Around Scotland - Monday 29 December 2008

(Monday 29 December 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS takes a look back at events of the past 10 months.

THAT was the year that was. Well, for this column, it has been 10 months, in fact. I've had the privilege of pestering you in this corner every week since March with reflections on the state of our wee northern nation.

I can only hope that you have been occasionally entertained and sometimes enlightened. I am sure you'll have disagreed with me more than once.

Around Scotland was part of a planned increase in Scottish coverage in the Morning Star to coincide with the paper's return to Day A circulation north of the border in the spring.

For a number of years, Scots have only been able to get the Star a day or more late due to difficulties with transport and distribution arrangements. Cracking the distribution problem has been no easy task, but it was important to surmount these difficulties and congratulations to those responsible.

It is now quite unusual to get the paper a day late, at least in my local newsagent. Circulation of the Star in Scotland has been increasing. And now we have exciting new developments including the website going subscription free.

If Around Scotland is part of that movement forward, then I am pleased.

Here's some of my highlights - and lowlights - from a year Around Scotland.

March: More than words?

Wendy Alexander provided us with a surprise at the Scottish Labour conference.

SUDDENLY, the ideological battle seemed to become clear again.

"This is the territory Labour will be happy to fight," said Wendy Alexander.

"Left against right. Cutting poverty against cutting taxes. Rewarding hard work against unearned wealth. Socialist against nationalist."

I didn't actually make it to Labour's Scottish conference in Aviemore, but the hardy socialist delegates and visitors who did will, no doubt, have been delighted to hear their local leader proclaim a new blood-red Labour identity north of the border. Well, maybe.

April: Unions lead the way

WITH the Ineos workers conducting an ultimately successful strike at the key Scottish oil refinery in Grangemouth, the STUC met for its annual congress in Inverness.

Gordon Brown came and said nothing about the 10p tax fiasco or anything else much. Wendy Alexander and Alex Salmond also addressed the congress, which then called for a new constitutional convention.

The STUC, once more, played its historic role of yoking the stubborn, competing donkeys of democracy together and leading them out of the barren impasse of mutual fear, hostility and stupidity.

PCS Scottish secretary and STUC general council member Eddie Reilly was right to remind the First Minister of the SNP mistake in removing itself from the constitutional convention in the 1990s and warned him to "spend more time listening rather than preaching."

He was also right to warn Labour's Scottish leader of the mistake that she was making in removing options from the debate and not recognising the Scottish people's right to self-determination.

"If you don't have confidence to win the argument, then you have no right to be in the debating chamber," Reilly said, in a remarkable speech. "There is no settled will of the Scottish people."

May: I'm as bemused as anyone

Another surprise. Alexander tore up Labour's no-referendum script with her bold call to "bring it on."

AS bemused as the next political hack. That's what I was telling people who asked me what I thought of Alexander and the sudden emergence of the independence referendum question.

As Vince Mills pointed out in this paper, the issue is not really about nationalism. It is much more about class.

It was unlikely that there would be a vote in favour of independence even if a referendum did take place. The problem was that there were no popular left-wing shots in Alexander's new Labour locker with which to outflank the SNP on basic issues.

Until that changed, the gloomy electoral prospects for Alexander and Labour were unlikely to change either.

June: Alexander is out

Alexander's resignation as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament came as a surprise to everyone. Certainly to me.

I THOUGHT that she would serve her day in the doghouse in September for her donations misdemeanour and battle on.

Whatever her reasons for quitting, it provided Scottish Labour with an unexpected opportunity to have a debate among members and affiliates on its direction. And it was certainly needed.

July: An SNP coup in Glasgow

For Labour, it was hotter than the Gobi out in the East End of Glasgow on Thursday July 24. I had the feeling that the party would maybe just hold on in the Glasgow East by-election, despite its disastrous start. I was wrong.

WINNING Glasgow East was a jaw-dropping coup for the SNP. Labour couldn't lose a seat like this unless a substantial part of its core vote actually turned against it.

The party, moving ever rightward under Blair and now Brown, basically failed to make itself relevant to enough of its core voters over the last decade.

The lack of local organisation and canvassing returns before the by-election - indeed, almost the lack of a proper local constituency party at all - was evidence of a party which has lost touch with its roots.

August: Salmond's Freudian slip

Despite a downpour of legendary proportions, around 150,000 workers were on strike across Scotland on 20 August. The local government unions UNISON, Unite and GMB were joined by PCS civil servants in withdrawing their labour for 24 hours. Meanwhile Alex Salmond lost his footing.

IF Freudian slips really do let the cat out of the bag, the size and shape of Alex Salmond's Thatcherite feline was plain to see through the hessian for a long time before its inadvertent release.

Speaking to Total Politics magazine about Scottish attitudes to Margaret Thatcher's policies, Salmond said: "We didn't mind the economic side so much. But we didn't like the social side at all."

September: SNP displays its true colours

As Labour elected new leader Iain Gray, the SNP got caught in the credit crunch.

THE global crisis of capitalism - we can write that phrase with full justification today - revealed many truths.

One of them was the right-wing nature of the SNP government, whose leader is a former Royal Bank of Scotland chief economist.

I too am keen on saving banking jobs for Scotland, but its haste to put the foxes in charge of the hen coop characterises the SNP government in Scotland as much as it has new Labour in Britain under Blair and Brown.

The fact that the SNP has been successful at presenting itself to Labour's left is Labour's fault for being right-wing more than the nationalists' for being socialist.

Global capital needs to be faced down not fawned over in this crisis. The Labour government still has the state power to address that at UK level and beyond, something which the SNP can never do at Scottish level, with independence or not, no matter how many bankers it is pals with.

October: Proud day in Dundee

IT was moving to see 96-year-old international brigade veteran Jack Jones raise his fist in salute to fallen comrades as he rededicated Dundee's memorial to its Spanish civil war heroes on Saturday October 11.

November: Glenrothes surprise

I DIDN'T tell you so. In fact, I admitted that I had no idea which way the Glenrothes by-election was going to go.

Like most people, I thought that it would be a narrow win for either Labour or the SNP. Most people apart from smug Alex Salmond, of course, who declared outright nationalist triumph days before the defeat.

Crucially, the SNP has not won the argument for separation from the UK. Independence is still only favoured by about a third of Scots.

The local income tax and the Scottish Futures Trust policies are unravelling. The arc of prosperity has turned to ashes.

I might be wrong of course, but, after Glenrothes, I think that the independence referendum promised for 2010 is going to become a poisoned political football which Salmond will wish he had kicked further into the long grass.

December: End of a bizarre year

IT'S been a bizarre year. Interesting times in Scotland as elsewhere.

I leave you with some good news that the Scottish Water workers appear to have won a substantially improved settlement as a result of their strike.

Sadly it's not all joy. I'm now off to join a demo in Glasgow against the Israeli military strikes on Gaza.

The fight for justice goes on.

All the best for the new year when it comes. Sláinte!

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Hey Bruce, that's my guitar!

Boss class: middle-aged ready to rock Glastonbury














Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Blur rumoured to play at Glastonbury | Music | The Guardian

Probably no god...

Polly Toynbee: My Christmas message? There's probably no God | Comment is free | The Guardian: "Here is an enjoyably impudent piece of research from Innsbruck University. People were observed buying newspapers, using an honesty box to pay. They were interviewed later - so the person with the clipboard seemed unconnected with the newspaper purchase - and asked about age, occupation and attitudes. Men cheated more than women; people over 50 cheated more than the young; higher education made no difference; and by a long chalk churchgoers cheated most."

Around Scotland - Tuesday 23 December 2008

(Tuesday 23 December 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS explains why this year's Christmas number one makes him happy.

