Scottish Political News

It's time for my wee survey again. Here's the last one.My contention is that the UK's government is centralised way beyond what's typical in similar countries. That in turn means that most of the top private sector jobs are in the South East, not because of market forces but as an inevitable response to where big government is located. From that follows our inability to sort out transport and

It wasn’t, to be frank, the most powerful oratory I’ve heard. Indeed, I was moved on our webstream coverage to call it insipid - with the caveat that I had perhaps simply heard too many conference speeches. But still Nick...

Right, so I burnt JJ a CD this week, but I dont have any CD cases. So I just looked on the shelf for a case from an old CD. I picked up Hillbilly Rock, Hillbilly Roll by The Woolpackers. Now, I wonder if she'll guess why I had that particular CD?

*The Notwist

I may not be the train regulator, but… One of my eight wishes for 2008 was:

That the majority of my commuter trains into London are on time (December’s score: 0%).

Two months into 2008, how is Southern - my local train operating company - faring? I’ve crunched the numbers and the answer is that they’re getting better, but are short of my target.

Based on the wording of my wish, these stats are limited to journeys I’ve made into London for work, and only count the train I actually took: if I got to the station and a train due earlier than the one I was aiming for arrived late and I caught it, that counted as a late train; but if it was so busy that (rather than squeezing in) I waited for the next train and it was on time, that counted as an on time train.

On the one occasion that the train I went for was cancelled, I’ve made an exception and counted that as a particularly long delay (17 minutes; the longest delay otherwise was 9 minutes).

Here are the stats:

	January	February	Year to date
Proportion on time	37.5%	53.3%	45.2%
Average delay (mins)	2.6	1.8	2.2

So my morning train did manage to be on time the majority of the time this month, but, averaged out against January (when I caught more trains), the proportion for 2008 so far is 45%.

Not great, but only a little way to go to get over the key 50%. And what a triumph that would be.

I'm posting this from the new super-duper web browser flock. All zippy web 2.0 features enabled. Hope it works. http://www.flock.com/ Blogged with Flock

Breaking new ground in Aviemore where Scottish LibDems are conferring. New federal leader in Nick Clegg who’ll speak this afternoon. New challenge for the party in that they’re now in opposition at Holyrood. (This is their first annual conference since...

With Gail Sheridan deliberately making herself look haggard and less appealing for when she ends up in Cornton Vale it is time for RfS to find a new guilty pleasure. To qualify the lady has to simply be hot and a leftie. To be honest I was simply visiting the Socialist Unity swamp where I have been amused with heart felt love notes to Fidel interspersed with bitchy infighting between various

Don't forget your free copy of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Edinburgh folks. It's World Book Day on March 6th, with £1 books for the kids including Neil Gaiman's' Odd and the Frost Giant. And you can get Neil Gaiman's brilliant American Gods as a free ebook!

Don’t forget your free copy of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Edinburgh folks.

It’s World Book Day on March 6th, with £1 books for the kids including Neil Gaiman’s’ Odd and the Frost Giant.

And you can get Neil Gaiman’s brilliant American Gods as a free ebook!

. . .at least in income. The Office of the Scottish Charity Register has published a list of the 300 charities with the biggest income. Many of them operate beyond Scotland but Edinburgh University comes top of the Scottish ones with an annual income of £438m.

OFF THE LIST!So here I am in the Costa coffee shop in Stockbridge,sipping from a cup big enough to pee in and munching a chocolate pastry with a fancy French name. And listening to the muted tinkle of the middle classes at play.A woman opposite starts bleating into her mobile, for all the world like a schemie twat on a Princes street bus. I silence her with my scariest Leith look. She turns it

Another silly gem from that Soapbox of the North: the letter column in the Berwickshire:



Like many of your readers we received a card from John Lamont with useful contact details etc which was fine by me.
However, what I strongly object to is this card being printed in Brighton, England.
Surely this work should have been carried out by a local printer, with our money being spent to support local firms.
Perhaps John Lamont had his eye on a ‘Brighton jolly’ in order to ensure correct wording etc for the art work (lovely St Abbs Harbour view).
‘Freedom of Information Act’ - so how much did this cost John and did you pay with Scottish bank notes?
Next time make sure a local firm is asked. We have an excellent exchange rate you know and we all need to support local labour.
Let’s see if John Lamont will give a reply to this open letter and an apology for his insensitive mis-use of funds by his support of the ‘Auld Enemy’.
Who’s smiling now John. (Name supplied and shredded in error)


