Around Scotland - Tuesday 27 January 2009

(Tuesday 27 January 2009)

MALCOLM BURNS highlights the latest goings-on in Scotland.

Recession remedies

The dear leader, Gordon Brown, was in Scotland at the weekend. Among other things, he hosted a fund-raising dinner at a posh hotel in Glasgow and took a phone call from Barack Obama.

He also strenuously avoided the R-word, even while talking about the precipitous state of the economy. But, whether Brown says it or not, Scotland, like the rest of Britain, has now entered what is known as "technical recession."

I'm pleased to say that the Scottish Trades Union Congress has been less coy about what is going on and what needs to be done.

Regarding the continuing failure of the banking sector to help address the crisis, STUC general secretary Grahame Smith argues that "Full nationalisation is increasingly looking like the most appropriate option."

At British level, Smith is calling for further economic stimulus measures in the forthcoming budget, including "targeted tax cuts for the low paid and increases in jobseeker's allowance and statutory redundancy pay."

And, in Scotland, the SNP government needs to act on recent announcements to establish a "substantial and coherent package of support for those have lost their jobs and those at risk of redundancy."

Smith also correctly placed the situation now facing Scotland in its historical context.

"Scotland is still struggling to deal with the persistent economic inactivity resulting from the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s and the disastrous labour market policies which accompanied them," argues the STUC leader.

"It is absolutely essential that the same mistakes are not repeated."

I couldn't agree more.

Capitalism's crisis is a challenge and an opportunity for the left to fight for and deliver social and economic justice.

Burns's birthday goes off with a cliche

CALL me a curmudgeon. Perhaps the great tartan-wrapping which accompanies the Homecoming 2009 endeavour actually does help to attract visitors to Scotland, though god knows why. It doesn't attract me.

Alex Salmond is bigging it all up, of course. The Scottish Nationalist first minister reckoned that Burns Night on Sunday January 25, the anniversary of the poet's birthday in 1759, was "the start of an extraordinary celebration - a once in a 250-year celebration of the lasting legacy of Robert Burns and the country that he loved."

If the 300 events listed as part of Homecoming 2009 do pull in the planned 100,000 visitors and £40m in additional tourism revenue over the course of the year, then all well and good. The five themes for the year - whisky, golf, great Scottish minds and innovations, culture and heritage, Burns - are all fine by me, except golf. I've never loved the game.

However, as with all years of this, months of that and festivals of the other, everything that's going on anyway is rolled into the supposed extravaganza.

Burns suppers always happen. Some are fun and some are po-faced, but they were on last year and they'll be on next year too. The same can be said for whisky drinking. And golf-playing, I guess.

Well, Glasgow City Council did make an effort anyway. The City Chambers was wrapped in a couthy Burns anniversary tribute light show at the weekend. Very spectacular, if you like that kind of thing.

We had the opportunity to gather in Glasgow's George Square in Sunday's cold "blast o' Janwar wind" to look at the light show and wait to be entertained by bluenose comic Andy Cameron and reality TV star Michelle McManus in the name of celebrating Burns the Bard.

The Burns kids themselves actually preferred to go to their usual swimming lessons in the indoor warmth of Scotstoun pool.

Alba needs support

AT THE Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow on Friday, Scotland's Gaelic arts officer Malcolm Maclean and Herald journalist Torcuil Crichton were in conversation on the subject of the recently launched Gaelic digital channel BBC Alba.

I was pleased with myself to have managed to grasp a little of the discussion in Gaelic and grateful for the simultaneous translation on induction loop to get the rest.

The new Gaelic channel has had a fairly positive critical response and, happily, good viewing figures considering that it still faces the problem of being unavailable to the majority of people, including me.

The only way to see BBC Alba is via Sky channel 168 or Freesat channel 110, though you can see some programmes later using the BBC iPlayer. The broadcasting restriction is due to the unfair decision by the BBC trust to keep the channel off the Freeview terrestrial platform until at least 2010.

Maclean and Crichton were in agreement about the need to widen access to the new channel. Until the campaign to get BBC Alba on Freeview is won, the fledgling channel will, though no fault of its own, be unable to fulfil the needs of its audience.

Tartan-free celebration

THE Celtic Connections festival which is now in full flow in Glasgow has grown over the years to become a massive, mega-successful, multicultural cornucopia.

It really does attract visitors to Scotland and doesn't do so with tartan and shortbread.

Of course, there's plenty of Celtic and Scottish going on, but it's woven nicely into a seamless garment with many other cultures.