THIS is the nearest I hope I'll come to a Christmas message, dear reader. I'm cheered by the fact that the Christmas number one chart-topper is Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah.

It doesn't matter to me whether it's Alexandra Burke's dreadful X Factor interpretation or Jeff Buckley's or anyone's. I'll probably be tuned in to something else.

But the perverse relationship between pop music and Christmas is nicely illustrated for me by the thought that people are buying this complex and dark anthem to the power of sex, written by a Jewish man who is now a Buddhist.

I quite admire Cohen as a writer and musician and I never thought him depressing, that's just a stupid cliche.

Hallelujah isn't my favourite song of his. I think that he's written better tunes and sharper words, but it is certainly not the usual mind-numbing twee pap complete with bells and candles.

I'll not be the first to point out the incongruity of its ascent through the ITV show X Factor, complete with gospel choir and tinsel, belted out by a cabaret singer with a loud voice who clearly doesn't have the faintest idea what she is singing.

Hallelujah is certainly not a Christian song. If it leads in any religious direction at all, it's the wrathful, jealous god of the Old Testament who is in the frame here.

At least we are spared Sir Cliff coming out of every loudspeaker in the land with some inane homily.

Religion excels at making people feel that there is something meaningful just out of reach in what they can't easily understand.

Burke's hopelessly mistaken rendering of Hallelujah displays this kind of credulity. An ironic opiate for the masses indeed.

I had a similar glee when Lou Reed's Perfect Day - a very dark, very beautiful song about heroin addiction - sold millions and hit number one around Christmas a few years back after it was adopted by the BBC as a charidee single for Children in Need.

I am sure that Lou and Lenny can sing all the way to the bank for their royalties and deservedly so.

There, I just felt that I had to write that. Not much to do with Scotland, apart from the fact that it will be playing all over this land, much like everywhere else.

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!

Hallelujah! Here's my bum

HOW much of an ass can the law be? A man was sentenced to 12 months in prison at Glasgow Sheriff Court last week.

His crime? Not a violent attack or robbery or fraud.

He was convicted under the catch-all Scottish charge of "breach of the peace" - for being naked.

The man is Stephen Gough, also known as the "Naked Rambler," a former marine from Hampshire and he has spent nearly the last 30 months in prison just for walking around with no clothes on, including a couple of hikes from Land's End to John O'Groats. Apparently the cost to the taxpayer of harassing this man has mounted to more than £200,000.

Gough told the court that, if people were offended by his nakedness, the problem was with them and not with him.

I agree. We are all naked under our clothes. Who cares if he wants to walk around with nothing on? Who is looking?

In some regards, Scotland is a very different country from the narrow Presbyterian place that it used to be a mere couple of decades ago. In others, it is clearly not.

Every time Gough is released from prison or discharged from court, it seems that he is immediately rearrested and stuck back in jail.

There is plenty of violent crime and socially abusive behaviour going on which extra police time could be devoted to instead.

I don't think that the powerful authority of Scots law should be bothered with the Naked Rambler. Free the Naked One!

Hands off the forests of Scottish people

AMONG the welcome plans for tackling climate change which have been made by the Scottish government, there is a very damaging proposal indeed.

SNP Environment Minister Michael Russell has raised the idea of leasing out 25 per cent of the publicly owned forest estate to private investors for up to 75 years to help pay for action on climate change.

The plan is contained in a Scottish government consultation to seek views on how better use can be made of the assets of Scotland's national forest estate to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

The Scottish forestry trade unions - PCS, Unite, Prospect, GMB and the First Division Association - argue that the private lease proposal represents "the biggest challenge to forestry jobs, the integrity of the Forestry Commission and the sustainability of the Scottish forestry sector that we have seen for over 10 years."

It is a bad idea all round, in other words.

The unions are running a campaign to oppose this stealthy privatisation.

As well as preparing a detailed response to the consultation, they have launched an online petition which has already been signed by hundreds of people.

"I believe that Scotland's national forest estate is an invaluable asset that provides health, education, employment, conservation, heritage and recreation opportunities for people across the whole of Scotland and I call on the Scottish government not to lease 25 per cent of the estate to private investors but to keep it in public ownership and control."

If you're online and you agree with that, take five minutes now to sign up at www.fctu.org.uk/petitions
 

In homage to Caledonia

A HIGHLIGHT of my trip to Dundee a few weeks ago to join the local Trade Union Council's International Brigade celebrations was hearing Daniel Gray reading from and speaking about his new book Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War.

Unfortunately, I missed the actual book launch, which was held in the Iron Horse pub in Glasgow last week. Yes, I know that it was a bit of an oversight to miss a book launch in a pub.

So I'm glad to note that Gray will be speaking again on this subject at a public meeting on Saturday January 17 at 11am in the Unity Office, 72 Waterloo Street, Glasgow.

Homage to Caledonia gives an account of Scotland's fascinating relationship with the Spanish Civil War. It is based on the letters written home by Scots Brigaders, in the collection of the National Library of Scotland where Gray has been conducting his researches on the subject.

More people, proportionately, went from Scotland than any other nation. Some 549 Scots fought in Spain and support came from all parts of Scotland. Gray makes a powerful case about how action in and on Spain was a continuation of anti-fascist, progressive action in Scotland.

The book is published by Luath Press and can be bought online at www.luath.co.uk

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Just a perfect day

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Just whose hallelujah is it anyway?: "Fans of Leonard Cohen (and of the late Jeff Buckley, whose 1994 version is treated as sacrosanct) are predictably outraged at the big-arms, eyebrow-raised bombast, with the now traditional online campaigns and rival singles vying for the Christmas Number One.

But maybe they need not worry so much."

Brits out soon-ish... but still a disaster

Scott Ritter: Dick Cheney refuses to admit that Saddam Hussein was not a threat | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "The occupation of Iraq by the United States is far more brutal, bloody and destructive than anything Saddam ever did during his reign. When one examines the record of the US military in Iraq in terms of private homes brutally invaded, families torn apart and civilians falsely imprisoned (the prison population in Iraq during the US occupation dwarfs that of Saddam's regime), what is clear is that the only difference between the reign of terror inflicted on the Iraqi people today and under Saddam is that the US has been far less selective in applying terror than Saddam ever was."

Around Scotland - Tuesday 16 December 2008

(Tuesday 16 December 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Fat cats get all the cream

I WROTE a couple of weeks ago about the Scottish Water pay dispute. The publicly owned corporation imposed a below-inflation pay increase despite £1 billion in savings provided by the staff.

Scottish Water executives claim that Finance Secretary John Swinney's public-sector pay policy doesn't allow them to give workers a bigger increase. Meanwhile, they pay themselves fat-cat salaries and bonuses rising far ahead of prices.

Labour MSP Des McNulty pointed out last week that new Scottish Water chief executive Richard Ackroyd was being paid £263,000 a year. More than even Barack Obama was McNulty's quip. More than 10 times the £23,000 average annual wage of the Scottish Water staff, I observe. And bonuses this year could push Ackroyd's pay beyond £400,000.

The water unions were due to meet Swinney today to see if there is a way in which he can apply the guidelines to allow the corporation to fund a fair pay increase from some of the billion or more which the staff have worked hard to save the organisation.

I don't know whether he will act. My guess would be not, in which case the unions, UNISON, Unite and GMB, have a balloted mandate to follow last month's one-day strike with further planned strike action around Scotland over the Christmas period.

Monkeys and organ grinders

THE reality facing tens and even hundreds of thousands of Scottish public-sector staff is the same. Paltry, below-inflation pay rises which have been arrived at after many months of negotiations and only sometimes marginally improved by dogged industrial action.

