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Better Nation

Big on growth, short on ambition

Sep 10

Posted by The Burd in Holyrood | 7 Comments

Well, how did I do?  I tried to predict the bills that might feature in the Renewing Scotland:  Programme for Government earlier in the week.  It would appear I allowed my imagination to run riot.  Here was me harking back to a positive, hope-inducing, confidence-building manifesto and picking out the ripest plums.  There I was factoring in that with the shackles of minority government off, the Scottish Government might knock itself out with some big beasts of bills.  Silly me.

This might well be a government programme for economic growth and there are some excellent initiatives coming down the line, but its legislative activity isn’t exactly going to set the heather alight.  But it does tell us a lot about our SNP Government:  here is an administration committed to making things happen without reaching for a prescription in the form of three Stages, some amendments and a debate.  A few big gigs aside, this is a legislative programme which largely tinkers.  And its common theme can be summarised as gradual and incremental shift.

I got five out of sixteen right: minimum alcohol pricing, the rights of children, the budget (but that’s hardly an achievement), police and fire reform, freedom of information amendment.  Mea culpa then and remiss of me to forget that the self-directed support bill didn’t make it through the last Parliament.

This does have a lot of meat on its bones and expect the unions and COSLA to get worked up about the shift in power and control away from agencies and professionals and into the hands of those who use care services.  It is long overdue and as long as it does not focus overly on direct payments as the main method of giving people a say and a budget for their care, but factors in all the other more imaginative, less bureaucratic ways of empowering those who care and those who require care and support, then it will be a fine piece of legislation, that marks a real shift away from the traditional public service model.

And how could I have forgotten about the anti-sectarianism bill, or to give it its Sunday title, Offensive Behaviour at Football bill.  Which in itself is a bit of a misnomer, for it will sweep up other equality strands and behaviour outwith football and even in parallel universes (the internet to you and me) in its wake.  Given that dark forces are rising, as one, to oppose its necessity, this isn’t a sure bet to make it on to the statute books.  Am I the only person bemused by this bill’s ability to unite the Old Firm in perfect harmony?

Another interesting bill is Criminal Cases (Punishment & Review).  It looks technical – and probably is – but it will mark a bit of a power shift away from the courts towards the Criminal Cases Review Commission in terms of appeals.  However, if I was Lord Carloway, who has beavered away at his review since early summer, I’d be a wee bit miffed, for this bill steals a march on some of the issues he was tasked with addressing.

The changes to criminal legal aid are overdue, as are the ones to create a single council to review civil law.  Previously, the practice has been to set up commissions who report at length and are often ignored.  A little rhyme, reason and regularity in monitoring and modernising our civil legal system is to be applauded.   And it’s always seemed a little inequitable that not very well off folk have to contribute to their justice in civil matters, yet all criminal representation has been supported by the public purse.  Though there is a big difference between someone wanting to prevent the use of a right of way and someone defending their innocence against serious charges that might result in the loss of their liberty.  Expect some impassioned debate on this one, not least from the vociferous criminal lawyer brigade.

More justice stuff, with land registration and long leases.  I won’t pretend to understand what the former is about but the latter seems another equitable measure, albeit a small scale attempt to shift – see? – land and property ownership out of the few and into the hands of the many.   And of course there’s the freedom of information amendment –  now this bill will see a bit of a bunfight, I think, with many from outside the Parliament pushing for more far-reaching reforms.

Agricultural holdings will attempt to create more farmers and prevent exorbitant rent rises by landlords.  The Aquaculture and Fisheries bill will no doubt give the Green lobby something to get their teeth into and expect the forces of the establishment and probably our third estate to gnash and wail over the Council tax bill, as it will seek deny absentee landlords and overstretched developers, as well as the rich, their right to clutter up our streets with decaying and desolate properties.  Again, there is a shift here of power and control but this bill could have been – still might end up being – a whole lot more radical.

The bill for the National Library of Scotland involves tweaking and while the Water bill might be pumped up as a big geyser, it is likely to prove a little dry for commentators to get worked up about.

Where will the bunfights occur?  Anywhere a lobby can get organised, but expect some ding dong over police and fire reform, with the unions as prime agitators, and minimum pricing, with the big drinks companies and supermarkets ganging up against MSPs.  If nothing else, it will all generate a lot of headlines and chip papers.

