Scottish Political News

http://www.sundayherald.com/51832

You've probably seen this already, but Labour's appalling Cathcart by-election campaign continues in its comedic vane. For those of you who don't want to click on the hyperlink I have summarised Comrade Gordon's pronouncements below:

On former sports and cultyur minister Frank "Do you deliver pie suppers to Easterhouse?" McAveety:
“Frank’s got the attention span of a goldfish. I’d be sitting here saying ‘Frank, there’s a complicated point about the capital programme that I need to explain to you’ … and he’d be strumming away on his guitar...He's just a daft boy who nobody rated when he was leader of Glasgow City Council”

On education minister Peter Peacock:
“We were all angry at Peacock being a minister because the ink wasn’t dry on his Labour party membership card and, as we suspected, Peacock was coming [in] with the need to square the balance with the rural authorities.”

On the introduction of Proportional Representation for Local Government Elections:
“What he (McConnell) has done is not going down well with the big figures in Westminster. I’d ask: ‘What do John Reid and Gordon Brown think of this?’ What I’m hearing is that they’re not best pleased.”

On Labour's treatment of Pat Lally:
"Disgraceful"

On McConnell's revue of local authority funding:
“As [Cosla President] Pat Watters rightly points out – wee Jack is contradicting himself. When Jack was finance minister, we said we want an independent review of local government finance, and now suddenly, out the blue, he’s announced one.”

On the coalition:
"Labour should have opted for minority governmen...this coalition politics can lead to paralysis or to pork-barrel politics [spending in return for political support]”

And you all thought Mike Watson was a thug. In a number of ways I hope he gets elected; I like a good disaster movie.

http://www.sundayherald.com/51832

You’ve probably seen this already, but Labour’s appalling Cathcart by-election campaign continues in its comedic vane. For those of you who don’t want to click on the hyperlink I have summarised Comrade Gordon’s pronouncements below:

On former sports and cultyur minister Frank “Do you deliver pie suppers to Easterhouse?” McAveety:
“Frank’s got the attention span of a goldfish. I’d be sitting here saying ‘Frank, there’s a complicated point about the capital programme that I need to explain to you’ … and he’d be strumming away on his guitar…He’s just a daft boy who nobody rated when he was leader of Glasgow City Council”

On education minister Peter Peacock:
“We were all angry at Peacock being a minister because the ink wasn’t dry on his Labour party membership card and, as we suspected, Peacock was coming [in] with the need to square the balance with the rural authorities.”

On the introduction of Proportional Representation for Local Government Elections:
“What he (McConnell) has done is not going down well with the big figures in Westminster. I’d ask: ‘What do John Reid and Gordon Brown think of this?’ What I’m hearing is that they’re not best pleased.”

On Labour’s treatment of Pat Lally:
“Disgraceful”

On McConnell’s revue of local authority funding:
“As [Cosla President] Pat Watters rightly points out – wee Jack is contradicting himself. When Jack was finance minister, we said we want an independent review of local government finance, and now suddenly, out the blue, he’s announced one.”

On the coalition:
“Labour should have opted for minority governmen…this coalition politics can lead to paralysis or to pork-barrel politics [spending in return for political support]”

And you all thought Mike Watson was a thug. In a number of ways I hope he gets elected; I like a good disaster movie.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4247244.stm

First of all, let me say that I don't understand, like, watch or have any intention to learn about cricket. As far as I can ascertain, not many countries play it in any great numbers and the Ashes are only ever contested by England and Australia, and fairly regularly at that. The reaction to their victory seems, at first glance to be a little over the top. Does it merit huge coverage on the broadcast networks? Obviously not, but as most news channels are now concerned primarily with diversionary trivia on account of its cheapness and lack of controversy it doesn't surprise me.

However, cricket is obviously very popular in England, and they own the airwaves above Scotland. What seems from an uninformed distance to have been a minor contest in comparison to say, winning the rugby World Cup obviously reasonates enormously with English people. It matters to them, and it's only fair that is reflected in their media. Therefore, the BBC's coverage seems appropriate for its true target audience, ie, England.

