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If you had to start from scratch, how would you structure Scottish football?

Jun 29

Posted by Guest Blog in Holyrood | 22 Comments

A grand guest today from Garve, a middle-aged website programmer based in the Highlands, passionate about Scottish independence, Ross County FC and open government. He’s very annoyed that some numpty took the Twitter handle which is rightfully his, but doesn’t use it, and that he’s had to resort to @G4rve.

The recent release of an SFL document prepared after talks with the SPL and SFA, which crudely both threatens and bribes Scottish clubs to ignore any niggling remnants of the integrity they might once have possessed in order to vote a new club into SFL Div 1 simply confirms my belief that the entire system is broken and corrupt.

Take one issue. I’m convinced that every single person involved in Scottish football agrees that one-up/one down between the SPL and SFL1 is wrong, and that at a minimum, playoffs should be introduced. What do you call a system where for years everyone agrees something is wrong, where it would only take a vote to change it, and yet nothing happens? Broken. Why is this the case? Because those who can vote are also those who gain or lose through the result of their votes. Corrupt.

If I were to create a new structure, it would be run by people whose allegiance was to the sport only, and not to individual clubs. They’d be tasked with making the game entertaining, promoting youth development and pretty much nothing else. They’d do so without any thought for the preferences of the big clubs or the television networks.

What would be possible under such a structure? Well, just about anything. We’re constrained by the rules on the pitch, which is fine, but off it we should use our imagination. Most fans agree that the current league structure is often dull and far too predictable.

I’m only one supporter, but I’ve got a dozen fantastic ideas to improve things. I say fantastic in that 95% of them are fantasy, crazy and unworkable, but 5% would be great improvements. Unfortunately I don’t know which is which, and up to now there hasn’t seemed to be any chance that they could get voted through the current moribund structure anyway.

But the crisis brought on by Rangers’ failure may have changed that. It’s clear that the decision of many SPL clubs to vote no to a newco claiming a place was brought on by fan power, until now a fluffy, feelgood concept which the clubs were happy to pay lip service to, but never believed would really matter to them. If fan power can do that, is it time to take it a step further and use it to force through a complete revamp of the game? If it’s ever going to happen it needs to be now.

So here’s a fanciful program for change. A fan’s forum collects enough signatures to credibly put the footballing authorities on notice that a new structure is to be developed for the start of the 2013/14 season, with boycotts to ensue if it’s not accepted. A month is taken to allow fans to submit all the crazy ideas that have for a new system, then 100 people from all over the country are elected to take these and turn them into a workable structure and competition. This is released before Christmas to be simulated, tested and commented on for a month, a further month is taken to incorporate those findings and the plan is finalised by the end of February. Until then, clubs won’t know if they are playing for promotion or fighting relegation, because the league structure of the next season is unknown, if it’s a league structure at all.

What about my fantastic ideas then? Well, here are a few.

  • Start with clubs having no representation within football’s authorities whatsoever.
  • A national 16 team league with a pyramid structure beneath it formed of 3 regional 16 team leagues. 3 up/3 down, with a further 3 play-off places. Relegation from the regional leagues to local feeders, giving a route for any club to make its way through the system.
  • A new cup for the top league and teams which finish in the top half of the regional leagues, which also invites teams from Northern Ireland, the Republic, Wales and one each from the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man.
  • Two franchise places in the league system for London Scottish and Manchester Scottish teams. UEFA won’t stand for it? Have we ever asked them?
  • 50% of money raised by the authorities through sponsorship or TV rights is distributed equally to clubs throughout the game to increase competition, with the rest paid in prize money on a sliding scale. No club can receive this money unless they have an active youth and women’s football setup. Part of this money also withheld from clubs which don’t have a certain level of fan representation on their boards.
  • All players to have a registration record which holds information about the clubs, league and non-league, which they played for or trained with until they were 18. A proportion of any prize money their later clubs earn goes to the clubs which developed them, along with other payments. For instance, if Cowdenbeath develop a player who eventually plays for Scotland, they get £1,000 each time he (or she) is capped.

Dumb ideas? I’m only one fan, and out of a thousand dumb ideas there will be lots of great ones, enough to be the structure of a new, more exciting setup for Scottish football. If Iceland can crowdsource its new constitution, perhaps we can do something similar.

