Hauled Up By The Rector

The town I now call home has been in the news a bit of late. Ellon, or more accurately, the state of repair of its Academy, seems to have attracted the attentions of none other than Iain Gray, Leader of the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament, or if you prefer, ‘Leader of the largest parliamentary group not represented in the Scottish Government’, to give him his Sunday title.

There are a few issues on which Labour likes to claim a monopoly of concern, of which perhaps the most trumpeted yet least justified is education. In particular, during their time in office together with the Lib Dems, the number of schools being either built or refurbished became the statistic of choice to demonstrate just how much more they cared about Scotland's future than did anyone else.

A school which started life under a Labour led administration is a ‘Labour School’. Not an ordinary, common or garden ‘school’. Not even a ‘Labour/Lib Dem school’, but a ‘Labour School'. This delusional annexation of the public good for sectional interest has even led the party to claim that not a single school project has been initiated by the SNP since taking office.

In fact, something like £1bn of school projects have commenced since the SNP took power. Some, yes, will have had their genesis prior to the election, but the fact remains that just as new schemes are progressing, the monies to build those signed off by Labour are being found under the present administration. Much of this is financed through the conventional capital allowances of [shock, horror!] local authorities – in other words, the way we used to build schools before the false God of PPP/PFI came along to bamboozle the credulous and enrich the unscrupulous.

Although PPP was never ruled out by the Scottish Government as a means of financing projects, the fact that the liabilities are due to come back on balance sheet has removed any advantage which the initiative might ever have brought. The cost of capital under PPP was always excessive, and with the Westminster government now having to offer to bail out PPP projects thanks to the drying up of the capital markets, it’s pretty clear that as a funding mechanism, it’s dead in the present climate.

Anyway, to our tale. The present main building at Ellon Academy opened in 1979. It was cobbled together by the then Grampian Region based on what was an existing design for (I think) Dyce Academy, in order to meet the needs of what was, thanks to the oil boom, a rapidly expanding town.

The big problem was that it wasn’t only Ellon which was beginning to fill up with new houses and young families. The same was true of a swathe of East Aberdeenshire and it wasn’t long before the Academy had the highest school roll in Scotland, serving 22 ‘feeder’ primaries. This put a great deal of pressure on the building and temporary accommodation had to be provided for pupils – a situation which lasted until the new Meldrum Academy was opened, which allowed for numbers to ease somewhat in Ellon.

The nature of the school building and the heavy use to which it has been put over that time means it’s now nearing the end of its useful life. The signs of wear and tear are obvious as you walk around. Given the difficulties of refurbishment while the school is in use and the dubious value in any case of refurbishing the 1970’s main building, the need for a new school on a new site is obvious.

Aberdeenshire Council has now brought forward detailed proposals for a new Academy. Some £3m has been set aside for initial architectural works, and the new building, together with replacements for Kemnay Academy and Means Academy in Laurencekirk, will be funded out of the council’s capital budget.

From this, I hope I’ve been able to make it clear that although the present state of the Academy buildings is one which has built up over a considerable period of time, the wheels are now in motion for a new school to be built. Which makes it all the more surprising that Iain Gray should have chosen to use the school as a political football at FMQs recently.

After admitting that he didn’t know very much about Ellon, Gray chose to lambast the state of the school buildings, in a crude attempt to taint the Government in the constituency of the First Minister. There was, he told Parliament, a ‘plan to refurbish Ellon Academy under the previous Executive’.

This came as news to one Ellon resident – past Rector of the Academy, one-time Councillor and former member of the Education Committee, Alan Cameron. He wrote to Mr Gray last week, pointing out that not only were his claims that there were plans to refurbish the Academy under the previous administration completely untrue, but that it was only under the SNP government that any monies had been allocated towards replacing the school:

Dear Mr Gray

I note last week during First Minister’s Questions that when making comments about Ellon Academy you claimed “a new school would have been built under the plans of the previous Labour-led Executive.”

This is completely untrue.

As you may be aware I served as Headteacher of Ellon Academy between the years 1981 and 1996. I also served on the Education Committee of Aberdeenshire Council between 1999 and 2007 and am well aware of the need for a replacement school building.

I was extremely disappointed that Ellon Academy was not included in the Outline Business Case submitted to the Scottish Executive in December 2001.

In 2004/5 the school appeared on Aberdeenshire Council’s own list of 24 potential school projects they viewed as a priority. However, no funding was attached to this list and it is simply not credible to claim that “a new school would have been built”. In fact it was never on any Scottish Executive programme.

Indeed it is only under the SNP in Government that progress has been made. Aberdeenshire Council have confirmed that the first time any funds have been made available for the Ellon project is this year and they have identified £3.3million within their current Capital Plan for preparatory architectural works and site acquisition.

I’m sure you never knowingly misled Parliament and think it appropriate that you issue a public apology as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

Alan Cameron

Gray decided to visit the Academy last Friday, and responded to Mr Cameron by repeating his fallacious claim that the Government hadn’t commissioned a single school since coming to office. However, although the present lack of a new building was the fault of the SNP, the fact that a new Academy hadn’t been built under eight years of Lib/Lab government was because “it was up to councils to prioritise and make up the programme which schools got built”.

Aha - so by Gray’s own admission, it was the council’s fault between 1999 and 2007 rather than the Lib/Lab government, but became the SNP Government’s fault instantly thereafter! But it gets better still, when Gray claimed that “if Labour was still in office there would have still been a programme with a level playing field and real progress could have been made building a new Ellon Academy.

So, in the space of a week, Gray has gone from saying there ‘would’ have been a new academy, to saying only that there ‘could’ have been a new academy – which as we all know there’s now going to be anyway. Which leaves us where, exactly?

Well, Ellon will in due course get a building which matches the ambitions of the pupils and teachers inside it, and not before time. However, it’s no thanks to Iain Gray, either in Government or in opposition. For him, this issue was never about Ellon Academy or the well being of the staff or the pupils - it was always about trying to score debating points against Alex Salmond at FMQs. In the end, he couldn’t even manage to do that bit right.

I've long suspected from his performances at First Minister's Questions that Gray is receiving some very poor advice from his backroom staff. Having made a complete fool of himself and likely very few friends on his daytrip, I suspect it’s the last that either Ellon or its Academy will be seeing of Mr Gray for quite some time.

Gordon SNP Facebook Group

It's been a week with too many distractions for blogging. However, just to reassure you that I've not been slacking in any way, here's a couple of links to show that my eye has simply been on some other more important things.

There'll be more from me on Labour's Ellon Academy related shenanigans later, but I've embargoed that post until the morning. In the meantime, please feel free to head over to my new-ish Facebook Group: Elect Richard as Gordon's Next MP. Sign up as a member, and you too can be in the vanguard of helping the SNP meet its 20 MP target :-)

The Scottish Play

Given that it's supposed to be all 'hands to the pump' in the present economic crisis, you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of Lib Dems in demanding that the SNP forget about independence, while seemingly talking of little else themselves.

The spin and the cycle can be summed up thusly: talk of constitutional change is bad right now if it concerns Independence, but is tickety-boo if it's concerned with 'further powers', whatever that means. Independence is a distraction in the present crisis; will put at risk recovery when it comes; and will be deemed pointless in an economic upswing which shows, we will be told, that Britain is working. In short, it's always going to be 'not the time' for any constitutional option which the Lib Dems decide they don't want the people to have their say on, in the vain hope that eventually, Independence will become the constitutional choice that dare not speak its name.

Genies and empty bottles spring to mind, almost as readily as does this little skit from Blackadder. Given the evident discomfort of the Lib Dem leadership to talk of referendums, I wonder if they go through a similar rigmarole each time the word is mentioned? I do hope so :-)



P.S. I admit I'm coming a little late to this, but in light of some of the present mince which there is about, I can't recommend this post from Julie Hepburn highly enough.

zzzzzzzz

So... Sir Menzies launches some kind of setpiece attack about something or other, yet it's my old colleague Craig who tops the news after winning the Maryfield by-election in Dundee for the SNP...