There are enormous disparities between what Scots pay for with regard to broadcasting and the representation they receive in return. I have already covered this "broadcasting gap" in an earlier post - one which still holds my record for comments received. The case to have broadcasting devolved is, in my opinion, unanswerable. The time to make that case is not right now.

Scottish Brit Nats don't need much of an excuse to take an SNP point, twist it and use it to beat the party with - so why did Christine Grahame - herself born in England - do it? She must have known how it would have played. Far better to have compiled a report on more obvious irrelevancies in the broadcasting gap, such as the lengthy reports we in Scotland have to endure on health, education and law and order, all of them devolved issues. A few weeks back Tony Blair and Jack McConnell visited Easterhouse where Blair was forcibly berated by a female resident on local crime rates, completely oblivious to the fact that her true target stood, head-bowed a few feet to his left. With no strong news being broadcast from Scotland no wonder people are confused.

There is as I said an unanswerable argument to be made for splitting the BBC into four separate national broadcasters. Making the case when England is on a collective sporting high just makes the root of that case a pointlessly easy target.

PS - I'm fully aware that the Scottish national cricket team has qualified for the next World Cup. Good luck to them; I'm still not interested in watching them.

Anyone who has been reading the Scottish newspapers in recent days cannot fail to have noticed the headlines about Scotland's Oil. According to a report written in 1975 by a government economist R G L McCrone and released to Kenny MacAskill MSP of the SNP under the Freedom of Information Act, far from struggling financially under Independence and having a fiscal deficit, Scotland "would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner. Just as deposed monarchs and African leaders have in the past used the Swiss franc as a haven of security, so now would the Scottish pound be seen as a good hedge against inflation and devaluation and the Scottish banks could expect to find themselves inundated with a speculative inflow of foreign funds."

The significance of the existence of this report and the timeframe surrounding it is that it was written at a time when the SNP was dramatically on the up, riding the success of the "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign. It shows the government of the day running scared of constitutional change but most of all, it shows that the Labour and Conservative parties have consistently lied to the Scottish people for a generation. They have denied Scotland had the ability to stand on her own two feet economically. The release of this report has put the lie to everything they have said against independence for the last thirty years or so.

Some telling quotes from the paper:

"Even after its discovery the full significance of North Sea oil...still remains in large measure disguised from the Scottish public..."

"Thus, all that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low; there is a prospect of Government oil revenues in 1980 which could greatly exceed the present Government revenue in Scotland from all sources and could even be comparable in size to the whole of the Scottish national income in 1970."

"North Sea oil could have far-reaching consequences for Scottish membership
of EEC because of the tremendously increased political power it would confer.
As the major producer of oil in Western Europe, however, Scotland would be in a key
position and other countries would be extremely foolish if they did not seek to
do all they could to accommodate Scottish interests."

"This paper has shown that the advent of North Sea oil has completely
overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish
nationalism. An independent Scotland could now expect to have massive
surpluses both on its budget and on its balance of payments and with the
proper husbanding of resources this situation could last for a very long time
into the future."

To those involved in the campaign for Scottish Independence it has come as no surprise whatsoever to have their long held suspicions confirmed in writing.

Gordon Wilson who led the "It's Scotland's Oil" campaign in the late 1970s wrote a letter to the Herald newspaper on this subject. He wrote: "What is now clear is the extent to which Scottish Labour condemned two generations of the poor and current pensioners in Scotland to life on the margins by their complicity in the oil cover-up when the party sided with England rather than Scotland. That is a betrayal without comparison and ought to be punished at the polls."

It's hard to disagree with those sentiments and Labour should be looking at the forthcoming by-elections and Scottish Parliament elections with some trepidation.