What do you do about a problem like an endemically corrupt financial system?

Jun 29

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 7 Comments

Bob Diamond was almost certainly ignorant of the market manipulation Barclays have admitted to. You don’t take notes on a criminal conspiracy and you don’t run a major bank without knowing how to not know what you shouldn’t in a defensible manner. Sorry for the Rumsfeldian epistemology.

But this isn’t limited to individual banks, or a lapse in the regulatory regime. Other banks were directly involved in the LIBOR manipulation and in the credit swaps fraud that will be announced shortly. Not to mention all the other incidental frauds that haven’t been discovered yet. There’s a systematic problem that all the major commercial banks are or were actively and gleefully participating in.

The ever astute Gaby Hinsliff pointed out the fundamental issue with a thorough Leveson-esque inquiry into this. It seems justified but would make the current IT issues at RBS seem like a good day as the UK portion of the international financial system collapsed under the weight of its own shit.

I don’t really know what to do from here. The banks have caused a massive world recession which has caused huge government deficits and the failure to deal with the recession in a sensible manner by governments, not least the austerity programs in Greece, Spain and the UK have made matters worse. Yes, there are issues about the way that the Northern European countries benefited from a relatively low Euro exchange rate at the expense of countries like Greece and Italy, that the better off benefited from the policy of price stability pursued by the BoE and the ECB at the expense of the worst off but there’s a deeper issue about the way that corrupt financial institutions have literally collapsed the Western economy around us all through fraud and corruption.

There’s essentially three questions which may well have conflicting answers:
1. How do we get out of this?
2. How do we stop this happening again?
3. How do we punish the incredible malfeasance which got us here?

Get your money out

Jun 28

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 5 Comments

Picture by Jessica Lucia

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up – Lilly Tomlin

Late stage finance capitalism, along with being inherently unstable due to requiring periodic crises to act as selection events, is endemically corrupt with constant fraud, back scratching and what I believe is referred to in the parlance of our time as “troughing”.

In the US the defence in a fraud trial is trying to convince a jury that because state governments couldn’t tell they were being systematically defrauded by financial institutions that was ok (HT James for that link). Seriously.

Over here Barclays systematic, long term manipulation of LIBOR during the worst financial crisis in the history of the world resulted in a fairly minimal fine which will be used to reduce the cost to other banks of running the FSA, which failed to stop it. There’s a bigger fine being paid to the US, but in total the fine probably represents about 10% of the profit generated from the two scams. If I got to keep 90% of my ill gotten gains I might take up bank robbery too.

The lenient fine isn’t particularly surprising, but the lack of prosecutions is. Turns out this is because Barclays realised there was first mover advantage in rolling over, cooperated with the authorities and did a deal with the authorities who are investigating a number of other banks for the same or similar offences: i.e. conducting massive fraud.

These are just the latest in a long, depressing line of companies such as JP Morgan , Goldman Sachs blah blah, blah blah, blah blah, blah blah.

Basically, they’re all at it and they don’t care. And they’re probably doing it with your money. So move it.

Lapsed

Jun 27

Posted by Kirsty in Constitution, Ideology, Parties | 37 Comments

Sometimes it comes down to the simplest things.

I have struggled with holding my Labour Party membership ever since the Glasgow East by-election. To be confronted with the destitution I saw only five miles away from where I used to live while canvassing and leafleting shocked me to my core.

Maybe I’m just a naïve, privileged stupid girl, or perhaps I’m just a normal person, rightfully horrified by walking into a close with shit and graffiti smeared all over the walls and kids playing next to methadone tumblers and needles.

It was only one close, because the two activists and I decided to jettison our leaflet run after that, but it’s horrified me ever since.

Whenever I have campaigned for the Labour Party I have been able to justify seeing the more unpleasant parts of lots of places in Britain by truly believing the candidate I was working for and the wider cause were both doing good, or were going to do better, albeit perhaps slower than I would want to see. But in Glasgow East, a seat I knew Labour had held forever anon, I couldn’t in good faith console myself that this was an acceptable place which my party had abandoned people and children to live, within an hour’s walking distance of the contrast of my comfortable life surrounded by my university and West End lifestyle.

