Rather Grim Rutherglen

Posted on October 4, 2023 by davidsberry

The person who calls an election before the day is either gallus or foolhardy—or both. In its efforts to catalyse conversation, this blog has sailed close to the controversial winds. But in over a thousand posts, it has never stuck its neck out quite so far as now.

This one is different.

Tomorrow, the voters of Rutherglen and Hamilton West go to the polls to elect a new MP. The seat—like every other former Labour seat in and around Glasgow—had been held by the SNP, although one of the most marginal. Created in 2005, it was first won for the SNP in 2015 by Margaret Ferrier. She lost it to Labour in 2017, but won it back in 2019with a ore comfortable majority. However, she was foolish enough in 2020 to travel back to Glasgow  from a vote at Westminster while she had tested positive for Covid and was stripped of the SNP whip when this was discovered.

All this led to a recall petition being initiated, which gathered the requisite signatures from 10% of the electorate by July of this year, with the seat being declared vacant on August 1st.  A by-election was duly called for the 5th of October—tomorrow.

This contest bears no resemblance to the three by-elections held in England this summer. As the Conservatives are irrelevant here. Though there are 14 candidates, Ferrier is not among them. The real contest is between the SNP’s Katy Loudin and Labour’s Michael Shanks. Whatever their personal qualities, they have been swamped by the political juggernauts of party campaign machines pouring resources into the area.

For this will be a showdown, a litmus of how well the SNP has survived increasing criticism from ferries to drug deaths and the degree to which Humza Yousaf has steadied the ship since the demise of Nicola Sturgeon and her Chief Executive husband. This will be measured against Anas Sarwar’s ability revive Labour’s fortunes in Scotland from its single-MP nadir. The result will be rightly judged as an indication how many seats Scotland might add to Starter’s tally across Britain. This may well decide the 2024 General Election.

Both main contestants will say this is a tight race, that there is everything to play for. But the result will be a Labour triumph and rather grim for the SNP.

This writer says this with a heavy heart. After four decades of SNP membership and several senior posts in the party, we parted our ways around the Independence Referendum as those running Holyrood succumbed to an inertia born of cosiness in their MP billets, [trbrlance of loyalty over initiative, and a predilection for voter bribes over inspirational vision from the leadership.

Sarwar is not setting the heather alight with inspirationsl visions of what Labour might do at Holyrood, any more than Starmer is at Westminster. Both are gambling that their opponents are making such a pig’s ear of things that power will simply fall into their laps.

Napoleon once said “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake:. Humza’s mistake is to keep Sturgeon’s pedestrian policies without displaying the steely competence with which she made them appear worthwhile.

Though it gars me greet to say it, Michael will walk it. This will undermine already shaky SNP confidence, such that, many of the other yellow dominies covering the Greater Glasgow area may well topple in similar fashion, as wayward sheep of ex-Labour voters come back into the fold.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Rutherglen has been a bellwether for change The Conservatives permanently  lost the seat to Labour in the 1964 by-election which presaged their decline in Scotland to the rump of MPs that are all  they have garnered here for years now.

#1084—626 words

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Mass Oysteria?

Posted on October 2, 2023 by davidsberry

Time was when the denizens of the Edinburgh Enlightenment dined on woodcock and pigeon, while the poor had to make do with the humble Scottish oyster. So plentiful were they along the foreshore of the Forth.

Since medieval times, they were not considered a delicacy, and so were available in quantity for poorer households to augment their haggis, neeps and tatties. But people became ever more skilled at locating and harvesting their immobile, shallow-water beds, until—like the great herring shoals in the North Sea—they were fished out.

After initiating a programme of restoration of native sea grass to areas where it formerly flourished, Restoration Forth is now working with volunteers to re-introduce oysters to the Firth of Forth. They will also be working alongside local organisations, including the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick. The native oyster has been missing from this location for some 100 years. Project partners and members of the local community will be deploying 20,000 oysters this autumn, with a further 10,000 next Spring. Together with restored seagrass meadows, the oysters will provide new habitats for marine life and improve water quality.

Supported by the World Wildlife Fund, the oysters will be collected from Little Loch Broom near Ullapool, where they have remained plentiful. The location of the restoration site is not being announced to ensure it remains undisturbed.

Both seagrass and oysters capture carbon and pollutants and stabilise the foreshore. Seagrasses also reduce wave energy, which helps prevent coastal erosion; native oysters reduce excess nutrients in the water and stabilise the seabed, improving water quality and clarity. 

The intention is to have complete 42 hectares of seagrass and 30,000 oysters by the end of 2024.

But, before seafood chefs start hunting them down to add to their menus, be aware Scottish oysters are smaller than the large Pacific oyster we are now used to. That said, they are sweeter and more succulent. And. if Scottish Enterprise and Marine Scotland were ever to pull themselves out of the passive, self-satisfied dwam they are in, there is great economic potential for development of shellfish husbandry. The wide, sheltered waters of the Forth are also suitable for the cultivation of mussels, cockles, and razor clams, as well as the currently modest shrimp, crab and lobster fisheries. Having such a seafood bonanza on its very doorstep could only add to Edinburgh’s stature as the second-most-popular tourist destination in Britain, as well as enhance Scotland’s reputation for and exports of, seafood.

#1083—418 words

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Our Nomenklatura *

Posted on September 17, 2023 by davidsberry

“You must believe in something. I believe I’ll have another drink.”