It's been clear to the unions that the monkeys with whom they are forced to negotiate in councils and quangos are not grinding the organ of public-sector pay.

Last week, the Scottish Parliament finance committee took some interesting evidence on the public-sector pay system in Scotland which confirmed this view.

Scottish government Finance Directorate deputy director Alistair Brown has responsibility for public-sector pay policy. He set out the aims of the policy - increases should be "affordable and sustainable," there should be flexibility to suit the business needs of public bodies and policy should support pay that is "fair and non-discriminatory."

So far, so fair - in theory.

Comparing the entitlements of the public-sector executives with those of the workers, SNP veteran MSP and committee member Alec Neil argued that some of the former appear to be excessive.

"As you rightly said," he told Brown, "a key objective of the pay policy is fairness, but two completely separate pay policies seem to apply - one for people on the front line who are doing the work and another for those at the top of the tree. My point is that those at the top of the tree seem to be taking the taxpayer for a ride. It is no wonder that we have industrial relations problems in the public sector."

Then, Labour's ex-whip Jackie Baillie had the poor mandarin squirming when she exposed the bureaucracy and delays resulting from the Public Sector Pay Policy Unit's role in overseeing pay offers by the local government employers and the myriad quangos or non-departmental public bodies.

Unlike Brown, the trade unionists who gave evidence later in the session were models of clarity.

"We have lost any sense of fairness in public-sector pay," Eddie Reilly, Scottish secretary of Civil Service union PCS, told the committee.

"If we have one pay policy and one grading system," Reilly argued, "why do we have so-called negotiations in 22 or 40 areas to produce different pay systems for the same job levels in different areas? Surely, the activities of those employers could be reduced to a central bargaining unit so that the same unions could sit round one table and deal with one set of pay negotiations under one policy, with one grading system. That would deal with pay properly at the Scottish and UK levels."

It surely would. But it would also expose the organ grinders north and south of the border who are short-changing the taxpaying public by offering the fat cats the cream and low pay instead of fair pay to public-sector workers.

Dignity for Palestinians up for debate this week

THE very last item of business in the Scottish Parliament for this year will be a motion on Thursday from Labour MSP Pauline McNeill on "dignity for Palestinians."

Last month, McNeill, who is convener of the Parliament's cross-party group on Palestine, was one of 11 European parliamentarians who sailed to Gaza with vital medical aid on a boat called Dignity from Cyprus in defiance of the Israeli blockade. She was joined by fellow MSPs Sandra White of the SNP and Lib Dem Hugh O'Donnell.

Congratulations to them all.

That was the third voyage of Dignity to challenge the siege of Gaza, which has become a permanent blockade and which has affected every aspect of Palestinian life to the point where they are now in receipt of the largest food aid programme in the world. There has been a fourth in the last week.

McNeill's motion expresses the concern of the Scottish Parliament about the impact of the blockade on ordinary Palestinians.

The denial of basic health care rights, the shortage of medicine and severe restrictions on leaving Gaza for referral treatment have resulted in many deaths.

The motion also supports the efforts of Edinburgh Direct Aid to send aid to Gaza and recognises that action by the international community to secure an end to the siege of Gaza and implement international law is key to encouraging long-term peace in the Middle East.

I hope and expect that the rest of the Scottish Parliament members pass this motion before they head off for their holidays.

You can find out more about the Dignity voyages and aid to Gaza at www.freegaza.org and www.edinburghdirectaid.org

Scottish supporters do this paper proud

KEEPING the Morning Star afloat is just as important as keeping the Dignity sailing the Med and breaking the blockade.

The annual Morning Star bazaar in Glasgow which I enjoyed last Saturday is just one of the many ways in which readers and supporters help the paper. It used to be held in the Govan Unemployed Workers' Centre and migrated to the Annexe in Partick a few years ago.

It's the usual Christmas Fayre and jumble sale kind of event, with stalls and home baking. You can have a cup of tea while waiting to win the wheel of fortune or have a lucky dip on the tombola. As ever, the best thing that I came away with was a few jars of Mrs Ajam's Cape Curry paste, hand made to a secret hot recipe from South Africa by RMT man Stewart Hyslop, who always does a Cuba stall at Star events. But the home baking is always good too.

Elizabeth, my 10-year-old, spent a few days before making dozens of hand-painted paper holders in each of which she enclosed a teabag - a fairtrade one, yes, I think so - with a teapot or a Santa on the front and a little poetic message on the back to Santa or a far-off friend saying words to the effect of "Enjoy a cup of tea on me as I can't be with you at Christmas."

She sold a load of these teabag envelopes for 50p each. I have no idea where she gets her enterprising spirit from, but it certainly helped the cause a little.

The bazaar raised around £1,200, an amazing result from a simple and friendly event.

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The Mother of All Demos

The Register: The Mother of All Demos - 150 years ahead of its time



"NLS was designed to harness the power of 'collective intelligence' - to create a deeper level of thought. His research group was dedicated to 'augmenting human intellect.' But forty years on, Engelbart's core vision has vanished. NLS has devolved into Twitter."

Around Scotland - Monday 8 December 2008

(Monday 8 December 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

On Thursday, 260 Glasgow-based journalists at The Herald group were told that they faced redundancy and would have to reapply for 220 of their jobs.

Have The Herald and its sibling titles the Sunday Herald and Glasgow's Evening Times been losing money hand over fist? Not in the least. They provided Newsquest, owned by the US Gannett corporation, with £26 million of profit in the last financial year.

It is true that, like most of the print media, they are suffering from a long slow decline in sales and a loss of advertising revenue as a result of the growth of the internet.

But Newsquest, rather than investing a good chunk of the profits generated by their talented journalists and make a transition to the digital age, has prevaricated and penny-pinched over essential new technologies, which has caused many problems. And redundancies have been the order of the day at Newsquest's Glasgow operation.

Last year, a successful one-day strike led by National Union of Journalist chapels averted compulsory redundancies. But even the voluntary redundancies have been damaging. Staff numbers have been cut by about one-third in the past four years.

The impact on the quality of The Herald in particular could be described as Metrofication. Readers of other so-called quality dailies, especially the regional press, will be familiar with this process.

Apart from the masthead and a veneer of Scottish news on the front and back pages, an increasing proportion of the content of The Herald is remarkably similar to the Metro papers you can pick up for free on your morning bus or train. It no longer has enough staff to write sufficient original stories.

Huge swathes of Scottish life, especially in politics and business, now go unreported and unscrutinised. Much of the content is simply regurgitated wire copy, mostly from PA.

Now, new Herald editor Donald Martin has claimed that the latest changes taking place are "exciting." Maybe they are if you are on the editor's salary. But the 260 journalists who are being forced to take less pay and poorer conditions, four fewer holidays a year and work new enforced shift patterns or lose their job altogether do not agree.

The big idea is "direct input" journalism, as has been so successfully implemented - irony intended - at the Express group of pornographer Richard Desmond.

But direct input by journalists is no guarantee of better quality. It's no better than blogging. It's a bit like going to the pub and pouring the beer straight from a barrel into your mouth. You might get just as drunk, but you'll probably prefer to go to a better pub.

However, the greedy owners can only see the short-term pound signs as they strip away the "costs" of production.

When Newsquest took over in 2003 from Scottish Media Group, it promised the Competition Commission that the titles would be safe in its hands and that the quality of journalism would be maintained through investment to take the papers forward.

It looks now as though what Newsquest is really about is simply pumping cash from its flagship Scottish operation across the Atlantic to the coffers of its hungry owner Gannett. At this rate, there will be no Scottish quality newspapers left in a couple of years time, an outcome which will be bad for Scottish civic life and democracy.

