Why no ministers at Tartan Week

It’s St David’s Day and my mind (warped as it is) turns to the very poor cousin of the St Patrick’s Day Parade in New York – Tartan Day. We learn today that Scotland’s ministers will not be going on this annual junket this year – a surprise for two reasons:

1. When faced with the charge that they were really just going to NY for a day out at tax-payers’ expense, they have always claimed that it was important to represent and promote Scotland in New York…..times have changed, apparently, and Tartan Week can do without them.

2. Most MSPs cannot resist hopping on a gravy train when one approaches.

Now, I am all in favour of Scotland’s MSPs and Executive members keeping as low a profile as possible (they are an embarrassment to Scotland and a waste of money), but I wonder what the reasoning is behind this non-attendance this year. Have they decided to stay at home to clear up the mess they have made of the NHS system in Scotland, the soaring violence rates in the country, or do something about the poor transport system perchance? Maybe it’s to deliver some of the promises they made on education. Now, it may be my cynical nature, but I suspect that this has something more to do with the up-coming Scottish Parliamentary elections and these politicians want to do some politicking in order to keep their seats for another term and stand on platforms waiting the arrival of more gravy trains.

Inverclyde…the only way is up

and it looks as if the Council is moving in the right direction. After a damning report from government watchdogs in 2005 that slated the local council that covers Greenock, Gourock and Port Glasgow  as being the worst in Scotland., it looks as if the council is making some improvements.

The Council has not been lucky with its councillors or chief executives in recent years… but then it is not an easy place to run. The local newspaper the Greenock Telegraph used to do a great job of keeping the council on their toes and the council faced real scrutiny at one point, but this slackened off in the last 5 years or so. Perhaps it’s time that the “tully”, as it’s known in the area once again concentrated on keeping the council and its officials under the microscope.

The old industries of ship-building and sugar refining have disappeared and the council and other agencies have tried to attract the likes of Amazon and T-mobile into the area; but they can only do so much.  Inverclyde has its problems, it is an area of deprivation and high unemployment and of very high drug use.  And its health situation is not great; when McDonalds decided to open 4 restaurants in the area almost all at once (including one in the new sports complex) local doctors, far from condmening the move, thought that at least it would give some people a break from the fish and chips which made up their daily diet (one Dr was quoted as saying that at least by having a Mickey D meal people got a piece of lettuce and tomato in their bun, which is more fresh veg than many were taking).

Inverclyde does need far more investment from the Scottish Exec, the UK Government and Europe. A lot has been poured into the area, but not nearly enough.

Another LibDem gaffe

…well they’ve just had a party conference so it had to happen. But this time hapless minister Ross Finnie was not the one to put his foot in it. Instead it was Jamie Stone (LibDem MSP) who called the SNP “xenophobic” shortly after his party leader (Nicol Stephen, for all those who had forgotten) had said that the party would not engage in name-calling. The SNP sanctimoniously demanded an apology as if they had never heard of a politician stooping so low as to call one another names. Stone apologised.

Exam time

Question…(and no cheating, please): Imagine you are a member of the Scottish Executive.  Your own public service campaigns are saying that 20% of the adult population (yep, 20) have problems with numeracy or literacy.  You have committed to reduce class sizes so that teachers can help their students. However, you have not bothered recruiting enough new people into the teaching profession (perhaps you are among the 20% of the adult population referred to above) and have just realised that you can’t meet your stated targets. What do you do?

a) You think that the public will believe that it was a nice thought anyway, and although you hadn’t thought it through properly and got yourself into a bit of a muddle with finances. they’ll probably forget all about it (after all there was that horrible mess with the doctors and NHS and they forgave you for that…didn’t they)…after all it’s nice to be nice.

b) Try to keep quiet about it (after all it was 4 years ago that you promised this)

c) Say that you really need to give teachers flexibility in their jobs and if there is a real benefit to students, let classes increase by almost 50% more than your stated aim.  (You presume that the only real way that students would benefit from a larger class was that if the alternative was not be allowed to go into class at all as all the classes were full and you had forgotten to recruit extra teachers).

 Answer: Remember, you are the Scottish Executive: you do all of the above.

