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The answer to travel in Scotland – going round in circles

Jan 6

Posted by Jeff in Transport | 22 Comments

The Glasgow Underground, aka the Clockwork Orange, is the third oldest subway line in the world behind London’s Underground and Budapest’s Metro. It is also fiercely popular in Glasgow, in part due to its sheer simplicity – one train goes clockwise around the numerous stops and the other goes anti-clockwise. Dead easy.

I wonder, and have wondered for a while, if there isn’t a way to take this concept wider, and to a higher altitude.

Let’s start with a little bit of local topgraphy.

Scotland consists of 790+ islands, the vast majority of which are not reachable by foot, car or underground. That leaves flying or ferry, unless one wishes to swim to Stromness.

So what are the options?

Well, one can currently fly from Islay to Glasgow, Colonsay or Oban; from Barra to Benbecula, Kirkwall or Glasgow; from Stornoway to Aberdeen, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Benbecula; Sumburgh (Shetland) to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Fair Isle, Foula, Glasgow, Inverness, Kirkwall, Lerwick, OutSkerries or Papa Stour and Dundee to, well, London, Jersey, Belfast or Birmingham apparently.

The list goes on and on, there are after all 38 airports in Scotland, all sending planes hither and thither across the nation throughout each week in a myriad of directions.

My question is – why do we send planes criss-crossing each other across Scotland when, taking Glasgow’s underground as an example, the most efficient way to service all stops is to go round in a circle? Is there not a way to have two domestic routes for Scotland, one clockwise and one anti-clockwise?

For example, a route could be: Edinburgh – Glasgow – Islay – Tiree – Stornoway – Kirkwall – Sumburgh – Aberdeen – Edinburgh. You could mix up some stops every other round trip, Benbecula instead of Stornoway for example, or Dundee instead of Aberdeen. You could even bring into play Fife airport or build one on Mull to really spread the Scottish pound. Moving the ideas into overdrive, there could be a Government-sponsored cycle scheme at the more rural airports so that tourists can hit the ground pedalling when they touch down, spending their Euros and Dollars more easily in our farthest flung parts. I also can’t imagine anyone minding having to go via Scotland’s beautiful West (or East) Coast to get to where they’re going, particularly if it includes the world’s most popular airport for landing – Barra.

The opportunities are endless but there must be a quicker, more convenient way of mixing rural Scotland with the nation’s cities to aid business and tourism. An improved boarding system that would make flying on these flights more like catching the train would make it more workable too; pre-cleared passengers standing by the runway in a bus shelter at Tingwall waiting to hop on before the Scottish Flyer takes off again. Why not?

The other option is ferry of course. Many of them may now sail on Sundays but it’s not the most modern and convenient way to travel for would-be tourists or business people, as romantic and other worldly as they are for the rest of us. Even the excellent suggestion in The Herald yesterday, to give every Scot a free ferry ride a year, would struggle to get travel off the ground. How many of us have looked at Harris or Jura or Orkney and longed to travel there but balked at the driving distance and logistical nightmare of boarding ferries? It can’t just be me, and this free ticket won’t boost passenger numbers for those flying into Scotland from afar.

Nonetheless, we have two fine options on the table – to use our ferries more, including giving each Scot a free ferry ride each year or to rejig how we fly domestically and bringing our highlands and islands closer to the relatively richer central belt.

Which would you choose?

Prediction 2012 – Death of the Cybernat

Jan 5

Posted by Kirsty in Democracy, Elections, Parties | 13 Comments

 

To my ears, 2012 is a fantastic, futuristic,far-off place, populated with daleks and space odysseys. But the future is now, and like all good science fiction, this prediction is probably as preposterous and as far-fetched as its title suggests, but with that tiny grain of truth that makes it plausible.

Unlike the poor badgers, the death of the cybernat this year won’t be as a consequence of a cull. More accurate would be to say this year will see the demise of the stereotype negative cybernat. But that would make a more boring, less Doctor Who-esque post title. Nationalists and independence supporters will continue to dominate Scottish politics’ digital sphere. They’ll just do so in a relentlessly positive fashion.