Finally – be still my beating heart – there is the bill to enshrine in law rights for children.  At last, some generational justice.  And while it has been touted as largely uncontroversial, I’m not so sure.  There are plenty out there who would seek to deny children the same rights as others, particularly when this bill is the precursor to a huge shake-up of children’s services.

So, not a lot on the face of it to get excited about, though plenty to work the Justice committee into a lather, this legislative programme might be somewhat lacking in ambition and big flagships, but it demonstrates quintessentially what this Government is all about.  A gradual shifting of the tectonic plates of where power lies in Scotland, and where the SNP wants to lead the country to.

Worst Motion of the Week – Holyrood Hero of the Week

Sep 9

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 14 Comments

I have some good news and I have some bad news.

The good news is that Elaine Smith MSP had a lovely night out at the theatre the other night. The bad news is that she felt the need to share that good news with us via the parliamentary motion process.

This is, hands down, the worst motion of the past week:

Motion S4M-00513 – Elaine Smith ( Coatbridge and Chryston ) ( Scottish Labour ): Dancing Shoes
That the Parliament congratulates the creators of the show, Dancing Shoes, based on the life of former Manchester United footballer, George Best; notes that the musical completed a sell-out month-long run at Belfast’s Grand Opera House in 2010 and is returning for a wider tour; recognises the songwriting talents of Coatbridge’s JJ (Jinky) Gilmour and Belfast’s Pat Gribben, as well as the contribution of playwrights Marie Jones and Martin Lynch; notes that the play is due to be performed at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow from 13 to 17 September 2011; recognises that, despite his worldwide success with the Silencers and a successful solo career, Jinky Gilmour still performs at local gigs, including the 2011 Coatbridge St Patrick’s Day festival; considers Dancing Shoes to be a contemporary and exciting musical, and wishes everyone involved all the best for the production.

Where do we go from here? MSPs telling us there was a great show on the TV? That Jedward should win Big Brother? Pointing out somewhere that does a cracking fish supper? There is surely no greater indication that politicians may be running out of things to talk about than bringing pretty mundane pub chat into Holyrood.

It’s not all bad news this week though. We have an exemplary example of what a motion should look like and kicks off our Holyrood Hero of the week series (which will hitherto be typically non-motion based):

S4M-00775 Margaret Mitchell () (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party):
That the Parliament notes with concern the development of waste services in North Lanarkshire; understands that North Lanarkshire is already home to Europe’s largest capacity landfill site as well as four other smaller landfill sites and will be the site of the Drumshangie incinerator which it believes will burn 300,000 tonnes of waste per year; further understands that the approved Drumshangie project is four times the size of the proposed Carnbroe plant and that, if the latter was approved, the two incinerators would have the capacity to burn 450,000 tonnes of waste per year; considers that there are inconsistencies in the criteria for the refusal of the Carnbroe plant and the approval of the Drumshangie incinerator; further considers that a review of the policy regarding waste disposal and incinerators would be welcome with a view to encouraging reuse and recycling as a priority over the construction of incinerators, and welcomes the efforts of local community and organisations such as the North Airdrie Joint Community Group and Greengairs Community Council in supporting recycling and reuse programmes.

Some important concerns are raised here with facts to back them up. This is the type of issue that I’d want MSPs to be looking at in the Chamber, not what happens to be on at the Pavilion Theatre this month…

The only party that should fear a federal UK is the SNP

Sep 8

Posted by Jeff in Constitution | 81 Comments

The NHS Bill cleared the Commons last night with only several Lib Dems deciding to vote against the Government’s proposals, despite lingering fears that there is simply too much private involvement and profiteering in the suposedly public NHS.

I have not had a chance to see the exact vote breakdown but it seems likely that some Scottish Lib Dems MP will have voted for the proposal and some Scottish Labour MPs will have voted against, despite health being devolved to Holyrood.

This is, therefore, the latest example of the West Lothian Question, where Scottish MPs (and by extension Scottish citizens) can have a say on English affairs but English MPs and citizens have no say on Scottish affairs. It is, and has been for quite a while, an unsustainable and deeply unfair arrangement.