The return of MPs to the hallowed halls of Westminster after their summer break has not gone well for the Government. P.M. Sunak came back empty-handed from the G20 summit in Delhi, to media seething with stories of schools riddled with crumbling RAAC; a bold breakout from Dickensian Wandsworth; water companies routinely dumping sewage with impunity and a stagnant economy.

Yet he and his party continue to tout Britain as the epitome of reason and democracy, setting an example to the world. Over the last decade or so, not only has this ceased to be the case. But, recent excesses of the self-sustaining nomenklatura from which both party and influential figures are drawn have, as times got tough, sacrificed noblesse oblige for more blatant self-interest. Sunak may claim he’s stopped the rot, but his post-Boris-and-Brexit shortcomings have done little to restorethe public faith in leadership of the country.,

Carnegie UK is a think-tank keen on tracking the health of our democracy. What they have found through YouGov polling is not good, viz:

  • 76% don’t trust MPs to take decisions that will improve their lives,
  • 73% don’t trust the UK Government on the same measure. 
  • 46% selected honesty and integrity as important values for the government to exemplify
  • 41% now say that democracy is not working. 
  • 32% see the biggest threat to our democracy as a loss of trust 
  • 16% see corruption as the second-biggest threat
  • 61% don’t believe the current UK Government reflects these values at all, 

The Government’s justification for behaviour that has led to this seems to be ‘the national interest’ – but the ‘Government’ and the ‘state’ here are not synonymous. When the two diverge to the extent that the Government starts acting in its own interest and to the detriment of the interests of the state, this no longer qualifies as democracy because it consists of a myriad documents and protocols which rely on any incumbent Government to act in good faith.

What seems to underly this is inequality—a growing disparity berween an elite who benefit from “the system” and the bulk of the population who do not. While the tide of prosperity was raising household financial boats from the 1980s to the 2008 financial crash, nobody much minded others getting rich while they were prospering themselves. A decade of austerity has sharpened the contrast and the cost of living crisis made the division stark.

With few exceptions, the elite is easy to define and a self-propagating nomenklatura, largely based in south-east England and educated at “public” (i,e. fee-paying private) schools. In the UK population, as a whole, 7% attend private schools, but:

  • 39% of the Cabinet went to private schools
  • 29% of the House of Commons went to private schools
  • 52% of the House of Lords went to private schools
  • 48% of the FTSE350 companiy CEOs went to private schools
  • 57% of the Sunday Times Rich List went to private schools
  • 44% of national newspaper columnists went to private schools
  • 43% of influential editors and broadcasters went to private schools

This may not be a complete definition of the elite who form Britain’s nomenklatura, but it is a pretty representative sample of who runs Britain. And they are increasingly running it for their own benefit, rather than any democratic principle that benefits all equally

But even the USA, a country with a much-vaunted Constitution, is not immune to similar, if not more severe, threats to democracy. The fallout from Trump’s behaviour in refusing to accept his 2020defeat and the mass of Republicans lining up behind him dwarfs any of his many peccadillos before and during his presidency. With four massive legal cases proceeding against him, he is doubling down and remains the front-runner as the Republican candidate for next year’s election. This has left more than just his Democrat opponents aghast.

This month, thirteen presidential institutes from Herbert Hoover to George Bush released a joint statement, expressing concern about the health of American democracy, saying:

 “While the diverse population of the United States means we have a range of backgrounds and beliefs, “democracy holds us together. We are a country rooted in the rule of law, where the protection of the rights of all people is paramount.” 

“We call on elected officials to restore trust in public service by governing effectively in ways that deliver for the American people, who must engage in civil dialogue,, respect democratic institutions and rights; uphold safe, secure, and accessible elections; and contribute to local, state, or national improvement.” 

Traditionally, ex-presidents do not comment on politics. Although no names were mentioned, it was clear the vitriol and disinformation coming from trump and his MAGA adherents were intended as targets.

The nomenklatura in the States are easier to spot. Instead of bank balance and accent, there it is a simple matter of bank balance alone. Also, instead of private schools, it is Ivy League universities that are the finishing schools for their elite. And because of complete lack of limits on how much money can be thrown at politics, the blatancy with which money talks far outstrips its more subtle interaction in the UK.

, As Trump and MAGA Republicans pump billions into disinformation, gerrymandering and obfuscation., it is small wonder presidential institutions of all stripes are raising the alarm in defence of democracy in such an unprecedented manner.

The UK may not suffer the same scale of open abuse of the system by those who can. But we have no political institutions of equivalent stature to the voices of past presidents to defend against to incremental erosion of democracy. The resulting  inequalities will be damaging to democratic engagement and any sense of common  galitarian future for our country.

*Nomenklatura;, In the former USSR, a list of individuals drawn up by the Communist Party from which candidates for vacant senior positions were selected

#1082—982 words

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The Tangle O’ The Isles

Posted on August 28, 2023 by davidsberry

Open Letter to Transport Minister Hyslop

Dear Fiona:

When we last met in the re-purposed Infirmary Street baths, you were Culture Minister, which shows the time since we last spoke.  This week’s news of further delay to delivery of the MV Glen Sannox (again) cannot sit well with you.