But I stayed in the party. I was able to pass off a sight that I still have nightmares about as an aberration, something the cause I was dedicated to would eventually solve.

I believe the Labour Party is still the best vehicle to solve poverty in Britain, but it’s not a journey I can take any longer. The children I witnessed in that close in Easterhouse that day were not there because immigrants had taken their parents’ jobs, but because a Thatcherite government strangled funds to a Labour-led council that had no hope to even begin to address those children’s needs.

I cancelled my Labour Party direct debit on Friday, because Ed Miliband’s intervention on immigration is to me the single, worst, most crappy-William Hague-era thing I have ever heard a Labour leader say. At a time of economic austerity, to even subtly posit that low wages, poor housing and lack of opportunities are caused by ‘them’, a foreign other, coming across from somewhere else, when the root of poverty in Britain is the fault of the political and economic system we continue to inhabit, is just the cheapest political posturing, and I cannot endorse it.

It is the final straw in a lapse that has been a long time coming. But it does come down to the simplest things.

I spent this weekend at the STUC’s youth conference, where policy for Scotland’s young trade unionists is debated and agreed for the year ahead. On behalf of the STUC’s youth committee I moved the motion for debate on the independence referendum, dedicating the STUC to convening events and debates for young trade union members to fully explore the pros and cons of independence, to receive input from both the Yes Scotland and Better Together campaigns, and to make their own minds up about what will almost certainly be the most decisive vote my generation will take part in.

I remain undecided about independence. I look at the Yes Scotland launch and am left cold by the unrepresentative panel and the clear SNP-only organization. But then I look at the Better Together launch on Monday and I’m left even colder.

It’s a simple thing, to believe an organization you value and even love, will value your own views back. Too simple, perhaps.

Independence, whatever your views, is too important an issue to be left to the politicians to decide. It’s certainly far too important a decision for us on the left to trust to a coalition between Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, who have already decided for us that the UK is the best possible political and economic system we can possibly have.

I’m a big fan of British democracy, but a walk around the east end of Glasgow a few years ago was enough to convince me that it wasn’t the best of all possible worlds.

It wasn’t enough for Labour to only consult with members on the timing, the number of questions, the electorate and the governance of an independence referendum.

As the party who delivered devolution for Scotland I’m angry that Labour have not seriously consulted party members on attitudes towards independence, or the devolution of further powers, and translated those attitudes into a less strident, pro-UK-as-it-is campaign. Sure, the attitudes of a party and activists who know they rely on a Scottish bloc vote to hold the balance of power in Westminster will be skewed. But I don’t believe there is mutual exclusivity in wanting every child in the UK to be lifted out of poverty, and in wanting economic powers to be closer to the communities they are meant to serve.

Until now I have always been able to stick with Labour because I believed my efforts served a greater cause. I know there are many, many Labour representatives who know this, and strive and work towards it every day. I’ve been incredibly privileged to know and work with a few of them, and I hope to continue to support them whenever I can. There is certainly no other political party I would consider joining.

But when Labour decides to blame immigrants, however subtly with one speech, and chooses to side with those whose economic policies cause the social ills we witness, by just deciding that there isn’t an alternative to the current system, it becomes a cause which no effort of mine can hope to change.

Why it matters that only the rich can become lawyers

Jun 26

Posted by James in Education | 6 Comments

A guest today from law student Tim Haddow. He is involved with the Edinburgh University’s Law Students’ Council campaign for fair access to the legal profession. Further background is available on the campaign website.

A stained glass window dominates Parliament Hall in Edinburgh, once the seat of the Scottish Parliament, now the hub of the Scottish courts. It depicts the inauguration of the College of Justice and the Court of Session by King James V in 1532. But the link between power, the establishment and the legal system is more than symbolic.

In his provocatively titled critique of land ownership in Scotland, “The Poor Had No Lawyers”, Andy Wightman argues that the Scottish legal profession has been complicit in a system that allowed the rich to acquire and retain much of Scotland’s land whilst the rights and interests of the poor were ignored or dismissed.

Whether or not Wightman’s analysis is right, it is undeniable that the Scottish legal profession was historically the preserve of the privileged: only they could afford the expensive education required. And it is hardly a flight of fancy to suggest that a legal profession overwhelmingly drawn from one part of society may mean a legal system that cannot fairly balance the needs and interests of all.

