Age Shall Not Weary Him

'What is the point of Menzies Campbell?', is a question with which I've been wrestling for quite a while now. In many ways, it's a question I never thought I'd ever be asking myself, since I'd long had a kind of sneaking regard for him. Sure, whenever matters SNP reared their head, I'd always found his knee-jerk patrician sniffiness to be absolutely insufferable. Otherwise, though, he earned my respect for both looking and sounding like a thoroughly competent MP who knew exactly what he was talking about.

I see in retrospect that mine was quite a rose-tinted view. That sure-footedness, demonstrated in matters of home and international affairs, has never quite been there when it comes to the equally important arenas of economic, health and education policy. In fact, it seems that the very qualities that made him appear so well cut out to be a Home or Foreign Secretary - his dispassionate aloofness and cultivated appearance of somehow being above the vulgar posturing of lesser mortals - are the very same qualities which are now rendering his stewardship of the Lib Dems such a becalmed and uninspiring affair.

Oddly, he seems to have diminished in stature since assuming the Lib Dem leadership. His perceived lack of support for Charles Kennedy tainted him from the start, as did his many fluffed appearances at Prime Minister's Questions. But never mind the recent fuss about whether he'd dump PR to get into government with Labour. To me, it is his apparent inability to connect with voters or to articulate any kind of coherent policy agenda, which should be causing the most discontent in Lib Dem ranks just now.

They are dropping, slowly but surely, in the polls. Where people liked Charles Kennedy even if they didn't necessarily respect him, Campbell seems to suffer from the reverse. Concerns about his age are raised, to which he now responds with an unbecoming prickliness. Watching him try to address this irrelevant jibe is becoming an increasingly painful sight. Like Gordon Brown trying to convince Middle England that he would make a good Prime Minister, the more Campbell tries to stress his youthfulness, the less it convinces.

Let's be clear, his age is largely irrelevant if we regard it as being an attitude of mind rather than a physical characteristic. In fact, I get the feeling that Campbell was probably middle-aged by his early twenties. And as one of the many politicos spawned by the Glasgow University Union Debating Society in the 1950s, it would have been surprising if he'd turned out any other way.

For all his protestations of having grown up in a Glasgow tenement, Campbell is a politician from the upper-middle classes, imbibed with a paternalistic and slightly patronising sense of noblesse oblige. But what once reassured about Campbell now just grates. And it is this, I think, which is what is hampering him and his party, rather than any questions about age. Like Gordon Brown, a section of voters has decided that they don’t particularly like him. And while voters cite Brown’s ‘Scottishness’ as being his prime draw-back (something which doesn’t seem to affect John Reid), it is Campbell’s age which is being held against him.

Highlighting the most obvious perceived flaw of someone we dislike is an instinct we develop in the playground. It might not be fair and it might be as base as it gets, but as Neil Kinnock, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith all found out, if the voters won’t take to you then electorally-speaking, both you and your party are toast.

The Lib Dems, while often confounding the pundits, have for the past while seemed like a party in search of a role. The charisma of a Paddy Ashdown or a Charles Kennedy has always in the past allowed them to escape the scrutiny they deserved for being all things to all people. With a revitalised Tory Party in England under David Cameron, also no slouch at appearing to be all things to all people, the days of the Lib Dems being able to hoover up the votes of the disenchanted now look to be numbered.

R.I.P.

Well, I phoned the insurance company this morning and regrettably, my car is going to cost too much for them to fix. It was still driveable, though, so maybe somebody might be able to put it back on the road. Hopefully it's not for the scapyard quite yet, and someone else might be able to get the good of it.

It's a nuisance, because the car was reliable, comfortable and I'd planned to hang on to it for at least another year. Anyway, that's all out the window now, and since my courtesy car is due to return as soon as the cheque arrives, it was out for a piece of unscheduled car hunting this lunchtime.

I've fancied getting a poor man’s Volkswagen Skoda turbo-diesel ever since I got a shot of my cousin's partner's one last year (taxi drivers seem to rate them too, which must count for something). The one I was after seems to be in short supply just now, but luckily, the garage down the road had a pre-registered one on the forecourt with just 27 miles on the clock.

Anyway, after taking it out for a blast with the salesman, we completed the paperwork and as of Monday, it will be mine, as, sadly, will be the paying of it for the next five years - ouch. It should be a lot more economical than my old car, mind, but since it's quite a bit smaller I suppose I'm going to have to learn to keep a boot tidy again!

And As If By Magic...