So why does the delightful and energetic Mr Lamont, our (Scottish) Tory MSP, have his puffs printed in Brighton. Perhaps (lets go for the simple answer: no suitable printers in Scotland-after all Brighton is First World, technically speaking. But, I hear you scream 'What about Fantasy Prints?' But Fantasy Prints is in Berwick-upon-Tweed. And Berwick is in?*

Any thoughts on the back of a Scottish Twenty Pound note to the Hutton Think Tank fao Huttonian Retirement Fund




* Enough about Berwick (Blog-ed)

All troops currently in Afghanistan and Iraq are working hard to ensure that we are free of the tyranny of Islamic Fascism and therefore demand our total respect. Prince Harry is however a special case. He recognises that his presence on the battlefield would turn him and everyone around him into targets and for that he has to be commended. This is why he deployed with the Ghurkhas into

From yesterday's Commons Hansard: John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): What a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Mr. Speaker, and to know that we have as our Speaker somebody who is simply not prepared to be pushed around, either by snobs or by bullies. ... Ms Harman: ... May I take the opportunity to associate myself with the hon. Gentleman’s remarks about you, Mr. Speaker, and to remind the

So the Trump town project will have to face a public inquiry. Of course the great man is disappointed but as his spokesman said yesterday. "It is his legacy for Scotland and he remains committed to building the world's finest golf course in one of the most stunning locations in the world." His legacy for Scotland? You just love the arrogance don't you? Will it happen? My guess is not.

It's the second blow in a week. Trump has been told to stop promoting his development with the coat of arms. Despite this it still appears on his web site. The demand was made by the Court of the Lord Lyon, which deals with Scottish heraldry, under a law passed in 1672. The same law was used to order the Harrods owner Mohammed Fayed to take down the arms of a clan chief from the gates of his Highland castle.

What is it with these nobodies trying desperately to prove their somebody?

• Trevor Phillips: Why I'm not backing Obama
• Sybase Gets Into Cluster Databases

I have considerable respect for Matt Drudge and linked to his website soon after I began this blog almost six years ago. However, I think he has committed a serious misjudgement with his decision to break the story that Prince Harry is on active service with the British army in Afghanistan. I quote below, word for word, what he writes in his flash page devoted to this earth-shattering(*) news:

You may know that for some time I have considered separating the Formula 1 content from this blog and posting it in a separate blog. I know that a lot of readers here are not very interested in Formula 1. And at times — particularly towards the end of an exciting season — this place becomes almost exclusively an F1 blog.

In the end I have decided that it would do no harm to set up a new blog. So I have gone ahead and launched it at vee8. Check out the introductory post here for a full explanation of my plans for the blog.

You won’t find me mentioning Formula 1 here very often from now on. So for the F1 fans among you, I encourage you to keep on reading here — but check out vee8 for my Formula 1 posts from now on.

Following an article highlighting the cost of delays in the planning process, The Scotsman kindly published my contribution.

Iain MacMillan, the director of CBI Scotland, warns of the expensive nature of planning delays in Scotland.

As a member of the Edinburgh Council planning committee, I find striking examples of such delay.

The new Edinburgh City Local Plan provides a framework for planning development and decisions. Having been drawn up and finalised in early 2007, the plan was put out for public consultation. The subsequent objections are to be considered by a reporter (appointed by the Scottish Government) at a public local enquiry.

The objections were referred in October 2007 and indications are that the public enquiry will begin in September 2008. A delay of almost a year is untenable in an already lengthy process.

The new Planning Etc (Scotland) Act 2006 (which mainly comes into force later this year) is designed to streamline the planning system. For the sake of us all, I very much hope it will. But I would advise Mr MacMillan not to hol
d his breath. Initial indications are that any impact on such delays will be modest.

The Scottish Government needs to address the culture which deems such delays acceptable.

(CLLR) CAMERON ROSE
City Chambers
Edinburgh

Following an article highlighting the cost of delays in the planning process, The Scotsman kindly published my contribution.

Iain MacMillan, the director of CBI Scotland, warns of the expensive nature of planning delays in Scotland.

As a member of the Edinburgh Council planning committee, I find striking examples of such delay.

The new Edinburgh City Local Plan provides a framework for planning development and decisions. Having been drawn up and finalised in early 2007, the plan was put out for public consultation. The subsequent objections are to be considered by a reporter (appointed by the Scottish Government) at a public local enquiry.

The objections were referred in October 2007 and indications are that the public enquiry will begin in September 2008. A delay of almost a year is untenable in an already lengthy process.

The new Planning Etc (Scotland) Act 2006 (which mainly comes into force later this year) is designed to streamline the planning system. For the sake of us all, I very much hope it will. But I would advise Mr MacMillan not to hold his breath. Initial indications are that any impact on such delays will be modest.