This political hot potato comes on top of a whole sack-full of then—from A9 dualling, to the white elephant of Prestwick Airport. The whole unwelcome accumulation was bequeathed by your eight predecessors flitting through brief tenures in the job en route to elevation, or ignominy. None had your experience: MSP for 24 years; government minister for 16 of them. Experienced authority must surely make its mark. Before even taking up post, you would be aware the Glen Sannox imbroglio was just the visible tip of a rat’s nest of problems with the ferry system. As ferry operator CalMac and owner CMAL fall directly under your jurisdiction, an opportunity presents itself to untangle the RoRo to the Isles.

Although Ferguson Marine bear some responsibility, they have been a reliable supplier of ferries in the past but, digging deeper, it soon appears that decisions on ferry procurement, made jointly by CalMac, CMAL and Transport Scotland appear deeply flawed. These flaws go much deeper than designers failing to anticipate MCA safety requirements of additional stairways on the Glen Sannox at this late stage.

It goes back to a decade ago when a steady investment pattern averaging a new ferry every year faltered. After MV Carvoria in 2017, few builds have entered service. This has resulted in flawed operating practice, robbing Peter to pay Paul, while an aging fleet means maintenance costs rocketing past £8m annually.

You need only look at CalMac practice of running a replacement freight ferry on the key Stornoway/Ullapool run with lorry capacity of just 6, when a capacity of 24 is required to cope—or CMAL’s late demand for dual-fuel engines in Glen Sannox—to doubt management competence at either firm.

More importantly, neither management understands either efficiency or profitability. You need not look far to find people who do. Western, Northlink and Pentland ferries (thid last able to build MV Alfred for £15m and lease it to CalMac for £9m) all make money. Even the tiny turntable ferry at Kyleakin turns a profit. After 172 years of monopoly operation, you’d think CalMac might have twigged how it’s done.

 Post-Brexit, is this contract/tender division that created CMAL still necessary? The £400,000 salary of its CEO and three directors represents immediate saving. The more useful staff would join CalMac, and an £11,000,000 annual loss avoided by closing their Port Glasgow ivory tower completely. It was Humza himself who ended the farce of contract bidding for ferry routes when he held the post you have now.

As you will appreciate, it can’t stop there. The three CalMac directors who took £300,000 in “performance” bonus during the time their company paid £10,500,000 in fines for failing on lifeline service implies they should get their jotters too. There seems no good reason why CalMac cannot turn a profitable, like other operators and cease to be a drain on your budget. Edinburgh City Council—not known for its dynamism—owns Lothian Bus, and siphons off £1,000,000 in profit annually to spend elsewhere.

Such an approach may sacrifice sacred cows, including those Sir Humphreys in Transport Scotland hold dear. But “aye been” is not a strategy. Asserting “£2bn has been spent on ferries” not only sounds directionless. Worse, it represents less investment than the one-ferry-per-year required to keep the fleet fit and modern. In the meantime, island businesses—especially tourism—are hurting badly, with knock-on effects on the economy and social demands.

A radical plan dumping CMAL entirely, restructuring CalMac under new management, tasked with a restructuring plan is essential to avoid total breakdown of  ferry services to the Hebrides. Otherwise, not only will islanders suffer increasing economic and social disadvantages, but the present wall-to-wall yellow of the political mac across the West is in danger of becoming just a memory.

Yours for Scotland

Dave Berry

Former NEC Elected Member; Former ANC Convener; Former Leader, East Lothian Council

cc: Paul McLennan MSP, East Lothian

#1081—711 words

See also the related blog of June this year Away with the Ferries

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Boardroom Banditry

Posted on August 24, 2023 by davidsberry

The last few years have not been kind to Joe Punter. After two decades of growing prosperity in the aftermath of the Thatcherite 1988 stock market “Big Bang”, Harry Enfield’s “Loadsamoney” satire came uncomfortably close to reality. Then “Prudence” Brown, deafened by the resulting din of shekels clinking into Treasury coffers was caught napping by Fred the Shred Goodwin taking his staid old RBS jalopy out on a fiscal Nuremberg ring, and all but writing it off—and any Scots’ reputation for fiscal probity with it.

So, the banks were bailed out with borrowed billions, VAT was jacked up to 20% “temporarily”, and everyone pulled on a hair shirt for a decade-long dose of austerity. This should have come naturally to the plucky Brits, who invented the “Dunkirk Spirit”, when everyone hunkers down in survival mode to see it through together. But it didn’t work out that way.

While workers’ wages and real incomes stagnated and savings made more interest in a sock under the mattress, one select segment did do well—so well that “austerity? What austerity?” might have been their leitmotif. Few would argue that valued skills and responsibility deserve higher remuneration. But at what point are we talking emperor’s clothes?

company the same as 50 workers on minimum wage. But that was not sweet enough.

This year, High Pay Centre researchers, trawling through annual reports and financial submissions. found that bosses at Britain’s biggest companies saw their pay rise by an average 16% year-on-year. In hard figures, the median pay of a FTSE 100 chief executive was £3.91m in 2022, up by £500,000 from £3.38m in 2021. In other words, boardroom bosses are now deemed worth £2,000 per hour. That’s 118 times the £33,000 a year earned by the average worker. So, while rank and file have been given a 37% increase over the decade, CEOs have enjoyed a 300% increase. The top of their “league table” currently looks like this:

  1. Sir Pascal Soriot (Astra-Zeneca) ££15,300,000
  2. Charles Woodburn ( BAE Systems) £10,700,000
  3. Bernard Looney (BP)  £10,000,000
  4. Ben van Beurden (Shell) £9,700,000
  5. Emma Walmsley (GlaxoSmithKline) £8,450,000

“The rise was in part due to the economic recovery following lockdowns and through bosses having “strong incentive pay awards tied to profitability and share price.”

