Lions Led by Donkeys Revisited

Posted on April 25, 2015 by davidsberry

This week the centenary of the launch of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of WWI reminded us all that butchery and senseless loss of life was not confined to the trenches of the Western Front and the massed Russian cannon-fodder of the Eastern. As with the opening of the ‘War to End All Wars”, it is right that the bravery and sacrifice of those who died there is acknowledged, if not celebrated.

But news pieces in the UK media of uniformed royalty making speeches and laying wreaths at Cape Hellas were rather long on glorification and short on reality. As with so many military operations, the expediency of the war effort, national morale and self-interest results in far more glorious victories being toasted when they were actually disasters. WWI seems to specialise in particularly pointless disasters.

The motive to launch Gallipoli was to break the deadlock of the new trench warfare on the Western Front with a strategic blow that would take one of the four Central Powers out of the war. Winston Churchill hatched the scheme during his first tenure at the Admiralty, his attention having been drawn there by the RN’s botched effort to prevent the German battlecruiser Goeben from escaping to Turkey when war broke out.

With frustration rising that the propaganda-touted Home Fleet was unable to bring the German High Seas fleet out to deal with it and unable to prevent embarrassing raids on North Sea ports, Churchill’s brilliant but Boys Own mind thought using the Allies’ superior navies to force “the Sick Man of Europe” (as the tottering Ottoman Empire was known) out of the war was the very dab to rekindle the sense of adventure he had relished against the Boers and at Omdurman.

They would force the Dardanelles against a much weaker Turkish Navy (Goeben notwithstanding), seize their capital Constantinople (not yet called Istanbul), thus forcing their surrender. This would open access to the Black Sea and to hard-pressed Russian and Rumanian allies.

As an example of inadequate intelligence, abysmal planning, inappropriate equipment, ad hoc muddling and tactical incompetence, Gallipoli has few equals in a war where Imperial jingoism seems to have trumped sensible evaluation and deployment every time. Having fought mostly spear-wielding natives and little else over a century of empire-building, the British mind set and training was geared to conflicts such as depicted in the film Zulu.

Turks were clearly not ‘British’ (cultural overtones of superiority intentional) and so could obviously be dismissed as similar to the Mahdi’s troops, slaughtered so comprehensively at Omdurman. The officers, many of whom had served in colonial roles, all of whom had grown up inculcated sons of the world’s first superpower, were particularly racist in  dismissing enemies.

The Turks—aware that an attack on the Dardanelles was a strong possibility greatly improved their defenses in the region. From February 1915, the Allies had bombarded and destroyed the Turkish forts right at the entrance to the 50-mile-long Dardanelles before making their attack proper. This revealed that the straits were heavily mined, forcing the Allied navy to sweep the area before its fleet could safely enter, but also alerting the Turks.

For an account of the various unedifying military missteps that characterise this best-forgotten pointless disaster, consider reading the original Lions Led by Donkeys blog. Suffice to say that it cost three dreadnoughts and 250,000 casualties on each side. By 1916, all troops and ships left were withdrawn with nothing positive to show for the utter waste.

However brave and resolute the troops were on both sides, it is hard to accept acknowledgement of that without parallel acknowledgement that the Admiralty planners, the Admirals and Generals in command, their considerable staffs of supposedly well trained, “top-notch” officers who dined well and passed the port in their comfortable messes on Lemnos or aboard ship of an evening were incompetent, verging on the criminal. Even now, they have not been brought to book. Consider:

  • On February 19th, Admiral Carden expected the breakthrough to capture Istanbul to take no more than two weeks. In one day his fleet of ten was halved.
  • Kitchener appointed Sir Ian Hamilton to land a Mediterranean Expeditionary Force of first the ANZACs (then training in Egypt) and the British 29th Division to silence the forts. But there were no landing craft, bombardment or support vessels provided and they were landed on scattered beachheads on the side of the peninsula away from the forts they were to capture.
  • The rapid, fierce Turkish response was countered by digging trenches and repeating the same unimaginative charging-barbed-wire-and-machine-guns tactics that had already made the Western Front such a bloodbath. So fierce was the fighting around Chunuk Bair that 711 of the 760 men of NZ’s Wellington Battalion were casualties.
  • Hamilton’s sensible attempt to outflank the Turks by landing IX Corps at Suvla Bay was botched by appointing the overage (if not senile) General Stopford to command it. His troops met no resistance and could have walked to the Dardanelles but were told to dig in and brew tea, which they happily did while Turks arrived to hem them in.
  • Because of poor logistics, summer heat and decomposing bodies, day-to-day life was intolerable, quite apart from Turkish snipers and artillery. Dysentery, disease, lice, flies and sores were endemic. Even water was scarce, tepid and reeking of chemicals.

Other than the courage and unbreakable spirit of those who survived this hell, there is little positive to be salvaged from the colossal folly. The former undoubtedly deserves to be remembered. But, even more tragic than their forlorn sacrifice is the depth of stubborn incompetence in the jingoistic imperial mindset of those who sent them into such futility in the first place.

It’s time that was remembered too.

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The Cost of Hubris

Posted on April 15, 2015 by davidsberry

The troops have been brought home, Camp Bastion is again empty desert and everyone’s happy the news no longer features Hercules aircraft landing at Brize Norton with another load of coffins. Everyone—the government, the opposition, MoD, the Army, the veterans and the families most of all—wants to draw a line and move on.

But it should not be that simple. Despite the human cost, there are good and bad wars. Without Isandhlwana, Omdurman and other Boys Own adventures, Britain would have languished as a second-rate nation on the periphery of Europe. Whatever you think of Kipling’s ‘white man’s burden’, making a fifth of the world pink made Britain rich and powerful, predating America’s ‘manifest destiny’ by more than a century.

All that was possible only courtesy of an omnipotent Royal Navy and an army fielding some of the toughest infantry ever to wear a uniform. That omnipotence went by the board some time ago but the quality of British servicemen in terms of professionalism has remained a standard by which others are still measured.

And, as a result, the British Armed Forces have found themselves in some kind of shooting war in each and every decade since WWII, despite the Empire shrinking from a fifth of the world to odd corners too remote/poor/uninhabited to constitute viable countries. After India, our ‘Jewel on the Crown’ became independent in 1947 and an avalanche of colonies followed suit, the interventions that could once be seen as internal and therefore essential—Mau Mau in Kenya, Eoka in Cyprus, Communists in Malaya—evolved into intervention in sovereign countries.

Although no British Forces were involved in Vietnam, the litany of involvements from Sierra Leone to various Arabian flare-ups and culminating in Iraq and Afghanistan, have become a fixture in British policy.

But why?

Developed, mature Western democracies like Germany and Sweden play global roles; they both out-manufacture and out-export Britain these days. They therefore have more economic interest in what goes on around the world than most. Yet they decline to throw their weight around. Their armed forces are deployed outside of their borders only on UN peacekeeping missions. As a result, their standing around the globe—but especially in developing countries—is enviable. They are seen as a force for good, for progress, for co-operation.

Contrast that with Britain, that insists it is still a world power and still entitled to a seat on the UN Security Council, justifying this by retaining Trident. The result? Muslim and ex-Comecon countries regard Britain as an American pawn, ex-colonies use it mostly as a source of aid; British friendship is more cultivated to ease arms sales than anything else. The argument that British Foreign Policy is more driven by the US State Department and BAE than the long-term interests of its citizens is hard to refute.

Because, since Blair mortgaged real global independence to maintain the ‘special relationship’ with Bush and the ‘world’s policeman’, ever-diminishing British forces have been increasingly absorbed in wars of intervention that they are hard-pressed to sell as ‘good’ wars. The initial Taliban-ousting success in Afghanistan was squandered when the focus shifted to Iraq too early. And for the next decade, the British Army was enmired in an un-winnable civic squabble that made Ulster look like a cake-walk. At least everyone in Ulster spoke English.

