There is something crudely simplistic about Alex Salmond’s big announcement yesterday. You can sense the naked strategising behind the opening policy salvo in the Holyrood election campaign (with my personal image being an Apprentice style table, the FM as Lord Sugar and the Shadow Cabinet nervously pitching their ideas to the boss)

‘A holiday on St Andrew’s Day?’, ‘We’ve done that till we’re Saltire blue in the face’, ‘Bring back the rail link?’ ‘No chance!’, ‘Ok, Ive got it. The spiritual home of the Left, the biggest concern for voters and a nice big round number – let’s promise to spend £1bn extra on the NHS’, ‘Love it, you’re hired. Now, lunch…’.

Or something like that.

In the good old days (four years ago) the SNP wasn’t a party that just reacted to problems but sought to prevent them happening in the first place. Free School Meals, SFT and, recently, Minimum Pricing. Ideas that I’m sure will remain SNP policy and, arguably, the public and some Opposition parties have not yet caught up with.

Scotland won’t better itself with an army of doctors and nurses waiting in the wings for our inevitable sickness caused by poor diet, low exercise, increased smog and a penchant for booze, drugs and smoking. To be the party of the NHS these days is to risk being the party of profligacy.

Holding firm to the unpopular but ultimately correct course of action is frustrating with elections to be won, a media to satiate, a party to hold together and daunting poll results so has the SNP blinked already and opted for that old New Labour solution of throwing money at problems? Surely a confident Government would be promising to keep NHS costs down through presiding over a healthier populace, not boasting that costs are going to have match our lamentable standards?

There is of course the Scottish Greens who so often eschewed opposition for opposition’s sake and voted alongside the SNP for Minimum Pricing and Free School Meals while not being afraid to stand alone and fight for a Land Value Tax, an alternative to the Forth Bridge and better insulation for current housing stock. Perhaps it is because the Greens have less to lose but on current evidence they seem most likely to have the stomach and the belief to follow their principles through into May.

Set against two parties content with consoling its public rather than intent on leading it, the Greens look a good vote for a more robust Parliament.

I gratefully received this enjoyable press release yesterday:

Speaking in this morning’s Green Party debate on Public Services in Scotland, Derek Brownlee MSP, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Finance & Sustainable Growth, said:
“There is a simple option for Patrick Harvie, the Greens and the usual collection of self proclaimed socialists who lecture us on a daily basis on the need to tax and spend more.
“They can follow the example of Hazel Blears, write a cheque for whatever amount of extra tax they feel they should pay and send it off to HM Revenue and Customs.
“The cheque will be cashed. Their guilt will be assuaged. Another part of Labour’s debt will be repaid.
“There is nothing stopping any socialist in this country putting their money where their mouth is and paying more tax – the new progressive coalition government will not prevent any socialist in this country from putting their deeply held principles into practice.”

Let’s step back a minute here. The City is already rolling in cash again, if it ever really stopped to be. You can certainly see it at every turn where I work just off Threadneedle St in London. Traders, bankers and investors suppressing grins, checking booming property and share portfolios and hoping above hope that the political spotlight won’t fall on them any time soon or the game may be up. Like a gully that had experienced recent drought, the luscious water is pouring back in as unsustainably cheap share prices and volatile markets start to reap massive dividends for a select few once more.

And against this backdrop, Derek Brownlee would seemingly have us allowing the rich to pay less tax and welfare cuts and job losses to bite hard amongst the poor.

It has always struck me as unfair that when any party proposes raising taxes, the instant rebuke is that families are already struggling to meet the cost of bills, rent and food, as if any tax cut would automatically zero in on those who can least afford to pay, which is so rarely the case.

There is little doubt that a rebalancing of our economy is overdue. There was a strong will for this to happen at the height of the financial storm and now, despite Labour, Conservative and Lib Dems all having been in power at a UK level over this period, and (admittedly hamstrung) SNP in power at a Scottish level, the status quo has continued.

Of course Holyrood has limited powers but this Land Value Tax idea that the Scottish Greens are proposing can, and should, be part of the solution. Not that this press release chooses to deal with that, or any, detailed policy proposal head on. That’s not the only enjoyable disappointment though.

The linkage of Patrick Harvie with Hazel Blears is bizarre. It is at best clumsy and at worst, well, I probably shouldn’t say. Hazel paid a cheque for a tax liability that was quite clearly due from her and occurred in the heat of the expenses scandals. Neither of these factors apply to the leader of the Greens.

Furthermore, Derek Brownlee is proposing ‘self-proclaimed Socialists’ pay tax as some sort of charitable donation. As it happens, there is no process or mechanism for an individual to pay HMRC more tax than he or she is due to pay. The Treasury is not Barnardos or Oxfam. I daresay most of these Socialists are thinking hard about where to spend their money, where cash can be targeted in local economies in order to best aid struggling businesses and those most in need. There is a short-cut to bring about the necessary fairness, fairness that every party seemed to be falling over each other to promise less than a year ago but are yet to deliver.

At opposite ends of the spectrum, and perhaps even creating the real, meaningful dividing line, are a Conservative Party that believes that community spirit via The Big Society can paper over the cracks and fissures that spending cuts will inevitably cause and a Green party that believes in decreasing the inequality gap and increasing social mobility through something more reliable and substantial as the tax system.