That's not really a very good title, but it implies, hopefully, that I'm going to London for a conference this weekend. I don't know quite how much I'll actually get to see (transport difficulties) but it should be a minor amount of fun, especially as I'm determined to wear my new tshirt on the last day, NOBODY KNOWS I'M A LESBIAN.
Moreover I am very happy because I've finally finished a short story which has been niggling away at me for three years and am getting on well with my book, so have wasted a cheery hour googling my own name. I am not mentioned anywhere on the interweb, which is simultaneously relieving and disappointing, and all my namesakes seem to be Australians and/or golfers.
Soon you'll know if I've died or not. Meanwhile, let me leave youse with this final thought:
Walk, don't run.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/46818.shtml

My apologies in advance, for this post will take a very similar line to the one which immediately precedes it. The article linked to above finally kills any pathetic unionist argument about the economic benefits of the Union. Anyone who commanded at least two of the five senses worked that out years ago. What it also finally kills though, is any lingering belief that the Labour party has ever had Scotland's best interests at heart.

The reaction of British Nationalists from the Labour party was swift and predictable. Alistair Darling, current Secretary of State for Scotland (yes, that job is still taken...) failed to defend his party's lies, disinformation and obfuscation and did what Labour always do - he launched an attack on the SNP for bringing the report to light. Newsnight Scotland resurrected the utterly odious Brian Wilson from his crypt, whose main argument for his party's wholesaling of Scotland's wealth was that independence was "a selfish argument". That is, benefiting England's GDP by a percentage point was preferable to transforming Scotland into Europe's wealthiest country.

Of course, in the time since the great Unionist deception, Scotland has harvested Europe's largest prison population, a mass deindustrialisation, the lowest life expectancy of any European country, a highly-educated but woefully under-used workforce, almost one-third of our population living in poverty, infant mortality rates on a par with Russia, a nationwide cringe in place of self confidence and a bleeding of our corporate base. If expressing a desire to reverse all of that is symptomatic of selfishness then sign me up.

There exists in Scotland a culture of Unionism, British Nationalism, call it what you will, amongst a proportion of our political and media class which seeks to tug the forelock and kowtow to a southern master. They will lie, deceive and deny in order to pursue acceptance or acknowledgement from those masters. They will agree to wage illegal wars and host vast nuclear arsenals on their constituents' doorstep. They are devoid of principle, morality or responsibility for those they purport to represent. And yes, I am angry.

According to Sky News [link] there was an Al Qaeda plot to assassinate Tony Blair and his wife in public during Queen's the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002. The allegation is made in the memoirs of Sir John Stevens, recently retired chief of the Metropolitan Police.

The timing of these allegations is very apt for a government facing opposition to proposals to crack down on our civil liberties on the pretext of greater "homeland security". It is no secret of course that the gentleman making these allegations about a terrorist plot was given a life peerage on the day he retired from his job at the Met. [link] It is hard to imagine papers about any supposed threat being in the public domain so there is no way to show conclusively whether this is something that was genuinely considered to be a serious threat or whether it is another false alarm designed to bolster the public image of Tony Blair. Long range weapons which can hit the UK and can be deployed within 30 minutes, anyone? Downing Street, as expected, refuse to give any comment about the allegations.

The release of this information also comes in the wake of a speech from Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, which states that civil liberties in the UK will have to be "eroded" to protect the UK citizens from terrorists. [link]

Draw your own conclusions but it is surely food for thought.

Congratulations to Scotland's much-maligned footballers on their 2-1 win over Norway last night.

Our nothern neighbours share a number of similarities to ourselves 0f course: Underpopulated, geographically disadvantaged, a large horde of North Sea oil, a liking for fish and a tendency not to feel the cold when we visit Italy or Spain in November when the locals are clad in knitwear. Norway recently celebrated 100 years of independence from her larger neighbour Sweden, the last five of which has been spent enjoying their status of being the most prosperous place on Earth. Have a read of the article linked below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4223148.stm

Done that? Good. Now think of pensioners here dreading winter. Think of children being raised in dire poverty. Think of our appalling levels of life expectancy. Think of our business' ambitions being choked under centralised indifference. Think of our inadequate infrastructure. Think of our hefty environmental footprint. Think of our brightest and best working in call centres and fabricated public sector roles. Think of our increasing levels of violent crime. Think of our culture of mediocrity amongst municipalities. Think of our small country sending thousands of young men to engage in an illegal war. Think of our enormous stash of nuclear warheads just an hour's drive from our largest city.