A festival drawing talents as diverse as Michael Nyman, Nanci Griffith and Allen Toussaint has as much to do with "connections" as with "Celtic." And that's a good thing.

If you feel like getting out and about in Glasgow, there's plenty on at www.celticconnections.com

The Spanish civil war Scots

I MANAGED to miss Daniel Gray's talk on his new book Homage To Caledonia in Glasgow last week.

However, I'm pleased to report that the book, published by Luath Press (www.luath.co.uk) is winning lots of praise from those who have read it.

Also on the subject of Scotland's role in the Spanish civil war, there is a new production of From The Calton To Catalonia by John Maley and Willy Maley at The Ramshorn Theatre in Glasgow at 7.30pm each night this week until Saturday January 31.

Ring (0141) 548-2542 or visit www.strath.ac.uk/culture/ramshorn/ for more info.

COULD you make it up? Probably not.

Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown appeared in a strip together at Number 10 on Sunday - though not in the actual flesh, thankfully.

Salmond and Brown feature in Sunday Post strip The Broons, the cartoon family who live at the fictional No 10 Glebe Street.

Not to be confused with reality - the two are unlikely to be in any room together for fun - nor with satire such as the Private Eye magazine's Broons spoof where the prime minister is depicted as a jowly, brooding patriarch always chiding his wee Cabinet Broonites, the Sunday Post gig is the couthy Scottish equivalent of an appearance on The Simpsons.

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 20 January 2009

(Tuesday 20 January 2009)

MALCOLM BURNS is happy to report that health board direct elections are agreed.

MSPs have unanimously supported the principle of direct elections to health boards in Scotland in an important and perhaps even historic debate in the Holyrood parliament last Thursday.

Cabinet Secretary Nicola Sturgeon introduced the Health Boards (Membership and Elections) (Scotland) Bill on behalf of the government, which follows a similar private member's proposal by Labour MSP Bill Butler in the previous parliament.

"Many people in all parts of Scotland believe - rightly, I think - that there is a real democratic deficit in the operation of our health boards," Sturgeon argued.

"Too often, the public feel shut out of the big decisions that health boards take daily and which account for significant sums of public money."

She cited the attempted closure of the Ayr and Monklands A&E departments by unelected health boards, despite massive public opposition. The plans were eventually overturned by her ministerial decree.

"I believe strongly that having elected members on health boards will enhance and improve the quality of decision-making in the NHS," she said.

The new law will alter the composition of Scottish health boards to include directly elected members. It also provides a statutory basis for the presence of local councillors who already sit as health board members.

The Bill proposes that health board elections would be held every four years using a single transferrable vote proportional representation system, with a single ward covering each health board area. Two pilot elections will be held and independently evaluated before any further rollout is approved by parliament.

One interesting proposal in the Bill is that the voting age in health board elections will be lowered to 16. There was some concern expressed in the debate about the practicality of this, as MSPs focused on the potential child protection issues of having a public electoral register giving birth date information for people aged 15.

However, the Scottish government appears to be solid on this and it augurs well for the age of franchise to be lowered in future parliamentary and local government elections.

The current Bill has some weaknesses.

Primarily, it fails to provide for an outright majority of directly elected members, which was a key element of Butler's earlier Bill.

Under the current proposal, local authority representatives and those directly elected by the public will form a majority of health board members only when taken together. The remainder will be government appointees, as before.

The UNISON response to the Bill in the consultation period was forthright on the composition of boards, stating that it was "unclear from the Bill what the role of senior officials is under the new board constitution."

The union argued that "officials should be advisers, not voting members, of the health boards they are employed by."

Another deficiency identified by unions in consultation and members in the chamber is the provision for the cabinet secretary to remove elected board members from office.

Despite such reservations, there seemed to be a large amount harmony in the parliament on the health board elections issue.

Compliments were paid to the health and sport committee, which has considered representations on the Bill, and to its chairwoman, Scottish Nationalist MSP Christine Grahame.

MSPs of various parties praised each other for their wise contributions to the debate. Sturgeon and Grahame also praised unions UNISON and Unite for their constructive engagement in the consultation.

The Bill gained cross-party support. Even Tory MSPs backed it, despite previously voicing the medical establishment's concerns that mere mortals would be incapable of helping to run their own health service. Ah, the good old British Medical Association - still not quite come to terms with the NHS, having fought it tooth and nail in the 1940s.

But most plaudits in Holyrood on Thursday rightly accrued to Butler. His private member's Bill in 2006-7, though not passed then, forced the issue onto the manifestos of both Labour and the SNP in the 2007 election and it has undoubtedly paved the way for the measure of democratisation of the Scottish health boards which now looks likely.

