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Students – they grow old so fast

Dec 1

Posted by Jeff in Education | 2 Comments

So this is the new politics that Nick Clegg promised then? Vince Cable unable to support a policy that he not only helped to prepare but has sitting squarely within his Ministerial remit and the Deputy Prime Minister regretting signing pledges in the same year that he put pen to paper.

It is not only the Liberal Democrat side of the debate that is falling to pieces though. Yesterday marked the third day of action from students, students who appear to be getting younger and younger not to mention fewer and fewer and if a protest doesn’t have momentum then it doesn’t have much. Don’t get me wrong, I am in favour of the protests if they are saying that fees should be paid through general taxation to ensure fairness is guaranteed. However, that message has weakened in concentration, is struggling from a lack of political leadership and is getting lost in the sound and fury of scattershot protests from scatterbrained students.

The declining numbers are getting noisier but they seem to be losing the clarity of their argument. What is the point of students ‘occupying’ university buildings? Does this small minority really expect a counter-insurgency from the Government? I believe Appleton Tower in Edinburgh was occupied last week. Why?

One of the worst thing that some of the students protesting can do is speak directly into a camera or give their views directly. As this Comment is Free article shows, the convenience of not only circumventing national democracy but circumventing student democracy is counter-productive. The zealotry in the article is unnerving and the us-against-the-world mentality, while understandable given that the coalition won’t now change its collective mind (even if some may safely abstain), is not the smartest way to curry favour with a watching public.

Nick Clegg invited questions on tuition fees yesterday and one that I would have dearly loved to have asked is what would happen to a person who went to university with the best will of the world to ‘make it’ in their chosen field but life, as is so often the case, got in the way and the person was ‘stuck’ on the average wage of £25k/year? They are earning above the £21k cut-off but face a mortgage of £27k, not to mention a second mortgage of whatever university living costs were, nor even the third mortgage that would hopefully exist to (1) provide accommodation and (2) form the basis of any meaningful pension?

Wouldn’t such a millstone around a person’s neck be too much to bear, even before adding in any impacts of children to support, relationships that go awry and any compounding of related or unrelated mental health issues?

These questions, pressing concerns for those impacted and a factor that Scotland will learn from before taking its decision, is getting lost in the shuffle.

The Tories are not for turning, the Lib Dems are all over the place, the Greens and SNP are intent on opposing but are on the fringes of the UK debate and the Scottish debate is still some way off so the only meanginful opposition is the students but they lack the experience and strength in depth to maintain a consistent, clear argument through to the end. Ideally Labour should step up in Westminster and fall in line with correct but grating students on the streets.

Protesting is apparently a right lark but it’s difficult to support it when fairness and respect is flagrantly flaunted. The same, of course, can be said for coalitions.

A nation rejoices: more powers not to use!

Nov 30

Posted by James in Constitution | 21 Comments

The unicorn carrying the SaltireToday had a big red-pen circle round it in the SNP’s schedule when they were new to office – it’s the day the referendum would have been held if Parliament had let them Bring It On! Instead, it’s Westminster that’s making the running on more powers for Scotland, and today Michael Moore (with or without Nick Clegg) will come to Edinburgh to announce what we already know – there will a Scotland Bill to legislate most of the Calman recommendations into effect.

The SNP are palpably furious to have lost the initiative to London on the final St Andrew’s Day before the election, and today is indeed significant, although largely in news management terms. Like the National Conversation, Calman was set up to listen only to one side of the argument, and the end product has been suitably lacking in radicalism.

As an anorak, the title annoys me too. If it passes, The Scotland Bill will become The Scotland Act. We already have a Scotland Act, and it’s a pretty historic document wherever you stand on the constitutional question. It’s the only legislation where any proportion of the public might just know the first memorable line: “There shall be a Scottish Parliament”. Now we’ll have to distinguish them by date, which will aggravate the anorak quotient of these future discussions.

But I digress. The plans are to devolve an odd mix powers to Holyrood. Aside from the tax question, the newsworthy items seem to be regulation of airguns, drink drive limits and speed limits. For some reason the media aren’t exercised by the proposals to split Stage 3 consideration of legislation into Stage 3 and Stage 4, the first for amendments and the second for final approval.

Now, there’s a decent consensus against free access to airguns, against drink driving, and Parliament would probably back statutory 20 mile an hour residential zones. Once changes in those areas have been made, though, what remains to do? Where’s the radical change the Coalition tell us Calman will bring? What can we do differently?

Of course, the main thrust is those tax powers, even though the aggregates levy and air passenger duty are not coming to Scotland just yet. Central to those is the idea that the equivalent of 10p is lopped off all the income tax bands in Scotland, and Holyrood then has to take an active decision about how much to raise.