Think very hard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4220250.stm

So, finally, finally the Executive (no doubt with some prompting from recently-elected Deputy First Minister Nicol Stephen)have finally relented and agreed to lower business rates to keep them in line with their English counterparts. Surely the "vision thing" would decree that business' rate burden be reduced to an extent whereby firms enjoyed a competitive advantage over those from other countries? Perhaps if they raised their sights to other small European countries, they would see just how far behind we lag.

Interesting comment from the FM on nebulous plans to reduce the rate burden further for firms engaged in that amorphous, favourite Executive secor, R & D. "In doing so, we will make Scotland the most attractive place in the UK to invest in research and development,".

By extrapolating that thought, surely be presently having business rates higher than elsewhere, Scotland is presently the least attractive place in the UK to do any sort of business?

http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/46413.html

Charan Gill is exactly the sort of candidate that political parties should, on paper, be putting forward for election: Successful, intelligent and with an experience of life outside the public sector. However, he is not now, and never has been, a member of the Labour party. I don't know anything about Charan Gill's political views or what causes he hods dear. I know he once tried and failed to buy Partick Thistle. I know his story about being asked if he was a "protestant Sikh or a catholic Sikh" on his first day at work in a shipyard because I've heard him tell it at least four times. I know he sold his Ashoka chain of restaurants for £8million a few months ago. Other than that, nothing.

Alf Young recently made an unusually salient point about Tony Blair being a "freelance politician", that is, a man of no particular ideological affiliation. Power first, policies later. Charan Gill will fit right in.

German utilities giant EOn has appointed an investment bank to advise on a takeover bid for Scottish Power. This hostile, wholly uninvited bid will succeed. The third largest company in Scotland, the largest industrial firm in the country will have all corporate power transferred to Dusseldorf, all UK-level decision making will be sent to Coventry.

If past German takeovers are anything to judge by, this will prove to be an unmitigated disaster. Witness BMW's expensive destruction of Rover, or Daimler-Benz's feat in transforming Chrysler from being a fast-growing, innovative company with international ambitions into a laggardly tertiary US-only operator.

Brian Wilson, former UK Energy Minister says "I would prefer to see a strong Scottish power company, but you can't write the rules.".

Consensus in The Herald this morning suggested that as Scottish companies (including SP) have made foreign acquisitions, then it was 'open season'. Which would be fine, if it were really true.

What if Scottish Power were to take over E.ON? Would that be 'open season'? Would the same set of 'rules' apply? Don't be so bloody stupid. In 2000 Vodafone became the first foreign company to successfully engineer a hostile takeover of a German firm when they acquired Mannesmann. It took them a year, as well as frequent trips to German courts to confirm that they actually could, legally buy their target.

Vodafone were the last foreign company to do this. In 2000, the Schroeder executive (with the complicity of the Greens) abolished the German equivalent of capital gains tax on profits made from sales of shares, thus allowing banks, pension funds and insurance companies to flourish. Germany's economy may be weighted down by its ridiculously generous social security system, but corporate Germany is bubbling along rather nicely in spite of this. In that time the Euro was launched, and spent the first couple of years in a valuation trough, leaving German firms open to foreign predators. None were taken over against their will. At the same time, laws were passed in Germany, which allowed companies to implement defensive strategies for a period of 18 months if faced with a hostile takeover. In short, they hope that predators will simply become bored and frustrated by their depressed share price and move on. They do.

In Italy the central bank recently blocked takeovers of banks by French and Spanish rivals. In France, at the merest whisper of a PepsiCo bid for Danone, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We must display economic patriotism, especially for our strategically important companies.". All of the examples above are firmly obstructive at best, to utterly illegal at worse, in the face of EU takeover and competition law.