Estimates vary but the US has spent something like $1.6tn on its involvements to date. That’s £1,000,000,000,000 or twice Britain’s entire budget. The war in Afghanistan alone has cost Britain ‘just’ 4% of that—£37bn. Since 2006, on a conservative estimate, it has cost £15m a day to maintain Britain’s military presence in Helmand province. The equivalent of £25,000 will have been spent for every one of Helmand’s 1.5 million inhabitants, more than most of them will earn in a lifetime.

Cost of US Involvement in Iraq and Afghan Wars

Cost of US Involvement in Iraq and Afghan Wars

MoD officials claim “British troops were in Helmand to protect British national security by helping Afghans build up their own security forces”. But, after 2,400 wounded and 444 dead British soldiers (not to mention around 500 ‘civilian’ dead) and ten years, what has been achieved? Contrast with Iraq, a ‘bargain’ at only £8.4bn (MoD figure for 2003-09 only). Civilian deaths in Iraq have been a feature of the country since it was ‘liberated’ from Hussein’s tyranny, worsening recently as the ISIS offensive has destabilised the place yet again. There is every reason to believe that Afghanistan will mirror just as sorry a tale over the next decade.

Unfortunately, nobody in Britain seems to be asking what £45bn has bought civilisation, let alone Britain. Rather than killing umpteen foreign nationals for questionable aims, that sum translates into 115 hospitals or 2,250 schools or the entire government investment in the rail industry for the last decade.

Civilian Deaths in Iraq by Year

Civilian Deaths in Iraq by Year

Had the net result of either adventure (Iraq or Afghanistan) resulted in either becoming a model of democracy and stability now taking its place amidst the world community, an argument could be made that the money was well spent. But from the French at Dien Bien Phu to the British in Helmand lies a trail of hostility bred from cultural incomprehension and the mistaken belief that (in a repulsive phrase much in use during the hapless US incursion into Vietnam) “inside every gook, there’s an American trying to get out”.

Typical of the cultural mountain to climb was that in 2010, after five years of war, just three officials among the 160 UK Embassy staff in Kabul spoke Pashto. The proportion among serving officers in Helmand was even worse and among troops engaged in ‘pacification’ none at all. Here and in Iraq, Britain (like its US master) were using the wrong tool for the job. ‘Shock and Awe’ destruction of Hussein’s or the Taliban regular forces was a doddle. The cultural colonialism that followed was doomed to failure, just as a multiplicity of band-aids is no cure for brain hemorrhaging.

But, worse than leaving the country occupied with little or no net benefit, the resentment caused by the presumptive dismissal of local culture makes enemies where there were none. This, in turn, feeds the propaganda of those already hostile. There is an argument that 7/7 would not have happened had Britain not been hostile to such muslim countries. If Britain is to include, as it does, significant numbers of muslims who are to be regarded as citizens and equal as such, then following the US-led ‘global policeman’ foreign policy  is hard to reconcile with such principles.

Is it not time that Britain lost the delusion of being a World Power, propping up that claim with nuclear weapons? It can afford neither and would become a better global citizen more at peace with itself and its ethnic complexity. And when the outdated post-imperialists protest that we must be prepared to defend ourselves against the likes of Putin with his designs on Ukraine, ask them how they would feel if Russia  started dictating British policy in Ulster or its relationship with Eire.

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Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Posted on March 29, 2015 by davidsberry

Everyone knows there’s an election coming. The less political punters who think “they’re a’ the same” and seldom bother to vote may already be turned off by the whole affair with over a month still to go. But that would be a shame because—like the referendum in September which engaged just about everyone—there are things worth paying attention to this time around. It’s not just ‘business as usual’.