Personally, I don’t think there’s any political difference between simply letting the existing Scottish Variable Rate remain unused, were it still available for use, and a 2015 post-Calman Scottish Government simply sticking 10p on tax so the bands remain the same as the rest of the UK. The bands, allowances and thresholds won’t be subject to change, and the Commission claims “this is because income tax is a progressive tax”. If that was the real reason, Holyrood would simply have been forbidden from making the bands less progressive: given the way Scotland votes, the suspicion has to be that the Grand Coalition (in the case, including Labour) don’t want Holyrood to be able to make the tax system more progressive.

The fact that the upper rates can be changed in lock-step does mark a limited improvement on the Scottish Variable Rate. It would ensure that income tax increases continue to be progressive above the £44,875 level at which the top rate kicks in, unlike the tax powers voted for in 1997 which are progressive only up to that point. So here’s the open question to Scotland’s political parties. If you had the Calman powers now, would you consider using them to limit the cuts?

pic credit

Scotland’s double dip education

Nov 29

Posted by Jeff in Education | 17 Comments

It is dangerous to assume that one’s experience of High School is the same as that for every other Scot who has ran that six year gauntlet. Not everyone will have had their trousers pulled down onstage during the school production (as rehearsed) or had to fast talk one’s way out of stepping into the middle of gang warfare (not rehearsed). Alternatively, some others may have had their heads flushed down the toilets, something that was promised me but thankfully never materialised, not that it didn’t stop me expecting it at every turn for the first few weeks. I’m just glad I didn’t ‘self-dunk’ over the school holidays to mentally and phyiscally prepare myself, like some sort of primary seven Marine.

Anyway, one thing that all Scottish High School pupils will have faced is the option of six years of education. S1 and S2 are exam and trouble free so pupils start getting properly motivated in S3 and S4, seeking to pass their standard grades; they then ideally find extra gears of motivation for Highers in S5, putting in their first ever stint of months long study; many students then achieve the grades that they need to get into university, finding out close to the start of S6 which institution they will be attending. In such instances, I would imagine most pupils would do as I did, drop classes to the bare minimum and spend as much time as possible hanging out in the common room and/or playing sport, motivation well and truly on the backburner.

Moving onto university, a sudden, sharp burst of passion and enthusiasm for one’s chosen subject is soon replaced by the peer pressure, seductive socialising and general waste of time that is Fresher’s Week and most of the year that follows. Time passes and the need to justify those four long, hedonistic years starts to bite so a 2:1 is salvaged with some last minute cramming in later years.

To chart the levels of motivation and application over these key years for any student, years that will probably shape the rest of their lives, the following could quite reasonably be applied (the first red arrow being S6 at High Achool and the second red arrow being first year university):

Is it not better to just scrap sixth year for those who do not need it and get pupils out there earning and learning? Isn’t it worth trying to smooth that line out and remove those two dips?

The fledgling education debate north of the border seems to be focussing on ways to finance the current process but if we improve and contract the current process then it will inevitably be more affordable. Not necessarily all problems solved but let’s at least get some quick wins under our belt before trying to pass on Tory cuts with no extra revenue.

Examples of such quick wins could include:

– Make Scottish degrees three years in length, instantly saving 25% from the total cost of a typical university qualification and stamping out what tends to be a wasted year for unfocussed students
– Promote the mentality of only doing a sixth year if you are actively studying towards something. Seeing out a year before taking a job or university/college place that is already awaiting you is a waste of a school’s resources and a waste of a student’s time
– Create opportunities for work experience for the period between receiving an unconditional university offer and the start of university, raising money for the studies to come and real life experience that will make studying all the more relevant and valuable
– Matching what a university student earns in a year, over a certain limit, with funding towards fees and/or living allowance

Many people are worried about a double-dip recession but we currently have a double-dip education system that creates unnecessary obstacles for students and prevents from them even wanting to get ahead by offering such tantalising opportunities to muck around and not do very much.

Something for the Anoraks

Nov 26

Posted by Malc in Media | 7 Comments

A bit of plugging going on for something my employer is up to – though don’t worry, it isn’t in the least bit controversial.

The University of Stirling is home to a new project entitled the Scottish Political Archive which seeks to chronicle Scotland’s political history through photographs and campaign material.  The project is still in its early stages and a lot of cataloguing work is still ongoing (along with website construction) but there’s plenty to see already.

I stuck a few links up on Twitter a couple of days ago and the reaction from politicos seemed fairly positive – with many enjoying seeing a slightly different side to the politicians they thought they knew quite well (John Swinney with hair brought several giggles from the assembled Twitterati).