The Scottish Government needs to address the culture which deems such delays acceptable.

(CLLR) CAMERON ROSE
City Chambers
Edinburgh

The plaque in the Buffet King in Nicolson St has been stolen. It commemorated JK Rowling penning some of the chapters of the first book in the Harry Potter series in the premises. It was then Nicolson's cafe. More here.

Apart from Independence, the main issue which drove me into the tender embrace of the SNP as a student was the party's commitment to free education.

Back in 1994, when I started out as a fresh faced undergrad at Stirling at the fag-end of John Major's government, it was almost axiomatic that the Tories were the barbarians at the gates. After all, they were planning to cut the already fairly meagre student grant by 10% each year in '95, '96 and '97. What a lot of students seemed less inclined to believe, despite the best efforts of myself and many others, was that nice cuddly Tony Blair was going to scrap the student grant entirely, bringing in tuition fees for future cohorts of students.


Throughout, the NUS, led by guys like Jim Murphy, Douglas Trainer and Richard Baker, was deeply unenthusiastic when it came to defending free education. Of course, Labour party policy at the time was to make students pay for their education, no matter what their personal financial circumstances were. Of the aforementioned titanic triumvirate, one is a Labour MP, one a Labour MSP and another became a Labour Government Special Advisor. What's that you say? Rewards for services rendered? Well, now, I really wouldn't like to speculate...

Anyway, today was the day that tuition fees, in their modern guise of the 'Graduate Endowment', were finally scrapped. I have to say, having slogged my guts out for years, making the unfashionable argument that the only barrier to higher education should be academic ability (even resigning once from the National Executive of the SNP Student wing because I felt it wasn't taking a sufficiently hard line!), it feels good to have won out in the end.

Not everyone will be happy, though. Here is a brief transcript of an interview from earlier this week on Radio Scotland between the estimable Colin Mackay and the noble Baron Lord Foulkes:

LGF : “The SNP are on a very dangerous tack at the moment. What they are doing is trying to build up a situation in Scotland where the services are manifestly better than south of the Border in a number of areas.”

CM: “Is that a bad thing?”

LGF: “No. But they are doing it deliberately...”

Oh dear :-) But meanwhile, back in the real world, hopefully never again will wannabee heroes of the revolution, or at least the disciples of university Labour clubs and the NUS, take to their high horses to denounce free education with the most damning epithet they knew - that it was somehow 'middle class'. As of today, a bit of equality has been restored to help make sure that all those who are capable of learning can do so. Maybe not quite a revival of the democratic intellect, but certainly the first days of a better nation.

I’m ashamed to say that yesterday’s rooftop protest at the House of Commons almost passed me by entirely. You see, the Houses of Parliament have their own entrance to Westminster tube station, so I walked underneath the unfolding drama oblivious to the whole thing, apart from wondering briefly why on earth half a dozen policemen were standing out in the courtyard looking heavenwards.

Ordinarily, I’d be fairly sympathetic to anyone protesting against a third Heathrow runway, though not perhaps for the same reasons. In my opinion, Heathrow is a horrible, congested, poorly laid out airport to be avoided at all costs. We should be trying to stem domestic flight by investing in high speed rail. Anything which makes Heathrow even bigger than it already is, is unlikely to be either good for passengers or good for the environment.

However, what concerns me most about the protest is the likelihood of it leading to a further tightening of security at the House of Commons. This, in my view, would be a very bad thing, even if, as seems likely, it turns out that the protestors did receive a bit of help from someone on the inside.

Of necessity, Westminster has for some years been surrounded by unsightly barriers, concrete road blocks and machine gun toting policemen. Members of the public already go through airline style security checks to get into the precincts. If you wish to view the Commons from the public gallery, you'll now find yourself glassed off from proceedings lest you be overcome with the urge to throw something.

These measures might all be necessary evils, but once inside, non-passholders enjoy relatively free access to view the buildings and to meet with their representatives. Despite the need for visible high security, the various police officers, doorkeepers, security guards and support officers still manage to police the Palace with discretion and sensitivity. In my view, this is exactly as it should be.

These incidents, while dramatic when they happen, are still pretty infrequent. Yes, protestors got onto the roof, but existing security measures were such that they couldn’t do anything more drastic than unveil a couple of banners. Frankly, there’s a world of difference between sneaking in something harmless like a cloth banner and being able to take in something more sinister, where the preponderance of security officers, sniffer dogs, metal detectors and x-ray machines would have made the likelihood of being caught in the act very high indeed.

There are plenty of people who would like to use incidents like this as an excuse to curb legitimate protests and further restrict public access to Westminster. They must be rubbing their hands with glee right now. While the protesters have got some publicity for their cause that they would never have managed otherwise, the question is, at what cost to others who might want to make their voices heard in the future?