There has been much talk in the last couple of years of the potential of The Herald under a new owner, perhaps a trust guaranteeing editorial independence on the model of the Irish Times Trust. The Scotsman, which was reduced to a rump under the Barclay brothers and continues to languish with the current owners Johnston Press, might also benefit from a similar arrangement.

The NUJ must engage in talks with management to try to avert the current disastrous redundancy strategy at the Herald titles.

Meanwhile, on the national stage, civic and public leaders in Scotland including the NUJ and the STUC should now be galvanised into a campaign to rescue an important institution of our public life from its rapacious and destructive private owners.

I am sure that governments in both Edinburgh and London could be convinced to support such an initiative.


CONFIRMATION of Newsquest's cost-cutting strategy was provided after the BBC Trust decided to abandon plans to invest in a network of local websites. This news was greeted with relief by owners of local newspapers such as Newsquest. The Evening Times in Glasgow last week ran a special feature calling on people to get involved as "correspondents" who would report on local issues for the planned Times microsites in districts of the city. The salary for doing this work was not mentioned, mainly because it appears that there is none. You too can work for Newsquest in Glasgow - for nothing!
 

Nationalists' plan set for little local difficulty

IT HAS been obvious for a long time that the SNP government's plans for a local income tax have been in trouble.

They deserve to be. Last week, the government suffered a 60-65 reverse in the Scottish Parliament on a Conservative motion that the local taxation Bill should allow debate on all options including a land value tax, as favoured by the Greens, and reform of the existing council tax.

While this is not the same as outright defeat for the SNP plans, it neatly demonstrates the parliamentary arithmetic which will probably scupper them.

The SNP needs to buy off the Lib Dems who do not believe that the local income tax proposed is nearly local enough. Then they need to persuade the Greens to give up the land value tax and still hope for a fair wind on the day.

I hope that the local income tax ship sinks. Whether or not you are a believer in local income tax in principle, this plan works out as little more than a cut in local government funding of several hundred million pounds.

Ironically enough, as with the unloved Scottish Futures Trust, defeat for its flagship policy has also been part of the SNP political plan. It hopes to blame Labour for voting down its "popular" and supposedly "fairer" policy rather than actually have to implement it.

But Labour is happy enough - the flawed tax plan was a vote-winner for Labour rather than the SNP in Glenrothes.

New people for new times

FULL marks to Scottish Trades Union Congress economist Stephen Boyd for nailing the first report of the government's Council of Economic Advisers led by erstwhile gnome Sir George Mathewson.

Former Royal Bank boss Mathewson chairs the council whose report published last week failed to rise to the challenge of the current economic crisis.

In fact, its main recommendation was for a restructuring of Scottish university education in the future, with students presumably paying more.

"As a lesson in the banal, the report is peerless," Boyd commented. "Reflecting the long-standing prejudices of its chair, the council calls for an extension in flexible labour markets, thereby ignoring the wealth of international comparative evidence demonstrating that the UK is already very lightly regulated."

This is both a devastatingly understated critique of Alex Salmond's favourite banker and yet another reminder that the SNP government's economic policy was, until a few weeks ago, effectively that of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

We undoubtedly need some smarter, more successful Scottish thinking at the top.

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 2 December 2008

(Tuesday 2 December 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

A quality of life issue

IT'S not often that former Labour chief whip Jackie Baillie MSP has everyone agreeing with her, even or maybe especially in her own party.

But the stage-one reading of her Disabled Persons' Parking Places (Scotland) Bill in the Scottish Parliament last week turned into a bit of a love-in.

Not only did Lib Dems and Tories praise her in order to bask in the warm glow of the moment, but the SNP government judged the initiative worth supporting and even agreeing to find resources for.

So what is this worthy initiative? A Bill to make disabled parking spaces legally enforceable. It's actually so simple that you wonder why it wasn't law before.

Of the one million disabled people resident in Scotland, 96,000 are registered wheelchair users and almost 230,000 are registered blue badge holders. But almost 85 per cent of disabled parking bays are advisory, which means that anyone can park in them without risk of being penalised. Local authorities, at present, simply rely on other drivers' goodwill not to park in designated places.

Baillie's Bill would require councils to make these legally enforceable - in other words, you'd be liable to a parking fine if you used one without a blue badge.

As well as being an issue of equality, it is a quality of life issue too.

The East Dunbartonshire MSP had done her homework on the main issue which might have caused the Bill problems - the cost of implementation.

Highland Council indicated that it would take two workers 12 years to identify where its 400 or so disabled parking spaces were and to promote a traffic regulation order, yet it would only take two from Glasgow one year to do over 4,000 spaces, Baillie reported in the debate.

"And why does the process of designating a bay cost £119 in Fife and £466 in Glasgow?" Baillie asked. "The higher cost of paint in Glasgow remains a mystery worthy of Arthur C Clarke."

Parliament unanimously agreed that the Bill should move forward to its next stage and it is likely to become law next year. Around Scotland is happy to add congratulations to Baillie on a small piece of progress towards a fairer Scotland.

That's rich coming from the bankers

THE Scottish media credulously and uncritically reported last week that the average wage in our little segment of northern Europe's erstwhile "arc of prosperity" was up from £23,080 in 2003 to £28,296 in 2008.

That's almost a quarter more in five years or the equivalent of a 4.2 per cent increase each year. The figures were produced by our friends at the Bank of Scotland, apparently on the basis of official UK earnings statistics.

Good old statistics. Black is white, according to nine out of 10 people who responded to a recent survey.

Bank of Scotland chief economist Martin Ellis makes this conclusion: "Average earnings in Scotland have risen by more than retail prices over the past five years, indicating an increase in living standards for the typical worker."

But there's treachery in the words "typical" and "average." I'm pretty sure that I know a hell of a lot more typical workers in Scotland who are paid below the £28,296 line than way above it.

The Bank of Scotland's number-crunchers have used the mean average - total pay divided by number of people paid. But that doesn't reflect typical pay at all. The very high earnings of the fat cats, including the bankers themselves, bring the mean average up.

STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham points out that the median figure - the point at which half of earners are below and half above - is more accurate.

"The median salary in Scotland is considerably lower than £28,000," the STUC official explains, "while 23 per cent of Scots are living on poverty pay of around £12,000 to £13,000 a year."

He states that "Scotland has one of the highest levels of wage inequality among major developed countries."

That is a point which could and should be addressed by the governments in Scotland and the UK as we head into a recession.

I am sure that the Scottish public-sector workers who have been striking for fair pay this year, including those in Scottish Water, might have settled for a 4.2 per cent increase each year over the last five. It would at least have kept them more or less in line with inflation.

Why Scottish water workers are angry

WORKERS in the real world have lost out badly over the last few years of restricted pay settlements and rising inflation.

It's rather different to the feather-bedded world inhabited by Bank of Scotland high-fliers and even the directors of a big publicly accountable corporation like Scottish Water.

Research by UNISON Scotland shows that staff pay in Scottish Water has lagged behind inflation and even further behind what the directors pay themselves ever since the corporation was formed in 2002.

"The latest retail prices index for October 2008 shows that prices are 23 per cent higher than they were in the middle of 2002," the union said. "In contrast, wages in Scottish Water have only risen by about 15 per cent in the same period.

"The current pay increase of 3 per cent for 15 months from April 2008 (equivalent to 2.4 per cent over one year) which has been imposed by Scottish Water does not help workers to catch up with the price increases which they have faced in the last few years.

"In contrast with staff wages, the remunerations of Scottish Water's executive directors has risen substantially since 2002. Three executive directors who have been on the board continually have seen their annual salaries (excluding bonuses) rise from an average of £108,000 in 2002/03 to £172,000 in 2007/08.