ScotEnt staff don’t worry if you are “business critical”

The Herald is reporting that Scottish Ebterprise will be using £5million of public money to make a 35-45 of senior management redundant…..That’s a lot of money. ScotEnt has been badly run for years now and become a bit of a joke, so they do need to take urgent action. There is one interesting quote from a Scottish Enterprise source who told the Herald newspaper that no “business critical” staff would be allowed to go. The real question is, of course: Why are there any non business critical staff in a public financed company in the first place?

Grow Up Scotland

First posted 27 November 2006

It was once said that bigotry was Scotland’s shameful little secret. For anyone with any knowledge of Scotland – and particularly the west of Scotland – it has always been obvious that it has never been a secret; shameful, yes.

The shameful truth is that Scotland is bigoted. More than that, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has a point, with Catholics five times as likely as the general population to suffer a bigoted attack according to recently released statistics from the Scottish Executive, there is a strong element of anti-Catholicism in Scotland.

There will be howls of protest in the letters pages of publications such as the Herald – a refuge for middle class bigots. No doubt they will claim that bigotry is restricted to the football pitch: it is not. No doubt they will say that it’s down to separate schools – but it is not the Catholic schools that breed this poison.

This bitterness typifies the character of too many people in Scotland. It has got to change. How can Scotland claim to be part of a world economy if it cannot treat 16% of its populace with respect?

Scotland does not deserve to be part of the international community until it grows up, until it can treat everyone with respect and dignity. The Reformation was almost five centuries ago, immigration from Ireland (then part of the UK) peaked 125 years go – if it takes Scotland so long to come to terms with that, then what hope is there for Scotland to come to terms with newer waves of immigration. The tragedy is that some Scots appear to be incapable of change – we may have to wait until they and any intolerant offspring they have bred die out, so that Scotland can again be a welcoming, international and all-embracing nation.

Mr Blair – why the Scot Exec should be encouraging him to stay

When Tony Blair leaves office the Labour Party will not only lose a leader, but also a useful whipping boy.

Since the ill-fated invasion of Iraq and the disgraceful stance in Lebanon, Mr Blair has been able to do no right in the minds of many people. But it’s not just Mr Brown that could find this useful, the Scottish Exec also benefit.

Among the weeping and wailing at the party conference over Mr Blair’s imminent departure, there was also a vocal element who felt that Tony’s departure just wasn’t imminent enough. They want him to go in case he damages the party’s performance at the elections next May.

But should he go? If you have someone to blame for your defeat then you can ignore your own incompetencies:

– a legal system where lawyers threaten to walk out of legal aid cases because they are not being paid enough (while Scot Exec lawyers appear to get three times the amount of a lawyer paid to represent Joe public gets)

– A&E rooms (and hospitals) are being closed

– high rates of violent crime

– the transport system is still a mess

Perhaps an unpopular PM, marred by foreign policies, is the best excuse for poor election results. Surely the Scot Exec should be encouraging him to stay until after the election then they could say as they ruminate over a disastrous election “Ah but, it wisnae us…a big boy did it and ran away”

Scottish prosecutors “bungled” the blessing affair

Stunned by the bad headlines generated for cautioning Celtic goalkeeper Artur Boruc, who had blessed himself on the football pitch, Scotland’s prosecuting authorities have spent the last two days trying to rescue their damaged reputation.

The Crown Office issued a statement to say that the caution was not for blessing himself, but for gesticulating to opposition supporters. According to the Crown Office statement witnesses described Boruc “smiling or laughing at a Rangers section of the crowd and making ‘come on’ gestures.” And apparently this was enough to unsettle the crowd for ten minutes. The female fiscal decided to issue a caution for a gesticulation rather than prosecute – the statement said that she had not mentioned the act of blessing himself in the caution. Whether or not the football player was warned about his smiling or laughing is unclear.