To win in politics needs professionalism and edge. Professionalism in standing good, able candidates, in communicating your message to voters and in calculating your strategy and tactics to defeat your opponent. The experience of 2007 and 2011 demonstrates the SNP has this in spades, while every sudden unexpected Subway sandwich stop and rolling news headline crash of Scottish Labour demonstrates otherwise. No doubt the 2012 Local Government elections will continue to demonstrate this trend in results in May.

Edge is harder to define. It’s the magic ingredient in any election which decides a winner between two even candidates. Even taking the above, for all the SNP’s success, to most voters there is little in terms of policy, or outlook, or local representation, to separate most SNP candidates from most Labour candidates. It comes down to which party has the edge, the slight nose in front of the other, to give it the win.

Political parties try to win the edge off the other by framing the debate on their own terms and then amplifying their message within the frame. The simplest and often most effective way to do this is to go negative. In Scottish terms, it helped Labour claw back to within one seat of the SNP in 2007, but wasn’t a stratagem it could employ in 2011 after lifting the SNP’s manifesto.

The harder, but in the long run more effective, way to gain an edge is to go positive and stay positive. And this is where our beloved negative nasty cybernats will disappear, as a sacrifice for the good of the independence referendum.

The referendum won’t be in 2012, but the SNP’s campaign, given Scotland Forward‘s launch, is already in action. Compared to referendums, elections are a piece of the proverbial to win – I jest, but if you turn up, look and sound good to enough voters, don’t do anything stupid and spend wisely you’re most of the way there.

To win a referendum, however, requires a paradigm shift in people’s minds, an act of persuasion so big and inspiring they become willing to rewrite the base codes of how they live and are governed. Much easier to be on the side of No, where I suspect Labour will entrench itself,  where you simply have to tell people such a shift cannot be done, for positive and negative reasons, although I also suspect the latter will dominate.

But one way the independence movement can persuade people of the need for this this shift is through relentless positivity. If the transition from devolved Scotland to independent Scotland is associated with positive words like fortunate, blessed, diverse, beauty, unique, rich, colourful, potential (and all these words are just from Alex Salmond’s first paragraph of the introduction to ‘Your Scotland, Your Future’), then the paradigm shift won’t seem so big and scary, and the unionist side’s claims won’t ring so true.

I’d be shocked if several copies of George Lakoff’s ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’ weren’t knocking about Gordon Lamb House, which explains in beautiful detail why this might just work for the Nationalists. The positive frame is where the SNP need to keep the independence debate to have a chance of winning, and the opposition haven’t yet managed to steer them off it. And this relentless positivity won’t just be from parliamentarians, but from party members, both online and offline. There will of course be outliers, but the SNP’s professionalism as it operates towards achieving its ultimate cause will ensure it amongst its membership.

So farewell cybernats. Given Scottish Labour’s new Twitter Tsar, negative digital discussion has probably just moved across to the other side of Scottish politics, but I look forward to editing your relentlessly positive commenting below and in the future. Remember, after all, a referendum is at stake..

Prediction 2012 – Labour to lose its grip on Glasgow

Jan 2

Posted by Jeff in Elections | 16 Comments

If my 2011 predictions are anything to go by then I should really be giving 2012 a miss. However, despite not living in my once-envisaged Iain Gray governed, AV wonderland, I shall limit myself to one prediction for 2012 and, over reaching further than an MSP discussing foreign affairs on Holyrood’s dime, for 2013.

First up, 2012. 

With so much of the coming year’s Holyrood business already well known and positively anaemic, not to mention the UK’s focus so distinctly unScottish, it is difficult to know where to look to find something to predict around. One could suggest that Rennie, Lamont and Davidson will continue to fail to lay a glove on Salmond this year, that the SNP Government will continue to fall short of its climate change commitments, that the Edinburgh trams will run into more difficulties and that the Scottish people will remain stubbornly around the 30% pro-independence mark, but you wouldn’t get very high odds on any of those anyway. 