Well done Craig ! :-)

Those That Can

I was delighted to see one of my former Primary School teachers on Reporting Scotland this evening. Maureen Tremmel, or Mrs Tremmel as she always was to me, is now Headmistress at Gullane Primary, where pupils have just won a national cookery award.

To win, the pupils cooked, sourced and prepared a meal using local food, even visiting a local pig farm in the process to learn how to make sausages. All good stuff, and TV interest notwithstanding, just a little bit different, I'll bet, from how the same part of the curriculum will be taught elsewhere.

I encountered a few inspirational teachers along my way through school. Straight away, I can think of Mr Wood and Mrs Brydon, both Heads of the Music Department and Conductors of the school orchestra; Mr Tillie, the Head of Geography; Mr Savage, the Head Teacher of History, who would probably be quite chuffed to know that even though the timetable meant I had to drop his class in 3rd year, I still ended up with a degree in his subject; Mr Wilson and Miss Scotland in the English Department, and Mr Simpson in Physics - all of whom spurred me on in their own particular ways. However, I'd have no hesitation whatsoever in placing the redoubtable Mrs T, my teacher in primaries 6 and 7, right up there at the top.

Why? Simply, without a word of exaggeration, she is one of that rare breed who was born to teach young minds - really. She treated every one of her pupils, and I mean every one, like the individuals they were while brooking absolutely no nonsense whatsoever. She encouraged us to think in shades of grey, to challenge, to express ourselves, and once the work was done, invariably to her exacting high standards which could push you well beyond what was required just to simply 'get by', drew out hidden talents in us all by giving us the absolute freedom and trust to go and discover things for ourselves.

Maybe there was a touch of the Jean Brodies at work. You always felt special as part of her class – somehow trusted, mature, adult. Her confidence and presence rubbed off, helping turn us into the young adults we were inevitably going to become. And knowing the challenges that would come as we entered high school, no matter what the guidelines did or didn't say, she had the foresight and interest to encourage us to work ahead of the class as we felt able, so that we'd be as well prepared as possible academically for the jump that was to come.

Particularly, I remember the gentle nicknames, the obvious affection for all her pupils and interest in their lives outside school, the class debates, the time I was allowed to spend on art and music, the class trip over the water to Pittencrieff Park, the party the class organised for her in strictest secrecy before we left for high school... only in retrospect can I see that perhaps more than any other teacher I ever had, she epitomised that 'leading out' process of what is within, the very educto root from which we derive the word education itself.

Lots of people become teachers, most of them I'm pleased to say very good ones. However, there's precious few who have the sheer natural talent and obvious love of the job which Mrs Tremmel did. The very fact that the purple prose can still flow here, even after two decades have passed, might in some way serve as a testament to how fortunate I think the pupils and parents at Gullane are to have a teacher like her in their midst.

Simmering Away

I've been trying to avoid commenting on matters financial of late. After all, who could not be chilled to the marrow, indeed disgusted to the very core of their being, at recent disclosures on remuneration? What could be more galling than seeing an individual who helped precipitate the collapse of some of our best known financial institutions being able to walk away with a gold-plated pension scheme, tacitly approved by government and bankrolled by the same taxpayers who will be left to sweep up the resulting economic carnage left in his wake?

It's absolutely disgusting, and frankly, no matter what the law says, someone should intervene to stop it. But that's probably enough for now about Gordon Brown's future pension arrangements. There's bigger issues to concern us, after all.

A post about the politics of the financial crisis has been brewing for a while, but every time I've sat down to do it, somehow I've just got so far and stopped. I think that's largely because I've found it hard to adequately express my distaste at the sheer neck demonstrated by senior figures in the Labour Party in pointing the finger of blame at everyone but themselves.

That's not to deny the trans-national nature of the present situation – far from it. However, with the whole 'it started in America' meme, alongside the depiction of Scotland and the so-called 'Arc of Insolvency' - effectively using British weakness and failure as a justification for the constitutional status quo - sometimes, there just isn't enough Brasso in the world to go around.

You can say what you like about Fred Goodwin and let's face it, many have done exactly that over the past week. However, there's something deeply hypocritical about the way Labour has tried to scapegoat bankers in general and Mr Goodwin in particular as a diversion from the bigger picture. After all, capital is amoral - in going on the acquisition trail and in lending freely in the mortgage and unsecured debt markets, bankers only did what they were allowed to get away with by the regulators.

During the resulting growth and profits spree, the Labour Government was happy to hoover up the corporation tax receipts. The consumer debt boom went on buying up imported goods and in fuelling an unsustainable housing bubble. Meanwhile, huge public spending increases seemed to disappear to little discernible effect, with billions squandered on the dripping roast of PFI.

Even before 1997, Labour was keen to get in with the City. In one of his first acts as Chancellor, Brown tore up the old model of discrete regulation by the Bank of England, only to replace it with prescriptive box-ticking and a glossy brochure industry. He crowed about new models of regulation and harangued others for not following suit. Sadly for us, Brown's 'light touch' also meant soft touch. With responsibilities blurred and with few having the understanding or the ability to adequately quantify risk, the dangers grew. Armed with the twin mantras that 'boom and bust' had been abolished and that we were only 'borrowing to invest', Broontania marched fearlessly toward the guns.

Ah, but Brown led the world in responding to the crisis, bleat the apologists. Even Paul Krugman entered the fray, much to the delight of the Brownies. Well sorry, but not even a Nobel Prize in economics offers a guarantee against talking nonsense periodically.

Let's examine the evidence - in response to the banking crisis, Brown had the opportunity to lead when Northern Rock failed. However, instead of allowing a private sector takeover by Lloyds TSB, Brown dithered for 6 months before opting for nationalisation, on the grounds that allowing for a takeover on a weekend was anti-competitive. Compare and contrast this with the swift and decisive manner in which the US Government allowed Bear Stearns to be taken over and through the swift recapitalisation of insurer AIG.

When it came to liquidity, the Bank of England reacted more slowly than the Fed or the ECB. In guaranteeing deposits, Gordon Brown trailed behind the much sneered at Irish. On stimulus, he was also well behind many other major economies, and as Eddie George says, Brown's earlier borrowing ultimately left little room for stimulus, with the eventual package representing 1% of GDP as opposed to the USA's 5%.

Brown's Labour has been behind the curve on every major response to the crisis, yet still the courtiers preen and posture in spite of this. While the Tories have been attacked with the idiotic 'do nothing' line in England, understandably, it's been the SNP which has born the brunt of Labour's ire in Scotland. After breaking their own call for unity late last year, they launched a series of attacks on the Scottish Government for not acting on matters where it has, by Labour’s own design, little powers anyway.

Whether it's spurious attacks on jobs or investment, the Labour line has been simple – just leave the complicated economy stuff to the big boys in London – they know what they're doing and anyway, youse could never afford a national debt like ours. Meanwhile, Labour's Scottish spokespeople exhibit prolier-than-thou cretinism, trying to associate real world experience outside politics with ideological unsoundness and the sort of cosiness with the financial sector which Brown himself was only too keen to cultivate over the previous 2 decades. Whether it's over paintings or political 'pedigree', the game has been, however implausible it appears in reality, to try and somehow pretend to be on the side of the people.

The less said about Iain Davidson's foray into the art world the better. However, with his acceptance speech as Leader of the Labour group in Holyrood, Ian Grey managed to make a life lived well sound less like a principled set of career choices in service of his fellow man, and more like an extended penance to exorcise repressed middle class guilt. It's like being back in the students union – an experience hardly dissipated by a Secretary of State and Holyrood party spinners steeped in the swamp of NUS/Labour Students politicking.