While First Minister Jack McConnell carefully tried to sweep the affair under the carpet and urged people to look for the good in Scottish football, other politicians were more vocal in their condmenation. While it has to be said that the Scottish Nationalist Party is normally a party of chicken littles (the sky is always falling down on the SNP), their leader condemned the Crown Office for bungling the affair and the party’s Roseanna Cunningham claimed with surprising insightfulness that the reassurance that the Celtic goalkeeper had been cautioned for gesticulating at Rangers fans and not for blessing himself, was “too little, too late” as the damage had already been done to Scotland’s reputation.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church welcomed the Crown Office’s assurance and clarification that it would never countenance prosecuting anyone for religious observance.

Scotland: the best small (minded) country in the world

In September last year the United Nations named Scotland as the most violent country in the developed world – no mean feat. As a reaction, of course, politicians and police spokesmen were jostling each other out the way for areas of sand to bury their heads in: the method of calculations used in the survey, they claimed, were flawed; Scots were all really nice to each other and anyone who was attacked probably knew their attacker anyway (it’s always nice to be introduced to your mugger or murderer socially).You might think that such a devastating report from the UN, with its associated headlines that reverberated around the world, would have spurred even the most talentless politician into action – not really, Scots soon forgot about this statistic, to the relief of the hapless Justice Minister and First Minister.

But just when you thought nothing would be done about the high levels of crime, it appears some action has been taken to clean up the streets (or at least football pitches): the Scottish procurator fiscal department, this week issued a formal caution to Artur Boruc, a goalkeeper with Celtic Football Club, whose fans are predominantly Roman Catholic, for blessing himself during a match against rival soccer team Glasgow Rangers, with its predominantly protestant following. Boruc’s heinous actions apparently caused fear and alarm to the sensitive terraces of the football stadium. The move of the procurator’s office has been condemned by some opposition party politicians and by the Catholic Church.

Scots like to think of themselves as welcoming and open. The tragedy is that the country is in danger of driving most Scots with these qualities away. Sadly sectarianism in Scotland reaches levels that a 21st Century country should be ashamed of and continues to be bubbling under the surface at the highest levels of business and politics. The bigotry is more pronounced on the west coast of the country, which saw the largest influx of Irish Catholics in the late 19th Century. The bitterness emerged spectacularly last April: as around the world people mourned the death of Pope John Paul II, in a small west of Scotland town a bitter little group of bigots threw a firework party. Despite complaints to the police – Scotland has had to introduce bigotry laws – Strathclyde’s finest could not identify where the fireworks were coming from.

Other public displays of middle class sectarianism can often be found in the letter pages of the Glasgow Herald, often a refuge for the Mr and Ms Angry of darkest Ayrshire, where outraged sectarians will attempt to justify or excuse any anti-Catholic issues. That is not to say that their views are not fascinating, in the same way that a microbiologist is fascinated by a new organism; their fury that so much news coverage was devoted to the death of John Paul II, who they believed was the leader of a minority group (which is true, only one in six people on the planet are Catholics) and demanded to know if the same accord would be treated to the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. So with academic curiosity we await the reaction of the Herald’s letter writers.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s just religion that Scots at the highest levels have a beef about. If you are English you are in for a tough time. When Digby Jones the then Chair of the UK’s pre-eminent business institution delivered a lecture in 2002 warning ministers of the dangers of alienating businesses and pointing out that some Scots were perceived as having a chip on their shoulder, the Scottish Environment Minister Ross Finnie responded by calling him an “English Prat”. He was later forced to apologise, claiming that his statement was taken out of context (although he never spelled out in what context calling one of the UK’s most senior business leaders an English prat was acceptable).

Even this year, First Minister Jack McConnell announced that he would not be supporting England in the World Cup – but would cheer on anyone who played England. In the storm of publicity that followed, McConnell smugly popped up on news programmes to say that it was all a bit of fun, he had the right not to support England and people should be “relaxed” about it. Meanwhile in Aberdeen and Edinburgh children wearing English football strips were attacked. The attacks were treated as racist, but given Scotland’s ranking on the UN table this could be hard to prove. Questions were raised again about McConnell’s suitability for the post and his grasp of the realities of Scottish life.

In May last year McConnell launched the excrutiating tourism campaign: Scotland, “the best small country in the world”. With its bigotry, racism and sectarianism – even by people who should know better, perhaps “the best small-minded country in the world” might be more appropriate.