—The High Pay Centre

Readers who faced eye-watering hikes in both energy and petrol billd should have little trouble explaining why profit incentives placed 3 and 4 so high.

“The report shows Britain is a land of grotesque extremes. We need an economy that delivers better living standards for all – not just those at the top.

“—Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary

Outside of the biggest firms, workers’ average wages have failed to keep up with rising prices, especially for fuel, electricity and food. Inflation, rise at, is currently at 6.8% in the year to July. However, the figure was much higher throughout the majority of 2022, peaking at 11.1% last October.

“While workers in sectors across the board were forced onto picket lines to make ends meet, these top brass were trousering fortunes.”

—Gary Smith, GMB general secretary

“The pay of chief executives is all too often criticised without further thought. Company leaders provide value to customers with the products and services they sell”

—Duncan Simpson, executive director at the Adam Smith Institute

 Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show regular pay growth, which excludes bonuses, reached 7.8% over the three months to June compared to a year earlier, but actually dropped by 0.6% once inflation was taken into account.

“Workers should not ask for big pay rises to try to stop prices rising out of control,” 

—Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England

“At a time when so many households are struggling with living costs, an economic model that prioritises a half-a-million-pound pay rise for executives who are already multi-millionaires is surely going wrong somewhere.“

—Luke Hildyard, director at the High Pay Centre

#1080—694 words

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Trump is Toast

Posted on August 20, 2023 by davidsberry

Despite what US Civics and uber-patriots might have you believe, the USA is not the “perfect union” that the Founding Fathers conceived a quarter of a millennium ago, embodying their noble principles in the US Constitution. More than two dozen Amendments later, its imperfections astill being recognised.  Despite its undoubted virtues, this blog had argued it needs to be dragged out of the 18th century when 1 million people in 13 states exercised horse-drawn democracy and shaped for the 334 million using the email, jets, social media, etc. of the 21st century.(see Twelve Score and Seven Years Ago of July 2023, or Republicans Wrecking Their Own Republic of April 2023).

Until a decade ago, US politicians generally respected the rickety rules, even if the monies deployed dwarfed anything the Founding Fathers anticipated. Then along came Donad Trump, whose behaviour in business had shown he didn’t even understand the concept of “Rules” and applied the same bullhorn braggadocio to politics. Regular readers will know this blog holds his tactics and abilities in low regard (see Trump des Willens  of July 2023 or. Those Who Walk on Water II‑Donald J. Trump of October 2022). But, unlike McCarthy on the 1950s and Goldwater in the 1960s, Trump holds a large part of a morally malleable Republican party in his snake-like spell

In the 2 ½ years since he was bundled off to Mar Lago to ggrump constantly about the election, his ratings have proved Teflon/ The Republican minnows who might contest the republican nomination for 2024 have kept quiet or scuttled over to the MAGA camp, where Trump rules the roost. Indictment on four separate clutches of charges only seem to have consolidated his support.

Butp however loudly he blusters on Truth Social, however many walls of lawyers he hides behind, what will bring him down is the same flawed Constitution he swore to uphold in January 2017. The 14th Amendment, conceded in the aftermath of the Civil Was to prevent Confederate politicians to lapse into their pre-wa hellor ways, having taken up arms against the republic. It has no time limit, and so applies to both Trump tacit encouragement of the January 6th storming of Congress and his attempts to alter election results in Georgia and other states.

Section III of the 14th Amendment is wordy, but unambiguous.

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

A legal obstacle this massive will derail Trump’s freewheeling trolley—and the MAGA bandwagon brown-nosing close behind.

No.1079—513 words

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Trump des Willens?

Posted on July 22, 2023 by davidsberry

German director Leni Reifenstahl’s seminal Triumph des Willens propaganda film from 1933, charting the rise of Hitler may need to be dusted off, if reports seeping out from the Trump-loyalist MAGA wing of the Republican party prove to be true.

It seems Trump and his allies are crafting something that reeks of dictatorship. The plan is to centralise more power by increasing the president’s authority over every aspect of federal government that now operates independent of political interference.

As well as taking over independent government agencies the plan requires getting rid of the present nonpartisan civil service, which currently provides objective continuity between changes in political direction at the top—as happens now in Britain—purging all but Trump loyalists from the U.S. intelligence agencies, the State Department, and the Defense Department. They plan to start “impounding funds,” that is, ignoring programs Congress has funded if those programs aren’t in line with Trump’s policies. 

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.”—Russell T. Vought (Trump’s Office of Management & Budget).

Vought now advises the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, who envision a president who cannot be checked by the Congress or courts. Trump’s desire to fill that role is neither new, nor surprising. Political observers in the US have remarked on this since early in Trump’s administration. But what is new is the willingness of Republicans to condone such an authoritarian power-grab. 

What lies behind all this seems to be “Project 2025.” This coalition of more than 65 right-wing organisations identifying personnel and policies to recommend to both Trump, and to Republicans running in the 2024 US Presidential election. Project 2025 is led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, that spearheaded the Reagan revolution of 1980. 