In the much-vaunted 'court of public opinion', the verdict is that Brown's is a government which has lost all direction or semblence of coherence. It is pitifully, woefully, even dangerously out of its depth. It is devoid of ideas, denuded of principle, absent even of endearing personalities. In Scotland, it has long since ceased to be a Labour party and is now simply the anti-SNP party, infected with the canker-ridden sourness of temper tantrums that flow from someone having ‘stolen’ their sweetie.

Somewhere in the 80's or 90's and we can no doubt all point to different dates or events, the Labour Party became solely about the pursuit and retention of power. Entrenched in swathes of Scotland on a minority share of the vote by the first past the post system, there was no competition to drive out the cliquishness, clannishness and petty rent seeking which came to scar it. Swept out of office in 2007 and with municipal power bases weakened by the plurality of PR, it found itself unable to distribute patronage as it once had.

Without economic credibility, Labour in England has lost its reason for being in power. Without power and patronage, Scottish Labour lost its reason for being a long time before.

Peat Worrying

I may have a new favourite blog. If you haven't already, please do.

Retaining No Credibility

I see that the Scottish Lib Dems have set up another of those one-off websites. This time, it's to 'campaign' to retain the UK opt-out of the European Working Time Directive in respect of retained firefighters.

Personally, I’m full of admiration for the work the retained do on our behalf. Without their willingness to put themselves on call at all hours, large parts of Scotland simply couldn’t have the levels of professional fire cover which they enjoy at present. If this opt-out were to end, it would mean the closure of smaller stations, which would mean that vital response times to incidents would increase, placing lives at risk.


However, I can't help but wonder why, if the Lib Dems are as concerned as they claim to be about the impact of this change, did their MEPs manage to split and vote both for and against removing the opt out when the vote was held on 17 December 2008? And why, given the particular impact on Scotland, did the solitary Scottish Lib Dem MEP, Elspeth Attwool, vote to remove the opt-out herself?

People are used to the Lib Dems facing both ways depending on who their audience is. On an issue as serious as this, shouldn't they be offering us a united front? Perhaps more to the point, isn't it the height of hypocrisy to be stating that you stand for one thing in Scotland, while voting for precisely the opposite in Europe?

Pole-Axed

This is genius:

Details of how police in the Irish Republic finally caught up with the country's most reckless driver have emerged.

He had been wanted from counties Cork to Cavan after racking up scores of speeding tickets and parking fines.

However, each time the serial offender was stopped he managed to evade justice by giving a different address.

But then his cover was blown.

Read the rest for yourself on the BBC Website here.

It's Scotland's Electromagnetic Spectrum!

OK, I'll admit it freely here and now. 'It's our Electromagnetic Spectrum!' perhaps isn't the catchiest slogan in Scottish political history. However, the sentiments behind it could turn out to be an important part in ensuring that rural Scotland can take its place at the forefront of the digital revolution.

Before your eyes glaze over, please, hear me out. This is, I'll admit once more, a bit of an anoraky issue. Or at least it is until you get to the implications. So, if you're still with me, get yourself a strong cup of coffee and strap yourself in tight as we head (only temporarily, I assure you) for the 'dork' side.

As some might remember hazily from dim and distant science lessons, the electromagnetic spectrum covers everything from nuclear radiation and the UV rays that give you sunburn, to visible light, right down to the frequencies that bring you mobile phone signals and television through your aerial. It's the mobile phone and TV signals which should interest us here, though.

Since there's a limited amount of data which can be sent on the space available, these portions of the radio spectrum are much coveted, with telecommunications companies prepared to pay handsomely for the rights to use them. And HM Government in London, which regulates these usages for us, is only too happy to collect the cash on our behalf.

It's big business too. When he was but a humble Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown managed to extract a whopping £22.5bn at year 2000 prices for the 5 new mobile phone network licenses. This is what became known as '3G', which you can use to get high-speed data on your mobile phone or a laptop, albeit at something of a premium cost.


It would have been a disaster for companies like Vodafone or Orange to have missed out on the chance to offer these enhanced mobile services, so they paid through the nose for the privilege. Having seen how successful the UK Government had been at milking the cash-rich telecoms companies for these lucrative licenses, the rest of Europe followed suit.

Results? The phone companies ended up having to overpay for the franchises; they then couldn't afford to expand 3G coverage as quickly as they might have liked; and in a bid to rebuild their finances, they then spent several years wringing this cash back from the poor consumer, through overcharging us for data usage, for using our phones overseas and by selling overpriced pictures and ringtones to kids.

Consequently, it's taken nearly a decade for 3G technology to really catch on in the UK. In Scotland, despite the fact that there's now an even faster fourth generation of the technology just around the corner, 3G coverage is still dismal. Venture too far away from the Central Belt, Inverness, the M74 or the main east coast ports, and you'll be back to using 20 year old technology – pitting a stagecoach against a bullet train.

And it's with the '4G' future that it looks like Labour is about to make exactly the same mistakes. Desperate for money, Brown will, as he announced in his 2007 budget, attempt to raise £30bn from the companies, this time from the spectrum which will become available after they've switched off analogue TV signals.

The trouble is, when this 'digital switchover' happens on our TV screens, for many people who are served by smaller relays rather than by the main TV transmitters, instead of getting 50-odd channels, you'll be stuck with about 18. Unless, that is, the government decides to keep some of this bandwidth for digital TV coverage in rural areas.

'OK, so everyone will get a good digital TV service that way, but it'll mean less money for the Government to repay its debts!', I hear you cry. Well, yes, indeed it would, and much, much less money too, if I had my way.
3G coverage isn't great in England, but it's hopeless in Scotland. If we want 4G to be better, then we need to do something radical, and here it is. Instead of having another auction for this spectrum, then why not give control of it to Scotland, and let the Scottish Government give it away for nothing?

That's right – after we've given everyone a decent free digital TV service from Gatehouse of Fleet to Gartly, let's give the rest of the spectrum away to the mobile companies free, gratis and for nothing. The catch, if you can call it that, is that in exchange for not paying the Scottish Government for this privilege, the companies successful in their bids will be the ones which promise to expand their Scottish geographical coverage the fastest.

So, Scotland takes control of one of her resources, rural Scotland gets the decent digital TV and mobile coverage which it lacks presently, and we take our place as one of the most digitally connected countries in the world. And since we'd be giving away something which we didn't have to begin with, the cost is negligible.

A Scottish solution to a Scottish problem; one which makes us better rather than worse off; and which won't cost a penny either. I bet Gordon Brown hates the idea already...

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Iain Macwhirter - newly elected rector of Edinburgh University. I'm sure he'll be a worthy and staunch advocate of the interests of the student body.

The Torchpaper LIT

I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised to learn this evening that the SNP Government has decided to drop, at least for the duration of this Parliament, plans to replace the Council Tax with a Local Income Tax.

My strong support for LIT is something which I've put on the record before and which I'm happy to do so again. The Council tax hits low earners disproportionately and is particularly pernicious for people who live alone. It allows people in HMOs to escape paying what ought to be their fair share. The value of one's house bears no relation to one's ability to contribute towards local services and the sooner it's replaced with something fairer, the better.

So why ditch what remains a popular and fundamentally fair policy? A number of reasons: Firstly, there's the refusal of the present Westminster Government to budge on continuing to make available the monies paid in Council Tax Benefit, currently around £400m each year, to continue relieving the burden of local taxation. Then there's the small matter of the £1bn of budget cuts coming our way over the next 2 years. While neither of these are insurmountable obstacles in themselves, put them together at a time when Government is going to need to be able to offer enhanced central funding support to Local Government, and it risks leaving other areas of importance open to the prospect of funding shortfalls.