For the first time in nearly a century, it seems that no party holding an overall majority is easily the most likely outcome. The post-war era of monolithic Westminster-dominated behemoths who were once sharply distinct but have now (like the Republicans and Democrats in the USA) half-blended into Tweedledum vs Tweedledee apparatchiks who seem more fixated by power, the status quo and traditions than breaking moulds and forging new futures for the people.

Since Labour has backed off from the fractious statist mess they created in the 1970s and Tories have backed off from the equally fractious Thatcherite mess of the 1980s distinctions have blurred. Since Blair’s New Labour took power and the noughties by storm, the jibe about Red/Blue Tories has had an increasing whiff of truth.

But rather than fall over each other to woo the middle class, what post industrial Scotland needs is a dynamism that will take it into the 21st century with the kind of quiet resolve, social justice and effective economy that characterises Norway or Finland. What England does with its Westminster rituals, its delusion of world power, its cultural isolation, its distrust towards its neighbours is up to England. Scotland deserves better.

So, rather than getting too caught up in what is an English political debate about how best to afford Trident, aircraft carriers and a ‘seat at the top table’, Scots must be looking beyond May 7th and considering how best to prepare its people for the future. This is not, in the first instance, about re-fighting the referendum. But it is about driving the country forward, powered by the energy, interest and vision that the referendum unleashed.

I attended an SCDI (Scottish Council for the Development of Industry) Forum, held at RBS HQ at Gogarburn. Not only was the array of speakers impressive but what they said and the debates that ensued illustrated the resources upon which we can draw and the ideas that need to be exploited in forging a prosperous and distinct future for Scotland.

The RBS HQ Campus at Gogarburn

The RBS HQ Campus at Gogarburn

The welcome by Ken Barclay, RBS Chairman in Scotland, set the tone that a debate on our economic future was urgent. But Secretary of State for Scotland Alastair Carmichael echoed it by speaking of City Deals and decentralisation as essential steps to an efficiency and effectiveness that leads to prosperity.

This was reinforced immediately by Sir Richard Lees, Manchester City Council Leader who brought a tale of how Greater Manchester, enjoying a 19% population growth 2001-11 due mainly to an influx of younger people, was performing at 4.5% annual growth, better than London’s. But he emphasised that this was not as robust as Munich or Barcelona who had control over a greater geographic swathe and (more importantly) a range of services.

So he was on a crusade for a ‘Northern Powerhouse’—major political elements of the city region (ten councils, including the city) co-operating closely on services while major civic elements (NHS, transport, etc) came under their jurisdiction. He believed that, more than any other factor, cities drive growth and prosperity in their region. He also saw economic and social policy as inextricably linked, with particular emphasis placed on the early years of education. But key among such large overarching organisations was a need for close working and avoidance of silo mentality.

Clearly, despite Alastair Carmichael’s enthusiasm for city deals, we have a way to go. Unlike highly devolved Germany, until recently the UK operated a monolithic power base entirely focused in London. Unfortunately, despite receiving devolution themselves, Holyrood has been equally poor at passing those powers devolved any further and this will be a pivotal issue if Scotland’s cities are ever to benefit Manchester’s pioneering example.

The breakout (or ‘workstream’) sessions followed three themes. Of most interest to me revolved around ‘Better Skills’, led by ECC Chief Executive Sue Bruce. Scotland’s poor vocational system is holding it and the skills of a swathe of its people back. Social stigma associated with non-academic achievement is a curse common to England and Scotland.

Germany makes no such mistake and values craft and creative skills alongside academic ones (going a long way to explain their dominance in precision engineering and exports that capitalise on it). The Wood Commission highlighted a shortage of skilled young people and how poorly we dovetailed their training into education.

British Gas Field Operations Director John Craig provided and excellent example of the application of Modern Apprentices. They must replace their entire installed base of meters by 2020 with smart ones that can be read remotely. This involves 50 million installations in the space of five years. To achieve this, British Gas are hiring and training hundreds of young people as their own engineering staff have good mechanical but limited electronic skills and/or training.