"That represents an average executive director increase of nearly 60 per cent - more than twice the increase in RPI over the same period and almost four times the increase in staff salaries."

These very directors bleat that they must pay the workers in line with Scottish government pay guidelines - which are themselves a reflection of Britain's regressive public pay policy - even though the accounts show that there is money available for a fair settlement. In fact, workers have helped Scottish Water make savings of more than £1 billion in the last few years.

Labour MSP Bill Butler has tabled a motion in the Scottish Parliament recognising that Scottish Water is publicly owned and accountable to Scottish ministers, who are responsible for setting the pay remit and approving any pay deal.

Butler's motion calls on the Scottish government to engage directly to resolve this dispute and ensure that public servants are awarded a fair and negotiated pay settlement.

Last week, the three Scottish water unions UNISON, Unite and GMB held a well-supported 24-hour strike for fair pay. The action was unprecedented - but, unless there is some movement by the government and directors, it will be repeated this week.

Climate march

ANOTHER week and another demo.

On Saturday, the Scottish Climate Change march in Glasgow will call for just solutions to climate change at Holyrood, Westminster and at the United Nations talks in Poznan, Poland.

The demo is supported by UNISON Scotland, Friends of the Earth and the World Development Movement among others. It starts at the Amphitheatre, Clyde Street, Glasgow at 12.30pm. Regular Star contributor Richard Leonard of GMB Scotland will be one of the speakers.

Visit www.scottishclimatemarch.info and www.globalclimatecampaign.org for more info.

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Anti-racist rallies mark St Andrew's Day

Anti-racist rallies mark St Andrew's Day / Britain / Home - Morning Star: "FIGHTING BACK: Trade union officials and politicians leading the Glasgow demonstration. pic: MALCOLM BURNS

Around Scotland - Monday 24 November 2008

(Monday 24 November 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Roaring lion or mouse?

THE Calman Commission on Scottish devolution is due to publish its interim report on Tuesday next week. I imagine that we will not be able to tell from this whether it will squeak like a mouse or roar like a lion when it delivers its final conclusions next year.

Probably a bit of both, if it behaves like the typical commission of the great and good inquiring into a complicated and contested political issue. I am looking forward to next week's interim report though.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the seriousness with which Calman has approached the work. There has been a wide range of submissions from all sorts of interested parties, bodies and individuals and the commission has travelled around Scotland and beyond to hear and record opinions. The exchange of views at the evidence-gathering event which I attended in Glasgow was open, robust and actually quite enjoyable.

Much of this evidence is available in transcript and some in video form at www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk.

A paper on financing devolution by Professor Anton Muscatelli and his independent expert group was published last week. It is as dry and academic as you would expect from a bunch of orthodox economists, but it is well worth reading. It lays out in detail the various funding options with useful international comparisons.

It doesn't take an economics professor to grasp that "full fiscal autonomy" - in other words, a completely independent financial regime - might be incompatible with the continuation of the United Kingdom as it has been up to now.

However, Muscatelli has shed light on the funding issue and rightly pointed out in a TV interview that the way forward is a political and democratic decision, not one for economic technocrats.

The evidence given to Calman by previous Labour first ministers Jack McConnell and Henry McLeish is forthright and revealing. McLeish, in particular, is excellent on the need for further home rule. If he had been so clear-thinking when in office, he might not have muddled his way into resigning.

The evidence from the STUC is also strong, but you will be dismayed by the lacklustre Westminster government submission.

Thus far and no further? It looks like Whitehall and Downing Street have learnt nothing and have probably forgotten nothing either. I hope that Calman will give it a rigorous examination.

Meanwhile, what's happened to the SNP government's National Conversation? Not much.

The initial document last July, shortly after the nationalists became the minority administration, was an interesting one and certainly challenged Labour and the other parties, which were then in disarray.

There's a handy little guide to the National Conversation timeline at the Scottish government website (tinyurl.com/scotnatconv) but it reveals little more than a few regurgitated ministerial speeches and blog entries and nothing later than Salmond and Sturgeon's summer holiday tour with the cabinet to Dumfries, Inverness, Pitlochry and Skye in August.

Perhaps they can argue that they are spending their time governing and so the blue sky thinking has been put on hold. But it seems to me that the SNP government now has all its constitutional eggs in one basket - the referendum pencilled in for St Andrews Day 2010.

So far, on seriousness and level of debate if not yet lionhearted bravery, I have to give Calman the plaudits and Salmond's squeaky mouse of a National Conversation the brickbats.

Aberdeen anti-racists set to defy march ban

NOVEMBER 30 is St Andrews Day, Scotland's national day.

A number of years ago, the STUC, its member unions and local trades union councils decided to strengthen their campaigning against racism and fascism. It was agreed to focus on St Andrews Day with annual marches and rallies which would link the idea of Scotland with an inclusive equality agenda regardless of race, creed or colour.

Each year, on the weekend nearest to November 30, thousands of Scots led by their union banners take to the streets in the anti-racist, anti-fascist cause.

It's become a valuable tradition, so it is shocking to hear that the St Andrews Day march planned by Aberdeen Trades Union Council has been banned on the casting vote of SNP councillor Callum McCaig.

Police advice that the city could not handle a demo in the morning as well as an Aberdeen versus Motherwell football match in the afternoon seems spurious to me.

I am delighted that the Aberdeen comrades are not taking it lying down. Aberdeen TUC secretary Sultan Feroz was rightly defiant in pledging that the rally in the Castlegate on Saturday will go ahead as planned at 11.30am.

I'll be with them in spirit, since I will actually be at the Glasgow march. Assemble at St Andrews in the Square, off Saltmarket, at 10.30am for a march at 11am to a rally at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Rose Street at 12 noon.

It's only four years since Aberdeen's then Lib Dem-led council got into bother by initially giving consent for a National Front demo to take place in opposition to the St Andrews Day march in 2004. That idiotic decision was seen off by a massive popular outcry against the fascists. I fully expect that this one will be too.

Aberdeen was a Labour council until 2003, when it fell to a LibDem/Tory coalition. Last year's council elections resulted in an SNP-led coalition, again with the Lib Dems. How very liberal and democratic they are too, eh?

A history of struggle

ON THURSDAY, Close the Gap and UNISON Scotland mark the 40th anniversary of the Ford equal pay strikes with an event in Glasgow's CCA.

Winning Equal Pay: From Red Clydeside To Ford Dagenham will be an opportunity for trade union activists and low-paid working women to celebrate past equal pay victories and look to the future to discuss how equal pay can be realised for all women today.

The evening will consist of short films on the Ford strikes and the 1943 Clydeside strikes famously led by Communist shop steward Agnes McLean, later a redoubtable Labour councillor in Glasgow.

There will be an opportunity to hear from two of the original Ford strikers, in addition to trade unionists who are currently involved inequal pay struggles. Light refreshments will also be provided.

Places are limited, so you'll need to register by contacting Shona Roberts of Close the Gap at the STUC via sroberts@stuc.org.uk or call(0141) 337-8146.

Here's a wee YouTube video to put you in the mood - uk.youtube.com/user/winningequalpay

Edinburgh lecture

PROFESSOR Allyson Pollock, chairwoman of International Public Health Policy at Edinburgh University, is never anything less than provocative and always well worth reading.

Her inaugural lecture entitled Liberty, Commerce and Public Health Care is on Tuesday at 5.30pm in The Chancellor's Building, LittleFrance, Edinburgh.

The lecture is open to the public and deals with the excellent question, "If markets don't work for banks, then what is their place in public health care?"

Email Patricia.McClory@ed.ac.uk or call (0131) 651-3166 for more details.

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 18 November 2008

(Tuesday 18 November 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Fantastic news for Star

I WAS delighted to read the feature articles by John Haylett and Richard Bagley in the Star last week outlining plans for the paper's bright new future.