Add in the clear reluctance of HMRC to administer the tax, and the prospect of having to find alternative collection methods risks exacerbating these pressures further. With the country firmly in the grip of a recession, it's likely to see a fall in income tax revenues at a crucial time. All things considered, despite the fillip of the small business bonus scheme, it's clear that this is not the time to be placing an additional, if small, burden on small enterprises to aid the collection and administration process.

Then there's the parliamentary arithmetic. Although I suspect that some in the Lib Dems might have been open to the prospect of setting LIT centrally, at least to begin with until it settled down, there seems to have been no guarantee that this would be the case. So even on the best case scenario of having 47 SNP plus 16 Lib Dems on side (63), with 46 Labour and 16 Tories resolutely against (62), this was going to put a lot of power in the hands of the Greens and Margo. Even if Margo was persuadable (and so far as I can see, she's been playing her cards very close to her chest, no doubt with an eye to the tight numbers), if the 2 Greens had decided to vote against rather than abstain in view of their support for a Land Value Tax, that would have made it at 64-64 a repeat of the first budget vote. Result? The bill would fall.

If Jack McConnell had taken up that High Commissionership in Malawi and the SNP had taken his seat at the resulting by-election, that might have given the breathing space necessary to make proceeding worthwhile. However, that's not where we are. As such, the sensible thing to do is to park it and campaign for a stronger mandate next time round.

You'd think that with the policy being shelved, Labour might actually be quite happy. Not a bit of it. On Scotland at Ten this evening, Andy Kerr was barely coherent with rage. Despite being, we are told, an unpopular policy, the SNP had used its popularity to win the last election. Even in his moment of 'triumph' he still couldn't get the story straight – a bit like the earlier claims from his party that while collecting less overall than the Council Tax, LIT would simultaneously increase taxes on the lowest and the highest paid, as well as all the hard working families in the middle. There's nothing like having a coherent position in politics and throughout, theirs has been nothing like a coherent position.

So, with the exception of the benefits arising form the continued Council Tax freeze implemented by the SNP, we're back to where we were pre-2007, with the SNP campaigning in favour of LIT and Labour and the Tories campaigning against. While the Tories at least have a vaguely plausible position of offering enhanced reliefs (which still won't make a fundamentally unfair tax fair), having so far rejected all alternatives proposed, Labour are still in favour of the Council Tax unreformed and increasing.

With their refusal to put an alternative plan in place before 2011, that's not going to be a credible position for them, far less a vote winner next time out. We can all remember the shambles they made before the last election, when they claimed that an extra band at the top of the scale would allow for the creation of an extra band at the bottom, without the need for a property revaluation – something which would rather implausibly have left 11,000 band 'E' households paying out to reduce the bills of nearly 500,000 band 'A' dwellers. In the Orkneys, this back of fag packet policymaking would have left just 2 band 'E' taxpayers paying to implement the policy - I wonder how Peter Maxwell Davies felt about that? :-)

Just as a reminder, here's a summation of Labour's position on local tax, as expounded by Cathy Jamieson on Newsnight back in April 2007:



Anyway, to move from the ridiculous to the sublime, I also recall a bet from the dim and distant past with Richard Havers over this matter which may now have lost me, or perhaps even cost me, a lunch somewhere nice. In any case, I'm sure I'll be reminded of the exact terms of the bet in due course!

An Expensive Way to Boil Water

Another Scots Independent column...

In its first annual report published at the end of last year, the Scottish Government's Council of Economic Advisers recommended that an economic and CO2 abatement assessment be made of all the energy options open to Scotland. Sensible advice, moderately expressed, you might think, although that wasn’t how our esteemed friends in the unionist parties and the press saw matters.

The hooting, hollering and tyre-swinging began in earnest, with varying degrees of erudition being displayed along the way. Whatever – for anyone who knows that 2+2 = 4, there’s only one result which any study into the economics of nuclear could possibly come back with. However, if you were determined, while there’s a welter of superb analysis out there already, from Greenpeace as well as Scotland’s own Professor Steven Salter, there’s worse places to start than the most recent annual report and accounts for the recently taken over British Energy (BE).

Normally, when a company is taken over as a going concern, the price paid to shareholders exceeds the value of the assets. Given that BE total assets were deemed to be worth £12.4bn by company accountants and an operating profit turned in of £507m, there’s surely something unusual about the fact that Électricité de France (EDF) was able to buy BE for its asset value of £12.4bn.

Unless that profit figure is not all that it seems, it looks like EDF has taken the pants off the BE shareholders. Unfortunately, following BE’s bankruptcy and takeover by the Government, those shareholders were us, the taxpayers. However, it’s worth delving a little further into the figures before drawing a conclusion.

More curious is the reference in the accounts to 'non-current' nuclear liabilities, which in plain English means future decommissioning costs. On the company balance sheet, these amount to just £5.3bn, of which £2.5bn is for ‘back-end’ fuel costs. Which leaves the princely sum of only £2.9bn for decommissioning BE’s present sites.

Now, it’s important to note here that the costs of decommissioning the earlier Magnox stations have been hived off (to Magnox Electric Ltd – a part of BNFL which operates on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency), which means that BE is effectively operating only ‘in the present’. This means that thanks to the taxpayer taking on all past liabilities, it only has to cover the decommissioning costs of its present sites.

The only reliable basis we have for estimating future decommissioning costs is based on our experience of decommissioning Magnox stations. According to its business plan, the NDA expects to have expenditure in 2008/09 alone of £2.9bn, the majority of which you’d expect to be going on site decommissioning. Planned expenditure is expected to be £2.8bn in both 2009/10 and 2010/11.

So, from this, we can see that BE has only set aside on its balance sheet as a liability the equivalent of just over one years decommissioning costs for Magnox. Looking at ongoing contributions, it paid just £22m in 2007 and £23m in 2008 into the Nuclear Liabilities Fund. Even allowing for the ‘sweeping up’ of future cashflows by the NDA, it’s clear that BE has been failing catastrophically to make adequate provision for future decommissioning costs.

The Magnox situation could be even worse for the taxpayer than it seems. That 08/09 clean up cost of £2.8bn represents £1.5bn of grant-in-aid from government and assumes that £1.3bn will be raised through commercial activity. However, even the NDA admits that this income is “uncertain”; and acknowledges that it is “expected to decline” due to “ageing facilities and fragile infrastructure”. In other words, if these increasingly creaky facilities have to shut down early for any reason, even if only temporarily, it’s ‘bye-bye’ commercial income and ‘hello’ increased taxpayer liability.

But back to BE, at the time of takeover, there was deemed to be just under £5bn shareholder equity in the company. If a more realistic account was being taken of present liabilities, that equity figure would have been wiped out many times over. Which begs the question – why would EDF want to take over such an operation? What could they possibly have been offered - apart from the prospect of being able to build new reactors on BE’s existing sites – to make this deal attractive?

The answer is simple. Unless the price of electricity is allowed to soar, profits and shareholder equity are dependent entirely on governments allowing for the real long-term clean up costs to be underestimated, hidden or hived off elsewhere. Just as Magnox failed to wash its face commercially, so too has the present generation of reactors. And if I’m still alive in 50 years time, it’ll give me no satisfaction to see the same financial trickery being deployed along with the promise that this time, with newer technology, it’ll somehow all be different.

Given England’s population and shortage of natural resources, there’s probably little alternative to new nuclear south of the border. We, on the other hand, with our surfeit of renewables and hydrocarbons, have a cheap, profitable and clean set of alternatives. Instead of fatuous scaremongering about ‘lights going out’, I wonder what it will take for the lights to go on for Scotland's nuke fanatics that it’s no more than a hideously expensive way to boil water?

Budget Passes 123-2

So... budget passed 123 votes to 2, and everyone can legitimately say they've got something - even the Greens, who still couldn't bring themselves to vote in favour.