If Republican senators are worried by growth of the MAGA wing of their party, they have kept remarkably quiet about. At a time when elected leadership should be speaking out against usurpation of the democratic ideals on which America was founded, such silence suggests collusion. This fuels Trump’s ambition. 

Have Republicans actually embraced such radical ideology? It echoes that advanced by authoritarian leaders like Russia’s Putin or Hungary’s Orbán. Such leaders argue that the era in which democracy seemed to triumph is over; that the tenets of democracy—equality before the law, free speech, academic freedom, etc.—weaken a nation by eroding the patriarchy and Christianity form the foundations of traditional society. They call for “Christian” democracy, which justifies governments enforcing their beliefs. 

Its blueprint is how Florida governor Ron DeSantis has gathered extraordinary power into his own hands, using it to mirror Orbán’s corruption of real democracy. Among other acts, DeSantis has:

  • banned abortion after six weeks.
  • banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation.
  • made it easier to sentence someone to death.
  • let people with neither training nor permits to carry guns.
  • banned colleges and businesses from conversations about race
  • exerted control over state universities
  • made it harder for his opponents to vote

It is a legacy that goes Suella Braverman one better. He always goes one better than her. After rounding up migrants and shipping them off to other states, DeSantis is now calling for using “deadly force” on migrants crossing unlawfully.

Because institutions in the US are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are being used against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the FBI and the Department of Justice are both “weaponised” against Republican principles. It matters not one whit there’s no evidence of bias: the fact such institutions support democracy means ipso facto hostility towards right-wing policies. 

“Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”—Trump loyalist John McEntee, in New York Times

The roots of the Republicans’ apparent rejection of democracy lie back when Roosevelt embraced regulation of business, provided a basic social safety net, and built infrastructure. That system ushered in a period lasting to 1981 that economists call the “Great Compression,” when disparities of income and wealth were significantly reduced. 

Recently, at the Turning Points Action Conference in Florida, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—a reliable fount of Trumpian cant—compared Biden’s Build Back Better plan to LBJ’s Great Society from the 1960’s. This had invested in education, medical care and welfare. She noted that, under Biden, the US had made “the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs, that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.” 

For once, she was right—but she meant it as an insult and rallying cry.

Greene regards all of it as “socialism,” Yet, not just LBJ and FDR, but Republicans like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower agreed that investing in programmes that enable working people to prosper is the best way to strengthen both economy and nation. 

Luckily Greene’s and her MAGA buddies do not seem to be sweeping America as they hoped. A poll by policy pollster KFF found that 80% of Americans like Social Security, 81% like Medicare, and 76% like Medicaid. A majority of both main political parties agree. 

This provides reassurance to us fans of the USA that the lunatics are not about to take over the Congress asylum, because extremist rants emanating from the likes of Trump or Greene seldom emanate from Joe Sixpack of Chippewa Falls, who—thankfully—is more sensible than such folk as manage to get elected.

Acknowledgement: Much material for this blog was taken from HGether Cox Richardso’s Letter from an American newsletter sub well worth taking out to stay abreast of US politics.

#1078—945 words

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Russia Got It Wrong Before

Posted on July 18, 2023 by davidsberry

As usual, the fickle herd that is UK news has drifted from Ukraine and focussed on more popular po-faced coverage of scandals and record-breaking heat waves. It has been left up to more obscure channels, such as BBC Alba, to sustain Auntie Beeb’s original mission to educate, as well as entertain. 

Despite being primarily Gaelic-language, they do not restrict themselves to interviewing octogenarians about dying cultures, but frequently show themselves to be far-sighted and more cosmopolitan than their main metropolitan colleagues.

This was underscored on Sunday, July 16th when they broadcast the hour-long documentary Sgeulachd Cogaighd-nah-Artaigh (Untold Arctic Wars). At first sight, this might seem like an esoteric topic, of interest solely to aficionados of obscure military follies. But anyone who waded through the waves of subtitles in four languages would have discovered that the present stalemate in Ukraine is not the first time in the last century that the Russian juggernaut took on a smaller neighbour—and had its head handed to it for its troubles.

The precedent has become lost in the global nature of World War 2. The seeds of this other conflict were sown in the collapse of the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union in 1917. During the several years while the Civil War raged, along with Poland and the Baltic States, Finland established themselves as sovereign nations and—once Stalin extended his iron rule over Russia itself—lead candidates for reintegration into the Soviet Union.

The urgency seemed especially acute in the case of Finland. It had established an ethnic border from Petsamo on the Arctic Ocean down through the wastes of Karelia to Lake Ladoga, then across the narrow isthmus between there and the Gulf of Finland to include the city of Viipuri (now Vyborg in Russian), the border lying just 20 miles from St Petersburg and the main Baltic Fleet base at Kroonstad. Between the wars, this created what is known in diplomatic circles as “tensions” and pressure on the Finns to cede most of their territory around Viipuri and Ladoga, as well as valuable nickel mines around Petsamo.

Despite being at ideological loggerheads with Nazi Germany, Stalin stunned the world in August 1939 by signing a non-aggression pact with von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s Foreign Minister. This gave Hitler a free hand to invade Poland the next month, triggering World War 2. Although not part of the deal, Stalin saw this as giving him a free hand in the Baltic.