Once more, Holyroodbelle is first off the mark with a sneak preview of Labour's latest campaign poster :-)

Scorching the Earth

Well, at least we can't say we weren't warned...

McConnell Starts Dirty War

"There is nothing that Labour can say that will change peoples' minds about Labour. There is no point in having a positive campaign because it doesn't wash. There isn't a bit of evidence to suggest that going positive will make any difference. They don't know Jack and they don't like Labour." - Labour Campaign Source.

Sir Menzies hits out at opponents

The Liberal Democrat leader questions Gordon Brown's "courage" to lead and attacks David Cameron.

So there you have it. Since Labour and the Lib Dems (the original Labour saving device?) have little good to say for themselves, they'll try and scare people away from their opponents; play the man rather than the ball at each opportunity; drive down the turnout and then hope for the best. Anyone fancy a sweep on how long it is before Lakshmi Mittal is paying for posters round Scotland of Alex Salmond with 'demon eyes'?

UPDATE - just found this excellent post by Will Patterson, saying much the same as me, but with far more eloquence than I feel like attempting just now. Read and enjoy.

Legal Weasels

I've just had a 'courtesy call' from the legal team attached to my car insurers, following my accident at the start of the week. They asked me how I was, to which I answered "fine". "Are you sure?", they then asked, "no aches or pains or anything? Because we can get you examined".

"Quite sure", I said, before joking that I had no plans to sue anyone over the accident if that was what they meant. And without so much as a pause for breath, the caller went 'OK Mr Thomson I'll just put that on your notes thanks for your time goodbye', and hung up.

I know they're on my side, but even so, what a bunch of ambulance-chasing, unethical weasels! How many folk are now pursuing claims for damages, on the grounds of non-specific back and neck pain 'resulting' from minor car accidents, I wonder? And how many settlements are made out of court, not becuase of the merits of the case, but because it's the cheapest way to make it go away?

'Courtesy' call my foot. Grrrrrr.

Worth a Laugh

This is good. Well worth a look.

WTF?

Can anyone explain to me what business Network Rail, an effective state monopoly masquerading as a private company, has in donating any money at all to the regional franchise of the governing party?

Scottish Labour

Network Rail Ltd status: Company
company reg no: 04402220 40 Melton Street, London NW1 2EE
28/02/06 £ 5,000.00

Scottish Labour

Network Rail Ltd status: Company
company reg no: 04402220 40 Melton Street, London NW1 2EE
31/12/06 £ 6,000.00

Good News Travels Fast

Rather irritatingly, Tory über-blogger Ian Dale, has scooped us all with details of a sensational poll in tomorrow’s Scotsman (even more so since he appears to be on a jolly to Washington DC right now!). In figures unprecedented this close to an election, it would seem that the SNP has a 5-point lead over Labour for Holyrood in the constituency vote and a 4-point lead in the regional ballot.

It looks like the wheels are coming off the Labour campaign, since this poll won’t take account of Health Minister Andy Kerr announcing a probe in to the alleged manipulation of NHS waiting lists. Neither will it have been able to digest the astonishing news that senior Labour aide, Stephen Lawther, had quit his post following clashes with colleagues over tactics and presentation. And with Jack McConnell providing such visible leadership…

The polls have been remarkably consistent of late, agreeing that the SNP is ahead, even if there’s some debate about the magnitude. And unless far more complex moves are afoot, this apparent swing to the SNP looks like having one of two possible explanations. Neither, it has to be said, looks particularly good for Labour.

The first explanation is that traditional independence-supporting Labour voters might be starting to come over to the SNP, thus threatening to tip the balance in many marginal central-belt seats. Alternatively and perhaps more worryingly for Labour, if these voters are staying loyal, perhaps it is floating voters who don’t necessarily want independence, that are now looking for an SNP government.

Neither group looks like particularly fertile ground for Labour’s current nat-bashing strategy, described by one party stalwart at the weekend as being ‘The worst campaign I have been involved in for over 20 years”. While I’d never underestimate the power of the Labour establishment in Scotland to pull out the stops for the party, even that might not be enough to save them this time.

The SNP deserves a chance to show what it can do in office. I hope these figures can be taken as a sign that it might be about to happen.

Another Competition

After yesterday's unplanned excitement, it looks like things might be getting underway. My car should be collected tomorrow morning by the garage, and a courtesy car delivered around the same time. Fingers crossed, then.

I've spent a lot of time on the phone this morning, being entertained, if that's the word, by the music they play when you're on hold. And while I was waiting I thought, why not have another competition, this time to find the least appropriate piece of music to play while someone's on hold to their car insurance company?