The UK barely raises an eyebrow when large companies fall into foreign hands, and in an ideal world it wouldn't bother me if Scottish Power were to go German. However, as I detailed in this blog back in June, for UK read London. Owing to successive centralizing governments, a majority of the UK's capital is based in one city. London is such a leviathan in business that it can easily shrug off the loss of a few large corporate HQs and fail to notice. The rest of the UK, especially Scotland with its shrinking excuse for a corporate sector, is not well served by this. The loss of a £10billion company, the largest in Glasgow (and by quite some margin) could have a devastating effect upon the city, and Scotland as a whole.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand I am loathe to offer examples of parochialism by other EU states as something worth following. France offers no better an economic role model than non-London UK. However, Scotland is in a bad way economically right now, and is losing HQs hand over fist (Newall and Budge, Scottish Radio, Belhaven and now Scottish Power in what is merely a few weeks) and help is needed.

There is a precedent for this - in the 1980s, the Royal Bank of Scotland was a small regional bank, worth about £200m when it was subject to takeover bids from both the Midland bank and Standard Chartered. On both occasions the Monopolies and Mergers' Commission blocked the deals, despite the Royal's then willingness, and despite offering no real threat to competition. The reason? The Tory government of the time said "it is important to a nation's future prosperity that it's major companies capital ownership remains in that nation, especially in a country such as Scotland which is presently suffering economically...future prosperity is dependent upon local corporate action, and would be ill-served by a remoteness of decision making.". The Royal Bank, itself no stranger to foreign growth (almost uniquely successfully so in a Scottish context), is now the 2nd-most profitable bank on Earth, and has seen its market cap grow by a factor of 250 in 23 years. Who knows where Scottish Power could be in 23 years' time? Given Scotland's abundance of options in the field of alternative power sources, will this takeover be seen as us selling part of our natural resources for next to nothing?

Right now we have the worst of all worlds: an economic policy formed with London in mind, coupled with ridiculously high fiscal business burdens (no tax-free share sales for us), and the utter lack of fiscal responsibility which accompanies the social workers' manifesto that is the Barnett formula. Nicola Sturgeon is thus far the only politician to impress the importance of Scottish Power's continued independence. It would be nice to see her joined by someone from the media or another party. By trying it once, they might get themselves some guts.

Frank Popp - designer, band leader, darling of the Düsseldorf media scene and all-round clever dude - purveys the kind of music that is guaranteed to get any party going. Displaying a liking for 60’s soul and funk that quite honestly is baffling coming from any German, even a DJ as talented as this.

Ride on with the Frank Popp Ensemble

(0% native)
In Mr. Popp’s own words - 50,000 watts of funkin’. Standout tracks : ‘Breakaway’, ‘Hip Teens Don’t Wear Blue Jeans’ (check out the scream during the intro…brilliant), ‘Robbie, Tobbie & Das Fliewatüüt’.

Yet again however, I’ve missed the boat by a long way - my copy of the CD informs me that Mr. Popp plays regularly in Club Unique in Düsseldorf’s famous Altstadt (known locally as the longest bar in the world). I remember trying to get into Unique on a cold night in ‘96 but was stopped at the door by some shady dude who asked from behind the vault-like door whether I was into Hip-Hop. Being the honest type I replied in the negative and watched in horror as the mediaeval steel shutter was slammed shut in my face (I trudged off through the rain to get me a Schweine Brötchen so the night wasn’t a total loss).

If Unique is now thumping to the sorts of sounds that cross the Delfonics, the Supremes and some of the more experimental elements of Blaxploitation disco (and with Goo Goo Muck there’s even a Cramps cover!) then I can assure you I won’t be making that mistake again and if you, Dear Reader, are in Bolker Strasse anytime soon then I suggest you er, popp in and take a look. There are a couple of droning, self-indulgent tracks on ‘Ride On . . .’ like the dreary Superstick but not enough to spoil the overall juicy taste of funk.

Touch And Go

(0% native)

More of the same in Popp’s second album. Sam Leigh Brown’s vocals get better and better. Overall it’s great sounding but if I had to choose I’d put ‘Ride On . . .’ above this offering. Standout tracks ‘All I Need’, ‘Enough’, ‘Just Say Goodbye’.

