17: Not What It Used to Be

Posted on April 18, 2011 by davidsberry

Delighted as I am by the MORI poll this weekend that put the SNP ahead of Labour (55 vs 49 seats) for the first time in this contest, what seems far more telling is a series of major cracks in the monolith formerly seen as all-conquering.

First off, Labour published some blustering numbers of 5,000 activist contacting 5,000 voters a day, but nothing adds up. It would take 50 days to reach their 250,000 target—in other words they’d still be campaigning a month after the election. Then there’s the elementary mistakes they’re making that smack of panic and unco-ordinated campaigning, as when they claimed £80m would pay for a council tax freeze but forgot that, since this recurs annually, there would be a £240m hole after only 4 years.

But what encourages me most of all happens right here in East Lothian and belies the ‘5,000 activist’ claims—two lost Labour souls asking directions in one of our new estates; two councillors on Dunbar High St talking mostly (symbolically?) to each other; their Tranent alarm system that calls a squad out when the SNP dare to have a stall there—and then a half-dozen of them mill around in red jackets not quite knowing what else to do before they go home after 45 minutes.

Whereas in the West end of our county they used to weigh the Labour votes, they’re going to need every one they can scrape up this time. For my money, they should consider a new slogan like “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be” because even its remaining members know that the Labour Party isn’t. “Things Can Only Get Bitter” has such a nasty ring to it.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

18: Won’t Get Fooled Again

Posted on April 17, 2011 by davidsberry

Having met more people yesterday than any other single day so far, the liveliest chats were around the SNP’s ambitious policy to convert to green energy by 2020. But my concern is less whether that can be done and more that Scotland reaps the full economic benefit of being a world leader.

While Scotland in general and Aberdeen in particular made billions from North Sea oil, the UK Treasury and foreign companies made more. And most Scottish companies—whether Ramco, Cairn or OHM—have been swallowed up by bigger fish. People did make money but very little of it wound up in Scotland, catalysing further developmemnt. And it wasn’t just the US-based global giants like Transocean or MacDermott who made out like bandits. National control allowed our old friends the Norwegians to build solid companies on the steady flow of oil.

The Scottish merchant fleet above the size of ferry is tiny; The Norwegian is over 2,000 and growing by almost 200 a year, one third of which are laid down in home yards. Many of these are  specialist ships; highly profitable. Farstad specialises in positioning ships that move and anchor the massive rigs at sea. And, like Holland’s reputation for tugs, they have a world class reputation that brings them business in Angola, Brasil and Indonesia.

As if to highlight how poor we are in using our skills and exploiting local opportunity, the best pipeline-laying ships in the world are run by the Swiss(?!). Allseas’ polyglot crews can hit a metre-square target with a 12″ pipe in 200m of water in the dark. Their skills save the gas companies billions and the thirty welders on board command hourly rates like basketball scores.

If Scotland is to learn how to exploit our riches, we need to learn more than just squirreling away a $200bn oil fund like Norwegian neighbours. We must not be fooled again with the 21st © equivalent of beads and blankets and mostly semi-skilled jobs, as we were in the 70’s.

Allseas MV Solitaire. Pipe is laid through the Stinger at the bow

Posted in Commerce, Environment | Tagged | Leave a comment

19: The Right Question

Posted on April 16, 2011 by davidsberry

Met an eighteen-year-old and a ninety-four-year-old yesterday who co-incidentally asked me the same question within an hour of one another: Why should I vote for you? Two decades trying to represent the place and you’d think I’d have the answer down pat. Even though it’s rare that people are that direct, that’s what it all comes down to. What I said was:

  1. East Lothian is unique—it’s not like other places and it’s certainly much more than Edinburgh’s dormitory backwater
  2. Unlike other candidates, I don’t just live here, I’m from here; I understand it.
  3. Twelve years as a local councillor & three years as Council Leader give me—uniquely—the in-depth experience of delivering what we need
  4. My track record of success was built on a combination of speaking straight, knowing the business and working with people to get thing done
  5. It’s time I took that to Holyrood because we need our own champion there.
That’s the pitch given to both ladies and, if they and others give me the chance, I will carry that message to Holyrood after May 5th.
Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

20: Manifesto Destiny

Posted on April 15, 2011 by davidsberry

In 1845, during the Polk administration, America coined the term ‘Manifest Destiny‘ as a rallying cry for its vision of becoming a world-class power stretching from Atlantic to Pacific. Still absorbing the massive 1803 Louisiana Purchase, in 1848 the US incorporated Texas, Northern Mexico and the Oregon territory as the final third of the ‘Lower 48’.

