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.

A Pedant Writes

Courtesy (if that's the word) of Matt Wardman,I've just learned that an anagram of 'Scots and Independent' is 'Snide Pedant Contends'.

Heh, heh, heh. Love it :-)