Indeed, in closing the debate, Sturgeon paid him a cheeky compliment.

"Bill Butler did much to progress the case for direct elections and I can tell that he is delighted to have a government in place that backs his view on the issue."

For his part, Butler promised to table an amendment at the next stage of the Bill which would mean that the elected members alone, not including local council representatives, would be an outright majority on health boards.

Around Scotland raises its glass and proposes a Gaelic toast of good health to Butler. Slainte, a charaid.

New Bill aims to outlaw NHS car park charges

THE Scottish government capitalised on the unpopularity of hospital car parking charges last year by abolishing them.

Well, that's what it claimed. However, not all facilities were included.

Numerous NHS car parks, the most significant being the private finance initiative sites at Glasgow and Edinburgh Royal Infirmaries and Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, continue to charge.

And the issue has become further inflamed by health board plans to restrict car parking times for staff.

Labour MSP Paul Martin's newly launched private member's Bill aims to tidy up that mess by outlawing all car parking charges at any NHS site in Scotland.

It's a simple, straightforward Bill which is supported strongly by unions. So that's good.

It would have been even better if all the Labour colleagues now lining up to support Martin's Bill had used their votes to oppose PFI in the NHS while Labour was busy with its privatisation agenda when in government. They might even still be in government.

Two Georges go head to head

I SHOULD expect that the gloves will come off fairly quickly in the Edinburgh University rectorial election, in which students will vote next month.

This pitches my friend, comrade and fellow Star columnist George Galloway against m'Lord George Foulkes.

Now a Labour list MSP for Lothians, Foulkes is probably best known for having been a controversial chairman of Hearts FC. But he is also a former MP and junior minister in the Blair government and a notorious supporter of the illegal Iraq war.

Well, if I were an Edinburgh student, I'd be voting for George (Galloway of course).

But I think that the other nominated candidate, thoughtful Sunday Herald writer Iain McWhirter, may be a good bet to split the colourful Georges and actually win.

More work with less money?

GLASGOW Council's community service supervisers have been on indefinite strike since January 6.

Their job involves supervising offenders who have been given community service as an alternative to prison, but the 21 UNISON members are facing pay cuts of over £1,000 caused by the council's 2007 single status equal pay review.

They are effectively being asked to do a more responsible job for less money.


Messages of support and donations can be sent to Glasgow City UNISON, 4th Floor, 18 Albion Street, Glasgow G1 1LH or unisonenquiries@glasgowcityunison.org.uk

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Around Scotland - Tuesday 13 January 2009

(Tuesday 13 January 2009)

MALCOLM BURNS reports on the growing concern over the Scottish government's plans for a cultural development agency.

An urge to destroy Creative Scotland

It's not often that the nation's cultural workers speak with one voice.The cack-handed attempts by government over the last few years to establish a new "cultural development agency" called Creative Scotland appear to have pretty much united them.

The stalled plan to form Creative Scotland out of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen - the rebranded Scottish Film Council - is opposed by the Scottish Artists Union, the largest body representing visual artists.

SAU lobbied MSPs at Holyrood before Christmas on the issue. At the same time, over 100 chairmen and chief executives of Scottish arts organisations, from galleries to theatres and festivals, sent a private letter of concern over Creative Scotland to First Minister Alex Salmond.

Following the SAU initiatives, 440 individual artists, writers and producers including well-known names like Val McDermid, Louise Welsh and Alison Peebles published an open letter last week calling on MSPs to vote against Creative Scotland when the proposal finally struggles back into the Scottish Parliament.

"We have no confidence in the process of the formation of Creative Scotland or the confused and inappropriate proposals that have arisen,"the artists declare.

They criticise the lack of consultation with the arts community and claim that the proposed expanded remit to support the creative industries will be "at the expense of the public funding of artistic independence."

In the absence of government figures, the cost of setting up Creative Scotland has been variously estimated unofficially at between £2 million and £7 million. Scottish arts workers argue that this expense coupled with "overstretched resources" will lead to cuts in grants.

They also believe that the rumoured introduction of loans instead of grants, hinted at by Culture Minister Linda Fabiani, and proposed changes to intellectual property rights will "reinforce artistspoverty."

It is a pretty devastating critique by a large swathe of the community of clients which the new body should be serving. So, is the Creative Scotland idea dead?

The government claims it will be delivered "without delay." A limited company called Creative Scotland has been set up and a transition team is in place. This is now led by Ewan Brown, former chairman of Lloyds TSB in Scotland.

