiry should be held into the conduct of the war in Iraq.

The motion, put forward by the SNP and Plaid Cymru, won the support of the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and a significant number of Labour backbenchers, demonstrating amply the cross party concern which the issue causes. However, with enough Labour MPs choosing to abstain, it wasn't quite enough to bring Blair to account on this occasion.

Guerilla tactics, through necessity, might be the usual forte of the nationalist parliamentary groups at Westminster and no doubt govern to a large extent how they are perceived in England. Tuesday's Guardian expressed very well the reasons why the motion was unlikely to succeed. Nonetheless, for all Labour's often tribal dislike of the SNP, the debate showed that when the will exists, even a few good people acting justly can help hold even the most powerful and seemingly untouchable to account.

The SNP and Plaid Cymru deserve credit for giving over one of their few setpiece occasions so this matter could be debated properly by the house. While it speaks volumes for the vacillations of the other party leaderships that this hasn't happened before now the question still remains - why was it left once more to the nationalist parties to bring this matter up for the parliamentary scrutiny it clearly has long deserved?