(Tuesday 23 September 2008)
Top highlight of BBC Alba
ONE of the highlights of Eilbheas on BBC Alba, for me at least, was the fictional punk band in a Hebridean garage playing a cover of Union Jack, a song that I co-wrote about 30 years ago for The Rong, a real Stornoway punk band.
"Union Jack, thalla's cac!" they trilled angrily. Loosely translated, this means: "Union Jack, go to fuck!" Well, we were young.
The spirit was less nationalistic than republican and anti-imperialist and just loud, really. You can hear the original at www.myspace.com/saddayweleftthecroft and judge for yourselves.
Anyway, if and when it arrives, the massive BBC royalties cheque that I'm expecting from Eilbheas will be donated to the strike fund in the Scottish local government pay dispute.
MALCOLM BURNS reviews the latest goings-on in Scotland.
Here come the gnomes
Well, well. The gnomes of Edinburgh are gathering to put in a counter-bid for the Bank of Scotland.
Last week, it was effectively handed to Lloyds TSB along with the Halifax bank by Prime Minister Gordon Brown after short-selling "spivs" drove parent company HBOS to the brink of collapse.
The unlikely figure who is fronting this initiative, one time left-wing firebrand and now SNP MSP Alex Neil, claims that a team of "banking elders" can save the Bank of Scotland for the Scots.
Along with entrepreneur Jim Spowart, who set up HBOS direct-banking subsidiary Intelligent Finance, the people to whom Neil will be talking this week include former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir George Mathewson, merchant banker Sir Angus Grossart and ex-Bank of Scotland boss Sir Peter Burt.
You'll remember these three Scottish banking knights from previous lives.
Burt was chief executive of the Bank of Scotland on whose watch it was originally taken over by - or euphemistically "merged with" - the Halifax in 2001. This ended whatever independence the bank, founded in 1695 and the first ever to issue paper money, had left within the modern global economy and saw the HQ shift to Halifax.
Grossart was hired only a week ago by First Minister Alex Salmond and Finance Minister John Swinney to be a star leader for their private finance pig in a poke Scottish Futures Trust.
Mathewson was the man Margaret Thatcher put in as a safe pair of hands to take charge of the Scottish Development Agency during the Tories' relentless assault on Scottish industry in the 1980s.
He presided over a rapid, state-funded increase in foreign ownership of Scottish assets. After that, he joined the Royal Bank of Scotland, eventually leading it to become the fifth biggest bank in the world via the acquisition of the NatWest, among others.
Only this week, Mathewson has been defending the practice of short selling, in which his present companies engage.
According to the Sunday Herald, this group of Edinburgh gnomes "already has access to major supporters in the Middle East and Asia who are well disposed to Scotland's financial community."
This is a thought that fills me with as much confidence as the list of Scottish banking knights, I have to say.
I'd like to know how handing over control of a major institution like the Bank of Scotland to Middle Eastern and Asian financial interests is meant to guarantee its "independence" any more than the Brown plan to hand it over with HBOS to Lloyds TSB.
But hey, ain't Scottish capitalism wonderful?
One of them is 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.
New Gaelic TV station (if you can receive it)
THE brand new Gaelic TV channel which launched on Friday night has been "set up to fail." That's the view of one of its directors, the former Labour MSP Alasdair Morrison. It's hard to disagree.
My family of lefties and Gaels settled down on Friday night to welcome in the new BBC Alba channel, which was hosted on BBC2 Scotland for its first hour and a half.
The opening celebratory concert was not my cup of tea, but entertaining enough. Eilbheas, a comedy drama set in 1977 about the ghost of the late Elvis Presley taking a young, mixed-up Gaelic punk rocker under his porky wing, was witty, funny, bold and included lots of cinematic and pop culture references. Not bad at all.
The station promises a wide range of programmes broadcast between 5pm and midnight each day, far more than previously scheduled for the traditional channels. And all in Gaelic.
So, what's the problem? Why should it fail? On Friday night's free-to-air taster showing, the new channel would stand up with the competition from the multitude of other less mainstream channels available. It could form a focal point in the continued revival of Gaelic language and culture, much as S4C has in Wales.
But S4C occupies the Channel 4 slot on free-to-air TV in Wales. In comparison, the BBC will not be broadcasting BBC Alba on analogue TV at all and it will not even be available on Freeview.
Viewers will be restricted to a paid-for Sky satellite channel or the less widely used satellite competitor to Freeview called Freesat - and I am buggered if I am paying Rupert Murdoch, so this means buying another, different set-top box and a satellite dish as well.
This restriction has been justified on the basis of an analysis of the public service value of BBC Alba by the BBC trustee in Scotland.
Who is that? Step forward Sir Jeremy Peat, another former chief economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Peat argues that the notional £4 million cost of putting BBC Alba on Freeview, where people will see it, is not justified. Instead, the new channel must prove that it can attract a wider audience than the 60,000 Gaelic speakers in Scotland through the backwater of an obscure Sky channel and the barely used Freesat.
It's clear what Morrison means. And the campaign to get BBC Alba on Freeview now starts here.
Last week, it was effectively handed to Lloyds TSB along with the Halifax bank by Prime Minister Gordon Brown after short-selling "spivs" drove parent company HBOS to the brink of collapse.