It is good to think that some of the path forward has been opened by the Scottish experience.

Sales are on the up. For many years, we Scots were only getting the paper from the day before due to circulation problems. It's great to be able to pick up today's Star in our local newsagent.

Every little helps. We order two copies and the deal with the shop is that the extra one goes on display and we'll buy any that are left at the end of the week. I hear that a woman who works nearby is now frequently buying the extra copy.

Having been an online journalist myself over a number of years, I think that the decision to make the web version of the paper free to access is exciting.

I know what the risks are. There is a danger that sales of the print edition could be undermined. But the opportunity of getting the Star's unique and vital broad left news and views heard more widely is really important to grasp.

So, if you're reading this but you don't take the Star regularly, you know what you have to do. Order it at your local newsagent and get it every day. And make sure your union office and branch are ordering their copies too.

That way, we can make sure that the new improved paper and free-to-access website will survive and grow.

Annual award bash big on backslapping

SCOTLAND'S annual Politician of the Year Awards took place last Thursday at the plush Prestonfield House Hotel in Edinburgh.

The winner was Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who followed in the footsteps of last year's winner Alex Salmond after the SNP success in the Scottish Parliament elections.

I suppose that it was inevitable that the SNP would be recognised two years on the bounce. After all, you'd be hard pushed to award the top prize to any of the Scottish opposition.

Gordon Brown's favourite MSP John Park was handed the title of "one to watch." Some people think that this might be because of his brutal football tackles, painfully evident to sports hack Chick Young in the recent unseemly fracas during a "friendly" between Sottish parliamentarians and journalists. He's now universally known as "Chopper" Park.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre juxtaposition, Alistair Darling won the gong for best Scot at Westminster, an award sponsored by Bank of Scotland, the bank that he has just bailed out with billions of our dosh.

Harmless political fun or a tedious self-aggrandising drink-fuelled backslapping bore? Hmmm. Which could it be? Yes, you've guessed. Dismal.

It's a wonder that no-one's ever thought of just torching the whole proceedings.

Salmond's comic turn

The internet is a great thing. Those of you who missed Alex Salmond's sketch for BBC Scotland Children in Need as the Rev I M Jolly, the miserable TV padre created by the late great Scottish comedian Rikki Fulton, can catch it online at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7730701.stm

It's the longest that you'll ever see the First Minister going without looking smug.

Opinions differ on whether he was any good. Labour loyalists tend to think not. Personally, I reckon his humorous self-deprecating performance was not at all bad and he had the sense to make sure that he had a first-rate script.

Meanwhile, over on YouTube, another video called Glenrothes Downfall also features some top-grade writing and it skewers Salmond mercilessly.

It's not an original idea - there are plenty of Downfall voiceovers on the web - and I know that I have said that I despise cheap allegations of nazism, but that's not what this is.

As satire, I think that it nails the SNP strategic problem over the independence referendum. But mainly it's just very funny.

Search YouTube for "Glenrothes Downfall" and judge for yourselves.

Argentinian return

IT'S so long ago, was it just a dream? The first time that Scotland played Argentina at Hampden was on June 2 1979. I remember it well. I was there.

It was just a year after the nation had gone World Cup crazy with manager Ally McLeod, who really did claim that we'd come back from Argentina '78 with "at least a medal." So much for that.

But at least we got to see the real champions and Diego Maradona, who, at 17 hadn't been picked for the previous year's World Cup squad, give a lesson in football brilliance to a Scotland team which was led by our best ever player Kenny Dalglish.

The Hand of God is due back in the home of Scottish football tomorrow night, assuming that he hasn't walked out, as he has threatened to do in a dispute with the Argentinian FA. My teenage sons Liam and Neil are going to the game and I hope that they see some Maradona magic. I'd settle for 1-3, as it was on the summer night when I was spellbound.

Money for Palestine

FULL marks to Labour MSP Pauline McNeill for putting on a great fundraiser for Gaza on Friday night in Glasgow's G2 nightclub.

With the venue donated free by the management and artists playing for no fee, the gig raised a healthy four-figure sum to help Edinburgh Direct Aid organise a convoy of medical aid to Gaza hospitals.

The convoy is supported by Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Find out more or make a donation at www.edinburghdirectaid.org
 

STUC women's conference

CAN I add my comradely, even fraternal, greetings to the STUC women trade unionists gathered in Perth on Monday and Tuesday.

The sisters are not just doing it for themselves. As a regular source of imaginative and hard-hitting policy initiatives for the movement as a whole, the women's conference and the committee that it elects are doing it for all of us.

Salud, sisters.

.

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Around Scotland - Monday 10 November 2008

(Monday 10 November 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Tale of two by-elections

I DIDN'T tell you so. In fact, I admitted last week that I had no idea which way the Glenrothes by-election was going to go. Like most people, I thought that it would be a narrow win for either Labour or the SNP - most people apart from smug Alex Salmond, of course, who declared outright nationalist triumph days before the defeat.

A 6,700 majority in a mid-term by-election is a thumping win. There was nothing narrow about it. But what accounts for the scale of the Labour victory?

Labour, with fewer activists on the ground, managed to turn out even more voters than it had in the previous Glenrothes election. It was an impressive improvement over Glasgow East in July.

Learning from your mistakes is always wise. Glasgow East was called in a snap and the curtailed three-week campaign revealed an empty shell of a local Labour Party with no voter contact and hardly any active members. The parachuted-in campaign team had insufficient time to identify and turn out Labour voters. This was not the case in the lengthy eight-week campaign in Fife, where a similar team had time to identify and turn out the vote.

Thousands of Glasgow East voters had fallen so much out of love with Labour that they weren't voting and many more went over to the SNP. That clearly didn't happen in Glenrothes. And Labour seized its chance to play as the opposition to the local SNP-led council and the Holyrood government, despite it being a Westminster by-election.

I don't know about a Brown bounce due to the global financial crisis - that will be tested in the year or more between now and a general election. I am sure, though, that Salmond's inability to comprehend and respond to the failure of his beloved Scottish banks has been a turning point, possibly not unlike the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when Obama recognised the scale of the problem and McCain claimed that the fundamentals remained sound.

Ordinary folk on the sharp end usually have a good grasp of the fundamentals and vote accordingly.

Some pundits have compared Glenrothes to Glasgow Garscadden in 1978, when Donald Dewar held off a nationalist challenge at a time when theSNP appeared to threaten Labour's dominance in Scotland.

Up to a point. The position is more complex now, with the SNP actually in government at Holyrood, albeit as a minority administration.

After Garscadden, what happened next? In 1979, SNP MPs voted with the Tories against the struggling Callaghan government to usher in the era of Thatcher.

Salmond's strategy now is to hope that Labour loses the next UK election and that then Scots will turn to the promise of independence to escape from a Tory Britain.

I stand by my view that the SNP had more to lose in defeat at Glenrothes than Labour, though.

The nationalists' leader believes that his party's success depends on sustaining confidence among the Scottish people. He really needs continual spectacular by-election victories to keep the momentum going.

The law of diminishing returns kicks in here. The more you win, the more you are expected to win. When you lose, the magic evaporates.

But, crucially, the SNP has not won the argument for separation from the UK. Independence is still only favoured by about a third of Scots.The local income tax and the Scottish Futures Trust policies are unravelling. The arc of prosperity has turned to ashes.

I might be wrong of course, but, after Glenrothes, I think that the independence referendum promised for 2010 is going to become a poisoned political football which Salmond will wish he had kicked further into the long grass.


THE innocence of youth. Sean, who is just six, was concentrating last week on the wall-to-wall television coverage of Barack Obama's victory.

