Sunday Jukebox – Fade Out? I wish they would.

I had the misfortune of listening to Alistair darling on the radio this morning talking about placing a levy on the banks in order to make ‘them’ pay.  Obviously they won’t pay, we will … again.

Anyway, I just wished the interviewer would have faded him out.

Scotland’s constitutional referendum options

Much has been made of the ‘revelation’ that Alex Salmond is willing to consider a third option on an independence referendum ballot, it was a notion mooted some time ago and no doubt being reiterated now given the Lib Dems one day (behind closed doors) conference on the singular issue of where they should stand on the issue of the referendum, to be held at the end of the month.

I guess that the SNP’s current goal then is to attempt to win support in parliament for the three option ballot – given the near impossible nature of passing a two ballot option through Holyrood.  Of course attaining agreement for three option ballot won’t exactly be a walk in the park either. 

To pass the bill the SNP need the support of the fickle Lib Dems, the arithmetic would then be:

47 (SNP) + 16 (LD) + 2 (Greens) + 1 (Margo McDonald, probably, although who knows)  = 66

to the unionists:

46 (Labour) + 16 (Conservative) = 62

In this event I imagine we’re looking at something vaguely along these sorts of lines:

Should the Scottish parliament receive additional powers?

• Yes, it should be entirely autonomous, i.e. Scotland should become independent
• Yes, it should receive additional powers as detailed … elsewhere
• No, the Scottish parliament does not require any further powers

Others, elsewhere, have pointed out that it would be virtually impossible for any option to receive decisive backing from the electorate given that the vote would likely be split, with no option achieving a 51+% share of the vote.  This really beggars the question as to what the point of the referendum would be given the wooly nature of the results.

If we must have a three (or more) option ballot on the issue of independence constitutional reform then I would argue that it must employ the single transferable vote (STV) so that any outcome is decisive and can be seen to be decisive.  STV allows the voter to rank their preferences from most prefered to least, not a system I agree with given it may disenfranchise those who suffer literacy and /or numeracy problems.

My own preference is for a two option ballot, the archetypal yes/no answer to a simple question.  It does seem unlikely though that such a ballot will occur (given parliamentary arithmetic) and as such the SNP are likely to take what they can get, surely a flawed policy given that those who support the union will use the flawed ballot to keep the issue at arms length for “at least a generation”, a quote that yet may come back to haunt Salmond and his party.

The outcome of the ballot will therefore be hailed as ‘the end of the SNP’ and ‘the end of the independence movement’, whilst proclaiming that the union has been strengthened by devolving further powers to Scotland.  It may be that the SNP has become even more gradualist than most of us would actually like, would further powers be another stepping stone?  If this is the current goal then why not endorse Calman, unless the notion is that the SNP can extract some sort of Calman+ using the first genuine poll of independence to gain some more leverage.

Of course, as much as the unionists may disagree further devolved powers may well further undermine the union by increasing the level of asymmetric devolution of power that sees different countries and regions within the UK wield different levels of power and authority over there own affairs.  Would this bolster support for the English nationalists desire for a devolved or independent English parliament - a fledgling movement to be sure, but growing.

I’ve been asking the following question recently:

What is the point of Westminster?

I’ve been asking it a lot, I’ve been asking it of people who should be able to give a clear and decisive answer, people like David Mundell MP (Shadow Scottish Secretary), I haven’t had an answer from the latter and the other answers I’ve had have been fairly wishy-washy.

So if Holyrood pulls yet more powers away from Westminster won’t it simply become even more irrelevant and is this the real goal of the SNP, to undermine Westminster by delivering it into irrelevance, irrelevant to the day-to-day lives of the Scots? 

Alex Salmond recently made a comment about hanging Westminster from a Scottish rope, a poor choice of words perhaps … but what if the rope was Scottish devolution.

Sunday Jukebox – MP’s expenses

A couple of songs that remind me of they chancers who claim to represent us …

 

Also this week we’ve been having the SNP party conference, good an excuse as any for a bit of flag waving (another great song from Alan Smart):

Will the expenses saga ever end?

The simple answer to that is ‘no’.  But then you knew that already and that’s not why your here.

The expenses scandal first broke at some point shortly after the creation of the universe, at least that’s how it feels, and if the MP’s involved didn’t get it then, then it seems that they’ve learned little since and possibly forgotten some of the lessons learned during the initial furore that was heralded by the Telegraph.

Things may have died down a little during the MP’s ubiquitously named ’summer recess’ (as if they were children in some toff school), but since the start of the new term it seems that it’s been quietly simmering under the surface just waiting for the MP’s to return.