Most pointless contribution of the day though has to be the one from Margaret Curran. About to vote the same way as the Conservatives (and the Lib Dems and the SNP), she had the brass neck and effrontery to castigate the SNP for working with the Tories on the budget!

Yeah - as if Labour don't do similar in council chambers up and down the land, or even in Holyrood when it suits them to do so. Clearly, she's learned nothing from her experience of pretending to be that which she was not in Glasgow East.

Anyway, it's done and dusted now. The budget has huge legitimacy; and a valuable lesson can be learned not just about minority government, but of the responsibilities of a majority opposition as well. And with local authorities signed up to the historic concordat and all parties bar the greens signed up to an even more historic budget bill, I presume that means there'll be no more complaining about future spending lines? :-)

Battle of Harlaw

Oh well... it was always going to be a big ask for a Highland League side to eliminate SPL opposition, but I'd been keeping my fingers crossed that Inverurie Locos might do just that in the Scottish Cup against a Motherwell side that has been, well, performing indifferently of late. The weather tonight seemed to set the scene for a cup upset but alas, it wasn't to be, with Motherwell progressing by three goals to nil.

Shops in the town have been showing their support for Locos with special window displays - a welcome display of colour which lasted longer than anyone had expected thanks to the multiple postponements of the tie. The sense of pride and anticipation in the town has been palpable over the last few weeks and a joy to share in for someone like me who works there.

Even though it wasn't the result Inverurie was hoping for, well done to everyone at the club. You did the town proud.

Budget - The Aftermath

Per the post below, there's a poll in today's Sunday Times, which gives the first indications as to how the public at large might be viewing the budgetary shenanigans of last week. However, I thought it might be interesting to take a fresh look at events given the benefit of a day or two to reflect.

There's been some severe criticism of the SNP for not having the support of the Greens in the proverbial 'bag for life' before the budget vote. I've remarked elsewhere on my surprise at this,but it's maybe worth pointing out that in any negotiation, there is, by definition, more than one party involved. If it's not possible to have a deal, then it's not possible to have a deal – simple. With further detail emerging about the pressures on Patrick Harvie from his own side in this Sunday's papers, it's suddenly clear why John Swinney went out of his way to emphasise the common ground between the SNP and the Labour party during the debate.

As things stood, it required Labour abstentions to get the bill through. It wasn't enough. Harvie had his moment in the spotlight and funked it. Labour seemed intent on finding fault with initiatives like apprenticeships and town centre regeneration funding, simply because they wanted to claim a monopoly of ideas across the parliament. The Lib Dems, meanwhile, were still in a self-imposed splendid isolation over their demands for £800m of cuts.

And so, when it came to the vote, the Greens went against, having been unable to take yes for an answer. And Labour and the Lib Dems, who were certain that they could have a painless kick at the SNP by voting against the budget, thanks to the Greens suddenly found themselves where they neither expected nor particularly wanted to be - on the winning side.

That simply wasn't in the script, and for all Ian Grey's bravado in the aftermath about confidence motions, Labour and the Lib Dems found themselves experiencing a sudden and bowel-loosening acquaintance with realpolitik. No budget? No government. No government? 28 days to elect a new First Minister. Would Labour and the Lib Dems combine to elect Grey or Tavish? Not a chance. Which placed rather a lot of power in the hands of Annabel Goldie and the Tories...

Goldie excoriated Labour's tactics at FMQs. When she announced that one Labour government was damaging enough for Scotland and that we certainly didn't need two as a result of a bloodless coup, that really was check mate. Anyone daft enough to think that Grey could be installed as FM was suddenly faced with the prospect of the election they had accused the SNP of being 'arrogant' for pointing towards. And as the phones began to heat up with Labour Council leaders and trade unionists demanding to know what the hell Labour MSPs thought they were playing at by putting jobs and budget plans at risk, the bravery pills overdose wore off pretty quickly.

So, we are where we are, and a new spirit of co-operation appears to be abroad. Labour seem willing to deal on apprentices, while the Lib Dems appear to have put themselves back in the game by dropping their demand for a 2p tax cut. It's also become clear that no-one of any consequence would have criticised Harvie for taking the deal he was offered. Discretionary spending within the £33bn block is actually quite limited, so £33m would have been a remarkable achievement for a party with 2 MSPs. As it is, his principles remain pure, but the pot remains empty.

For my own view, having a unanimous vote in favour of the budget is not essential, but would be highly desirable. As the poll results below show, the public has taken a pretty clear view of who it considers to be the heroes and villains in this affair. The best face-saver for all is for everyone to back a budget which may not deliver all that they want, but which, in these 'difficult times', represents a good deal for Scotland as a whole. That way, everyone can emerge with something and we can all move on.

On a final note, there's been a lot of nonsense written about the supposed 'arrogance' of the SNP this week – frankly, since the party enters every Holyrood vote in the full knowledge that it could lose, it's always been a nonsensical and rather self-serving charge. You'll find no-one in the SNP disputing the responsibilities which come with minority government. However, now might also be a good time to recognise the responsibilities which come with opposition.

As I said after Glenrothes, sometimes a disparate opposition will be able to combine in ways which defeat the largest single minority. In truth, the opposition parties at Holyrood have always had the power to bring proceedings to a juddering halt any time they wanted. That's what happened this time, even if it did come about by dint of a Lib/Lab miscalculation and the idiosynchratic internal politics of the Greens.

Just because the government can be defeated, it doesn't mean that it should be, particularly on issues as important as a budget. The vitriol and venom directed in some quarters towards the SNP this week has not been particularly edifying – maybe this can be a watershed whereby the legitimacy of the government can be recognised, and a recognition also be made of the common ground which actually exists between the parties in the chamber, be that on the economy or even elsewhere.

Sunday Times Poll

LEADERSHIP APPROVAL RATING ON BUDGET PERFORMANCE:

Alex Salmond: +11%
Annabelle Goldie: -3%
Iain Gray: -17%
Tavish Scott: -19%
Patrick Harvie: -25%

WHO WOULD MAKE BEST FIRST MINISTER:

Alex Salmond: 35%
Iain Gray: 15%
Annabel Goldie: 11%
Tavish Scott: 5%

SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT ELECTION

Constituency vote (change on May 2007 in brackets)

SNP: 38% (+5)
Lab: 32% (--)
Con: 13% (-4)
Lib D: 12% (-4)

Regional vote:

SNP: 34% (+3)
Lab: 28% (-1)
Con: 15% (+1)
Lib D: 11% (--)
Gre: 6% (+2)
SSP: 4% (+3)
Sol: 1%

Scottish Parliament seats:
SNP: 47 (--)
Lab: 44 (-2)
Con: 18 (+1)
Lib D: 13 (-3)
Gre: 5 (+3)
SSP: 2 (+2)

WESTMINSTER ELECTION

Lab: 37% (-3)
SNP: 27 (+9))
Con: 20 (+4)
Lib D: 12 (-11)

ECONOMY

Trust most to make the right decisions in tough economic times (change from October Sunday Times YouGov poll in brackets):

Alex Salmond: 33% (+10)
Gordon Brown: 33% (-9)

In the October 2008 Sunday Times YouGov poll, Gordon Brown led Alex Salmond by 42% to 23%.

INDEPENDENCE

Support for independence (previous Sunday Times YouGov poll in October 2008 in brackets)

For: 29% (31)
Against 55% (53)

Where's Iain?

Where's Iain Gray? Isn't he supposed to be on Question Time just now??!

UPDATE: Indeed he was. From the Google cache:

Here it is...

A Big Hello

to the recent flurry of surfers from Iceland. You'll no doubt be delighted to know that this is a place where you will not be considered terrorists...


http://www.indefence.is/Home

The Budget

Hmmm… so 64-64 it was, and on a vote of the Presiding officer, the budget bill falls.

