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To be or not to be independent, that is the (first) question

Oct 20

Posted by Jeff in Ideology, Parties | 86 Comments

‘You take the low road and I’ll take the high road and I’ll be in bonnie independent Scotland afooooore ye.’

Now, these warbling words will not form the opening line of Alex Salmond’s set piece speech at this weekend’s SNP Conference but they might as well do. The half a year since the storming election result in May has seen the Nationalist camp calmly and diligently go about their business, simultaneously advancing their cause of independence (as proven by favourable polling evidence), while the various unionist parties have squawked and clucked directionlessly as if the sky is about to fall on their heads. Which metaphorically it may well do when the independence referendum comes around, if a Yes result is delivered.

The latest strategy from the unionist camp is to hold the Scotland Bill up as being the most significant transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood in 300 years, a boast that they hope will distract Scots away from the underlying question of full independence by demanding attention is paid to the tax changes that are still being ironed out.

It won’t work.

Scots are proving remarkably pragmatically nonplussed when it comes to delivery of extra powers to Holyrood from Westminster, almost to the point where an expectation exists that such powers continue to arrive over the border on the conveyor belt of devolution. This situation has ensured that the SNP will always have the consolation prize of further independence by stealth, as opposed to its preferred result of full independence by referendum.

However, what I don’t understand, and this is what I do hope Alex Salmond will explain in his speech, sung or otherwise, is why the SNP is offering its backpocket consolation prize alongside its prized objective of full independence on the referendum ballot slip. Surely a straight up and down Yes/No to full independence is more likely to return a Yes vote if Scots didn’t have the option to split the difference, compromise and vote for Devo Max. Give anyone a choice of more than two options and they will almost always select one from the middle; it’s a proven conjuror’s trick and it’s something that the SNP should bear in mind if they are offering three futures rather than only two.

I suspect that Salmond has shied away from the risk of putting everything on the table and ending up going backwards. There is a danger to the SNP that decades of hoping and years of planning may well result in one terrible word from a one-question referendum – No. The wind could be knocked out of the SNP’s sails and the momentum could be momentarily lost but with monumental repercussions – a bitter leadership contest, factions emerging, back to the dark days of the 80s etc etc.

But is that safety first approach of guaranteeing a little bit of extra momentum worth the risk of missing out on the 2-3% of yes votes that could make all the difference? That’s one for the SNP to consider and answer.

Don’t get me wrong, SNP activists will be going into this Conference pinching themselves at the position they are in and full square behind the First Minister as their leader. I remember well the evident delight that party members had during Inverness 2009 and Glasgow 2009 when the party fortunes amounted to little more than a wafer-thin minority Government and a referendum that was situated somewhere between a hope and a prayer away. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Nats have just a niggle of concern at the extra question being offered in the coming referendum.

When I took part in the Guardian’s blogging panel considering the future of the ‘Disunited Kingdom’, I was harangued, quite understandably, for not being fundamentally pro-independence enough, despite admitting quite freely that I’ll probably be voting Yes to full independence when the referendum comes around. The irony, quite possibly lost on my detractors, is that the satisfaction that I have with even a federal UK is seemingly one that I share with Alex Salmond himself, though I daresay even the most devout Nationalists wouldn’t say Salmond wasn’t pro-independence enough for any forum. Not yet anyway.

Alex Salmond once promised, and delivered, a political earthquake in the unlikely hunting ground of Glasgow East. Across all of Scotland, through hedging his bets with a second question, Salmond is already backpedalling on what can be delivered through his independence referendum and I just wonder if, far from the earthquake of independence, the wheels will come off the hefty SNP juggernaut as a result of not being brave enough. Nick Clegg went for the ‘miserable little compromise’ of AV in the end, is Salmond doing the same with Devo Max in the eyes of the SNP faithful?

After all, when a nation’s independence is at stake, is there really a middle road to be taken? It must be the strategic high wire road for the SNP or it will be the high jump for full independence.

Interns are not workers

Oct 19

Posted by Guest Blog in Economy, Society | 12 Comments

A guest post today from Barry McCulloch. Barry is an independent policy consultant. Currently, he is the Policy Manager at the Centre for Scottish Public Policy (CSPP) and the Policy & Communication Officer at the Economic Development Association for Scotland (EDAS). He hates acronyms yet uses them daily.

There is nothing quite like feeling passionate and angry on a wet, dreich Monday. I’m usually foaming at the mouth reading about internships at the best of time, but Nick Cohen’s excellent article in the Observer has (almost) pushed me over the edge.

Before launching into a polemic it’s worth pausing and providing a bit of context. In November 2009 graduate unemployment was spiralling out of control – youth unemployment was approaching one million, a fifth of whom were graduates.