"Can we get a black government, mum?" he asked, clearly envious of the exciting new development in the US. "Well, we have a Brown one," shejoked.

"But he's not even brown, he's just peachy," said Sean in disgust.

If only he was just peachy, Sean, if only he was.

Late-night clamouring of the inarticulate cybernats

THE cybernat is a curious form of virtual life. It cannot be seen, but obviously sleeps during the day, because its bilious trail of fury only ever begins late at night.

As tomorrow's politics stories find their way online after the first editions go to press, a series of bizarre postings by SNP web surfers appears on the websites of the Herald and the Scotsman or their Sundaysisters like a trail of droppings behind a flock of wandering sheep.

These describe the evil dealings against Scotland of Maggie Broon and his New Liebour party and the heroic defence of the nation by Wee Eck Salmond and his SNP bravehearts in terms so juvenile, inarticulateand sometimes offensive yet so insistently off-planet that it is indeed a wonder to behold.

Some, notably the cybernats themselves, believe that they have contributed to whatever successes the SNP has gained. I take the opposite view and, if I was Alex Salmond, I would issue a cease and desist order.

Sometimes, a comment thread becomes so faecal that the papers just switch it off. Who needs it? The cybernats then gather round another completely unrelated thread and add the complaint of censorship to their anti-English clamour.

I would say that they swarmed - they do like to give that impression - but I think that there are only about seven of them altogether.

You could tell that something catastrophic had happened in the Scottish political environment around midnight on Thursday, as it became clear that Labour had won the Glenrothes by-election with a rather large, indeed splendid, majority.

The cybernats were silent, virtually all night.

But the nuclear blast of Glenrothes clearly hasn't wiped the cybernats out - they have blearily continued to buzz helplessly beneath online articles over the weekend with the bizarre view that the election was rigged.

But somehow I think that it may never be glad confident one in the morning for the cybernats again.

What about more cash in our pockets?

AS the economy slides into recession, what better way for government to mitigate the crisis than putting some more money in the wage packets of ordinary workers.

You'd think that, after we've part-nationalised the banks and slashed interest rates, a simple old-fashioned Keynesian measure like that would be a no-brainer.

But right-wing monetarist orthodoxy still holds sway with the Labour government and it still says: "No, cap pay rises at 2 per cent." The Scottish government follows suit.

Thirty thousand Scottish civil and public servants were due to be on strike today, along with hundreds of thousands more across the UK fighting for a decent pay award.

A last-minute offer of talks means that the action has been suspended, but the mandate for striking is maintained. If there is no progress, more strikes will follow.

Meanwhile, ballots on further action are due to close this week in the long-running Scottish local government dispute and at Scottish Water, where the same hard-faced pay policy is being dictated by the Scottish government to an employer which admits that it could afford a better offer than 2.5 per cent.

Other workers in the public sector, such as meat hygiene inspectors, and in the private sector, such as the lorry drivers at CarntyneTransport, are also balloting on action over similar paltry pay deals.

Unless you're a banker, it looks like you have to fight hard for your money.

.

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Around Scotland - Monday 3 November 2008

(Monday 3 November 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Glenrothes challenge

THE Glenrothes by-election remains too close to call hours away from polling day on Thursday. I am not going to try. That fact that it's so tight would be remarkable considering that central Fife has been a Labour heartland for generations if the SNP had not snatched Glasgow East from Labour's helpless grasp in July with a swing of over 22 per cent.

It is likely that the swing away from Labour in Glenrothes on Thursday is going to be once more of pretty scary proportions whether or not it exceeds the 14 per cent required for the SNP to win.

However, in a way, it is a bigger deal for the SNP to fail in Glenrothes than for Labour.

Labour could indeed lose Glenrothes and, if it does, it will be another huge blow for the party. But it will merely confirm what everyone already knows - the right-wing policies of Blair and Brown have been a massive turn-off for Labour's core support.

Labour's reckoning will come when it has to try to turn out its core vote in the next UK general election. Meanwhile, Brown will remain in charge of the party and hold that evil day off as long as possible, perhaps even until June 2010.

For the SNP, Glenrothes could be more of a watershed moment.

The SNP opposed the war, it opposes Trident and it has posed as more left wing than Labour, though the latter is not a hard act to play.

Until his beloved Scottish banks began to fail and get bailed out by the UK taxpayer, Alex Salmond boxed much more cleverly than Labour. He has enjoyed genuine popularity, so much so that the SNP started this campaign as huge favourites to overturn a 10,000 Labour majority. Now, failing to win Glenrothes would be the SNP leader's first significant reverse since his return in 2004.

* Glenrothes is not the only election happening this week. From my perspective, the outcome of the presidential election in the US on Tuesday will have deeper and longer implications for Scotland, as well as the rest of the world, than Glenrothes on Thursday.

If you're reading this online across the pond, keep your eyes on the prize and get out and vote Obama. He might not be a socialist, but the world can't afford any more maniacs in the White House.

Abu Ghraib firm campaign gathers pace

THE Scottish government has contracted the research company CACI to conduct the 2011 census, as reported in the Star last week.

CACI is a wholly owned subsidiary of a firm that provided interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

A "rehearsal" for the census contract is due to begin in spring 2009 in the west of Edinburgh and in the island of Lewis and Harris.

Campaigning initiatives to oppose CACI involvement include the Scotland Against Criminalising Communities petition for an Ethical Scottish Census in 2011, which calls for the contract to be cancelled. You can sign it at www.sacc.org.uk/census/

The SACC campaign has been supported by many people, including comedian and writer Mark Thomas, journalist John Pilger, former Labour MP Tony Benn and Labour MSP Malcolm Chisholm.

Fellow Labour MSP Pauline McNeill also put down a Scottish Parliament motion recently calling for an ethical census, which has been supported by numerous MSPs including Bill Butler, Cathy Jamieson, Jackie Baillie, Patrick Harvie, Elaine Smith and Marlyn Glen.

CACI UK is the firm which operates the ACORN marketing and social classification tool. Most people who have done social research at one time or another, including me, have used ACORN (A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods) codes. I feel somewhat unclean even by that unwitting association with Abu Ghraib.

The ethical census campaign is rightly focusing on the Scottish government, but many other publicly funded organisations, including local authorities and universities as well as government agencies, will have paid for services such as ACORN provided by the UK arm of CACI.

We should be calling for them all to have an ethical audit of their suppliers, with Iraq war privateers top of the list for cutting.

Cardinal nazi-bashing sin

SCOTLAND'S leading Catholic Cardinal Keith O'Brien let fly yet another intemperate outburst at Labour last week.

He attacked Gordon Brown for supporting the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

O'Brien described research allowed by the new law as "grotesque" and akin to "nazi-style experiments."

I'm not a fan of loose accusations of nazism. You might disagree profoundly with the Prime Minister - I do often - but he is no nazi.

Anyway, if the spiritual leader to whom I owed my job had been in the Hitler Youth and my church had such a dodgy relationship with real nazi war crimes, I don't think I'd be accusing anyone else.

Fair deal for public services

THE voluntary sector is often overlooked, but it provides many essential public services.

In Scotland, as elsewhere, some voluntary organisations are being contracted to perform public services for less than they cost to deliver, putting at risk the quality of services for society's most vulnerable.

The Scottish government is being pressed to deliver a funding framework for public-service contracts to ensure equitable wages and conditions between front-line voluntary sector workers delivering public services and public-sector workers.

The Scottish Council For Voluntary Organisations and Community Care Providers Scotland have joined forces with the Scottish TUC and leading unions Unite and UNISON to bring the case for a national framework before the Scottish Parliament petitions committee.