What is marginally less likely, considerably more exciting and what would certainly drive a coach and horses through the modern history of Scottish Politics is the SNP taking control of Glasgow Council. And I predict that it will happen when May comes around.

Having Anas Sarwar and Johann Lamont in newly promoted positions will help Labour’s chances (and in that order of impact) but the SNP’s momentum, the well established Nicola Sturgeon and the irrepressible First Minister’s clout will see the Nats have the edge. Needless to say, if the contest is the SNP election machine vs Labour’s 2011 machine, then there will be only one winner.

In Glasgow particularly, the Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon may yet be the poster child for people paying more for their booze, in theory a damaging position to be in, but any such continued negativity from opposition parties will surely be more of a hindrance than a help after a 2011 that saw positivity being the name of the game. 

No, it is surely time for Glaswegians to see that Glasgow isn’t working and hasn’t been working for some time now. Health, drugs and life expectancy remain awful in comparison to the rest of Scorland (and beyond) and you can only blame those that have been in charge for that, as voters finally shall. Even a change for a few years will breathe healthy air into the corridors of power at City Chambers, ensuring a healthy competition between rival parties drive up results for all. 

And a traditionally Labour City that is governed by the SNP at council and national level hosting a successful Commonwealth Games mere months before an independence referendum could add up to a crucial extra 3% or 4% in favour of independence, based on population size and current polls. That is purposefully intended to be arguable but it’d certainly be a far cry from the days when Stephen Purcell was the hottest prospect in Scottish Politics. 

So onwards and upwards for Team SNP then? Well, yes, for a year or so anyway. My 2013 prediction revolves around the belief that the SNP are peaking too early and will be the victims of tall poppy syndrome and target practice before too long. Tony Blair may have put it off for longer than most but it is inevitable for all administrations and their leaders. And let’s face it, with record-breaking poll results, poppies don’t come much taller and targets don’t come much wider than the SNP and Salmond right now. 

It was, and remains, fun to be on the SNP bandwagon, to have a Cabinet of many talents that hold newer, fresher ideas than the opposition. But the public’s expectations from an incumbent Government only ever rise and that fickle public will soon enough tire of the Salmond chuckle and the SNP chutzpah. It will soon be more the done thing to sully the SNP than to support it, especially after the party runs out of new things to run, with the trophy of Glasgow Council safely on its mantelpiece.

Will that change in fortunes come before the all-important referendum? I believe so unless there is a snap plebiscite in the next 18 months. 

But that’s 2013 and this is 2012. Here’s to a great year and another round of elections, whoever the winners are. 

2012 Predictions

Dec 30

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 36 Comments

 Today the SNP claimed (ETA: this has now fallen off the internet fortunately there’s google cache), as evidence of their prowess, that 820,000 people moving from the other parts of the UK to Scotland since 2007. This was picked up by the Scotsman, on various blogs and on twitter.

On first glance, it seems pretty shaky. A wave of people totaling more  than 150% of the population of Glasgow coming here in the last 4 years? You’d have noticed that, surely…

On second glance, ok, it’s probably a gross inward migration figure cheekily ignoring outward migration so maybe the net figure’s a bit smaller and they’re spinning somewhat less impressive figures.

On third glance, like the burd you check the figures, scratch your head and wonder what the hell is going on in Gordon Lamb House. The General Register of Scotland (GRS) puts the annuals statistics at less than a quarter of what Joan McAlpine claims.

At which point I started to do my best Ben Goldacre impression and asked the SNP media team on Twitter what they based it on, in case it was a Bit More Complicated Than That.

It wasn’t.

Point man Paul Togneri asserted the piece was accurate and was based on aggregating monthly GRS figures. Which is methodologically dodgy at best, especially given directly conflicting annual figures from the same organisation for the same period.