So, in one respect it is to be welcomed that the UK Government has set up a Commission of ‘independent, non-partisan experts’ to look into and hopefully answer once and for all the West Lothian Question.

Supporters of the SNP will suggest that the solution is only a few years away and comes in the shape of a Yes vote to independence. This would of course put the issue to bed but the UK Government has a responsibility to assume that the United Kingdom as it stands is for the long term and needs to find a lasting solution accordingly.

For me, there is only one answer – four devolved Parliaments for the four constituent nations.

The imbalance in Scotland (and Wales and Northern Ireland) cannot continue. It’s not just votes in Westminster where problems arise, but a Parliament that spends money that it doesn’t raise is ultimately unworkable.

The only party that should fear a federal UK is the SNP. The balance and equity that such an arrangement provides will allow Scotland to crack on with free education for students, free care for the elderly, a renewables push and different levels of taxation to pay for it all, whether it’s Income Tax going up or Corporation Tax going down. There will be little disagreement that Nationalists can leverage to their own ends.

David Cameron going on the front foot on this issue, with rare support from Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, would finally put Alex Salmond on the backfoot and marginalise calls for independence, not that that should be the reason for advocating federalism, that’s just the politics of it.

A scaleable model for any part of the UK from council through nation through country up to the EU is a flexible solution that fairly and democratically meets the needs of every UK citizen, whether your issue is local, national or international.

It won’t be easy for a Prime Minister to relinquish so much power and many believe that it will be impossible, but for me there are only three choices that the UK has:

1 – Independence
2 – Scrap the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly
3 – Federalism

I simply cannot envisage another and we’re certainly not doing ourselves any favours by having Scottish MPs voting on non-Scottish issues to support a Prime Minister that we roundly rejected.

Tam Dalyell’s West Lothian Question has riddled us long enough. Let’s find a way to move on.

There is no “Taxpayers’ Alliance”

Sep 7

Posted by James in Elections | 15 Comments

sackboris2012Being criticised by the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance certainly reassures me I’m doing something right. I’ve come to their attention for having the temerity to oppose a second term for BoJo in London while – shockingly – continuing to live in Edinburgh. Having heard on the radio one morning that the King of Misrule was planning to run again with the help of a @backboris2012 Twitter account, I quickly jumped in and registered @sackboris2012 to give the other point of view.

I also bought the relevant domain name on a whim, and tweeted a small subset of Boris’s incompetence for a day or two. I then quickly realised I wouldn’t be able to give this enough time, so I dropped a few sensible friends in London a line offering to hand it over to them – some Greens, some not. Sian Berry, a former Green activist and former mayoral candidate herself, took it on through Common People, who I do think have done a great job with it. Their Oyster card holders with Sack Boris on them are all the rage, I understand.

Enter Mark Wallace, of anti-public service astroturf outfit the Taxpayers’ Alliance, who used the magic of the Allwhois public database to work out that Sian was involved with the Common People website, which in his mind makes it a Green front. Subsequently, Mr Wallace remembered how to use the same public database, and also established that I registered the SackBoris2012.com domain. Or he wanted to spin one small non-story out into two even smaller non-stories.

We had a little Twitter back-and-forth, in which I thanked him for describing me as exalted, and in which he claimed that the TPA have members in Dundee, although he refused to tell me how many. Any view on that yet Mark? I’d settle for a number of Scottish members of your organisation, to be honest.

So far so silly. But it’s a real question. Should I be permitted to take an interest in London’s politics, just like the TPA take an interest in Dundee’s? Is this very minor instance of involvement in London politics somehow offside?

I don’t think so. I do have a direct interest, and not just as the holder of an Oyster card. As long as Scotland is part of the UK, Scots have a legitimate interest in how the capital is run. The TPA regularly fuels the myth of English taxes being used to subsidise Scotland, when they know fine well that London is the best-funded part of the UK. I have no problem with a decent level of funding for vital public services, but the taxes paid by Scots help to pay for services in the capital and Scots taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to ignore London politics.