Like any human activity, the operation of the legal system inevitably reflects the approach, attitudes and preferences of those who operate it. And, as Wightman’s book exemplifies, the legal system has an unique role in shaping and regulating our society. Through it, rights are enforced, disputed facts are adjudicated, fault is attributed and the power of the state to impose settlements is exercised. The legal system determines what is ‘reasonable’ or ‘fair’ or ‘just’ for employers and employees; landlords and tenants; companies and consumers; the police and the public.

Secondly, whilst politicians may formulate law, it is our judiciary – selected from the ranks of the legal profession – who interpret and apply it. They preside over trials of the accused and sentence the convicted. In our common law system, they are entrusted with adapting the law to changes in society.

Finally, the legal system is not just of practical importance. The principles that guarantee democracy and the rule of law make it a constitutional actor in its own right. It adjudicates disputes between the state and the individual and determines the legality and justice of the acts of government. For Scotland, it defines the limits of the elected parliament’s power.

These factors demonstrate the importance a legal system that justly adjudicates between competing interests within society. And until the legal profession is open to all on their basis of aptitude for the legal practice, whatever their socio-economic background, the legal system will never escape the suspicion that it inherently favours the portion of society by which it is run.

Sadly, the dominance of the legal profession by the privileged is not restricted to history. A 2006 survey of Scottish solicitors showed just how few lawyers came from families whose parents were not professionals of one sort or another. Thanks to the scrapping of tuition fees, the availability of student loans and the efforts of university outreach programmes, access to law as an undergraduate degree is now wider than ever. But a more diverse profession is not being created: graduates entering legal training as recently as 2010 were much more likely than those starting other postgraduate courses to be from well-off families.

As in reformation days, it is the cost of education that is the stumbling block. Law graduates now need a postgraduate qualification before they can become trainee solicitors. The government used to support this course, the Diploma in Professional Legal Practice (DPLP), with a grant to cover the fees and another, means-tested, grant to assist with living costs. But rising costs and a capped fees award – now a loan – mean only half the actual fees are covered. The maintenance grant likewise failed to keep pace with inflation and was scrapped entirely two years ago. Consequently, law graduates must now find around￡9,000 to fund their diploma. Most start with no guarantee of a job at the end so, even for those with financial security, it is a massive gamble. For the less privileged, it is an impossibility.

In the longer-term, there must be reform of legal training to eliminate this financial hurdle. But such radical overhaul will take time, even if started now. The current system developed with the acquiescence of governments of all colours and remains part-subsidised by the state. Until reform is completed, the Scottish Government bears a moral and political responsibility to counter the increasing inequity in access to the legal profession.

Fortunately, a simple and effective solution exists: extend to DPLP students the same maintenance loans available to undergraduates. This is already done for equivalent courses in other professions and would reduce the personal contribution to a level achievable by all students.

But the Government’s response so far has been to shrug its shoulders. On a practical level, it argues that a recent change to the fees award has widened access to the profession. It has not. The reform does nothing for fairer access whilst meaning more government money goes to those who could afford to pay anyway. The government also advances a political argument: that fair access to the legal profession is not a priority. Speaking in the Scottish Parliament, the Cabinet Secretary for Education said:

“We do not support similar schemes for other professions in which employment is mainly private, such as the architecture and veterinary professions, and I do not think that we should do so in the case of the legal profession.”

Mr Russell’s choice of comparison is strange: both architecture and vet students in fact already receive extended student support arguably more generous than that needed to ensure less privileged law students can enter the legal profession.

But the underlying suggestion is that the legal profession is just another profession; that entrenched privilege matters no more amongst lawyers than, to use Mr Russell’s comparators, among those who design our houses or neuter our pets. This demonstrates a dangerously impoverished understanding of the role of the legal profession in our society.

Fair access to the legal profession does matter. It matters to creating a legal system operated and shaped in a way that meets the needs of all our society. It matters to creating a judiciary that fully understands the society it judges. And it matters to ensuring the levers and safeguards of constitutional power are operated by those who legitimately represent the society they serve.

Fair access to the legal profession matters. It should matter to the Scottish Government too.