Yesterday saw the launch of the colourful 44-page SNP Manifesto for this election, by far the most ambitious, costed and detailed blueprint for the future of the Scotland. There may be no territorial ambition but, unlike any other manifesto, the aspiration to transform our country has a vision and scope that gives a lie to the old unionist girn that Scotland is too small or too poor not to need Britain.

As an example, central to our future is a green energy programme of renewables  development by 2020. This will put Scotland firmly on the global map as a leader in wave and tidal technology, with a seismic shift in  jobs to our periphery, somewhat like the US pioneer movement. With its clock-like predictability, tidal can replace nuclear as ‘base load’ for the energy grid. We’ll need installations around the coast, from the Pentland Firth to the Forth, perhaps even the Corrievreckan, Clyde Kyles and North Channel, Variants on the oil boom that came to Aberdeen and Lerwick thirty years ago will occur in Thurso, Nigg, Oban, Methil, Campbeltown, Ardrossan, as well as wherever the engineering happens. Companies equivalent to the oil service sector will suck in new employees as they grow, expanding abroad with the export market. The economy of peripheral areas will surpass some cities.

It won’t be the Wild West…but it will be the biggest demographic shift and economic boost anywhere in Britain since Scotland led the way in oil.

Posted in Commerce | Tagged | Leave a comment

21: Narrowing the Field

Posted on April 14, 2011 by davidsberry

Ever since nominations closed earlier in the month, we have known that only the four ‘main’ parties are contesting East Lothian. This is the narrowest choice that voters have had in decades and many people who favour one of the ‘minor’ parties will have to think who else they might transfer their vote to.

The Greens will find the SNP have excellent environmental credentials while the Pensioner Party will find the best swathe of policies for the elderly too, whereas UKIP adherents may be more comfortable voting eternally Eurosceptic Tory. Socialists, whether SSP or Solidarity, have been unable to consider Labour since Blair but when I see their statements like “We see Scotland as independent, a republic where we are not bombing Libya, not occupying Afghanistan, not threatening the world with nuclear annihilation, not privatising vital public services, not cow-towing to un-elected heads of state, not answerable to anyone but ourselves” I can’t see why they would not vote SNP.

As an aside, I canvassed the SSP’s former candidate here. He boiled with exasperation how ego and intolerance had shredded a fleetingly united left. Despite sounding like the Colosseum scene from Life of Brian, his  dismay was so obviously heartfelt that I was moved to sympathy. As for any BNP adherents, I don’t know how to advise them beyond reconsidering your politics entirely. Certainly the SNP would rather win without your support.

Although media must provide even-handed coverage, that does not apply to blogs like this. That said, just as major parties show mutual respect in the four hustings, why not extend that to minor parties? After all, you never know who may need to work with and—more to the point—it wasn’t so long ago the SNP was a minor party itself.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Posted on April 13, 2011 by davidsberry | Leave a comment

22: Decidedly Undecided

Posted on April 12, 2011 by davidsberry

Call me a cynic but when MORI or anyone else runs a poll that generates headlines that the Judean People’s Front is 15 points behind, or whatever, I fetch the bulk salt dispenser from the kitchen and wash the results down with lashings of gripe water. Not that they aren’t professionally conducted but 1,000 souls, however well selected, whose opinion results are filtered by flavour-of-the-month political interpretation by the polling agency is too close to examining the entrails of birds for my taste.

When you’ve been on all the doorsteps I have over the last nine months, deploying canvass experience from the dozen elections since 1994, then you get a picture—not of the nation, but of your patch. The Pensioner Party could be about to sweep Glasgow and I wouldn’t know it.