For a moment let’s imagine we live in a world where our parliamentarians operate a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  It’s certainly what they’d like us to believe each time an election roles around,  and I think it’s certainly what the people who elect, and ultimately pay for these politicians, want.  The fact that many (not all) have behaved in a manner, and from a position of such privilege, that is considered by most to be an absolute abuse of their office gives the lie to that.

Since their return to office, and in the full glare of the review and the media, it beggars belief that they should continue to protect the revenue they’ve made through the abuse of an already lax system.  They’ve attempted to portray themselves as victims of a grand conspiracy, when what has actually happened is that they’ve been caught with their snouts in the trough.

Victims are people who have been stabbed in the street because there has been a lack of police officers on the street, victims are people who have had their pension funds robbed by the encumbent government, or whose pension funds have been wiped out thanks to lack financial regulation by the people whose job it is to regulate and control.  Victims are people who have been failed by the welfare system, people who have lost their jobs because industry hasn’t been protected in an age of capitalist anarchy.

Victims are the people who pay their taxes in good faith, ask little of the state, and dutifully play their part only to see those who they expect to represent their trust abuse that trust.

A letter to some paper that was being relayed on the radio the other day made an excellent point, which I shall paraphrase:

If ‘I’ am overpaid by the tax credits system to the tune of £2,000, it will be demanded (under the threat of legal action) that those monies be repaid.  If I go to my MP and ask for their help, afterall this is no fault of my own, I will be told that these are the rules, that’s the way it is.

Meanwhile said MP may well be claiming £2,000 to have his garden done, house cleaned, or any number of routine maintenance issues undertaken – things that we’d all expect to do ourselves, regardless of what our job was.

There have been a raft of excuses wheeled out, I’ve even heard them picked up by ‘civillians’ in defence of our illustrious leaders.  One of my favourites is that the MP’s salaries are too low, it’s only right that they have these perks, afterall it’s a hard job they do.

We all have hard jobs to do, some jobs are harder or more unpleasant than others, in fact in relation to many of the highly unpleasant and difficult lowly paid jobs out there the position of MP should be considered a delight.  To be honest though that’s not the point.  I don’t want my politician to be there for the pay, I want those that represent me to treat it more as a calling, a vocation, I want them to be there because the reward they are looking for is the reward that comes from improving peoples lives.

If they want to maximise their earnings they ought to be looking to the private sector, sadly though I’m not sure many of them would succeed at even the lowest levels of the private sector.  Some appear almost thuggish in their behaviour, and I know for a fact how unpalatable some of them are to deal with.

Another excuse that’s been wheeled out time and again is that ‘anybody would do it’.  I wouldn’t, I’ve had ample opportunity to abuse expenses systems, or to avoid tax and NI payments and yet I’ve never flinched from being absolutely honest in such dealings.  What’s more, I’m not the only one.  Personally I resent the implication that I would make claims which seem to be absolutely amoral given the position that these people hold.

The latest ‘reasoning’ I’ve heard, it’s not even an excuse, is that worse things happen in this or that third world authoritarian dictatorship.  As if the fact that it could be worse means that we should be thankful the abuses are so seemingly low level … least those that we’re aware of, and yet there are always stories about the abuse of power.  Certainly during the term of our current Labour government, and the Tory one before that.

Sunday Jukebox – The Tory Conference

I thought we should have something appropriate given the Tory Conference has been underway this last week.

If there’s one thing that’s obvious from died-in-the-wool Tory supporters on the web it’s that they’d love to see Thatcher doctrine applied far and wide, which kind of begs the question why they haven’t been supporting the Labour government for the last 12 years.

I recently read someone complaining about David Cameron, labelling him as ’son of Thatcher’, no doubt a soundbite that we’ll be hearing more of in the build-up to the election.  It’s probably best though if we remember that Thatcher actually had Triplets some time ago, she named them, Tony, Gordon and Peter.  A threesome who continued Thatcher economic policy, continued privatisation, further developed private investment in public infrastructure (something that will cost the taxpayer X millions in the coming decades).

As if this wasn’t bad enough they also frittered away public money, took us into illegal wars, persued a regulatory programme that allowed the banking sector to implode all the while rewarding those who they would later accuse of causing the problems that they themselves had laid the groundwork for.

Anyway, this song was written in 1996, it seems strange now that it could be applied to either of the leading Westminster parties.  Billy Bragg – Thatcherites:

Sunday Jukebox – Gordon, nobody loves you!

I was listening to this the other day, and it put me in mind of the Brown being rebuked by Obama at the recent UN meeting, later on we had The Sun turning their support away from Labour in favour of the Conservatives.

I’m afraid that for everyone, except Brown, it just seems too obvious.

drip … drip … drip … it’s not raining. It’s The Sun.

Much has been made of the news today that The Sun newspaper has withdrawn it’s support for the Labour Party and the New Labour project generally, since clearly our democracy is based on the musings of one australian/american by name of Rupert Murdoch.