The Red Army, which had lurched clumsily across Poland’s Eastern border to occupy half the country, was also tasked with doing the same to Finland. After all, how hard could it be—4 million Finns against 180 million Russians? The Red Army had a massive tank park and air force; the Finns effectively none.

“The hostile policy pursued by the present Government of Finland towards our country compels us to take immediate measures to insure the external security of the state.”—Speech by Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov, November 29th1939.

Despite having three treaties in place, Stalin dispensed with the niceties of declaring war, just as another bitter Arctic winter was biting, on November 30th (do you detect any pattern here?). It became known as The Winter War.  The 7th Army’s seven divisions and tank corps had orders to breach the Mannerheim Line across the isthmus and take Viipuri—300,000 Russians pitted against a third as many defenders. The 8th’s six divisions were to swing round the top of Lake Ladoga and take the Finns in the rear, while three divisions of the 9th were to bisect Finland at Rovaniemi, and the 14th launched three divisions towards Petsamo from Murmansk. Inspired by success of the German blitzkrieg in Poland, Stalin, like Putin in 2022, thought it a matter of massive deployment of mechanised might.

As in Ukraine eight decades later, poor timing, poor training, and much hubris meant it did not go that way.

On the Mannerheim Line, the Finns proved to be just as dogged in defence as Russians. North of Ladoga, the 8th found itself road-bound in otherwise trackless forest, out of which Finnish ski troops appeared like ghosts to cut floundering columns of the 44th and 155th Rifle Divisions to ribbons.

Not only were there parallels in the long column of Russian armour stranded NE of Kiev for days before retreating, but shameless disinformation was not a Putin invention. The Red Air Force terror-bombed Helsinki. Several hundred civilians died and over a hundred homes burned. Confronted by this at the League of Nations, Foreign Minister Molotov blithely explained they were simply dropping food parcels for the starving Finns.

Despite the League of Nations urging members to offer all aid to the Finns against unprovoked Russian aggression, unlike 2022/3, little help came, and a massively reinforced Russian effort ground the Finns down to surrender in March 1940. In exchange for peace, they lost Viipuri, Petsamo and a slice of their Eastern border to Russia. This Pyrrhic Victory cost the Russians 48,475 dead, plus 158,863 sick and wounded—2/3rds of their initial force.

Despite already being at war with Germany, Britain and France had been organising an expedition to come to the Finns’ aid. It would have landed in the Norwegian port of Narvik, crossed to the Swedish Gällivare iron ore mines and passed into Northern Finland. Violation of two neutral countries was deemed justified if it cut off much of Germany’s war-essential iron ore—the Machiavellian reason behind supposed magnanimity to the Finns. As it was, the Germans executed a lightning conquest of Norway themselves a month later and put a lid on the whole thing.

But people like Putin, who nurses grudges against perceived historical wrongs, would have done well to be less selective about their history. As for Finns who know theirs, is it surprising they have decided to join NATO.

“The Mannerheim Line is a Finnish soldier standing in the snow.”—Field Marshal Mannerheim

#1077—996 words.

Posted in Military, Politics | Leave a comment

A Dearth O’ Bield*

Posted on July 14, 2023 by davidsberry

The Scottish media latched on to another “bad news” story this week when they discovered that there were over a quarter million people on housing waiting lists, with barely a tenth of them being allocated affordable houses each year. Though much is made of homelessness in Scotland, this is a different type of homelessness. 

Almost all these people have jobs and are not sleeping rough. But they are making do with unsuitable, sub-standard or temporary accommodation as they try to hold down jobs and build a life. They include many families and over 8,000 children, whose education and future are both being compromised. As outlined in a blog from this April The House that Jock Built, once, over 54% of Scots lived in social housing.

“I am very pleased that despite that we have reached our 50,000 target and that since 2007 we have delivered 111,750 affordable homes, with over 78,000 of these for social rent.”

—Shona Robison, Deputy First Minister

She claims 9,757 affordable homes were delivered in 2021-22, but this is not borne out by statistics.Impressive as such claims are, the 7,450 average over those 15 years means that things have seriously tailed off. This is exacerbated by the more elastic interpretation put on what constitutes “affordable”.  

Renting from councils is generally the cheapest, but housing associations are charging ever-higher rents, with Glasgow Housing Association coming in for particularly heavy criticism as landlords.

According to Scottish Housing News, a “worrying” drop in the number of new homes of all types being started in Scotland as the accumulated shortfall of homes of all tenures built since 2007 has grown to over 110,000. In fact, the number of new starts of all types dropped by 13% over the last year from 21,825 to 19,060. Given that council starts dropped by the same percent, the social housing situation seems less rosy than the Deputy First Minister would have us believe.

The basis for her assertions may be that, in the previous year, social sector new housebuilding show an increase of 17% to 6,704 completions, with local authorities’ up by 40% to 2,792 and housing associations’ up by 5% to 3,912. Unfortunately, social sector starts for this year fell by 16% to 4,161, with housing association approvals dropping a whopping 26% to 2,251.

“Given we have a critical shortage of homes, the 1,806 increase in the number completed in the year end to June 2022 is welcome. Disappointingly, however, this is more than offset by the 2,765 drop in the number of new homes started and will further add to the shortfall of more than 110,000 that has accumulated since 2007.”

