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SNP fiddles while Scotland burns

Nov 15

Posted by Jeff in Environment | 21 Comments

We are currently enjoying life under Britain’s ‘Greenest Government ever’.

However, that adage does not belong to the UK Government that prematurely made that boast but to the Scottish Government that wants to step away from being Britain’s ‘anything’ if it can get the chance.

As strong as the SNP’s environmental credentials are (and I know one co-editor who would disagree with that line alone, with good reason), there is always room for improvement, as a press release from the Scottish Green Party reminded us this weekend (or at least reminded the few who read it since no newspapers that I noticed actually picked up the story and ran with it).

The press release includes the paragraph:


While SNP Ministers continue to claim 90% of the income from oil and gas in Scottish waters, they have failed to take the corresponding 90% of the emissions from these offshore industries into account. These so-called “unallocated emissions” have risen since 1990, and Scotland’s real emissions have therefore fallen by far less than claimed by Scottish Ministers.

Richard Thomson has already stepped in with a rebuttal, a rebuttal that I believe rather dances around the issue. My understanding of Richard’s point is that the Scottish Government shouldn’t count these offshore oil emissions within Scotland’s world-leading 42% target because this is not a devolved area. So much for “It’s Scotland’s Oil”.

This may or may not be a technically valid point, I don’t know what the scope of ‘Scotland’s emissions’ is once you dig down into the detail but the fact remains that there are emissions not being counted (incidentally, that is for an exploration area that need not be extended, another area where SNP environmental credentials look decidedly flimsy).

There is a similar problem for flights in and out of the UK. As an example, if you fly from New York to Edinburgh, then one of Scotland, the USA or the UK should include the emissions from that flight in their national statistics. No countries in that situation currently do.

The SNP is seemingly quite happy to take an accolade that may be technically true but does not actually go as far as it should to solve the problem at hand. It is statistical fiddling while Scotland burns and is to take NIMBY-ism and turn it on its head. The on display IMBY-ism, for want of a better FoLA*, is to accept emissions off the coast and overhead just to tick a box. It is much easier to fight Westminster for £300m of Climate Change money than it is to fight for the right to count your country’s emissions as your own.

Britain’s Greenest Government ever, yes, but the ducking and diving has to end if the SNP wants to kick on and be genuine world leaders, as promised.

* FoLA – Four Letter Acronym

(Also blogged by Rob Edwards)

Scotland the timid

Nov 15

Posted by James in Economy, Holyrood | 28 Comments

On Wednesday John Swinney will start the long election campaign with the publication of his draft Budget, and his usual deft political sense appears to have deserted him.

We can tell a fair bit about his plans from the detailed advance briefing provided to the newspapers. First, and most inevitably, he will seek to continue the Council Tax freeze. The share of local services being funded through local taxation is diminishing, and so too their responsibility and accountability to local voters: but the advantage of this for the SNP is pure politics.

Having spent previous campaigns making a progressive case for fairer taxes and protecting public services, the SNP have apparently decided they can only win by claiming a crude low-tax position. Labour have rightly recognised that the freeze is untenable, given the consequences for local services, but their position still feels weak and nervous. If you’re aiming to top the poll, raising taxes may well be a brave move, but there has never been a greater need for devolved Ministers to find ways to raise more revenue.

The second frankly bizarre proposal from the SNP is to shift revenue spending into capital projects. Revenue spend is what pays the wages, and this shift is what is driving the cut in public sector pay they’re also floating – a cash freeze of course being a real terms cut.

Ministers would have us believe that the boost to capital budgets means “schools’n’hospitals”, but a quick look at the actual figures shows where this money will go in the longer term. By 2011-12, next year’s Budget, the absurd additional Forth Bridge will begin to be a massive drain on the capital budget, costing almost 50% more than the current total capital spend on education across the whole of Scotland. By 2015 it will be costing us almost £400m a year, assuming the costs don’t rocket and it’s somehow managed better than the SNP/Lib Dem coalition are managing the trams.

For SNP Ministers, that’s what capital is, roads. If they were honest, they’d say “roads and roads”, not “schools and hospitals”. That’s their priority, hardly a surprise given their own lifestyles – I would say the most common single story I get asked for a Green comment on is an FOI request showing SNP Ministers’ absolute addiction to the car. The most recent one showed Alex Salmond being driven from Holyrood to Holyroodhouse. Literally across the road and the First Minister was either too lazy or too regal to consider a two-minute walk.

This is a government of back-seat policy-makers, where the world passes by through the car window, not the bus or train window, let alone being seen from the cyclist’s or pedestrian’s perspective. And a dire squeeze on public funds is being aggravated by their absolute road-building obsession. The last lot were bad enough for it, with the M74 extension and the Aberdeen Western Peripheral, but now it’s front-line services and public sector staff that will really pay the price.