I can't promise a prize this time, since this could see me a few hundred quid out of pocket for a week or two. However, I will start things rolling with some suggestions of my own. There's 'Crash! Boom! Bang!' by Roxette; 'Hazard' by Richard Marx; and 'Into the Valley' by, ahem, The Skids.

I'm sure there's loads more, and of a higher quality than I've managed. Anyway, the comments section quivers with anticipation...

Call Centre Limbo Beckons...

I had an accident in the car on the way home from Dundee tonight. Nothing serious, no-one injured, but the poor girl in the other car was pretty shaken up by it.

It happened in Perth, on the north side of the river, just before you turn over the bridge to head south. Basically, I was coming up the inside of a queue of traffic, when someone turning right into a side entrance pulled right across in front of me. There was no time to stop and so I went straight into the side of her car at 90 degrees.

Luckily, there were witnesses and since she pulled in front of me without a clear view of what was coming, the insurance claim should be cut and dried. I was going fairly slowly, so no airbags were harmed, although since the crumple zone did its job so efficiently, it did mean that the car limped home looking more like an accordion than anything else.

Anyway, on getting home tonight, I dug out my policy and phoned to set the claim in motion. However, the phone number put me through to a different part of the insurance company, who then transferred me to customer services. They then gave me another number which, you've guessed it, put me straight back through to the first number.

Not really what I wanted to hear, as I'm sure you can imagine. And since they shut in 15 minutes, it hardly seems worth trying to fight through the system tonight. Why do I get the feeling that the rest of the week is just going to end up as one big massive hassle? >:-/

Lazy Sunday - Part I

Some interesting stuff in this morning's Sundays. The Sunday Herald splashes with news that one of Jack McConnell's key election strategists has quit, supposedly after having clashed with senior Labour colleagues over tactics and presentation. Now, regular readers will know that I don't like to intrude into private grief (much), but surely eyebrows will be raised at the quote from the 'senior Labour insider' that “This is the worst campaign I have been involved in for over 20 years”.

Regardless as to whether it's the conflict story which is true or the official line that 'family reasons' are behind his departure, there's one thing of which we can be completely sure: no-one in their right mind would be happy about having such a senior aide quit just a matter of weeks before an election. And just how hacked off would you have to be in your job to walk out and leave your chosen party in the lurch like that?

Next up is the Sunday Times (when are they going to put their Scottish content back on line, BTW?), which carries a story about how Rory Bremner, posing as Gordon Brown, managed to trick Margaret Beckett into making some indiscreet comments over the phone about her cabinet colleagues. The usual disclaimers apply here – shameful intrusion of privacy, sneaky and underhand blah, blah, blah – but I still found it incredibly funny in spite of that. And I have to admit, Beckett's reported response of 'Oh f***' when she found out about the con, hasn't made it any easier for me to regain my composure...

Of more significance are the lead stories on page 2, where Scottish Power, HBOS and the Edrington Group are 'understood to be furious over the [CBI] decision to challenge the SNP over its economic plans'. This refers to a series of 11 questions posed by the CBI, an early draft of which was leaked to the SNP. The SNP responded direct to each CBI council member, but in spite of that, the leadership took the decision to publish the questions anyway, before screeching that the SNP weren't answering the questions and that Alex Salmond was somehow refusing to meet with them.

Leaving aside the sheer mendacity of the CBI leadership tactics and the remarkable similarity in language between the questions and many recent Labour press releases, a better theatrical strop you couldn't have found outside the pantomime season. But will the people be much wiser as a result? I doubt it, somehow.

Thank goodness, then, for Bill Samuel, former senior corporate adviser to the Bank of Scotland and property investor, who not content with rescinding his former anti-home rule views, has made a £25,000 donation to the SNP and written a powerful article on p17 of the ST, where he sets out why he feels independence is the only way to address a falling population and low growth rate. And for good measure, he accuses Labour of having delivered “mediocre, lacklustre management”, while describing Alex Salmond as “a leader of real vision”.

SoS has got hold of a US government memo in which senior political figures spoke prior to the 1999 election of their concerns that the Scots wanted to be independent in the long-term, and that doubts amongst the Scottish voters as to Labour's good intentions meant that the SNP was well placed to do a number on the party. The language is vivid, and all the more striking when you see the people quoted. Go take a read, and compare and contrast with what they said in public at the time!