The Sun splash image

On the one hand some are insinuating that the fact that The Sun now supports David Cameron’s Conservative over the alternatives will mean that Labour supporters (both of them) will flock to the party in blue and send Labour out into the cold for another 20 years.

On the other hand Labour ministers are down-playing the papers move as being irrelevant and pointing out that they have more respect for The Sun readers than they do for The Sun itself and that they’re sure that Sun readers are quite capable of making up their own minds on the issue.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between.  Although, to be honest, I’m not sure how much faith I have in people who get their political commentary from The Sun (or any ‘red-top’ for that matter).

The simple fact is that this move will not instantly convert thousands of Labour supporters to Conservatives, but what it will mean is that the drip-drip-drip of pro-Conservative propoganda will niggle away at those who may have either become disaffected with Labour and are on the verge of realising that they aren’t the ‘working mans party’ that they once were … the fact that they are arguably further to the right than the Tories on some issues though should have highlighted this for them before now!

It’s the drip-drip-drip that’s important though.  By continuously repeating ‘facts’ ad nauseum and supporting a particular party by reporting events through a particular lens then readers can be nudged in a particular direction, a tactic employed by the Labour party in Scotland in relation to the SNP.

It’s interesting that the Scottish edition of the paper isn’t following head offices lead on this one though, I imagine since they’d like to retain some sort of readership in Scotland.  Which raises the specter that the whole thing is merely a cynical ploy to sell papers … although one does wonder if some backroom deal has been made with the Tories in order to secure what amounts to turning the former ‘newspaper’ into little more than a propoganda rag … if it wasn’t this before.

The Editor of the Scottish edition was highly ambiguous about where his edition stands on the matter, acknowledging that Labour had failed yet refusing to support any of the other parties fighting it out in Scotland, it’s true that The Sun briefly supported independence during the 90’s and so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that the paper could yet support the SNP in Scotland which would set up an interesting dichotomy where the English edition supports the most pro-union party whilst supporting the main pro-independence party in Scotland … I’m not sure how they could explain this away to their readership so I’ll not hold my breath.

Westminster: just what’s the point?

This is a question that often crosses my mind, particularly when I hear pundits, presenters and politicians proclaiming the (Westminster) Government will be introducing whatever piece of legislation or programme aimed at improving health, education, housing, or whatever.  Occasionally you’ll even here the age old conflation of England being labelled Britain, something that is even more misleading in these post-devolution days when Westminster bears no responsibility for a great deal of matters effecting Scotland.  You’d have thought that 10 years after gifting us our own parliament they’d have realised that.

Indeed a great deal of our day-to-day affairs in Scotland are managed and legislated for from Edinburgh, from our pseudo parliament, without any recourse to Westminster.  I say ‘pseudo parliament’ since it doesn’t have the full range of powers an independent parliament would have, but what it does have is enough to be going on with for the time being, enough even to usurp some unpopular Westminster decisions, such as new nuclear power stations.  Since the authority for nuclear power is reserved to Westminster the Scottish parliament has no direct say on them, however, if they are to be built in Scotland then they fall under Scottish planning laws, and this is a devolved matter.

So, if we’re running most of our own affairs anyway, what’s the point of Westminster?  They take and set most taxation, they are responsible for foreign affairs and defence.  These are probably the major things although there is obviously a great deal more, they are also responsible for dealing with Europe.

I was recently caught out repeating an oft-heard statistic, namely that 70% of UK legislation originates from Europe, it turns out that I was wrong.  Upon further research though I did discover that according to German MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis 85% of German legislation originates n Brussels.  OK, so it’s not the UK but it does give you a flavour of the influence that the EU wields.

Lord Stoddart asked the following question in regard to the EU:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of the statement by German MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis that 85 per cent of German legislation originates in Brussels, they will state what percentage of United Kingdom legislation is of European Union origin.

 Lord Malloch-Brown the Minister of State for the foreign and Commonwealth office responded thus:

It would entail disproportionate cost to research and compile the percentage of UK legislation originating in the European Union: some European measures are directly applicable in member states and others require incorporation into national law through a variety of legislative or administrative means.

It has been estimated that around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector stems from legislation agreed by Ministers in Brussels, but this is a category of legislation which is more likely than legislation in general to have originated in the EU. It is likely that the overall proportion is therefore much lower.

In other words in the areas of “business, charities and the voluntary sector” it might be about 50%, but they don’t really know, and in other areas they might know but they’re not telling.  It all sounds rather wooly to me.

When the Lisbon / Reform Treaty finally becomes ratified yet more powers will be ceded to Europe and I guess we can expect an even greater percentage of our legislation to be influenced or originate from Europe either directly or on a more administrative basis.