There’s still time to get a bill through in time for the next financial year, but no-one should be in any doubt that it’ll be tight. Additionally, let no-one be in any doubt that if a budget isn’t passed in time, the resulting £1.8bn squeeze on budgets will be pinned squarely on Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens. No council tax freeze, no more help for small businesses, fewer affordable homes, fewer police on the beat, a public sector pay freeze, no budget increases, no additional capital spending brought forward… I don't fancy being the politician who has to explain that.

You have to wonder why, if so much ground had been given on apprenticeships, hospital infections and town centre improvements, that Labour adopted such a dog in the manger attitude to the whole thing. Are they still so stung from the complete Horlicks they made of last year’s budget that they felt compelled to strike a tough pose this year? And the Lib Dems big huff continues, coming forward with a demand for a tax cut without offering the slightest hint where the axe should fall, with, as David Maddox pointing out over at the Steamie, Mike Rumbles selected as a negotiator only because he does theatrical, dudgeon-fuelled exits so much better than Jeremy Purvis.

Labour and the Lib Dems attitude may be disappointing, but no-one can say it's not in keeping with their post 2007 posture. However, it’s the Greens that really puzzle me. If £33m was their price, why did it take until half way through the debate for this to be made apparent? And why, when that was offered, did they still vote against what they had said they would favour? No doubt all will become clear over the next few hours as the ritual circus of self-justification begins.

I heard once about a bit of grafitto in the toilets at ACAS, which carried the sage advice that ‘everything except death is negotiable’. To that, tonight we can add ‘and Green Party irrationality’. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Nailing Some Lies

Another week, and another torrent of bilge about the ‘Soviet’ economy. Only this time, it’s not Scotland that’s getting it in the neck, but Wales, Northern Ireland and most of England. (Actually Scotland got her treatment a couple of weeks back in a feature penned by Jason Allardyce, also for the Sunday Times).

All the usual nonsense is there about identifiable spending per head and spending as a share of GDP, which I’ve rebutted to death previously - oil and gas revenues are missed out for Scotland; beneficiaries of non-identified spending are ignored; there’s no attempt to quantify the costs of delivering public services between areas; no effort is made to calculate the balance between revenue and expenditure; there's no explanation of the different levels of spending between English regions; and there’s no acknowledgment of UK borrowing. So, after you've obtained some distorted figures, you claim that your international borrowing is actually subsidy from the South of England to everywhere else. Brilliant, eh? :-)

I have my doubts about the provenance of the figures. Does anyone seriously believe that public spending is over 70% of GDP in Wales this year for instance? That it’s over 77% in Northern Ireland? Or that it’s going from 55% in Scotland now to 67% by 2012/13, despite the proposed cuts to the Scottish block? Of course not. Basically, it’s an Evening Standard leader writer’s fantasy - everywhere outside London and the South East is a basket case, and the country’s going to hell in a handcart.

Believe it or not, CEBR, the ‘economic consultancy’ behind this report, actually does work for some government departments. They also have a little bit of previous on this sort of thing, making the same elementary errors in the same reports every year. This always gives rise to the same screaming headlines about ‘crowding out’ - the rarely-observed phenomenon whereby public sector spending is alleged to stifle private sector economic activity.

It's much more complex than that, of course. However, there seems to me to be one small but symbolic way in which government could cut back its spending on wasteful, useless things which add no value to anything. I’ll give you a clue - it involves not giving government money to 'economists' who seem more interested in political rabble rousing than in learning to distinguish apex from fundament.

Iceland Helps Keep UK Pensioners Warm

Incredible, but true. From the National Pensioners Convention website:

Icelanders offer help to UK's fuel poor pensioners -

Icelandic Wool to England Project

A container filled with jumpers, socks and blankets - destined for Britain's fuel poor pensioners - will arrive at Grimsby on 26 January, following an appeal from listeners to a popular morning radio programme in Iceland, called Bitid.

The charitable appeal - called 'Icelandic Wool to England' (Islensk Ull til Englands) - started after the programme's hosts, Heimir Karlsson and Kolbrun Bjornsdottir, covered a story featuring Britain's National Pensioners Convention (NPC), and their warning that up to 1 in 12 pensioners may die this winter due to the drop in temperature.

Mr Karlsson interviewed an Icelander, Njall Hardarson, now living in Manchester, who explained the problems faced by many older people in Britain. The response from listeners prompted the idea of collecting garments made from unique Icelandic wool and shipping them to pensioners who are struggling to pay their fuel bills and keep warm in the current cold spell. A large freight company, Samskip, offered to ship the garments over and other businesses offered bags and boxes for packing.

The Icelandic organisers hope to formally hand over the garments at the end of next week to a charity of welfare organisation in the city of Hull (twinned with Reykjavik) to distribute to local pensioners.

NPC spokesperson, Neil Duncan-Jordan said: "This is a fantastic and generous act of compassion from the people of Iceland, particularly at a time when their own economic situation is extremely difficult. But it is also a shocking indictment of the UK government's complete inability to properly tackle the problem of winter deaths amongst older people.”

“In the last decade we have lost 260,000 pensioners during the winter months and the response from Whitehall has been a deafening silence. We hope this act of kindness will shame the government into raising the state pension and the winter fuel allowance so that pensioners have the confidence to turn on the heating when they need it without the fear of what it might cost."

Icelandic broadcaster, Heimir Karlsson, who helped organise the appeal said: "When we broadcast the story that UK pensioners were dying from the cold, our listeners could not believe their own ears. We decided to give the Icelandic nation four days to fill a 20ft container of pure Icelandic wool for the pensioners in Britain. Families, some from far away, came one after another with garments to fill the container. Some of the sweaters were brand new. One 9 year old girl gathered 37 beautiful sweaters and delivered it to us at the radio station."

"I am sure I speak on behalf of every living soul in Iceland when I say that we looked at it with an utter dismay and total disbelief, how badly the government of the United Kingdom treats its old people. The elderly deserve to live their last years enjoying the best of care. They deserve to live in warm housing, free from worries over cold and rising gas bills. The Icelandic people heard about how terribly the UK government treats the pensioners, and could not just do nothing about it!"

NOTE TO EDITORS

• The Icelandic radio station which broadcasts the Bitid programme is called Bylgjan
• The container will arrive on 26 January at the port at Immingham, Grimsby, Lincs

FUEL POVERTY FACTS

• 25,300 older people in England and Wales died of cold related illnesses between December 2007 and March 2008. This represents a seven per cent increase on last year’s figure of 23,740.
• Nearly 90 per cent of all excess winter deaths are of people over the age of 65.
• Almost one in three older people live in homes with inadequate heating or insulation making their homes more difficult to heat and/or keep warm.
• One in three pensioner households are classed as living in fuel poverty.
• Average annual energy bills now exceed £1,000. This will absorb 16 per cent of the income of a single pensioner dependent on the pension credit minimum guarantee and the current £250 Winter Fuel Payment.
• When the winter fuel allowance was first introduced, it covered about a third of the average energy bill. Now it covers less than a fifth.

See also here and here.

Portmantory?

In the 1950’s, the wags at The Economist parodied the socio-economic consensus epitomised by the policies of Hugh Gaitskill and Rab Butler as ‘Butskellism’.

With the return of Ken Clarke to front bench duties for the Tories, does that mean that together with Gordon Brown, we once more have ‘Clown’?

(With apologies to Dr I G C Hutchison, who enlivened one of my 9am History lectures about 14 years ago with that gag – Clarke was then Chancellor with Brown his Shadow).

The Man From Illinois

Point Of Order...

At FMQs today, Ian Grey made reference to the 7.5m apprenticeships which apparently exist south of the border.