Also, nobody should be at all surprised that Green activists (and ex-Green activists) do what they can in their spare time to oppose Boris Johnson’s campaign and Tory politics more generally. So do activists from across the left, and I doubt there’s anyone in the party who’s uncomfortable about this kind of thing. If I’d been a London resident for the last mayoral election I’d have absolutely voted Green 1, Labour 2 – Ken’s got some spectacular personality flaws and some serious policy blindspots, but an AV choice between him and the public-transport-hating blond buffoon wouldn’t exactly have been hard.

There is also a delicious irony to being accused by the Taxpayers Alliance of setting up a front organisation. They’re widely regarded as a partisan hard-right front organisation for the Tories’ ideological assault on public services. They unashamedly represent the interests of a tiny minority of very wealthy taxpayers, people who tend to engage in tax evasion tax avoidance tax efficiency, not the interests of the great majority who rely on and value public services.

And of course, like so many of the TPA’s core arguments, I’m afraid my title here is simply a lie. There is a decent organisation of that name which stands up for the interests of taxpayers, and they’re right here.

Why the SNP should run in England

Sep 7

Posted by Guest Blog in Elections, Parties | 89 Comments

Rev. Stuart Campbell is a professional journalist and blogger who writes about politics and other trivial matters for culture journal Wings Over Sealand.

As a Scot who’s made their life in England for the last 20 years, and also as someone on the liberal half of the political spectrum with friends and acquaintances of a predominantly similar persuasion, there’s a sentence I hear more than any other with regard to politics: “I wish we could vote for the SNP too”.

But it’s not just the material things – the free tuition, the free prescriptions, the free care for the elderly (and the abundance of natural resources) – that my dear English chums envy.

Most of them DO envy those things, of course, not out of greed or a sense of entitlement but rather because they appreciate a government that prioritises the things its people want. Conduct a UK-wide survey asking voters whether, for example, they’d rather their taxes were spent on healthcare or on buying useless weapons of global destruction and sending our young men and women to get killed in their hundreds in foreign wars of dubious legality and purpose, and I suspect you’d get a pretty unequivocal answer. But incredibly, there is no electable party south of the border offering those values.

(The Liberal Democrats pretended to stand for some of them, but abandoned their principles with startling and dismaying speed at the first sign of a ministerial car. Not for nothing was the most-tweeted post-election political joke “Why did Nick Clegg cross the road? Because he said he wouldn’t.”)

There is also considerable – and entirely legitimate – anger about the West Lothian Question. Only this weekend I had to explain the WLQ to an English woman (not an avid follower of politics) who didn’t know that Scottish MPs were allowed to vote on UK Parliament matters solely concerning England and Wales, and who was quite justifiably outraged to discover that the tuition fees imposed on English students alone were only made possible by the votes of Scottish Labour MPs whose constituents were exempt.

This double democratic deficit has a simple solution, of course – the end of the Union. Scotland and England could dissolve their increasingly strained and unhappy marriage – in which the partners are held together more by force law than any common interests or goals – and either become fully separate or participants in a federal UK with largely token bonds of unity.

cuthberts

(In respect of the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland already has a very separate way of doing things, with its own distinct political parties and structures, and the Welsh can to all intents and purposes be considered a region of England, comprising mostly 80-minute/roadsign patriots with very little appetite for even fairly trivial levels of devolution when it comes to the crunch at the ballot box.)

The English would be freed of the (real) West Lothian injustice and their (perceived) subsidy of the ungrateful Scots – leaving them, they would believe, the extra billions to make their own universities and prescriptions free and so on – whereas the Scots could elect governments more suited to their different political and social culture without having their wishes invariably trampled by the numerically-superior south.

The problem is that there is no way for English voters to express support for these ideas. All three mainstream parties are fanatically pro-Union (though mostly, if pressed on the issue, for largely nebulous reasons), and the likes of the English Democrats are either nutter-fringe outfits, racists or both. Opinion polls consistently show that roughly as many (and sometimes more) English people support an end to the Union as Scots, yet there is nowhere they can put a cross in a box to say so. Which is why the SNP should put up candidates for English elections.

It’s perhaps important to note at this point that I’m serious. I genuinely believe it’s something the Nationalists should do, rather than an abstract debating point. But obviously there would have to be some qualifications. Firstly, the SNP clearly can’t afford to contest every English seat in a General Election, and nor would there be any point in them doing so. But running in a handful of carefully-chosen by-elections offers huge potential benefits, and not just for the party itself.