—Jane Wood, Chief Executive, Homes for Scotland

The fact that there has never been a dedicated Housing Minister until now in the 16 years of the present SNP Government calls into question the priority they set on this key matter. For the first nine years, there were four ministers with portfolios that included housing. But for the last seven years, it disappeared into the portfolios of the growing number of Cabinet Secretaries and junior Ministers.

While this Government has been fond of creating “Councils” of worthies to target specific issues on which it is keen to focus, there has yet to be any unifying focus on housing in general, let alone affordable housing. There is some question whether the current developer free-for-all is producing sustainable communities, as the trend is to plonk a hundred commuter homes in an available field and let social integration take care of itself. But the fragmented nature whereby social housing is being provided does not seem to be addressing the issue. Low-cost-for-sale and rent-to-buy schemes are included as affordable” and councils seem reluctant to rebuild their own depleted stocks, even with right-to-buy considerably weakened.

The closest to a viable scheme appears to come from England, where Places for People have been making a business out of affordable housing for decades. It is a sign of drift in Scotland that the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLLACE) have given up in this area, and placed their faith elsewhere, as indicated by the article in their newsletter How Partnering with Local Authorities Can Help Beat the Housing Crisis , from Places for People. This article underscores exasperation at SOLACE from years of this government’s mishandling of its local government partners.

That a London-based company should be the one showing initiative in the historically Scottish issue of social housing should cause deep embarrassment to this government who are so keen to show what “independence” might achieve. The deeper question is why it is taking them so long to show the leadership needed to do something about it.

“The key to boosting housing supply is diversification, which will enable a range of large and small housing companies and local authorities to bring their capacity and expertise to boost housing production. Local authorities often face severe revenue constraints, so innovative new partnerships have a critical role to play in achieving the key aims of getting new developments underway and generating new income streams.”

—David Cowans, Chief Executive at Places for People

* “A Lack of Shelter” (Scots)

#1076—859 words

Posted in Commerce, Community, Politics | Leave a comment

Can Water Stay Liquid?

Posted on July 9, 2023 by davidsberry

“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,  Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.  But at my back in a cold blast, I hear the rattle of the bones.”

—T.S.Eliot, “The Fire Sermon,” Part III of The Waste Land

After a flurry of catastrophic publicity around England’s privatised water companies and centring on Thames Water, the largest, things have gone eerily quiet. But this huge rock in the UK government’s financial waters has not gone away; it has simply submerged below the sight of our ever-faddish media. As a supplier of water and sewage to a quarter of England, it is like the banks 15 years ago—too big to fail, especially as it supplies the imperial capital.

Yet the stench of failure is in the air. As with the banks, its troubles could have been foreseen. Instead of junk mortgages being packaged as sanitised investments and sold to the gullible Goodwins of the world, Thames had gambled that interest rates would continue at insanely low levels indefinitely. The past year’s 15 rate hikes has proved them horribly wrong.

Thames Water waded in well out of its fiscal depth before that. Having been privatised in the fire sale of public assets that characterised the latter days of Thatcher, it proved to be a bargain. Investors love utilities because they hold their market captive, providing consistently fat dividends. There was no shortage of buyers when it went private in 1989.

Things stayed quiet for the first couple of decades. But when Australia’s Macquarrie bank became the dominant investor 2006-2017, the temptation to milk this cash cow became irresistible. By leveraging miniscule interest rates to borrow cheap to fund minimal infrastructure investment, it became possible to pay lavish dividends, while keeping Ofwat quiet as the regulator. The result was Macquarie left Thames with an extra £2.2bn in loans, while £2.7bn was taken out in dividends. Meanwhile, debt rose sharply from £3.4bn to £10.8bn under its ownership.

It was another of those wizard wheezes offered by privatisation. Like the rail Roscos, PFI, power generation, Covid PPE, etc, etc, those in the know could tap the public’s munificence. All they had to do was clear the shelves of their offshore vault for the imminent cascade of cash. Even when Macquarrie bowed out in some disgrace for this behaviour, ownership remained largely foreign. 

The largest onshore shareholder is Universities Superannuation Scheme, holding 19.7%. But that’s it for Britain. Ontario’s Municipal Employees Retirement System owns 32.8%; Abu Dhabi’s Infinity Investments SA owns 9.9%; both British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, China’s Investment Partnership and Europe’s Hermes GPE each own 8.7%. Three other small investors sharing 12.5% are all foreign. But, even if they were not, the idea that any pressure on Thames from investors to please residents of Reading, as opposed to pensioners in Ontario, seems naive.

The cash cow culture was taken so far that infrastructure investment to the tune of £52bn was funded by customer charges and borrowing. Meantime, dividends totalling £57bn were paid out to shareholders. The below-the-radar time span over which such cognitive dissonance can be maintained is limited and McQuarrie was forced out. In 2020, Sarah Bentley was appointed as Chief Executive with a promise to forge an 8-year plan to rectify matters. She had been lured from Severn Water by a lucrative sign-on package.

Just a year ago, she was handed a total of £727,000 in two one-off payments, part of a £3.1million ‘golden hello’ for signing on—and this within days of being blasted by the Environment Agency for the firm’s pollution record. This is in addition to her eye-watering annual pay and bonuses the year before.