In fact, there’s to be 250,000 apprentices in England – some 30 times fewer than those claimed by Mr Grey. Additionally, figures published by the UK Government in December 2008 show that the number of those over the age of 16 and in training schemes south of the border comes to fewer than 5 million.

Oh dear. It seems to me that this is a clear-cut case of Parliament being misled. Maybe someone should tell the Presiding Officer... Jackie? Rhona? Tavish?

Got My Mojo Shirking

I can't quite put my finger on any particular reason why, but I've been finding it difficult to motivate myself to blog much of late. Obviously, there's been the holidays and after a year best described as frenetic, the prospect of having a few days over Christmas and New Year having as much as possible to do with family and friends and as little to do with politics as possible, was a very welcome one indeed.

Not even a new laptop was enough to inspire the creative juices to flow. The bottom feeders of the newspaper comments sections elicited little more than a weary shake of the head, although a letter to the Scotsman did almost get me going at one point – for which take a bow Alexander Mackay of Edinburgh.

It's probably fair to describe Mr Mackay as falling into the category of being persistent rather than persuasive or pertinent in his correspondence to the press. In this particular instance, he made the wonderous argument that since the UK was in recession, the Irish economy would suffer too. As Ireland and Scotland were both small countries, independence would therefore be bad for Scotland.

I must admit, it was the first time I'd ever heard a unionist cite British weakness as an argument for continued union. However, the urge to dig out GDP figures and data on trade flows between Ireland and the UK since the 1970's to squish his argument soon passed, since it would have been a bit like dispatching a midge with a bazooka. Instead, it was filed under the category of more bother than it was worth, and I opted to reach for the Quality Street instead.

Still, the prize for idiocy over the festive period must go to Ian Davidson MP, who tried to claim that as far as most people were concerned, Titian was an Italian footballer. Typical inverted Labour snobbery that somehow, 'it's no for the likes of us'. Well, I was lucky enough at my very unpretentious state primary school to be taken on a series of trips to Edinburgh's galleries to see these paintings. The idea that these paintings should sit on the walls of a city traders country pile rather than be available for all to view hardly seems like the essence of socialism to me. Still, it sums up a certain Scottish mindset very well – keep your head down, don't admire anything or any one, never raise your sights and be grateful for what is bestowed upon you by those who know better. Scottish municipal Labourism in a nutshell.

Elsewhere, the Lib Dems continued to bemuse. In Scotland, they want a 6p cut in the basic rate of income tax (2p at Holyrood and 4p at Westminster). If such a cut would be a good thing, I don't know why they don't argue for a 3p cut in Scotland in the first instance, rebalancing matters if they were ever to get their way at Westminster. However, at the same time as calling for these cuts, they refuse to say where the axe should fall. In addition, the party in the North East keeps calling for additional public spending, again without explaining where the money is to come from.

Mike Rumbles' reported theatrical storming out of a pre-budget meeting with John Swinney really does seem to put the tin lid on things. It's pretty clear they didn't want a coalition with the SNP in May 2007, but now, it seems they don't even want to exert any influence over the budget process. Did someone mention the politics of 'grudge and grievance' there? Having hitched their wagon to Calman, it'll be fascinating to see how they cope with being shepherded into the minimalist outcomes which it seems most likely to report.

Then we have the Forth Road Bridge. It was disappointing to see the Treasury appear to rule out the prospect of allowing the Scottish Government to stage the repayments for the replacement bridge over an extended period out of capital allocations which we know will take place in future. With PPP/PFI coming on balance sheet, there is now no advantage to this method of procurement. It'll be interesting to see what stance the Treasury takes in the talks it has offered with the Scottish Government – will provision for long-term borrowing be made, will there be an element of reprofiling, albeit over a timescale shorter than that proposed by the SNP, or will the obstacles to bond issues by the Scottish Government be removed?

I can see a few potential options which might satisfy both Whitehall and St Andrews House, but time, as they say, will tell. However, it's been thoroughly depressing to hear the same old records being played about 'picking fights'. It seems that there's a preferred narrative out there but that regardless of the facts or how ridiculous the accusation is – think Lockerbie, the Glasgow Airport attacks, Council Tax benefit, gaining access to Climate Change Levy funds – some unionist commentators and politicians will do their damnedest to try and crowbar the facts to fit the charge.

Anyway, it's not all been ennui and head shaking. I've also been getting my head down to scribe a book chapter on models of civic nationalism. I'm pleased to report that the (extended) deadline was met – now it's a bit like waiting for the exam marks to be up outside the departmental office. As for this evening, I'm away to an end of festive season party at the home of my election agent. 'Bring your fiddle and a bottle', was the instruction. Given my pre-Christmas drink drive message to the good people of Gordon, I'd better add a sleeping bag to that as well!

New Year at Laggan

A happy and prosperous 2009 to one and all from a frozen Laggan...

A New Toy

Negligent fellow, that Santa. For a couple of weeks now I've been scouting around for a new laptop. Christmas has come and gone, yet despite food being left out for reindeer and mince pies left in the hearth, there was no joy.

I guess he's got sloppy without any competition, or maybe that 'Spitting Image' video below was a wee bit close to the bone for him. Either way, in time-honoured fashion, to get something done properly I had to do it myself. And so it was that I could be seen emerging from one of Princes Street's myriad consumer electronics emporia late this afternoon as the proud owner of a dinky little Samsung netbook.

First of all, let me blow a resounding raspberry at PC World, who are still selling this particular model at the same price in their sale as they were before, despite most retailers having cut almost £20 off the price overnight. These computers can also be obtained free if you take out a 3G mobile broadband contract at the same time. A fantastic deal for someone, which left me cursing the fact that I already have such a long-term contract in place. See being an early adopter? Harumph....

There's actually not a lot that's wrong with my old IBM laptop. I've had it for about 3 and a half years now and it's still going pretty well. Unlike flashier contemporaries, it never claimed to 'do' multimedia (it's a laptop, for crying out loud – your 'multimedia experience' is going to be through a set of headphones on a train). Instead, it came built like a tank and eschewed all but the most essential features, which is probably why IBM and now Lenovo laptops remain so popular with corporate IT departments worldwide.

Kitted out in angular, Kevlar-like black plastic in a design which never changes from year to year, they just seem to say, in the most understated way possible, that serious people doing serious work don't mess about. Now, I've got a spreadsheet to update - what was it that you were trying to get your flabby and tarnished lump of overpriced, gaudilly-coloured plastic to do again?

Anyway, thanks to the costs of replacing a dud battery holding less than 10 minutes charge (nearly £100 by the looks of things), the IBM laptop has been relegated to home duties only, where it will stay plugged into a big monitor, a full sized keyboard and, of course, the mains electricity supply. Instead, that £100 has been put towards the new netbook, which at just over 1kg and with a screen size of 10”, is a considerably smaller beast, even though it is every bit as powerful.

What tipped the balance for me was the growing realisation that despite being a portable computer, the IBM wasn't, well, very portable. Combined with the bag and the power supply, it was adding about 5kg to my luggage every time I went somewhere (that was enough for Easyjet to sting me for £25 in excess baggage once!). Humphing it around airports and railway stations when combined with a case on wheels took some doing. My mobile phone can deal with most things valiantly, but sometimes, it's a computer you need and nothing else will do. In the end, the idea of having something smaller and lighter for those occasions when I was out on the road began to take on an obvious appeal.

So, I've now got a remarkably well-spec'ed little machine, with enough USB ports to keep me going, a network port (a seriously underrated feature), a surprisingly good keyboard, a lightweight power-pack (v. important), no annoying sticky-out bits when you want to use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and best of all, a battery which lasts for about 6 hours on a full charge.