So it wasn’t consistent within it’s own frame of reference. Maybe the overall impression of increasing migration from England, Wales and Northern Ireland was correct, despite net UK migration being 26,000 rather than the 820,000 that the SNP press release implies? Sadly not. Based on the SNPs preferred measure of medical records transferred each month, in the year ending March 2007 shortly before  the SNP took over 52,153 people from RUK moved here. In the same period of 2011 43,730 people did so.

So the SNP have done so well that 20% fewer people decided to move here since they took charge. Great work that. Well. Done. *slow handclap*

Worse, both net and gross migration to Scotland were higher not only under the previous Labour/Lib Dem coalition in Holyrood but were also higher between 1986 and 1994. So not really that much to boast about at all.

Still, and this is why I’m writing this up, it does give us some insight as to the SNP strategy for 2012. It’s going to be about construction of a narrative that supports independence with Scotland gradually but inevitably and inexorably moving towards independence under the SNP, facts be damned.

That’s my 2012 prediction. So stay frosty folks and trust no-one.

ETA: I’d like to point out that Kate did the digging on this and shot their fox, I’m just commenting on it

College Daze

Dec 21

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 28 Comments

From the outside, the electoral college the Labour party uses to elect it’s leader does look odd. From the inside, however, when you’re filling in another set of codes from the 3rd of 4th ballot to vote on line it also looks odd. Having multiple votes is a pretty weird thing, especially when you’re not entirely sure what to do and might vote each way for the sheer devilry of it. In the end, Johann won despite Ken getting more votes in the party member section leading comrade Breslin to despair at a re-run of what’s perceived as the undemocratic foisting of Ed Miliband on the Labour party instead of his brother.

And fair enough the electoral college is undemocratic, unfair and needs to be reformed – the aberration of multiple votes because (in my case) you happen to be a member of the Co-operative Party and the Fabians as well as a party member is just weird. It’s all run by the ERS, they could be tasked with de-duping the names, and all votes could be given equal weight. Great, all for that, one member one vote, democracy in action, that sort of thing.

Presumably then, this would mean that Ken would have won? Well, no. Johann had far more ballots cast for her than any other candidate, and mostly by people who only had one vote – members of the trade unions. The electoral college was put in place to undemocratically disempower some parts of the party against others, but it’s the bits that voted for Johann (and Ed) that were disempowered so rather than winning because of the electoral college it’s more correct to say that they won despite the electoral college. Lallands Peat Worrier goes into some detail on the numbers over in his peaty place.

In order to get the “right” result there’s two ways to go about it. Firstly, Labour could increase the unfairness of the electoral college by putting more weight on the membership and elected members sections, but that hardly gels with the cry of “byzantine and unfair!” so let’s discount that option.

Alternatively we could exclude the individual members of the trade unions from voting. I know it’s a long held dream of the Tories to break the union link, and of the SNP to gather trade union support for themselves, and there’s even some within the Labour party who want to do away with it and it a “modern”, “professional” political party. Why should trade unionists get a say in the running of a political party? It’s not like they started it, it’s not like the party is there to represent working people, it’s not like it’s the parliamentary part of a much wider labour movement and union members an integral part of it.

Oh. Wait.

The union link has changed in the past, it’s been a long time since the days of the block vote for instance, and it needs to change again, most pertinently so that candidates are able to campaign in a meaningful way for their votes – at the moment by and large all people get is a small pamphlet and perhaps an endorsement from the affiliated organisation. The divergence in the way that the party members and the union members vote is interesting and probably hints at something deeper, perhaps related to the changing demography of the affiliated unions relative to the Labour party membership?

As for the canonical SNP members who vote, well, they’d have had to pay good money and swear they supported the Labour party – so well done for lying and ta for the cash. I’m really not sure we’ve got Johann Lamont (let alone Ed Miliband) because of an entryist movement of false flag union members, impressive though the SNP machine is. If people are crowing about getting a ballot for “the enemy” then the best response is probably mild mockery for their vaguely infantile behaviour.

So, wrong leader? Only in the sense that Alex Salmond is the “wrong” First Minister because you’d have preferred somebody else to win, it’s not because of the voting system. Not unless you have a fundamentally different conception of what the Labour party actually is.