But I do know East Lothian three ways from Sunday and it is in political turmoil. From one end to the other, talk of cuts and job losses has made people nervous for their future. This has broken many bonds that once bound people to a party with a lasting faith they could fix things. It’s easy to over-generalise but the mood is that Tories might fix things but they’ve no chance in Scotland and Lib-Dems have blown the trust of even their core vote by being too fast cosying up to Cameron.

This ought to herd people Labourwards as it blows its rusty-but-trusty anti-Thatcher trumpet to rally the faithful. But they’ve spent so much time denigrating others, they forgot to have ideas of their own. There’s no substance left to rally round. The result is that the Undecided party is winning East Lothian, hands down. Though there’s wobbling in SNP support, its only on the independence question. So many other doorstep responses start with ‘well I used to vote for…” (fill in unionist party name) “but now I’m not sure”.

Such is their disillusionment that this great swathe of once-Lab/Con/LD voters is angry enough to bother voting if someone gives them a good reason. Thankfully, for nine months now the SNP has been talking to thousands of such people and doing just that.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

23: Round 4 (ding!)

Posted on April 12, 2011 by davidsberry

The fourth East Lothian hustings was organised by the Association of Churches in North Berwick and very well hosted by the Abbey Church, with Dunbar’s Rev Lawrence Twaddle in the chair. In keeping with last year’s success, again 80 people showed up and peppered the four candidates with substantial questions. The Tory held his ground but tended to talk entirely nationally, making few local references. He spoke too fast, not close enough to the mike, so he may not have been clearly heard.

The Lib-Dem, while exhibiting disarming sincerity, drifted between disclaiming ‘not be a professional politician’ and quoting policies from a categorised coloured cheat sheet her party had thoughtfully provided. That left the Gray Man and me to duke it out but the format allowed little real confrontation; we wound up mostly agreeing with each other—on the need for jobs, about Scottish Enterprise’s poor performance, on key role of education.

All four performed competently and the audience was politely attentive for the 90 minutes. But I felt I edged it and would have won any straw vote of the audience —a total turnout by the local Labour branch notwithstanding. This is not because I was local or even the top debater but because, whereas the two MSPs kept mouthing party lines from a national perspective (as if this were FMQs) I kept it local, hammering at issues that I have long believed mattered to East Lothian.

They seemed to have both forgotten that this was not just an opportunity to communicate with the media; it was a job interview for someone who could best listen to, understand and then powerfully articulate the hopes and fears of those in the room. I hope my enthusiasm for that job came across.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | 1 Comment

24: The Future’s So Bright…

Posted on April 11, 2011 by davidsberry

…we gotta wear shades! Or, at least that’s what you might have thought this weekend right across the county. It wasn’t just that Dunbar, North Berwick and Gullane were mobbed, with High Street pavements and car parks choked and beaches busy with strollers and pale skin lolling beneath newly dusted-down sunglasses. Elsewhere hummed to the tunes of lawnmowers and the chink of spade and iced tumblers in gardens. Weekends like this, our visitors just have to live with their jealousy.

But those visitors are also the future; they are what has revived North Berwick High Street and spurred hundreds of volunteers to make the place look cared for. This has now spilled over to East Linton and Cockenzie/Port Seton, as well as more obvious destinations, again because the place looks cared for. While we build such desirable communities, the financial boost to make it all work has to come from tourism.

Labour huffs and puffs about jobs and economy. But, with their heads stuck down a 19th © hole, they don’t have a clue. They want Cockenzie Power Station (possibly the ugliest but certainly the most prominent building in Scotland) to stay for another 30+ years. Why? for maybe 50 jobs. If you replaced it with a marina, harbour, boat trips, restaurants, shops, seafood specialties, etc, you’d have over 1,000 jobs, plus perhaps £30m injected into the local economy annually. You would also link wildlife of the lagoons with Longniddry Bents and elevate the John Muir Way to national status and re-invent Prestonpans as a destination by making a long seafront walkway part of it.

Beats me why my opponents are such Luddites and can’t see a more suitable future for such a wonderful place. Maybe they wear dark glasses on all the time; maybe they’re just blind.

Posted in Commerce, Environment | Tagged | 4 Comments

You Heard It Here First

Posted on April 10, 2011 by davidsberry

This Just in: SNP Outflanks Limit to MSP Numbers by also Standing in Enfield South (aka The Glen Croe Massacre)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment