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):

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.

Sunday Jukebox – reducing the voting age

Given the debate arising from the SNP’s proposed plans to give 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in a referendum on the issue of Scottish Independence I thought this would be appropriate, especially given the inevitable teeth gnashing about the maturity need to make such an important decision.

There are those who believe this is little more than a cynical move given the greater likelihood of this age group to back both the SNP and independence than the equivalent age group at the other end of the spectrum, and maybe they’re right. The SNP however has had a long standing commitment to lowering the voting age more generally and has held to this in their (utter ridiculous) plans to hold elections for health boards … I value my vote as much as anyone, but I’ll not be voting for appointments to health boards.

Anyway there are many immature 16 and 17 year olds just as there are many immature and ill-informed people in any other age group, young people’s priorities are as important to them as mine are to me. They pay tax, join the armed forces, can leave home, get married, and have a family all of these things involve decisions that are arguably far more important than the decision over which box to tick and yet they are allowed these former choices but not the latter, bizarre.

Should we fear America’s punishment?

America’s tantrum over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmad al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber (in case you’ve been in a coma for the last 20 years), seems to have finally petered out.  Following ill-informed letters and phone-calls from the head of the FBI, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and the US President Barack Obama remonstrating over the decision and attempting to force Kenny McAskill to make a different course of action they appear to have calmed down somewhat.

Indeed a state department spokesman has said that there would be no knee jerk reaction to the decision insisting that:

… we are very close allies, and I don’t think we’re looking to punish anybody, per se.

So what are they saying here, they’ve decided not to “punish” Scotland?  Or that they are going to “punish” Scotland just that it’s not going to be so overt? 

The key issue here as far as I’m concerned are that the Scottish Justice Secretary made a decision that was in his give, not in the give of the US Secretary of State, or anybody elses for that matter.  Regardless of what you think about the decision itself you must accept that it was not and is not the place of the US government to interfere in the internal affairs of any country, if they want to “punish” countries like Scotland or anywhere else for that matter it would merely serve to confirm what many people already believe about the country.

I’m not sure that a country that maintains a death penalty, shoots down civilian air liners (and fails to apologise), has been seriously implicated in the use of torture of captives, and has broken international law is really in a position to be shouting the odds about moral or compassionate decisions.  I certainly won’t be looking to learn any lessons from them.

Kenny McAskill at Holyrood, and more indirectly Westminster, have done absolutely the right thing in resisting any and all pressure from the US authorities to usurp the decision making process in this case.  Westminster would do well to learn lessons from McAskill on this one and grow some balls when it comes to dealing with the US Government, we are not answerable to the US and we should not be expected to back their every decision or point-of-view.

Independent nations would do well to remember that they are just that, independent, they don’t have to answer to the US, they don’t have to do as they are told by the US, and they don’t need to fear the US punishing non-compliance with their will.  The world community is based on diplomacy, not capitulation, countries must be able to abide by their own systems and customs without unnecessary and irrational caterwauling.

So the US aren’t going to punish us!  Laughable really, their government acts like a surly teenagers throwing their weight around and trying to act like they think grown-ups should act, and like real grown-ups the other nations of the world should treat such contemptible behaviour with the contempt it deserves, simultaneously chastising and nurturing the juvenile into adulthood.

Fortunately Obama has shown some potential to be a figure of maturity in foreign policy, let’s hope we see a coming of age before somebody decides the surly world teenager needs slapped down.

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.

“The Berryfields o’ Blair” by Belle Stewart

I rather enjoy this wee comic poem from the late Belle Stewart, I re-found it recently reading to my son and I’ve got to say, it made me smile:

When berry-time comes roond each year, Blair’s population’s swellin’,
There’s every kind o’ picker there and every kind o’ dwellin’;
There’s tents and huts and caravans, there’s bothies and there’s bivvies,
Ay, and shelters made wi’ tattie-bags and dugouts made wi’ divvies.

There’s traivellers fae the Western Isles, fae Arran, Mull and Skye,
Fae Harris, Lewis and Kyles o’ Bute they come their luck to try;
Fae Inverness and Aberdeen, fae Stornoway amd Wick,
A’ flock to Blair at the berry-time, the straws and rasps to pick.

Noo, there’s corner-boys fae Glesca, kettle-boilers fae Lochee,
And miners fae the pits o’ Fife, mill workers fae Dundee;
And fisherfolk fae Peterheid, and tramps fae everywhere,
A’ lookin’ for a livin’ aff the berryfields o’ Blair.

Noo, there’s some wha earn a pound or twa, some cannae earn their keep,
And some would pick fae morn to nicht, and some would rather sleep;
There’s some wha’ has to pick or starve and some wha’ dinnae care,
There’s some wha’ bless and some wha’ curse the berryfields o’ Blair.

Noo, there’s families pickin’ for one purse and some wha’ pick alane,
And there’s men wha’ share and share alike wi’ wives that’s no’ their ain;
There’s gladness and there’s sadness tae, there’s happy hairts and sair,
For there’s comedy and tragedy played on the fields o’ Blair.

But afore I’ve put my pen awa’, it’s this I would like to say:
You’ll traivel far afore you’ll meet a kinder lot than they;
For I’ve mixed wi’ them in field and pub, and while I’ve breath to spare,
I’ll bless the hand that led me to the berryfields of Blair.

Belle Stewart (1906 – 1997)

TaxPayers’ alliance targets Scotland

The TaxPayers’ Alliance has released details on how it proposes the government might save some £50billion in government spending, although I fear the ‘detail’ is anything but.  My attention was brought to this on Radio Scotland this morning when one news reporter was sounding particularly narked by their proposal to freeze the grant given to Scotland with seemingly no real understanding of how the system actually works … I’m guessing similar interviews were being given in Wales and NI Ireland that would also be effected if such a proposal was acted upon – they won’t be though, it’d be political and union suicide.

The item in question is number 23 out of 34 suggestions and it seems like a good place to start given the damage it did to my blood pressure first thing this morning.

Item 23

One year freeze of the grants given to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (current spending only).

Annual saving

£1,400 million from 2010-11 onwards.

This figure is the saving from freezing the Treasury current DEL grants to Scotland, Wales and the Northern Ireland Executive at their 2009-10 level for one year, relative to the Treasury’s current plans for 2010-11. Capital grants are unaffected by this suggestion.

Rationale

We have purposely targeted savings and reductions across the whole of Government so as to obtain as balanced a range of savings as possible. Many of the items in this report cover England only, and so it seems fair for the other nations of the UK to take their share of the burden. Freezing the current grants to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for one year offers a substantial saving, and also means that no services are necessarily subject to cuts. Instead, budgets received will have to be handled more carefully, with any unnecessary spending eradicated.

Considering the differing levels of spending autonomy enjoyed by the devolved assemblies, a general freeze will allow each nation to make its own decision over what is priority and what is not. In practice, if spending in England is scaled back, whether through the suggestions in this report or other items, a level of saving of this order of magnitude would happen automatically, given the methodology of the Barnett Formula.

It’s a really rather crude tool, and certainly in respect of Scotland the rationale given already has a commitment from the SNP government to see more finances targeted at front line services, i.e. cutting the costs of backroom operations.

The rationale though sounds somewhat confused on the one hand they say that many of the items in the report effect only England and therefore the other nations must ‘take their share of the burden’ whilst also reluctantly admitting that cuts in England would mean cuts in the other nations also, i.e. via the Barnett Consequential.  The implication seems to be that the devolved administration ‘enjoy’ differing levels of spending and that this isn’t ‘fair’.

Curiously when the presenter was questioning Matthew Sinclair, Research Director at the TPA, on the cost to Scotland of cuts in England there was some muttering and clearly no answer … he didn’t know, they haven’t considered it, they don’t have a clue.

The report seems to be largely spurious and may even form part of a Tory (or Labour) manifesto for the next election.  The full list of proposals is included below, the associated rationales can be found here (pdf):

Tackling areas of spending that are not performing
Reducing items of spending that don’t work

1 Abolish the Bus Service Operators’ grant
2 Abolish Sure Start
3 Abolish Building Schools for the Future
4 Abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance
5 Halt further orders and upgrades for the Eurofighter

Curbing over-extended government
Stopping government doing things it shouldn’t be doing

6 Halve the government advertising and publicity budget
7 Abolish Contact Point, the children’s database
8 Abolish the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT)
9 Abolish identity cards
10 Abandon plans to extend the compulsory school leaving age to 18

Cutting out the middle-man
Reducing agencies and people that get in the way of the frontline