There is an amusing video on YouTube of a couple of people giving a running commentary over BBC News wondering why they haven’t mentioned the earthquake (via Media Monkey).

The people in the video make some amusing comments, although they do exhibit the worst of the victim mentality that a lot of people in this country have. An inch of snow has fallen and it is the end of the bloody world. A train is five minutes late and it is an abomination that would never have happened under British Rail. An earthquake has hit us, woe is me. Etc, etc.

Maybe the guys in the video were being ironic when they kept on shrieking, “There’s been an earthquake! Hellooo? BBC? There’s been an earthquake!” But it wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of people genuinely were enraged when the BBC didn’t cover the only interesting that has happened in their dull little lives. I have heard that Radio 5 Live has had a record number of text messages. That doesn’t surprise me, 5 Live being as it is the country’s premier forum for self-important people with anal passages in place of their mouths, wanting to phone in and describe how the world revolves around them.

Victoria Derbyshire’s programme in the morning was even worse than usual, amazingly enough. The callers I heard all said much the same thing. “My house was shaking! I thought a lorry had crashed into my house!” “I was lying in my bed and I was woken up. At first I thought it was a burglar. Little did I know that it was something even more serious!” YAWN

So parts of England got the shakes. Big deal. The stories about it on the BBC News website are a parade of mediocrity.

“The room just started shaking” Shaking?! How will you ever recover? “The quiet market town at the epicentre of the earthquake recovers”. Yeah, recovers from a few toppled chimneys!

The only casualty from the whole episode appears to be one poor man with a broken pelvis. While I certainly would not like a chimney stack to fall on top of my pelvis, it isn’t exactly September 11 in terms of casualties.

So I am not surprised that BBC News decided not to give it so much coverage. It is worth bearing in mind that after 0100 BBC News 24 ceases to be a UK service. What we get in the UK is essentially a simulcast of BBC World. As such, it reflects a global news agenda.

This is the way it should be really. UK news seldom breaks during the night, and there are few people in the UK watching at that time of night anyway. News channels are notoriously expensive to run anyway. I know certainly that Sky News makes a loss.

It would be difficult for the BBC to justify spending license payers’ money on a near-useless overnight UK service that would be watched by very few people. The BBC has a 24 hour UK news service anyway — it’s called BBC Radio 5 Live. From what I heard of their coverage, they did a pretty good job — as you would expect from the Up All Night crew.

If BBC News 24 / BBC World were to slavishly cover the earthquake like Sky News did, the majority of the BBC’s viewers scattered across the globe would have been equally indignant as the people in the UK complaining about the lack of earthquake coverage. I can just imagine people around the world uploading their commentary onto YouTube. “5 on the Richter scale? I have taken naps through that!”

People across the world look to the BBC as a source of authoritative world news. A piddly wee earthquake in Lincolnshire just doesn’t cut it. If it was an exclusively UK service like Sky News then you would indeed expect them to cover it. But it isn’t, so you wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t).

I did actually watch a bit of Sky News’s overnight earthquake coverage and it was indeed execrable. In fact, the video I have embedded above highlights the completely different approaches of the two channels and why Sky News falls flat on its face so often.

BBC News might have been late to mention the story, but notably they got it right. They did not spend longer than required on the story, and they got the important details such as the epicentre correct. Meanwhile, Sky News were showing a map with Birmingham and Manchester pinpointed. Why? We don’t know. Sky don’t care about getting it right, as long as they can convey that something is happening — NOW!

In fact, Sky News’s coverage of the earthquake highlights everything that is wrong with 24 hour news. Media Monkey highlights their typically insightful coverage:

Sky News interviewer Faye Barker: “So, what were you doing when the quake shook?” Eyewitness, or should that be earwitness, from Lincolnshire: “I was in bed.” Barker: “Oh… [Pause]. And would you say it felt more like a juggernaut or a freight train going past?” Woman: “Er… a freight train.”

Sky News is also rightly being criticised today for a truly disgusting interview conducted by the diabolical Kay Burley. She was previously famous for her measured response on September 11: “If you’re just joining us, the entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack.” This week she asked the wife of recently convicted serial killer Steve Wright the following question:

Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?

What a vile question to ask. Not surprisingly, the interviewee burst into tears upon being asked that question. Imagine having that thought running through your head — “If only I had sex with my husband a bit more, those five prostitutes wouldn’t have been murdered.”

Unity, Jennie and Mitch Benn say all that needs to be said.

If BBC News lost respect for its slow response to the earthquake, goodness knows what Sky News must have lost.