Essentially, it was making a difficult task (obtaining a paid internship in Scotland) even more challenging in an underdeveloped “intern industry”. And there was little assistance to help Scotland’s struggling graduates.

With no funding the Centre for Scottish Public Policy (CSPP) created the Adopt an Intern programme (excuse the ancient site – a new one is on the way). The aim was simple: to build a fair, accessible and transparent internship culture in Scotland. Fast forward two years and 107 paid internships have been placed with the assistance of Scottish Government funding and employer contributions across the public, private and third sectors.

It has been a huge success and the programme is now offering intern exchanges between Germany and Scotland. But enough about the CSPP. As Cohen’s article painfully points out, they are only scratching the surface. Quite blatantly there are deep-seated and regressive cultural attitudes to internships.

Interns, so the argument goes, require experience in the labour market so do not deserve to be paid. They are a different type of employee who is not protected by the Minimum wage or the Equal Pay Act. Thus, their terms and conditions can be altered at the whim of an employer. As new Defence Secretary Philip Hammond (the richest man in the Cabinet) said:

“I would regard it as an abuse of taxpayer funding to pay for something that is available for nothing and which other Members are obtaining for nothing.”

How frugal. It is no surprise, then, to find new companies popping up to provide free interns and quell demand. One of the companies Cohen highlighted is Etsio. Curiosity got the better of me and I checked out their website. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t.

The FAQs section is worth quoting in detail because it’s illustrative of the norms and values embedded in London’s internship culture. I couldn’t resist adding some comments.

“Candidates

Why should I pay for a job?
You aren’t paying for a job (yes you are). You’re buying experience. Most applicants we come across don’t have any experience that would make them useful to our employers (students don’t have work experience? I don’t know what graduates they know).

And remember that our work experience clients are putting themselves at risk by exposing their trade secrets, customers and inside information to you. That isn’t the kind of experience that you can get elsewhere.

How much do I have to pay? (Yes, they have to pay for the privilege)
Each employer sets their own daily fees.

Employers & Interns

Is it ethical? (No)
With students now paying £40,000 for a university education – but zero useful experience for an employer – we don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to pay a few hundred pounds to get invaluable real life experience.

And many of our employers are small businesses who wouldn’t normally take on an intern. Etsio opens up the market to whole new areas. And applicants get to see how real businesses work. (If you or your parents can afford it)

It’s definitely morally suspect for an intern to take the place of a worker; and that happens all over the Western world at present. But (a big BUT) the Etsio service allows applicants to get a ringside view of what it’s like to work in the amazing businesses that feature in Etsio.

Is it legal? (No, not if they are indeed workers)
Yes. It’s a legal requirement to pay workers a minimum wage. But the interns are not workers: they don’t have regular tasks, they aren’t under the control of the employer, and they can come and go as they please. The intern is paying to learn, just as they pay to attend university. (All of this is complete and utter nonsense).

How does Etsio make its money?
By adding a small admin charge. It’s included in the fee that’s shown against each employer. There are no other charges.”

There is no shortage of organisations or politicians (a certain Mr Clegg comes to mind) that could have been named and shamed. The list is long, very long and by no means is it restricted to England (see Kezia Dugdale’s article). The exploitation of interns (graduates who will become critical to the success of the national economy) will continue until we settle some basic, fundamental questions:

  1. If interns are not workers then what are they?
  2. What rights do interns possess in the workplace?
  3. Should interns be paid (at least) a Minimum wage?
  4. At what point in the internship does an intern become an employee? 6 months? 9 months? A year?

The dictionary defines a slave as “a person who works in harsh conditions for low pay”. I’ll let you decide on whether an unpaid intern is a slave. But one thing we all should be able to agree on is this: paid internships, a “proven access point to professions”, are central to making a fair, equitable and mobile society.

Not great, not rubbish, just good enough

Oct 18

Posted by The Burd in Governance | 32 Comments

Toe-curling, infuriating, shaming.  These are only some of the emotions I experienced while watching BBC Scotland’s documentary on the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Sub-titled The Bank that Ran out of Money, the programme laid bare the extent of the folly of RBS’s global ambitions.  As one commentator put it, they thought they were spinning gold out of straw.

Worst moments?  Watching Tom McKillop, a fine chemist and industrialist, clearly out of his depth – but I’ll cry few tears at his fate, given that he’s still managing to accumulate baubles on the boardroom circuit.  Realising that either Goodwin didn’t have a scooby what he was doing, or if he did, he told barefaced lies to shareholders and the rest of us, year after year.  But absolutely the worst was realising that an awful lot of RBS employees got unco rich on the back of selling poor Americans an unfeasible dream.  Here was financial piracy and imperialism on an incredible scale, and it was cloaked in the Saltire.

