Published in the Morning Star
(Tuesday 19 August 2008)
"Even the most militant members of the denial tendency must now understand the cold realism that Labour is deep in the doldrums," he wrote. I agree.
"If Labour learns only one lesson from the last 12 months, it must be that, when it sets its ideological compass by the Tories or the SNP, it ends in calamity." Spot on.
Leonard refrained from stating a view on which of the nominated candidates would be best, but he said that Labour's turnaround "cannot stand or fall on the election of one candidate or another." I agree with that too. Whoever wins, Labour needs to change.
I think, though, that we have to have our eyes wide open about the various runners and riders.
Among the candidates for leader, the big problem is that they were all part of the team in government responsible for where Labour is now, in opposition and in grave difficulty.
Iain Gray is effectively the Brown Labour establishment candidate. Andy Kerr is the former Jack McConnell sidekick and continuing private finance initiative enthusiast. Cathy Jamieson has been deputy leader for eight years.
In her current stint as acting leader, Jamieson has managed to give the SNP leadership a hard time in the Scottish Parliament, something that her predecessor Wendy Alexander signally failed to do.
Gray and Kerr both appear to share the denial and "one more heave" mentality. The only one of the three who has clearly stated that Labour will fail if it is offering just "more of the same" is Jamieson.
Deputy leadership candidate Johann Lamont has been a junior minister in the same team responsible for the current predicament.
Of the five candidates for both positions, only Bill Butler has consistently been against the war in Iraq and against the Trident replacement. He is the only one who clearly describes himself as a democratic socialist.
He's also got a track record of practical achievement.
In the last Scottish Parliament, Butler promoted a private member's Bill, supported by health unions but not initially by the Labour leadership, to establish democratic representation on health boards for the first time.
His assiduous campaign resulted in the principle now being widely agreed upon across parties, including Labour, and likely to become reality.
There you have it. Around Scotland goes for Jamieson and Butler - a gender-balanced ticket which offers Jamieson the chance to prove that her successful jousts with the SNP in the Holyrood chamber as acting leader are no flash in the pan and combines that with a deputy in Butler who has credible and proven democratic socialist credentials.
Actually, someone else pointed the piece out to me, as I don't buy The Sun, of course. Sadly, several hundred thousand of my compatriots do, making the Murdoch rag the biggest-selling daily in Scotland.
The false report would have at least some effect on making people imagine union support lies where it does not.
Surely, the Morning Star would be impervious to such misinformation.
"Aaargh!" I thought on Friday when I saw a news story in this very organ describing in fulsome terms Iain Gray's support from Unite and then discovered that, in the same article, UNISON support had been mysteriously transferred from Iain Gray in the Sun (wrong) to Andy Kerr in the Morning Star (wrong again).
For the record, the UNISON Scotland Labour Link committee decided unanimously after a hustings with all five candidates to support Cathy Jamieson and Bill Butler.
Quite right too.
Now, each August, pipers and drummers from all over the world return to Glasgow to demonstrate the highest level of the piping arts at the week long Piping Live festival in Glasgow and the World Pipe Band Championships which have just finished.
Some are military bands, but many others are not, the competition is friendly and the purpose is peaceful. Well, peaceful apart from the ear-splitting racket.
The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band from Vancouver won the world title in front of 40,000 people on Saturday.
Still, that was a mere fraction of the audience which saw and heard the Mains of Fintry, a wee grade-four pipe band from Dundee, leading the athletes out in the Beijing Olympic stadium in front of 90,000 spectators and a global TV audience of billions at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
The news that they will be joined in the Day of Action by PCS Scotland civil servants in their continuing protest over low pay was not unexpected but is a strong indication of how unpopular the government public-sector pay squeeze really is.
Meanwhile, it's not just the public sector where discontent is simmering. Following disputes at the Herald and Times over redundancies last year, journalists at the Daily Record and Sunday Mail in Glasgow are now balloting over industrial action in response to unsustainably low levels of staffing.
The NUJ is concerned about the steady erosion of journalistic staff in newsrooms across the UK and Ireland as media companies take the short-sighted step of failing to replace staff who leave, in the hope that it will help deliver bigger profits.
Burns vs Paxman. No contest.
THE Scottish schools went back on Monday. As a final holiday excursion for the kids on Saturday after a week at the Haven fun camp in Ayr, we took them to Burns's Cottage at Alloway where the great poet was born in 1759.
I'd like to pretend to them that he's an ancestor but he isn't. Or a relation even, but I have no reason to suppose so.
I'm just glad that we are not called Paxman. At least my nine-year-old in a Scottish state school - a Gaelic-medium school at that - has already learned about both Robert Burns and William Shakespeare.
Jeremy Paxman's description of Burns as "king of sentimental doggerel" in the introduction of the 2008 new edition of Chambers Dictionary is as ignorant as it is a blatant piece of media hype for a commercial publication.
MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on north of the border.
The choice for leader
THE Scottish Labour leadership contest is now taking pace at hustings meetings around Scotland. Richard Leonard's wise article in the Star last Thursday should be read by all the candidates."Even the most militant members of the denial tendency must now understand the cold realism that Labour is deep in the doldrums," he wrote. I agree.