And finally, Mungo Mackay's diary entry for Friday has a familiar ring to it. Should I ask them for royalties? Or maybe even a job? :-)

Lazy Sunday - Part II

One of my favourite Sunday vices is to head down to Stockbridge, and seek out a cafe in which to spend the afternoon leafing idly through the papers. It's often hit and miss whether I can find somewhere with a seat, but it's been harder than usual today, thanks to the 'unforseen circumstances' which have kept Maison Hector closed.

It's clear that my long-held idler approach to Sunday is becoming increasingly popular in this part of town. And despite the ubiquitous Starbucks and Café Nero, it seems to me that there's plenty more room in the market for coffee and brunch-type places here.

My two favourite shops in Stockbridge when I was a kid were Duncanson's pawn shop (long since moved upmarket to Queen St), and the Stockbridge Bookshop. Sadly, the bookshop is now closed, but it does mean that some excellent window fronted premises are now for let...

Put in a decent coffee machine, some nice seats, tables at a height comfortable enough to read, eat and use a laptop at; install a wi-fi connection, find a decent patissier, learn how to do eggs benedict properly, and I can guarantee you'll be stowed out every weekend. I would if I had the spare cash, but I don't. Are there any business people out there with an urge to have their own little slice of Edinburgh café culture?

Some New Links

I've updated the links section to include some of the blogs and sites which have caught my attention recently.

First for a mention is my former SNP HQ colleague Julie Hepburn, wife of SNP Cumbernauld & Kilsyth Candidate, Jamie. I particularly enjoyed her demolition of the chancers of the SSCUP, but the most interesting thing will be to compare and contrast how the two blog about the run-in to the election and its aftermath.

Next up are Clairwil, Kevin Williamson, The Flying Rodent and Scotswahey!, while 1820 - Rise Like Lions and SNP Tactical Voting are also worth a look.

Finally, I'm adding a link to a new site called You Scotland, which bills itself as being "about the people of 21st-century Scotland taking power for ourselves, reclaiming the Home Rule agenda from a Scottish establishment that has so patently failed".

Sounds promising, although it doesn't seem to be much more than a glorified debating forum at the moment. But am I alone in thinking that the idea there's somehow a mass 'collective will' out there, ignored by politicians, but which can be brought to bear by a website, is really keech of the highest order? It all sounds too much like the fraudulant rhetoric of the 'independent' or the 'anti-politician politician' for my liking. 'Vote for me and I'll consult and then do whatever you want'. Aye, right.

Maybe this is how it needs to pitch itself to get attention from Scotland's web community. However, if it manages to get people thinking about their collective democratic responsibilities as well as getting folk to yell about the hot button issues of the day, those behind You Scotland will deserve the thanks of us all. I wish it well.

Question Time - Have You Seen This Man?

Question Time was enjoyable last night if you are a Nat. Poor George Foulkes was awful, making a fool of himself at one point by accusing the SNP of 'xenophobia' ( S&I passim), just seconds before he slated Alex Salmond for being 'London based'. Oops...

Nicol Stephen started promisingly enough, but he never seems to know when to shut up. In the end, vile self took over to turn in a waffly and forgettable performance. Annabel Goldie started quietly but came into it later, scoring points off of George Foulkes over crime (but did she really mean to say that Independence was 'not a priority'? - wow). Meanwhile, Alex Salmond was effective, winning the audience over early on and, maybe surprisingly in view of the red rag tendencies of wee George, kept the interruptions to a minimum.

But the star for me was Hardeep Singh Kohli. Not for him the usual celeb panellist cop out of regurgitating for each answer some variation on the theme of 'why can't we all be nice to eachother and have the politicians work together?'. He managed to be truculent, impassioned, thoughtful, honest, respectful and funny, often at times in the same sentance. He even got away with responding to the Edinburgh congestion charge debate by declaring 'I'm from Glasgow - I don't care', and lived to tell the tale! A fine performance - well done, sir.

And nice to see someone in the audience point out that McConnell had once more bailed out of a debate with Alex Salmond, leaving an unelected peer in his place. Wee George was left to splutter away about planted questions... rule number one, George - even if it is a planted question, you still answer it gracefully, even if you don't particularly see why on earth you should!

Jack Posted Missing. Again.

Question Time comes tonight from Edinburgh. All the main Scottish party leaders will be there, with the exception of First Minister Jack McConnell. Instead, Labour has decided to send along no-hope list candidate and serial bluster-merchant Lord George Foulkes.

Notoriously, Have I Got News for You, on being stood up once by Roy Hattersley, replaced him on the panel with a tub of lard. Maybe the Question Time team should have considered, oh, hang on a minute…

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!