I’m not going to do something as imbecilic as trying to pay extra money to the Treasury directly but I make no secret of the fact that I would happily pay more tax and would vote to do so accordingly.

‘Tax and spend’ is the strangest of insults from a politician. It is what Government’s are in business to do after all.

Anyone would think there was an election coming up eh?

I’m sure this will be an evolving list, but I’m struck by some of the names added to the Twitterati in the past few days and weeks (mostly SNP Government folks, come to think of it) who are associated with Holyrood and parties, so I thought I’d list them for your following pleasure. Or something.

Constituency/ regional list that they are standing in is in brackets (which, if they are already an MSP, may be different from the area they currently represent).  Additions (and corrections!) welcome.

SNP:
First Minister Alex Salmond (Aberdeenshire East)
Deputy FM & Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow Southside)
Finance Secretary John Swinney (Perthshire North)
Education Secretary Mike Russell (Argyll & Bute)
Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill (Edinburgh Eastern)
Minister for Culture Fiona Hyslop (Linlithgow)
Minister for Parliamentary Business Bruce Crawford (Stirling)
Minister for the Environment Roseanna Cunningham (Perthshire South & Kinross-shire)
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow Provan)
Rob Gibson (Caithness, Sutherland & Ross)
Bob Doris (Maryhill & Springburn)
Shirley-Anne Somerville (Edinburgh Northern & Leith)
Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire & Buchan Coast)
Shona Robison/ Joe Fitzpatrick (Dundee City East/ West, joint account)
Derek McKay (Renfrewshire North & West)
Aileen Campbell (Clydesdale)
Fiona McLeod (Strathkelvin & Bearsden)
John Mason (Glasgow Shettleston)
George Adam (Paisley)
Joan McAlpine (Scotland South list)
Humza Yousaf (Glasgow list)
John Finnie (Highlands & Islands list)
Stephen Noon (Manifesto Writing)

Labour:
Ewan Aitken (Edinburgh Eastern)
Greg Williams (Aberdeen South & North Kincardine)
Stephen Curran (Glasgow Southside)
Paul Godzik (Edinburgh Southern)
Richard McCready (Dundee City West)
Matt McLaughlin (Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley)
Elaine Murray (Dumfriesshire)
Claire Baker (Mid-Scotland and Fife list)
John Park (Mid-Scotland and Fife list)
Drew Smith (Glasgow list)
Kezia Dugdale (Lothians list)

Conservatives:
David McLetchie (Edinburgh Pentlands)
Iain McGill (Edinburgh Central)
Jamie Halcro-Johnston (Edinburgh Northern & Leith)
Mark Brown (Uddingston & Bellshill)
Mark Nolan (East Dunbartonshire)
Peter Duncan (Midlothian South, Tweeddale & Lauderdale)

Liberal Democrats:
Tavish Scott (Shetland)
Iain Smith (North East Fife)
Katy Gordon (Glasgow North)
Alex Cole-Hamilton (Edinburgh Central)
Paul McGarry (Glasgow Anniesland)
Jim Hume (South of Scotland list)
Jenny Stanning (LD media)

Greens:
Patrick Harvie (Glasgow list)
Alison Johnstone (Lothians list)
Mark Ruskell (Mid-Scotland and Fife list)
James Mackenzie (Greens media)

(UPDATED 1 February)

Our friends at the Daily Record have gone a little off the deep end today. We gave them a story that we’re going to oppose the SNP’s cut to the Freight Facilities Grant, a concern we share with everyone from Highland Spring to Aslef via WWF, and that we would work with Labour on this issue, not least because Labour MSP Cathy Jamieson has a very sensible motion up for debate at Member’s Business tonight.

With this move, SNP Ministers are saving just £7m, a sixth of one percent of the money they’re blowing an unnecessary additional bridge over the Forth. Yet all the evidence is this grant is exceptionally effective at shifting freight from road to rail, cutting emissions, helping business and boosting jobs. It’s an utterly perverse cut.

On this basis, though, the Record went for “POLITICAL MARRIAGE OVER RAIL CARRIAGE“, claiming cooperation on this issue hints at a Labour-Green coalition after the election. On one level, if we elect enough Green MSPs that any sort of two-party arrangement is even a possibility we’ll certainly have had an excellent night. Also, we certainly want to appeal to left Labour voters who know that Labour list votes rarely elect anyone, and, like the News of the World piece at the weekend, the editorial was a pretty clear message to those voters that a second vote for the Greens will be effective.

But the idea a joint campaign on rail freight means marriage is adding two and two to make an awful lot more than five. When SNP Ministers came to Parliament with near-zero climate targets, we worked with Labour and the Lib Dems to defeat them twice because we agreed with them, not because we loved them. When we worked with the SNP to try and win the case on minimum pricing, no-one said that foretold wedding bells. Being ready to back a Referendum Bill didn’t make us the SNP’s sweethearts, nor did voting with SNP Ministers and Lib Dem MSPs to abolish tuition fees suggest an awkward threesome.