Some folks might dismiss this as background music, to be played in lifts and the like. This is overly harsh. Under pressure I may concede that Mr. Popp’s music may just start to grate after a while but since when was that a reason for not getting in on a fad ahead of everyone else? Even if you decide not to get this CD there’ll still be no escape - every ad agency in the UK is going to be inflicting it upon you before long anyway.

UPDATE July 17 ‘06: Frank has signed to Universal in the UK and ‘an album’ is scheduled for a November 21 release.

UPDATE January ‘07: ‘Hip Teens . . .’ spotted being used in the first episode of Ugly Betty, the pants comedy about a girl who isn’t ugly.

it's not my fault I've not posted for many days. A lot has been going on in that my computer has decided that it won't accept the cookies of fire or what the fuck ever, and I've been busy, and having fits. So this may/will mark my return to blogging as such.

The SSP are in the news once again. BBC News reports that Rosie Kane has been arrested for non payment of a £150 fine imposed after a faslane anti-nuclear demo. Apparently she fully expects to be jailed. It seems that this is what the Scottish Socialist Party live for. Above all else, they seem to like spending time in prison. Like a one trick pony this soon gets tiring and like their antics in the Chamber which resulted in the Hep C sufferers being denied compensation it becomes boring and predictable. Rosie Kane said she was going to make the Parliament "like Big Brother". Well in this respect she has far exceeded everyone's expectations.

The Scottish Socialist Party are also in the news for dropping their threats of legal action against the Scottish Parliament over the suspension of four of their MSPs for the month of September. Mr Fox, the SSP Leader claimed this was because in order to proceed with a judiciall review, they would be required to apologise for their actions. The cynical among us may suspect it is rather the prospect of having to pay up to £100,000 in the event of losing the case.

There has been a general malaise about the SSP since Tommy Sheridan stepped aside as leader. Colin Fox often appears to be out of his depth and there are widely rumoured fallings out amongst the SSP parliamentary group. This was always likely, given the make up of the Scottish Socialist Party and the diverse and opinionated groups that gave rise to it. It would be no surprise if the SSP imploded before the next Scottish Parliament election and Tommy Sheridan stood for Respect, the party started by George Galloway MP.

http://www.holyrood.com/nav/news/stories/story.asp?story=elec188

That's the thing about people. Just when you're about to abandon all hope of ever saving them from the Sith Spin Squadron, they see straight through them. According to a MORI poll, only 24% of Scots are opposed to granting our parliament extra powers. A resounding 58% (or 71% of those who expressed an opinion) thought that it should have more powers.

Given a universally hostile print media and a staggeringly complacent and hopelessly inadequate rump of glorified Labour toon cooncillors, it should really have come as no surprise if the public had wanted to turn Miralles' building into an exhibit for the National Museum of Scotland: The Place The Dream Was Killed.

But they haven't. Unfortunately for the Brit Nat Labourites, the only thing they would appear to want to get rid of are the policies of Scottish Labour, who can't even summon a lone backbench voice to echo the calls of every other party in parliament : More responsibility, not less. Then again, millions of people took to the streets of cities across the world to demonstrate against the impending imposition of the Labour Party leader's policy on Iraq, and they didn't listen then either. Labour are a landslide defeat waiting to happen. If they continue to ignore those from their own heartland who have spent generations voting for them, they will be cast aside by the electorate - just as the Liberals were post-Lloyd George and the Tories in Scotland were post-Thatcher.

http://www.holyrood.com/nav/news/stories/story.asp?story=elec189

Mike 'Lordy' Watson has changed his plea to guilty, and has pledged to resign from Parliament. Rumours of an active boardroom battle between Scottish Bluebell and Swan Vesta for his now-available services have yet to be confirmed. So that will be another by-election. Given that the incumbent Executive has a majority of three, expect to see some desperate campaigning in Cathcart. A bunch of flowers from Asda and a 1kg box of Roses are already winging their way in Dennis Canavan's direction.