At the same time, RBS was branding itself glitzily across big sporting events and sponsorship opportunities.  Swashbuckling its way into everyone’s consciousness.  And most of us were proud of seeing a wee Scottish company mix it with the big boys and willing to share a little of the lustre of its reputation:  few of us paused to question the desirability or necessity of big being better.

Now, we have come full circle.  RBS has eschewed splashing the cash in favour of grassroots community sponsorship and grantmaking in an attempt to rehabilitate itself.  Yet, even this is blatant blaggarding.  To vote in its Community Force competition that pits charities against each other in a bilious game of sell your need, you must register with its website and attempt to avoid the bank’s marketing clutches in the process.  A sneaky way to try and drum up new customers methinks.

Such swinging extremes seem part and parcel of the Scottish psyche, epitomised by the stance of political parties over our constitutional future.  We’re either too wee to be half way decent on our own, or capable of dazzling the family of nations with our greatness.  The SNP, in particular, is guilty of braggadocio, albeit with the best of intentions and understandable rationale.

If your opponents constantly do down your country’s prospects, the obvious temptation is to counter that by trying to show how much better – wealthier and healthier – Scotland could be with independence.  Filling Scots with hope, aspiration and big ambition is a vital tenet of Salmond’s strategy towards independence.  It’s why under an SNP Government, building a sense of national pride through showcase sporting events like the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup are key components of the masterplan.  It’s also why the First Minister is much taken by Scotland being a world leader in renewable energy technology.  Self belief is everything in the race to win hearts and minds.

But this extreme is matched by the perverse pride many Unionists take in promoting the idea that Scotland on its own would be an economic basketcase, a stance that has encouraged them to forge political careers out of keeping the Scots cringe firmly at the forefront of our approach to life.  There is something far wrong with a political creed that revels in doing down a people’s ability to survive and thrive.  And it has succeeded in maintaining generations under the yoke of under-achievement, making us sniffy about real success, happy to wallow in our mediocrity.  How else to explain our swagger under the weight of poverty, ill-health, violence and aim always to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in everything from sporting endeavour to personal attainment?

There is a dishonesty inherent in both extremes and a little more honesty in our political discourse would go a long way.  Like Goldilocks, I’d be happy with just right.  Not every country can be great;  this nation does not need to be rubbish;  a half way house that does things decently would do for me.

I’d settle for living in a country which prioritises tackling inequality and injustice, where fairness is at the heart of the agenda.   That resolves to end the scandal of children growing up in poverty;  which ensures that the most vulnerable citizens do not go without or have to fight to get what they need;  where people pay what they can afford for the benefit of all.  I’d settle for a Scotland that feels confident enough to remove the chip on it shoulder, but does not feel the need to wear a fur coat with nae knickers either.  I’d be happy with a Scotland that is neither great nor rubbish, but just content with being good enough.

 

 

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Is it time for a Scottish Stock Exchange?

Oct 17

Posted by Jeff in Economy | 17 Comments

Across the world, dreadlocked, falafel-fuelled protesters are gathering in their dozens to camp out outside stock exchanges and areas of commerce to decry the greed that exists in our Corporate world. It is an injustice that cannot be denied. People lining their pockets with millions while so many struggle to just get by from one day to the next is far from an ideal model of how to run a fair and just society.

That said, it’s not clear what the end game is, not at all clear what success looks like from these makeshift campsites and Dylan songs wafting in the evening air. I popped my head by the Occupy London site at St Paul’s just a moment ago and there is little space for the extra protesters that would be required to turn the efforts into a movement that might actually get somewhere. I’m not being cynical but realistic. These particular efforts look set to come to nothing.

Hopefully a partial solution to the huge profits, salaries and bonuses that do exist out there will come through the Parliament, and particularly through pressure from Labour, the Greens and indirectly from the SNP (or directly through independence, but that’s not what this post is about). One of the big problems with the UK right now is that wealth is concentrated in London and the South East of England. Pulling and spreading that wealth out to other parts of the UK is difficult when the majority of profits come from market sectors that would not leave London for love nor money.

My hope is to see policies such as the following come into being:

(1) No one salary in any organisation being more than 10x to 20x the salary of the lowest paid person
(2) All pensions being of equal size irrespective of the role taken within the organisation.

But, perhaps there is something a bit more radical and a bit more distinctly Scottish that can be done to ensure a bit of financial fairness across the UK, and to give Scotland a jumpstart to its economy: – create a Scottish Stock Exchange.