You can find out more and sign the petition online before November 26 at www.stuc.org.uk/campaigns
 

Anti-rape campaigners aim to reclaim the night

THE Rape Crisis centre in Glasgow is organising a Reclaim the Night event on Tuesday November 25.

This marks the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and is the beginning of 16 days of action on violence against women running up to International Human Rights Day on December 10. In 2008, the theme for the 16 days of action worldwide is around women's human rights - the right to be free from male violence.

The Glasgow event is being held under the banner, "Stop violence against women. Women in the west of Scotland reclaim our right to safety on our streets, in our homes, in our schools, in our workplace."

Participants should gather from 6.30pm on November 25 at the STUC Centre, 333 Woodlands Road for the short march to Glasgow University Union where there will be speeches, music, stalls and food. All women and supportive men are welcome.

Visit www.rapecrisiscentre-glasgow.co.uk for more information.

It's quite apt that the Reclaim the Night event should end up at Glasgow University Union, a former bastion of student male chauvinism.

The sisters of today will follow in the footsteps of those who famously stormed the then men-only GUU Beer Bar almost 30 years ago and claimed it for gender equality. I was outside cheering them on.

.

 

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Around Scotland - Monday 27 October 2008

(Monday 27 October 2008)

MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.

Ye shall be queen

BLINK and ye missed it. The film which tells the yarn of the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association students who stole the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey at Christmas 1950 was only on in Scotland and it was only on last week. That's what you call a limited release!

This turkey won't even reach Christmas. Despite some high-grade Scottish movie stars like the normally brilliant Robert Carlyle, it received a critically lukewarm reception on its premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June.

It's not exactly Braveheart, more of a harmless caper movie of the sort produced by Ealing studios in black and white. Though not so good.

At least it was filmed on location in Scotland. My 10-year-old daughter was keen to see it because our street is in it, complete with period cars and vans and our tenement.

The direction and the script were pretty shallow. The political background in the film was sketchy and cartoonish, the low point being the depiction of saltire-brandishing Glaswegians dancing in the streets when they heard the news that the Stone was back home. As if.

While the film itself is a bit fey, the political background to the stunt that it commemorates is quite interesting.

John McCormick, chief political mentor to the Stone of Destiny heist students, was an ex-Labour Party home ruler who helped set up the Scottish National Party in the 1930s, only to quit in the 1942 split, disillusioned by the narrow fundamentalist pro-independence majority in the new party.

The broad front devolutionary approach that he sought was realised in the post-war national assemblies, where churches joined trade unions and town councils, and in the Scottish Covenant Association. Taking its name from a famous tradition of Scottish Presbyterian history, the covenant was a flowery declaration of Scotland's right to rule itself.

Dougie Bain, writing in Marxism Today in August 1978 during another period of devolutionary turmoil, describes what happened next.

"The labour movement responded to the initiative. The Scottish Labour Party included the call for a Scottish parliament in its 1945 election manifesto and the movement was heavily involved in the ensuing covenant campaign which attracted two-and-a-half million signatures demanding devolution of power to a Scottish Parliament."

That phenomenal covenant petition snowballed from about 1,200 signatures at the third National Assembly on The Mound in Edinburgh on October 29 1949, with unprecedented thousands of activists going door-to-door and conducting stalls and street campaigning in the following months. Scotland went a bit devolution mad.

"But," Bain continues, "the post-war Labour government was unmoved by it all and confined its response to a white paper suggesting a minor extension of the scope of the Scottish Grand Committee."

Not for the first or last time, Labour gave birth to a mouse.

Even if, as Andrew Marr suggests in his essential 1992 book The Battle for Scotland, some of the two million covenant signatures were Donald Ducks or Mickey Mouses, the scale of popular support for devolution which had been expressed was massive.

So, the disappointment for a romantic home ruler like McCormick must have been intense. In fact, the narrow SNP nationalism which he had rejected and the broad-based mass-supported devolution initiative which he had embraced had both failed to deliver anything. That was the context in which the student plan to snatch the Stone of Destiny came about.

The squat oblong block of red sandstone with metal carrying rings was the legendary coronation seat of Scotland's kings before Edward I of England captured it in 1296, so its retrieval would symbolise the return of Scottish sovereignty. Hokum then, as now, of course.

The bizarre Stone of Destiny caper was better rendered in the songs written soon afterwards than by the present cinematic effort. The late, great Norman Buchan put one of the best of these ballads, The Wee Magic Stane by John McEvoy, in his 1962 collection 101 Scottish Songs.

The song claims that, as the "wild folk up yonder … didnae believe it wis magic at a'," numerous replica versions of the stone were made and the original was mixed up with the copies. Though a stone of destiny was returned to Westminster in 1951, it is unclear whether it was the real one.

So, the song goes, "If ever ye come on a stane wi' a ring/Jist sit yersel' doon and appoint yersel King/Fur there's nane wud be able to challenge yir claim/That ye'd croont yersel King on the Destiny Stane."

One day, when she's older, I'll take my daughter over to the Arlington Bar, a fine wee pub in Woodlands Road where the GUSNA students hatched their plot in 1950, and she can sit on the wooden seat under which one of the real stones of destiny resides and crown herself queen.


* THE incoming Tory government in the early 1950s created an unproductive standing commission on devolution.

By 1955, more than half of all Scottish votes went to one party, the only time that this has ever happened. That was the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party.

Fast forward to the dog days of the Major government in 1996 and you would see the hated Thatcherite Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth return the Stone of Destiny again to Scotland in a shameless and vain attempt to curry favour. The Scottish Tories were wiped out in 1997.

Exposing the myths

A POWERFUL poster and website campaign exposing myths about rape is currently to be seen around Scotland.

Going under the slogan "This is not an invitation to rape me," the posters are designed to challenge attitudes held by the public which blame women for their victimisation in cases of rape.

Originating in the US, its launch through Rape Crisis Scotland represents the first time that the campaign has been shared with another country.

Scottish Trades Union Congress women's committee chairwoman Cheryl Gedling welcomed the campaign.

"The STUC fully supports Rape Crisis Scotland's new campaign," she said. "It is absolutely vital that we tackle Scotland's appalling conviction rates in rape cases, along with the attitudes some people hold where they believe a woman may in some part be to blame."

Visit www.thisisnotaninvitationtorapeme.co.uk for more details.

Onwards to community rebirth

FOLLOWING last month's successful conference on trade unions and community regeneration at the STUC, Clydebank TUC is holding a public meeting on local issues of development and democracy.

While local regeneration focused on river bank private development, the infrastructure and services needed by thousands of households in the post-war housing schemes have been neglected.

"Was this regeneration expenditure a hidden subsidy for large-scale property development which had nothing to do with the needs of local people?" asks Clydebank TUC spokesman Tom Morrison.

STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham will join local union leaders from Unite, GMB and UNISON to discuss these issues as well as the controversial pay offer and single status deal being put forward by West Dunbartonshire Council.

The Clydebank TUC meeting will be held tomorrow at 7.30pm in Clydebank Town Hall. All welcome.

Top turn from Star columnist

BROWSING through The List website of what's on in Glasgow and Edinburgh at teatime on Thursday last week, I came across an absolute must-see act appearing at the Oran Mor venue in Glasgow's West End - none other than my colleague and Star co-columnist Chris T-T and his band supporting his friend and fellow Winchester songsmith Frank Turner.

I rushed out and managed to catch the last half of Chris and his band's set. I wasn't sure what to expect, but high-octane loud punky guitar pop was an excellent surprise.

Makes me wonder what the other Star columnists get up to with their talents on their time off. I think that we should be told!

Turner wasn't bad at all either and, judging from the enthusiastic Glasgow crowd, he could be about to become a big star.

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