Given the growing outrage at Thames performance in both mains and sewer leakages, in May of this year, Ms Bentley announced that she and Alastair Cochran, Chief Financial Officer would forgo any performance bonus this year. It seems the scepticism that this was a “PR stunt” was justified, as Ms Bentley’s actual compensation rose to £1.6m—larger than her £1.5m last year.

“In 2022, untreated sewage discharges in England equated to a rate of more than 825 a day”

 —The Environment Agency

Despite such largesse last month, Ms Bentley resigned from Thames Water, giving no explanation. Give the lady her due—if she was bright enough to negotiate such a lucrative pat deal, she would be bright enough to anticipate the crushing debt juggernaut rolling down on Thames ever since interest rates soared.

The ticking time bomb is £10bn in debt that Thames needs to refinance at rates more like 5% than the 1% at which they originally borrowed. That translates into interest payments of £400 million that must be found each year. And any company with finances as shaky as Thames will not find lenders queuing up; rates charged vary according to to risk.

Was there another way? Consider the case of Scottish Water.

Since regulation was first introduced in Scotland in 1999, the industry has gone from being a very poor performer to being amongst the (if not the) best in the United Kingdom. It has invested over £15 billion in water quality, environmental performance. This proves that public ownership is no barrier to meeting, and even exceeding, the standards set by privatised companies in England. 

Average Scottish household bills for 2022-23 are currently £375. In contrast, Thames average charge jumped from $417 to £456‚and they are not the most expensive (Southwest at £526). In other words, Thames customers are paying a 24% premium for a much inferior service.

“At an average household charge that is £54 lower than in England and Wales, Scottish Water is providing one of the best values for money water and sewerage services.”

—First Minister Nicola Sturgeon

SW are projected to invests a further £0.6billion in improving water quality, environmental performance and addressing climate change. Total investment over this forthcoming twenty-year period will be around a further £20billion. SW receive no Government subsidies – customers cover the full cost of providing water services, borrowing only when prudent. 

While providing better value for the Scottish consumer than the private English model, does Scottish Water offer the optimal solution? Irish Water, which is Ireland’s national water utility, has considered various business models and supply frameworks to demonstrate value for money. They commissioned a Price Waterhouse Cooper study to compare practices with Scottish Water’s. It reported unambiguously that SW’s practice clearly delivered that end.

Scottish Water wholesales to licenced providers that retail their services to the non-domestic market. The usage of competition ensures a fair and equitable service that provides value for money to end users, with quality being directly assured to the customers.

“Drinking water in Scotland has reached a new high, with 99.91 per cent of all samples in 2013 meeting strict quality standards.”

— Scottish Water Annual Report 2013-14.

Starting out as a hodge-podge of regional water departments, Scottish Water was originally organised in 1996 as three companies: North, West and East. Ten years later, these were merged to form Scottish Water under CEO John Hargreaves. A combination of his guidance and Scottish government support for maintaining public ownership meant that SW was never under profit pressure as illustrated so blatantly by the case of Thames Water, detailed above.

Leakage across Scottish Water’s network has been reduced to 492 Mil L/day over its 77,900 square km (30,000 square miles. It has achieved its calculated economic level of leakage. In contrast, Thames Water leaks 639 million litres a day over its 13,000 square km (5,000 square miles). In other words, SW’s leakage is less than 13% Thames Water’s rate.

This is due to SW’s consistent investment of around £0.5bn each year in its infrastructure. To put that in perspective, the entire English water industry has averaged only £1.5bn per year in its aging, largely Victorian infrastructure. Of Britain’s 350,000km of water mains, SW controls 47,000km. Which means English pipes have had less than £5,000 per km spent on them, which Scottish ones received over £10,000 in annual infrastructure investment. And providing water to hilly, spread-out Scotland is a lot harder than to the Thames Valley.

However, the bottom line is that, by borrowing steadily at around £100m each year, SW carries no crippling obligation. In contrast, A report by Prof. Richard Murphy of the Corporate Accountability Network and Sheffield University looks at the accounts of nine major water companies, including Thames, and concludes that their estimate that they need £10bn over seven years to end sewage discharges is inadequate. It also says the environment department’s tally of £56bn over 27 years is an underestimate. Instead, it finds a House of Lords assessment that the problem requires £260bn of investment more accurate.

“Rising costs of production and the need for capital investment in the public water supply network in Ireland, has placed a strong emphasis on the need for water conservation and tackling the current high levels of leakage”

—Irish Department of the Interior

How the water liquidity crisis at Thames will be solved is anyone’s guess. But it is the latest example how this shibboleth of Tory governments—privatisation—winds up being more costly for the taxpayer and seldom for the Sarah Bentleys and Fred Goodwins of the world. Their track record is shabby. The government has had to intervene in several high-profile corporate failures, including RailTrack; GNER; ScotRail; RBS, British Steeland, most recently, the collapsed energy supplier Bulb.

The “greed is good” mantra of Gordon Gecko is over three decades old and it spawned the post-“Big Bang” snazzy braces sported around Canary Wharf, who deeded us the 2008 crash and a decade of austerity.  Perhaps it’s time to return to the sleepy model of staid but reliable institutions that banks and utilities once were before all our savings get siphoned off to Beijing or the Cayman Islands.

“Private sewage and water companies paid out £1.4bn in dividends last year, up sharply from £540mn in 2021.”

—Financial Times, 19th May 2023

#1075—1,678 word

Posted in Commerce, Environment, Politics | 1 Comment