"If Labour learns only one lesson from the last 12 months, it must be that, when it sets its ideological compass by the Tories or the SNP, it ends in calamity." Spot on.
Leonard refrained from stating a view on which of the nominated candidates would be best, but he said that Labour's turnaround "cannot stand or fall on the election of one candidate or another." I agree with that too. Whoever wins, Labour needs to change.
I think, though, that we have to have our eyes wide open about the various runners and riders.
Among the candidates for leader, the big problem is that they were all part of the team in government responsible for where Labour is now, in opposition and in grave difficulty.
Iain Gray is effectively the Brown Labour establishment candidate. Andy Kerr is the former Jack McConnell sidekick and continuing private finance initiative enthusiast. Cathy Jamieson has been deputy leader for eight years.
In her current stint as acting leader, Jamieson has managed to give the SNP leadership a hard time in the Scottish Parliament, something that her predecessor Wendy Alexander signally failed to do.
Gray and Kerr both appear to share the denial and "one more heave" mentality. The only one of the three who has clearly stated that Labour will fail if it is offering just "more of the same" is Jamieson.
Deputy leadership candidate Johann Lamont has been a junior minister in the same team responsible for the current predicament.
Of the five candidates for both positions, only Bill Butler has consistently been against the war in Iraq and against the Trident replacement. He is the only one who clearly describes himself as a democratic socialist.
He's also got a track record of practical achievement.
In the last Scottish Parliament, Butler promoted a private member's Bill, supported by health unions but not initially by the Labour leadership, to establish democratic representation on health boards for the first time.
His assiduous campaign resulted in the principle now being widely agreed upon across parties, including Labour, and likely to become reality.
There you have it. Around Scotland goes for Jamieson and Butler - a gender-balanced ticket which offers Jamieson the chance to prove that her successful jousts with the SNP in the Holyrood chamber as acting leader are no flash in the pan and combines that with a deputy in Butler who has credible and proven democratic socialist credentials.
The Sun and Star get the facts wrong
"TYPICAL," I thought on Wednesday when The Sun in Scotland ran an article on the Labour leadership wrongly stating that Iain Gray had won the backing of UNISON.Actually, someone else pointed the piece out to me, as I don't buy The Sun, of course. Sadly, several hundred thousand of my compatriots do, making the Murdoch rag the biggest-selling daily in Scotland.
The false report would have at least some effect on making people imagine union support lies where it does not.
Surely, the Morning Star would be impervious to such misinformation.
"Aaargh!" I thought on Friday when I saw a news story in this very organ describing in fulsome terms Iain Gray's support from Unite and then discovered that, in the same article, UNISON support had been mysteriously transferred from Iain Gray in the Sun (wrong) to Andy Kerr in the Morning Star (wrong again).
For the record, the UNISON Scotland Labour Link committee decided unanimously after a hustings with all five candidates to support Cathy Jamieson and Bill Butler.
Quite right too.
A whole lot of pipers piping
THE martial music of the Scottish bagpipes helped to lead the bloody British empire to the ends of the earth.Now, each August, pipers and drummers from all over the world return to Glasgow to demonstrate the highest level of the piping arts at the week long Piping Live festival in Glasgow and the World Pipe Band Championships which have just finished.
Some are military bands, but many others are not, the competition is friendly and the purpose is peaceful. Well, peaceful apart from the ear-splitting racket.
The Simon Fraser University Pipe Band from Vancouver won the world title in front of 40,000 people on Saturday.
Still, that was a mere fraction of the audience which saw and heard the Mains of Fintry, a wee grade-four pipe band from Dundee, leading the athletes out in the Beijing Olympic stadium in front of 90,000 spectators and a global TV audience of billions at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
Stoppages in the news
LOCAL government unions Unite, UNISON and GMB are gearing up for the big one-day stoppage tomorrow over the below-inflation pay offer by council bosses.The news that they will be joined in the Day of Action by PCS Scotland civil servants in their continuing protest over low pay was not unexpected but is a strong indication of how unpopular the government public-sector pay squeeze really is.
Meanwhile, it's not just the public sector where discontent is simmering. Following disputes at the Herald and Times over redundancies last year, journalists at the Daily Record and Sunday Mail in Glasgow are now balloting over industrial action in response to unsustainably low levels of staffing.
The NUJ is concerned about the steady erosion of journalistic staff in newsrooms across the UK and Ireland as media companies take the short-sighted step of failing to replace staff who leave, in the hope that it will help deliver bigger profits.
Burns vs Paxman. No contest.
THE Scottish schools went back on Monday. As a final holiday excursion for the kids on Saturday after a week at the Haven fun camp in Ayr, we took them to Burns's Cottage at Alloway where the great poet was born in 1759.I'd like to pretend to them that he's an ancestor but he isn't. Or a relation even, but I have no reason to suppose so.
I'm just glad that we are not called Paxman. At least my nine-year-old in a Scottish state school - a Gaelic-medium school at that - has already learned about both Robert Burns and William Shakespeare.
Jeremy Paxman's description of Burns as "king of sentimental doggerel" in the introduction of the 2008 new edition of Chambers Dictionary is as ignorant as it is a blatant piece of media hype for a commercial publication.
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great article malky
ReplyDeletethey're all great Mark! but thanks :-)
ReplyDelete