This post is really to serve two purposes – firstly, I’m trying to advertise it.  It’s kind of a service for political junkies (the kind of people who, say, read political blogs) to show the evolution of Scottish politics through media, photography and campaigning over the last 60 or 70 years.  So use it – go and have a look through some of the photographs, look for your favourite politicians, keep an eye out on Facebook for updates to the site as well.

You can see the photographs on Flickr here or “like” the Scottish Political Archive on Facebook here (Facebook login required).  Alternatively, the Scottish Political Archive’s photo blog is here, which carries the same material in a slightly different format.

Secondly, its a plea for help.  But I’m not asking for much.  The Scottish Political Archive is trying to make its picture as complete as it can.  Current work is focused on three collections – those of the Scots Independent newspaper, Bruce Watson (former SNP Chairman) and George Robertson (former Labour MP and NATO Secretary-General).  They range from photographs, policy documents, campaign materials and pamphlets.  But they don’t want to stop there.

To that end, they are looking for material.  Photographs of politicians at campaign stops, conferences, leaflets for elections and by-elections… you know the kind of thing.  If you have that sort of thing (and if you don’t, you’re not a real political anorak) lying around – probably in your garage – get in touch.  The Scottish Political Archive would be delighted to take it, scan it, archive it online – and return it to you (unless you want rid of it!).  Of particular interest are materials from 1979 and 1997 referendums, by-election campaigns and other election materials.

You can contact the Scottish Political Archive through Facebook or by emailing scottishpoliticalarchive@stir.ac.uk if you have anything you’d like to share.

Apologies for this being a text-only post. I would have used a photo from the archive, but I think some of them have special copyright/ permission status, and I’m not sure which ones!  Anyway – have a wee look, and let them know what you think!

Scotland’s absent Austerity Plan

Nov 25

Posted by Jeff in Economy | 30 Comments

Per the Guardian’s Editorial:

In Dublin, a humiliated and desperate government launched what it called the National Recovery Plan 2011-2014. The title was optimistic, the contents apocalyptic. Ireland faces tax rises of ¤5bn and spending cuts of ¤10bn, on top of the already announced cuts of ¤15bn. VAT will hit 24% by 2014. Wages will fall. So will the standards of the country’s already struggling public services and the prospects of any solid return to growth on the scale needed to start paying off the debt.

Scottish banks were bigger and their fall was harder than Irish institutions so it is fair to ask why we aren’t taking some of this same medicine? We are complaining about a 20% VAT rate, measly compared to other European nations out there, many of which in much stronger financial health than Ireland or Scotland. John Swinney announced very small cuts in his draft budget (~2%) and a wage freeze which, set against Ireland’s ‘Recovery Plan’ looks positively spendthrift.

However, should Scotland be looking to Ireland’s National Recovery Plan as a blueprint for taking better control of our situation? Can we really wait a year until an inconvenient little thing like an election is out of the way? We already have one bank heavily indebted to the UK Government and it would have been two had Lloyds not taken on the strain of HBOS, a decision that looks increasingly likely to be reversed in some way by the Independent Commission on Banking.

Scotland taking on two deeply troubled independent banks would be a tremendous challenge and, even for those wistfully and wishfully thinking they would like to see HBOS back on its feet, could prove to be too much to take on.

It would of course be George Osborne’s problem and not the Scottish Government’s but the impact on this ‘region’ of the UK, not to mention the independence argument, would be destabilising. When it comes to stricken banks, ‘bring it on’ is not the typical cry.

So where do we go from here? Well, in many ways Scotland has already fallen between two stools, even before the half-baked Calman measures are implemented. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be heading down that path already trodden by Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, lifting up the drawbridge and filling the moat as much as possible to keep bankruptcy at bay, no reason except it’s not Scotland that has to balance the books. If the coalition keeps sending us money then we’ll keep spending it. Doesn’t feel like a long-lasting solution though, does it?

And it’s almost too late for fiscal autonomy; the spring cleaning of national budgets is taking place all across the continent but Scotland’s static, inflexible position means that there is no debt for it to clear and a reduced incentive to adopt the same extreme measures that Ireland is the latest country to have to implement.

Scotland can’t raise revenue and it can’t reduce its spending, it’s saddled with a bank that needs Government support with another one potentially close behind and it has a high level of public sector staff. Looking around Europe, we would surely be in the high-risk category of being the next domino if we were on our own. Westminster has embarked on approaches to save its side of the UK with wholesale changes to the NHS, schools and train fares but where is the Scottish equivalent.

That we need a recovery of some sort is not even up for debate, hopefully nowhere near as drastic as Ireland’s, but where is the Plan? Scotland is not “humiliated and desperate” like Ireland is described in the Guardian’s article, but are we vulnerable and complacent?