11 Halve public sector spending on consultants
12 Reduce non-frontline staff in health and schools by 10 per cent
13 Reduce the size of the civil service by 10 per cent
14 Scale down ‘Local Education Authorities’ (LEAs) in England
15 Slim down the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG)
16 Rationalise the framework of regional government and business support
17 Begin a thorough rationalisation of taxpayer funded quangos and public bodies, including  total abolitions, funding reallocations and budget cuts

Tackling specific budgets
Taking a more blanket approach on specific budgets

18 Cut 25 per cent from the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS)
19 One year freeze of the resource and capital budgets of the Department for International Development
20 One year freeze of the Home Office resource and capital budgets
21 One year freeze of the grants from the Department for Communities and Local Government to local and regional governments
22 Cut 10 per cent from the budgets of non-ministerial departments, except for UK Trade and Investment and the UK Statistics Authority
23 One year freeze of the grants given to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (current spending only)
24 Simplify and rationalise the skills system and the plethora of skills programmes

Tackling above-inflation indexing
Increasing payments in line with inflation, but no more

25 One year freeze of the Basic State Pension and the Minimum Income Guarantee

Restraining public sector pay and perks
Recognising that the public sector has had a good deal recently

26 One year pay freeze across the public sector, excluding members of the armed forces serving in conflict zones
27 Increase employee contributions to all unfunded public sector pension schemes by a third

Cutting middle-class welfare
Stopping paying benefits to people who don’t need them 

 28 Abolish Child Benefit and the Child Trust Fund, and increase the Child Element of the Child Tax Credit to address child poverty concerns
29 Taper away the Family Element of the Child Tax Credit at 39 per cent immediately upon exhaustion of the Child Element of the Child Tax Credit
30 Target spending on free bus passes for the elderly and disabled on those who genuinely need it
31 Abolish free TV licences
32 Abolish interest subsidy to student loans

 Further emergency possibilities after 2010
If fiscal conditions were so bad as to require emergency savings

33 A further one year pay freeze across the public sector, excluding members of the armed forces serving in conflict zones
34 Reduce gross annual pay by 5 per cent for the richest 10 per cent in the public sector

Most of these are a bit of a nonsense placing the most disadvantaged at further risk and pushing borderline cases into the disadvantaged category be they low-earners, children, students, the elderly, those in rural communities.  I was going to critique a few of my favourites but to be honest it’s so much drivel that I can’t believe I’ve wasted all this time writing about it! 

As ever though happy to discuss.

Under that soft inviting exterior …

The Conservatives have done much to reinvent themselves in the post Major years, attempting to put some distance between themselves and Thatcher.  Following their disastrous showing in Scotland in the years since they were removed from power (and dare I say before) the upper echelons of the party have done their utmost to present a nice fluffy image.  Largely they seem to have been succesful in these efforts so much so that the party is now considered by many to be slightly to the Left of the Labour party … strange buy true.

David Cameron certainly seems a very personable chap, with his carefully styled hair and his open neck shirt he attempts to be the epitome of ‘cool’ reaching out to a young and largely ignorant youth he’s managed to make a twat of himself without even having to bother about tweeting, cause you know, hoodie’s need love too.

While the rest of the world seems to be making some efforts to move out of the current economic difficulties our two main parties jostle each other with talk of which will make the biggest most damaging cuts and put as many public sector staff out of work as possible … thereby one might imagine potentially pro-longing the economic pain, this however is not the point of my post today.

By a peculiar quirk of fate a disproportionate number of my ‘facebook friends’ are Conservative, and by Conservative I mean utterly blood-bloodied CONSERVATIVE!  It’s curious how many of them are utterly opposed to Obama’s healthcare plans, as if it really matters to people in the UK, yet this fascination that they have belies what many of these core Conservative nutters voters really believe about the future (or lack thereof) of our own NHS and the cost that this institution places on the public purse.

Whilst the decimation of the nations favourite whipping-horse may not be stated clearly in any forth-coming Conservative manifesto I can’t help but feeling that there are elements in any potential Conservative government that would see the whole thing put out to tender, an entirely privatised system probably rolled out over a number of years and ultimately supported by the more Tory than Tory Labour party.

I’ve no doubt that this sort of plan would be rolled out initially under the guise of providing more choice for patients and incentivizing particular health boards / hospitals / hospital departments to improve by taking money away from them in the same fashion as the Conservatives in Scotland wish to do to Scotland’s schools.

Their mask is slipping, and with a GE due in the next year not too soon either.