So if the EU is directing Westminster in areas that haven’t been devolved, and Holyrood is dealing with much of the day-to-day items, as well as major infrastructure projects, then what is the point of Westminster?  It strikes me as being little more than an additional level of bureaucracy and furthermore it prevents Scotland from fully participating with the European project … assuming that Scotland wants to.

Sunday jukebox – budget special

I think this song pretty much sums up what the Scottish budget is all about …

Scotland’s budget slanging match

I’ve been pondering the political slanging match that erupted on Thursday with a certain level of bewilderment and disappointment.  That the SNP’s most important budget announcements has been reduced to a …

SNP is anti-glasgow

and

Glasgow gets crumbs from the table

… type row based on the cancelling of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link by no less than a councillor, and let’s face it even being lead councillor of Glasgow City Council, Scotland’s largest city, doesn’t make you anything more than a councillor at the end of the day.

Stephen Purcell though may have intended to drive a wedge between Glasgow and he SNP, yet it is arguably this sort of negative campaigning that saw Labour lose the 2007 election.  It may even be worth pointing out that Purcell has been touted as a future Scottish Labour leader in the past and if this is part of his training then it certainly seems he is to be made in the mold of his recent predecessors.

Iain Gray though must be furious that his own pathetic attacks on Swinney, comparing him to Sweeney Todd, have been so readily ignored by the media in favour of Purcell’s nonsense anti-glasgow slurs.  Let’s not forget that Glasgow gets more per head than virtually any other council area in Scotland, or that Glasgow already has a major infrastructure project underway in the form of the M74 extension, something that Labour managed to put off doing for, well it must be about 40 years.

Purcell has called Swinney’s honesty into question over the figures used to make the decision to scrap the GARL project, yet his own party continues to writhe around at the lowest level in their approach to politics.  Politics to Labour is about winning at any cost, and clearly not about serving the people.

Meanwhile the Conservatives continue to portray themselves in a good light, even if you disagree with their politics you can’t help agree with their co-operative and mature approach to politics and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them secure more of their own interests from this budget as they did in the previous one.  On the other hand the highly combative approach to politics as espoused by Labour would seem unlikely to secure much more than ridicule, indeed it’d be well deserved.

Of course the budget isn’t really about slanging and arguing, it’s about figures and the spending that these imply, so courtesy of the Herald here are some of those figures:

OVERALL NUMBERS

John Swinney has £29.712bn to spend next year.  Adjusted for inflation, at this year’s prices, that is £29.535bn – down 268.3m and the first real terms fall in government income of the devolution era.  It is actually some £500m less than initially projected (down 2.3%) and also suffers through having to pay back capital expenditure previously brought forward as a measure to combat the recession.

ECONOMY & TRANSPORT

The finance and sustainable growth budget is reduced by £43.5m.  The most controversial aspect of the budget is the plan to scrap the Glasgow Airport Rail Link (GARL).  Work improving the Glasgow-Paisley line will go ahead, but scrapping GARL will save £170m, more than £6m of that in the coming year.  There will still be spending of more than £1bn in road and rail improvements, and an extension of free bus travel.

HEALTH & WELLBEING

The overall departmental budget rises by 2.4% to £11.35bn, with each health board receiving 2.7% more.  But within this the housing and regeneration budget falls from £701m this year to £441m next year as a direct result of having to pay back previously accelerated spending.  If the [Westminster] treasurey allowed fresh acceleration of future spending this would change, but this is unlikely.

EDUCATION

The education budget rises by £53m, a real terms increase of 0.7%.  Universities get 2.1% more in real terms, and colleges 5.3% more.  But the big controversy here is the decision to cut spending on teacher training – not as a saving but as a mechanism to ensure that newly qualified teachers get jobs [or perhaps to simply reduce the glut of teachers we already have].  This is described as a “temporary slowdown”.  There is also a £10m increase in the sum available for school building.

JUSTICE

Within this standstill budget of £1.215bn, administrative savings of 1.5% will free up resources so that a further 1000 police officers will be in post by 2011 in addition to the 1000 already recruited.  They will also secure police and fire pensions and continue with prison and court building programme, as well as measures to reduce reoffending.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Total support for authorities will approach £12bn and includes funding to freeze council tax for another year and continue implementing the Small Business Bonus Scheme.  The concordat between central and local government will look to deliver individual outcome agreements with each authority, but thus will come under even more strain as councils are asked to match the 3% administrative savings demanded of civil servants.

CARBON BUDGET

Scotland’s first national Carbon Budget was given a mixed reception by environment groups.  The analysis of emissions from publicly-funded projects is believed to be the first of its kind, but lobbyists said it risked being merely “an interesting analytical tool” if it is not allowed to impact on public spending.  The new study, released alongside the budget outlines the environmental impact of government spending in the year ahead.