Picture the scenario. A formerly strong Liberal Democrat seat, somewhere in the south of England, with low support for Labour. A Lib Dem vote that is very likely hugely disaffected and angry, and looking for somewhere to go. The chances are that they voted Lib Dem in the first place to keep the Tories out (so they’re not likely to defect in that direction), and that they did so either because Labour had little to no chance of success, or because of an equal antipathy to them.

Straight away there’s plenty to play for, then. And while it might seem counter-intuitive for the SNP to stand in the south of England rather than the more left-wing north, that’s precisely why it would be a good idea. It took Scotland a generation to free itself of the reflexive instinct to turn Labour in times of austerity – even when Labour had abandoned most of the principles that bred that instinct – and northern England would be starting from cold.

According to Scottish Vote Compass, the policies of the 2010 Lib Dem manifesto are already far closer to the SNP’s than those of the Tories or Labour. The party is also already familiar and comfortable with the idea of a federal structure – that being the way in which the Liberal Democrat Party itself is organised in terms of the UK- so switching to the SNP would in many senses be the easiest ideological leap for former LD voters to make.

But the SNP would also have another, slightly less palatable, advantage in a by-election in the south. They might well also attract the votes of disgruntled Daily Mail and Express and Telegraph readers who since 2007 have been fed a constant diet of mendacious anti-Scottish propaganda. The messageboards of those publications overflow with angry readers bitterly bemoaning the “subsidy junkie” Scots and urging them to just get on with it and leave. Given the opportunity of a two-for-one protest against both the whingeing Jocks and the mainstream parties at a time when disillusionment with Westminster politics has never been higher, is it such a stretch to imagine them, too, lending the SNP their vote?

Disaffected Lib Dems allied awkwardly to the Little Englander brigade would be a formidable electoral presence. But even if we assume that actually winning the election would be a pipe-dream – and indeed even if the SNP candidate lost their deposit – the mere act of standing would bring the SNP media coverage that money couldn’t buy. The subject of the Unionwould be the hot topic of debate not merely in the wee provinces of the north, but across the national media.

It’s hard to imagine a political operator as savvy as Alex Salmond failing to grasp such a glorious opportunity, and his job would be made easier by the fact that the greater the scrutiny of the relationship between Scotland and England – whether political or economic – the better the outcome tends to be for the SNP. Scotland has the truth on its side when it comes to whether it pays its way in the UK or not, and the Nationalists also command the moral high ground when it comes to the West Lothian Question, with their MPs abstaining on England-only matters in the House Of Commons.

But it’s not only Scotland that would stand to benefit. Salmond’s much-acclaimed appearance on the BBC’s Question Time earlier this year showed that the SNP’s position on subjects like the NHS and PFI carries a lot of traction south of the border too. A more social-democratic agenda being raised and discussed at length could only be good news for those of us down here who currently have no voice in Westminster, if only to remind British people that such voices still exist and such principles are still viable. Systemically-unequal neoliberal free-market capitalism isn’t the only game in town (as nations like those ofScandinavia ably demonstrate).

English voters are currently starved of meaningful democratic choices, being plagued by three parties that are in most important and practical senses indistinguishable from each other. (All support nuclear weapons and power, all want to persecute welfare recipients, all voted for tuition fees, all are a threat to civil liberties, etc.) The SNP has plenty of cash in its war-chest to fight a by-election or two. It’s hard to see what either could have to lose.

Originally posted on Rev S Campbell’s own blog.

ADDENDUM – by Malc

Within this piece there was a reference to Wales as “to all intents and purposes a region of England” which led to a discussion about Welsh and Gaelic languages, which may have offended some readers.

My own clear view is that the suggestion that minority languages are not welcome in the UK is not just wrong, it is ignorant and has a basis in colonialist attitudes.

Better Nation was intended as a vehicle to discuss and debate views which would improve Scotland in the future. I deeply regret that we featured an author whose views are so at odds with the protection of historical and cultural values held by those who hold dear their own language.

Future guest posts will certainly get a closer examination before they go up.

MH