However, the Bill to properly establish the new body foundered last year in the Scottish Parliament, when its financial memorandum was voted down in chaotic circumstances. Creative Scotland is still formally supported by the major parties and the government has now tagged the legislation onto the forthcoming Public Services Reform Bill.

But the reason why it failed before - problems over the financial arrangements in relation to Scottish Enterprise and the "creative industries" - and its current inclusion in a Bill for public service reform are both instructive. Creative Scotland is really not designed to support our creative arts and culture.

The Creative Scotland proposal was originally announced three years ago in January 2006 by Labour's then culture minister Patricia Ferguson, following former first minister Jack McConnell's vague intentions of creating "cultural rights and entitlements."

However, it was hard to identify a specific rationale other than to generate efficiency savings in combining back-office functions and to cut the number of quangos. A generous view could be to regard Creative Scotland as an example of the "must do something" mentality which afflicted the previous executive and seems not to have been shaken by the current government.

Many artists and cultural organisations suspect a deeper hidden agenda to change the basis of funding culture into a business model ofthe kind long proposed by Tories north and south of the border.

The introduction of the commercial model would mirror economic development agency support for business through Scottish Enterprise.

Since there will be no extra cash or even less, the suspicion is that business would be encouraged to fund the arts and that whatever state funding and assistance was provided would flow towards creative businesses which could show a profit.

There have already been shifts away from specialised support, such as provided to the film industry by Scottish Screen, towards a generic"creative industries" model applied to everything. The Scottish Arts Council has been reformed so that it no longer has directorates for specific art forms.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, the some what Blairite idea of the"creative industries" is losing whatever currency it had and the global economic crisis will mean that business is even less willing to fund the arts.

And the only people who seem to still support Creative Scotland are sitting in the Scottish Parliament.

The Creative Scotland proposal is due back in the Parliament in a few weeks time in the Public Sector Reform Bill. Watch that space.

Visit www.sau.org.uk to read more on the SAU critique of Creative Scotland.

The hunt is still on for National Theatre's home

PLANS to transfer the headquarters of the itinerant National Theatre of Scotland from its original base in Easterhouse to a former shipyard shed on the banks of the Clyde have been postponed.

NTS was created as a national theatre without the encumbrance of abuilding. However, there was always something merely symbolic about locating its administrative headquarters in a Glasgow housing scheme.

The accommodation it still occupies at The Bridge complex inEasterhouse has never been sufficient for the NTS core staff, who have been spread across various locations in the city. NTS currently gives its head office location as being in Port Dundas.

A plan to provide rehearsal and storage space as well as offices in the engine shed of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan was announced a year ago.

Older cultural buffs among you might remember The Shed as the venue for The Ship, the highly successful large-scale theatrical production by Bill Bryden during Glasgow's year as European City of Culture in1990.

Some of you may even have worked there when it was producing actual ships.

Now, the Scottish government has announced that The Shed "does not offer a viable solution to the NTS's short-term accommodation needs" and, though "the theatre will continue to look at this option in the longer term," other ideas are also "being actively considered."

Despite or, perhaps, because of its lack of a theatrical home, NTS has been one of the biggest cultural successes in Scotland since devolution.

Under English director Vicky Featherstone, NTS has had rave reviewsfor controversial and challenging but popular theatre productions. Most notably, the Iraq war play Black Watch, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006, has toured all over the world and has evenbeen released on DVD.

Just wrap yourself in tartan

WHEN in doubt, wrap yourself in tartan.

That seems to be the advice which Scottish public figures through the ages have clung to in the absence of having a clue what to do.

All attempts to extend and develop Scotland's tourism seem to quickly end up with a garnish of tartan, shortbread, mountains and pipers.

VisitScotland, the rebranded Scottish Tourist Board, suffered in thisway. Former first minister Jack McConnell's idea to promote Scotland inthe US quickly became Tartan Day. The Year of Homecoming 2009, which was also a plan from the previous administration picked up by the SNP government, appears to be going down the same road.

Now, the Scottish Parliament has launched a competition for a new in-house tartan to celebrate its 10th birthday this year. Haud me back.

No platform for politics

IF THE Scottish nation was expecting firebrand left-wing politics from ex-MSP Tommy Sheridan on Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 4 all day and all night, tabloid pages 1-94) then we will have been disappointed.

We should have known, of course. George Galloway was censored when he talked sense and broadcast on an endless loop in all media when he performed nonsense.

Now, we have the surreal experience of watching Sheridan empathise with LaToyah Jackson about her issues with the local Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall and dancing on ice with her while dressed as a pepperpot.

I think we can conclude that reality TV is not much of a platform for political ideas.

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