Edinburgh is reported to be the second largest financial centre in the United Kingdom after the City of London and, this may surprise some people, the fourth in Europe by equity assets. On top of this, it is one of the fastest growing city regions in Europe,[2] with strong rates of growth in banking and financial services at the forefront of this success. It can’t build a tram, sure, but it has a very strong European and even global reputation behind it that deserves to be built upon.

Yes, despite not having a stock exchange to revolve Scottish trade and dealing around, we are beating major cities that do – Stockholm, Vienna, Prague, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Dublin and Oslo to name a few. Even cities like Ljubljana, Bratislava, Belgrade, Podgorica (Montenegro), Skopje and Valletta have stock exchanges while Scotland does not.

We wouldn’t want to occupy an Edinburgh Stock Exchange, but we could own and mould it in the Scottish traditions of equality and fairness that would perhaps please even the most leftist of potential protesters north of the border. The opportunity to create increased activity around start-ups, business angels, joint ventures and mergers & acquisitions with such a centre in Scotland’s capital would be a golden one that could usher in a new great age for Scottish fortunes. It would also help Scotland build a can-do mentality by having one thing that we currently leave to other nations out there.

Can one agree with the #Occupy protests while still argue in favour of a new stock exchange for Scotland? I certainly hope so.

Why are Scots leaning towards independence?

Oct 16

Posted by The Burd in Constitution, Parties | 31 Comments

As my esteemed blogging colleague, Jeff highlighted, today’s Com Res poll for the Independent on Sunday produces the astonishing finding that a majority of folk south of the border support independence.

The whole poll sampled over 2000 voters across the UK, but only 176 were in Scotland, so caveats apply about the representativeness of the sample size.  But the really interesting findings are on voting intentions and opinions about the performance of various leaders and parties.

First, the headline indie finding in Scotland – support is up to 49%, an increase of 11% since the last Com Res poll, and firmly within the direction of travel reported by other polls over the summer.

Apparently, at the last General Election, 28% of Scots voted “other”, one presumes mainly for the SNP.  If there was a UK election tomorrow, 33% would vote SNP, 30% would vote Labour, 11% would vote Conservative and 6% vote Liberal Democrat.  Again, in tune with other polls, the SNP is increasingly becoming the party of choice for voters at all elections.  Would a 33% result be enough to see constituencies topple like dominoes, as happened in May?  Doubtful.  They need more swing towards them and away from Labour, particularly in the central belt.

The poll suggests the Lib Dems are finished in Scotland, at least for the foreseeable future.  On a series of attitudinal statements, the Scots are much more down on the Liberal Democrats than other parts of the UK or indeed the UK as a whole.

*Nick Clegg is turning out to be a good leader for the Liberal Democrats* – 83% of Scots disagreed compared to 53% at UK level

*The Liberal Democrats have done a good job of moderating Conservative policies in the Coalition* – an oft repeated assertion by Scottish Lib Dems in particular – 61% of Scots disagree compared to 47% for the UK

*Being in coalition with the Conservatives has shown the Liberal Democrats to be a credible party of government* – 17% of Scots agree compared to 24% of total participants across the UK.  Only Wales has a lower percentage agreeing (15%).

There is divergence in opinion amongst Scots voters compared to the UK as a whole and whatever the Scottish Liberal Democrats do, they are facing an uphill battle the whole time their party is in coalition with the Conservatives at UK level, because Scots do not believe it is making any difference to UK government policies or behaviour.  That belief is no doubt affirmed every time a Scottish Liberal Democrat MP pops up in the news bearing bad news – as the water carriers for the government in Scotland they are intrinsically linked to it all and it is doing nothing for their reputation with Scottish voters.

The poll also suggests a link between the Conservatives being in power, the austerity of the times we live in and growing support for independence.

*The Coalition Government’s policies share the burden of hard times fairly so that we are “all in it together”* – over one in four UK participants agree with this statement (27%) but in Scotland it’s less than one in five (18%).

And while one third of respondents think David Cameron is turning out to be a good Prime Minister across the UK, in Scotland only 18% think so.  If the Liberal Democrats have a hill to climb to turn around their electoral fortunes in Scotland, then the Conservatives clearly have a mountain to scale.

It is supposition – and it would be great if someone, other than the parties themselves, was prepared to engage in qualitative research that explores why Scottish voters are headed towards independence – but with a UK Government not to their liking, and not behaving in a way which finds favour with Scottish voters, you can see why people might be turning towards independence as a credible alternative.

And there are other polls indicating the key role that the economic situation might just be playing in that shift.  To be blogged on later….