That £400m a year cost for the additional Forth Bridge is, by coincidence, what the Treasury estimated a penny on the Scottish Variable Rate would bring in this year. Next time you hear Ministers object to using the tax-varying powers they once supported, remember you’ll be paying the equivalent of a penny more on income tax simply for Alex Salmond’s contract-signing photo-op, an event already scheduled for the election campaign and bizarrely backed by the non-Green opposition parties.

And so we know what’s coming. As Brian Taylor said on the Politics Show today, cuts, cuts and more cuts. Tory-led economic illiteracy driven from Westminster with Lib Dem assistance. Those Tory cuts now being handed on by the SNP, apparently to woo the Daily Mail. A Tory austerity drive which will apparently be accepted by Labour too. If the Scottish Greens’ conference hadn’t decided to offer the public an alternative, the chance to use the existing powers to raise revenue rather than waiting for Calman (let alone independence), then the public would be looking forward to a choice of five Parliamentary parties with nothing different to say, no alternative to passing on a variation of the same cuts.

Scotland is a country which voted by 63% to 36% in favour of a tax-varying power. A country which has consistently voted for more progressive politics than England favours. A left-wing nation led by Ministers determined simply to implement Tory cuts, afraid to use the powers we endorsed in 1997. A governing party obsessed with independence as the universal panacea but who cannot see how the case for self-governance is undermined by their refusal to use the powers they already have. Ministers who behave like the Daily Mail speaks for Scotland. A country whose two largest parties dare not look at an alternative to the Coalition’s cuts.

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7 reasons why Scotland’s Labour party may lose like Sweden’s Labour party

Nov 12

Posted by Jeff in Parties | 29 Comments

– Sweden had been largely ruled by Social Democrats for decades. After one term of the Modernitska Party, the country decided it deserved an historic second term. The SNP may enjoy that same opportunity.

– The Social Democrats are generally popular but a singularly unpopular leader at the helm was their ultimate undoing at the election. Iain Gray is likeable but his lack of chutzpah may similarly count against him come election day.

– Social Democrats promised to outspend the Modernitska Party, regardless of how much it cost the country. The public never fully bought it. Labour is unrealistically opposing ‘SNP cuts’ at every turn while continuing to propose GARL and a substantial building of new prisons.

– The Social Democrats struggled to decide how to tackle immigration, torn between being pro-immigration on principle or taking a stronger stance to win cheap votes. Labour, no thanks to Phil Woolas, are going through the same turmoil.

– The ruling Modernitska party in Sweden were able to outflank the Social Democrats on both the left and the right. The SNP enjoys that same flexibility across various policy issues.

– The Social Democrats are headed up by a tight clique of former Ministers. Labour is suffering from a lack of fresh blood coming through.

– The Social Democrats were far ahead in the polls for months prior to the election date with the ruling Modernitska party only pulling ahead weeks before the election date. Many predict the same will happen in Scotland.

I, perhaps optimistically, like to think that Scots think along the same latitudinal lines as their similarly-minded Social Democratic Scandinavian friends. Could next year’s Scottish election already be foretold by this year’s Swedish election?

incidentally, the biggest gainers in that Swedish election were…… the Green party.

Fighting Fire with Fire (extinguishers)

Nov 11

Posted by Jeff in Ideology | 35 Comments

They say (albeit mistakenly) that if you throw a penny off the top of the Eiffel Tower then by the time it reaches the ground, and if it hits someone, that person will undoubtedly die. The resulting lesson then, if you believe this piece of information, is that throwing a penny off a very tall building would be a very stupid thing to do.

I don’t know how to translate and apply the relevant physics formulae but, as an extension of this, one would believe that throwing a fire extinguisher from a medium-sized building (Millbank Tower, for example) is similarly dangerous. Consequently, the ‘anarchist’ who did such a thing yesterday is either stupid or ignorant and, one can also assume, is not a Physics student.

The protests against the coalition’s implementation of student fees were a largely peaceful affair. Would the headlines have been generated and the whole venture been worth it if the criminal damage hadn’t been carried out and does that, perversely, justify the action? Possibly but I genuinely don’t care about that aspect despite it dominating the news agenda. I certainly hope the majority of the viewers of Newsnight who were bored witless by Paxman’s toying of Aaron Porter and the random Socialist thought the same, desperate to hear about the meat of the issue instead.

I wondered on this blog what it would take for certain people to stand up, protest and raise their objections to the direction Britain is heading in and I got something of an answer yesterday. Ironically it was Nick Clegg who was amongst the first to predict widespread, “Greek-style” protests if we cut too quickly and too deeply and that may yet come to pass, largely as a result of his party reneging on its election pledges. We have had underground workers, firemen, BBC staff, students and air staff striking. Significant of course but so far perfectly manageable. What happens if teachers, nurses and social workers decide enough is enough and refuse to go to work? Are we ready for that? Is it justified?