The unlikely figure who is fronting this initiative, one time left-wing firebrand and now SNP MSP Alex Neil, claims that a team of "banking elders" can save the Bank of Scotland for the Scots.
Along with entrepreneur Jim Spowart, who set up HBOS direct-banking subsidiary Intelligent Finance, the people to whom Neil will be talking this week include former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Sir George Mathewson, merchant banker Sir Angus Grossart and ex-Bank of Scotland boss Sir Peter Burt.
You'll remember these three Scottish banking knights from previous lives.
Burt was chief executive of the Bank of Scotland on whose watch it was originally taken over by - or euphemistically "merged with" - the Halifax in 2001. This ended whatever independence the bank, founded in 1695 and the first ever to issue paper money, had left within the modern global economy and saw the HQ shift to Halifax.
Grossart was hired only a week ago by First Minister Alex Salmond and Finance Minister John Swinney to be a star leader for their private finance pig in a poke Scottish Futures Trust.
Mathewson was the man Margaret Thatcher put in as a safe pair of hands to take charge of the Scottish Development Agency during the Tories' relentless assault on Scottish industry in the 1980s.
He presided over a rapid, state-funded increase in foreign ownership of Scottish assets. After that, he joined the Royal Bank of Scotland, eventually leading it to become the fifth biggest bank in the world via the acquisition of the NatWest, among others.
Only this week, Mathewson has been defending the practice of short selling, in which his present companies engage.
According to the Sunday Herald, this group of Edinburgh gnomes "already has access to major supporters in the Middle East and Asia who are well disposed to Scotland's financial community."
This is a thought that fills me with as much confidence as the list of Scottish banking knights, I have to say.
I'd like to know how handing over control of a major institution like the Bank of Scotland to Middle Eastern and Asian financial interests is meant to guarantee its "independence" any more than the Brown plan to hand it over with HBOS to Lloyds TSB.
But hey, ain't Scottish capitalism wonderful?
SNP displays true colours
THE global crisis of capitalism - we can write that phrase with full justification today - reveals many truths.One of them is 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.
New Gaelic TV station (if you can receive it)
THE brand new Gaelic TV channel which launched on Friday night has been "set up to fail." That's the view of one of its directors, the former Labour MSP Alasdair Morrison. It's hard to disagree. My family of lefties and Gaels settled down on Friday night to welcome in the new BBC Alba channel, which was hosted on BBC2 Scotland for its first hour and a half.
The opening celebratory concert was not my cup of tea, but entertaining enough. Eilbheas, a comedy drama set in 1977 about the ghost of the late Elvis Presley taking a young, mixed-up Gaelic punk rocker under his porky wing, was witty, funny, bold and included lots of cinematic and pop culture references. Not bad at all.
The station promises a wide range of programmes broadcast between 5pm and midnight each day, far more than previously scheduled for the traditional channels. And all in Gaelic.
So, what's the problem? Why should it fail? On Friday night's free-to-air taster showing, the new channel would stand up with the competition from the multitude of other less mainstream channels available. It could form a focal point in the continued revival of Gaelic language and culture, much as S4C has in Wales.
But S4C occupies the Channel 4 slot on free-to-air TV in Wales. In comparison, the BBC will not be broadcasting BBC Alba on analogue TV at all and it will not even be available on Freeview.
Viewers will be restricted to a paid-for Sky satellite channel or the less widely used satellite competitor to Freeview called Freesat - and I am buggered if I am paying Rupert Murdoch, so this means buying another, different set-top box and a satellite dish as well.
This restriction has been justified on the basis of an analysis of the public service value of BBC Alba by the BBC trustee in Scotland.
Who is that? Step forward Sir Jeremy Peat, another former chief economist of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Peat argues that the notional £4 million cost of putting BBC Alba on Freeview, where people will see it, is not justified. Instead, the new channel must prove that it can attract a wider audience than the 60,000 Gaelic speakers in Scotland through the backwater of an obscure Sky channel and the barely used Freesat.
It's clear what Morrison means. And the campaign to get BBC Alba on Freeview now starts here.
Top highlight of BBC Alba
ONE of the highlights of Eilbheas on BBC Alba, for me at least, was the fictional punk band in a Hebridean garage playing a cover of Union Jack, a song that I co-wrote about 30 years ago for The Rong, a real Stornoway punk band. "Union Jack, thalla's cac!" they trilled angrily. Loosely translated, this means: "Union Jack, go to fuck!" Well, we were young.
The spirit was less nationalistic than republican and anti-imperialist and just loud, really. You can hear the original at www.myspace.com/saddayweleftthecroft and judge for yourselves.
Anyway, if and when it arrives, the massive BBC royalties cheque that I'm expecting from Eilbheas will be donated to the strike fund in the Scottish local government pay dispute.
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You co-wrote that song? Nice work. It's a good song.
ReplyDeleteI watched Eilbheas and Merlin on the same day through the magic of bit torrent (I'm in the States). Eilbheas was interesting, funny, and poignant - everything Merlin was not. I know which kind of programming I'd rather see in the future. Sad to see that the long-needed fledgling channel may be doomed before it gets off the ground.