There's no fancy speakers or DVD drive to weigh it down (when did you last use yours, anyway?), and while the screen is much smaller than what I'm used to, it's perfectly adequate for everything I'm likely to ever want to do on it. I've also managed to avoid the deadweight that is Microsoft Vista, getting one which runs the perfectly adequate (for a laptop) XP. Thanks to the wealth of free software there is out there, like Firefox and the superb OpenOffice suite, there isn't another piece of expensive Microsoft software on it. Cha-ching!

After all, what is it that most of us want a laptop for? If it's to download movies or do some serious filesharing (legally, of course), then you'd be better off with something else entirely. If it's to pose at your local Starbucks, then you've probably already bought a Mac or a Sony Vaio. If, on the other hand, you're like me and only want to surf the web, check your emails and do some simple word processing or number-crunching when you're out and about, then you can jettison most of the features. Just give me a good battery, a fast processor, a decent keyboard, ease of connection to the outside world and I'll be perfectly happy with that.

It's amazing what can be achieved when manufacturers stop trying to get laptops to be desktops, and just concentrate on the basic functionality which people need when they're on the move. My traveling, like my bank account, just got a little bit lighter.

It Was Christmas Eve, Babe...

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a goodnight.

The Christmas Spirit

Something festive to get us all in the mood...

A Free Ride

What a great idea. Will it ever catch on here?

December 19, 2008

While you celebrate the season, if you find you've had too much to drink, the Chandler Law Group is once again helping to ensure people make it home safely.

Starting Friday, they'll be offering a safe ride home to anyone in Charlottesville.

All you have to do is call Yellow Cab at 424-295-4131 for a free ride home within a ten-mile radius of Charlottesville.

The Safe Ride Home program runs until New Years Day.

Doing It Deliberately...

From the BBC:

An estimated 95,000 people have been overpaid a total of £126m over 30 years as a result of errors in public sector pensions, the Cabinet Office has said.

Retired civil servants, health service workers, teachers, judicial workers and armed services personnel were given too much money.

The government said the money need not be repaid, as this would not be cost-effective, but many face pension cuts.

Oops...

It's worth pointing out that as things stand, the UK Government is planning to adjust pensions to remove the effect of these overpayments from future calculations - something which could see peoples' pensions reduced and monies clawed back. In contrast, the Scottish Government is guaranteeing not to reduce anyone's pension which has been overpayed in this instance, and will instead apply future increases correctly to existing payments.

Unfortunately, the UK Government has responsibility for the pension schemes for teachers and those in the NHS, so many will find their payments reduced alongside those in the armed forces and civil service. However, those in the Scottish local government, fire and police service schemes will be able to keep these small historic overpayments.

As someone who used to ply his trade in the pensions industry, I have to say that in my opinion, the approach of the Scottish Government is the only fair one here. In contrast, the approach of the Labour Government in Westminster is both miserly and crass. Proposing to cut back veterans pensions at Christmas time? Good grief...

Frankly, as long as people's expectations were reasonable at the time and if the error is as long-standing as this one seems to be, it'd be better just to write it off. Especially given 1) the small amount of money involved (we're talking about the future indexed effects arising from a £124m overpayment made over a 30 year period - i.e. chickenfeed) and 2) Westminster fiascos like this one here.

Nonetheless, I daresay it still won't stop the inevitable incoherent ululations of distress about the supposed unfairness of Scotland doing its own thing here where it is able to do so. Who'll be the first rabid anti-SNPer to go off on one about this, do we think?

"But Flash! We've Only Got 14 Hours to Save The Earth!"

There you have it. Of all the phrases to stumble over at PMQ's, Gordon Brown managed it when trying to say "We not only saved the world..... [Hon members: Uprorious laughter] We not only saved the world's banking system..."

Sometimes, those Parliamentary sketches just write themselves!

UPDATE: Via Guido, here's someone else's grab of events from YouTube:
UPDATE 2: An interview with the German Finance Minister, Peer Steinbrück, in Newsweek. Explosive stuff...

Constitution Unit Takes Calman To Task

From the Press Association...

DEVOLUTION FINDINGS 'MAY BE TOO RESTRICTIVE'

SCOTLAND Devolution
03 Dec 2008 - 13:37
By Katrine Bussey, Deputy Political Editor, Press Association Scotland
(ScotFile:News special)

A think-tank warned today that the final conclusions of a high-profile body set up to examine devolution "may be too restrictive".

The Calman Commission, which was tasked with looking at all aspects of constitutional reform short of independence, published its first report yesterday.

But today a university-based think-tank raised concerns about the commission's eventual findings.

Members of the Constitution Unit, an independent research centre based at University College London, argued that because the Calman Commission incorporated a wide range of views, it may end up only reaching conclusions on those issues where there was a consensus.

It said as a result of that there was a danger that the commission's work "may lead to lowest common denominator solutions".

And the unit warned: "Such solutions are unlikely to provide a compelling way forward for devolution in Scotland, or across the UK."

Because the SNP are not involved in the Calman Commission, the unit said yesterday's report "only represents half the debate".

And it added that the commission and the Scottish Government's National Conversation "needed to engage with each other to ensure that issues of great importance of Scotland and the UK as a whole are debated in a more comprehensive way".

The unit claimed the Calman Commission was "only looking at part of the picture from a unionist point of view".

It stated the composition of the commission was "entirely Scottish" and said it had "looked at devolution chiefly from the position of Scottish-UK relations, with some attention paid to English concerns".

And as a result the unit said Calman was "not a thorough consideration of the implications for England of devolution to Scotland, or questions relating to Wales, or of broader issues for the UK as a whole".

In its report yesterday the Calman Commission ruled out full financial autonomy for Scotland.

But it identified broadcasting, energy policy, animal health, firearms and misuse of drugs among a range of areas which could see further powers given to Holyrood, in an interim report out today.

Tak a donner doon ma' steamie

Reciprocating a link here to an interesting new blog from The Scotsman/SoS/the Edinburgh Evening News. 'The Steamie' combines the politics journalists from the Scotsman stable and includes such luminaries as Kenny Farquarson, George Kerevan, Hamish McDonnell and the only person of my acquiantance to have met Saddam Hussein, Gerri Peev.



The Herald blogs have been one of the brighter points of that particular title's online presence, while Brian Taylor's writings are, without exception, a delight to read. For that reason, The Steamie has a fair bit to live up to in terms of meeting the standards set by others. Having stuck with the Scotsman through thick and thin (v-e-r-y thin indeed when Brillopad was at the helm), I wish it well.

Nyahh! Yez Widny Get Intae Europe!

...is a charge often levied about potential independent Scottish membership of the EU, as is the 'argument' that Scotland somehow wouldn't be capable of Eurozone membership on budgetary grounds.

Nonsense, both. However, my eye is drawn to the section of last week's pre budget report (page 27, table 2.3 as it happens). Here, you can learn that projected UK government borrowing will peak at over 8% of GDP in 2009/10. And there's every prospect it could be higher than that.

Normally, to get these kinds of figures, you have to treat an independent Scotland as being saddled to UK spending commitments and leave out the oil. These UK figures, remember, include 100% of North Sea revenues. Leave them out, as is traditionally the case when calculating the supposed Scottish 'borrowing requirement' so beloved of unionist barrack-room economists, and there isn't a single year from 2003 onwards where the UK would have operated within the 3% deficit limit (see right hand column - positive numbers indicate a deficit).



Of course, allowances can always be made and I've no doubt that just as an independent Scotland would find a path smoothed for her in terms of EU membership, so too would the UK in terms of Eurozone membership. However, as the pound slides towards parity with the Euro, and even with 'the people who matter' apparently in support, the possibility still has to be acknowledged that the UK might not be allowed to join the Euro even if it wanted to.

Fun and games. Anyway, to end on a positive note, with all this government debt, it might be time to buy shares in companies which make scientific calculators. My bog-standard desk one has already run out of zeros trying to keep track.