We have a national duty to keep our shared economy flowing but we have a democratic duty to not let our political leaders take too many liberties if we feel our opinions are being trampled over. 15,000 does not a majority make, not even close, but a tipping point could be reached and it looks like it would be timed to coincide with an AV referendum that the Liberal Democrats look likely to lose. What happens then?

Scotland may well be largely insulated from the cuts thanks to a genuinely left-of-centre Government which is already thinking outside the box to minimise the effects of the cuts, the possibility of a Nordic agreement with Norway to save Lossiemouth and prioritising capital spend for example. John Swinney’s eagerly awaited Budget on December 17th shouldn’t spark widespread anger but it will be painful nonetheless, I predict continued strikes and protests in England & Wales and more of a pulling together in Scotland.

Of course we should protest if we’re not happy and of course the Government should feel free to ignore us, just let’s not get bogged down by the mind-numbingly dull philosophising over the rights and wrongs of lobbing a fire extinguisher from a building. A penny’s worth of thoughts on the matter will tell you it’s wrong but irrelevant.

Who will be left behind in Glasgow

Nov 11

Posted by Jeff in Elections | 35 Comments

The region of Glasgow has always been a fairly settled land in terms of who would be returned at Holyrood elections.

In 1999, Labour won all 10 FPTP seats while the SNP took 4 regional, with 1 apiece for Lib Dems, Tories and SSP
In 2003, the only change was an extra SSP and Green at the expense of the SNP
In 2007, the only change from 2003 was the SNP taking Glasgow Govan and retaking 4 regional seats, at the expense of the Socialists

However, the announcement that George Galloway will be standing this year can make what is becoming a crowded field increasingly difficult to predict the winners from.

There are two schools of thought on Gorgeous George – one is that he is a busted flush and the other is that he is a formidable talent that is yet to be fully utilised. I will take a rather wimpy position and say that he is both.

The man’s oratory skills are electrifying, one need only look at the punishment he levelled out in the US to believe that. However, with no party machine behind him, George will always have to scrap and scrape his way to election victory and with the 2011 election very much an SNP vs Labour head-to-head, he will struggle to even get noticed, let alone elected. The man’s days in Parliament may well be behind him. The key factor as to whether George will make it into Holyrood is whether Glasgow voters blindly go with a wasted Labour-Labour vote or instead are savvy enough to opt for Labour-George Galloway on their ballot slips.

Not that it is only George who will be feeling the pressure.

The Lib Dems don’t have to slip by too much to lose their perennial single seat here, the dear green place of Glasgow may soon find itself without a Green MSP if it’s not careful and Tory blue is also at risk of falling by the wayside if its old vote doesn’t hold firm. Their fate will largely be dictated by the strength of the Socialist vote in Scotland’s second city and to what extent Glaswegians back the SNP to stop Iain gray becoming First Minister.

The Socialists should hope for a strong showing in light of a Conservative Government, unpopular cuts and Labour voters finally working out that a second vote for Labour is a wasted one. It is interesting to note that Labour took a massive 42.6% of the regional vote in 2007 with no MSPs to show for it).

However, there are now three options on the ballot for that far-left choice – Solidarity, Scottish Socialist Party and George Galloway. It looks entirely possible that the far-left have still not learned the lessons of the past and are fragmenting their precious vote share, shooting themselves in the collective foot. What an irony it would be if a splintered socialist vote allowed a Conservative to nab the 7th regional spot.

Exacerbating this problem for the far-left is that Tommy Sheridan’s well-publicised (alleged) bed-hopping exploits will probably ensure that he doesn’t come as close to Patrick Harvie as he managed in 2007, assuming Tommy’s is the top name on the Solidarity list. It seems, regrettably, that the firebrand politician now has a great future behind him.

So, prediction time again, and on the assumption of Labour winning 8 FPTP seats and the SNP winning 1, I predict the breakdown of number of votes/regional seats to go like this:

Number of regional votes – Party – 2011 (2007)
Labour 70,000 (78,838)
SNP 46,000 (55,832)
Lib Dems 12,000 (14,767)
Conservatives 14,000 (13,781)
Greens 13,000 (10,759)
SSP 4,000 (2,579)
Solidarity 10,000 (8,574)
George Galloway 4,000 (-)

1 – SNP (Humza Yousaf)
2 – SNP (Bob Doris)
3 – Conservatives (?)
4 – Green (Patrick Harvie)
5 – Lib Dem (Katy Gordon)
6 – SNP (Sandra White)
7 – Solidarity/SSP (Tommy Sheridan?)

8 – SNP

Of course, one more SNP seat at the expense of the Socialists (a vote share that even I believe I may be overegging) would mean the prediction effectively becomes the same result as in 2007 which, to be fair, wouldn’t be all that surprising.