John spoke of ‘fuelling the talent pipeline’, by which he meant they were engaging the young early on by ‘Inspire’ (at ages 5-11), ‘Inform’ (at ages 11-16) and ‘Experience’ (ages 16+). This involves entering schools for the first two stages to better support the last. However, the other presenter Marion Beattie of Skills Development Scotland betrayed the worst traits of a well intentioned but ineffectual bureaucracy. Fluent in the vocabulary “regional skills assessment”…”blended learning”…”triangle approach” it was, in Woody Allen’s phrase “tinged with nothingness”.

It was my distinct impression that, had she been confronted by an apprentice forester with a chainsaw she would have run a mile. Such bureaucrats dominate the civic structure of Scotland as part of the bloated 52% of Scots GDP dependent on the public sector. They are comfortable in cosy niches. As such, they are not part of the solution but part of the problem.

Interlude to Watch the Partial Eclipse during the SCDI Forum

Interlude to Watch the Partial Eclipse during the SCDI Forum

In contrast, the afternoon session brought a refreshingly frank ‘opening of the kimono’ by Darrell Steinberg, former President of the California State Senate. Among his legislative achievements, he created a $250m Career Pathways Trust to better prepare students for the workplace.

But the most important message he brought was the danger of over-reliance on academic results as a measure of either schools or the education they impart. California had based funding on a very narrow set of exam results, with the result that most education effort went into passing as many students as possible, all at the expense of a broader education and adequate preparations for the workplace, especially in vocational terms.

Although only a day long, the Forum was both though-provoking and useful for the opportunity it gave to meet and chat with the broad spectrum of 150-or-so senior business people who were there. Where the audience was weak was in policy decision-makers, whether MPs, MSPs, councillors or their staffs. Anyone concerned about the present academic fixation and consequent refrain from business that students are ill-prepared and sometimes even illiterate/innumerate would find that omission dispiriting.

For what Scotland needs is for our politicians of all stripes to stop fixating on their own career and tinkering with secondary legislation like smoking or air gun bans and meet this crisis in developing our young people to not just to have dreams but to have the skills to exploit them to the economic benefit of the country. That covers a broad spectrum of callings that need equal placing with academia—from the carpentry that drives the world-class Chippendale Furniture school in East Lothian to sports ambition to follow the trail blazed by Andy Murray to the international acclaim from music giants given to Nicola Benidetti for following her dream.

The SCDI Forum was only a signpost. The UK parliament is too fixated on dogmatic disputes based on politics to give a lead. It is the Scottish Government who must take a lead from Manchester and give our half-dozen city regions powers they are hoarding to plan, education and provide civic support for what is appropriate for them.

The present SNP government may show more gumption and initiative than what went before but Labour led a sorry cavalcade of mediocrity for the first eight years. If the polls are right, a decimated Scottish Labour will be in the wilderness for a decade and the Tories have yet to find their way back.

So, in forty days, the opportunity will be there for a rampant SNP to hold Westminster to account for devolution of what Scotland needs. They will have a clear run to go after and pass the Norways and Finlands of the world, a chance for a Second Enlightenment that boosts the lives of all our people. But that will happen only if they stop grabbing any reins of power for themselves and trust some to the hands of the people they claim to serve.

For all the barnstorming bravado shown in Glasgow this weekend, are they gallus enough to chance their future to achieve ours?

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Respect Unzipped

Posted on March 23, 2015 by davidsberry

Yet another thoughtful blog from BurdzEyeView—in this case entitled “Nae man can tether time nor tide” demands consideration and, in this case, response. The piece welcomes the initiative of a motion in the name of the party NEC to the SNP Conference (planned for Glasgow next weekend) that will require the party to consider all-female short lists of candidates for next year’s Scottish election in those constituencies without a sitting SNP MSP.

This blog can make no better a case for this initiative than is laid out in BurdzEyeView and it is therefore recommended reading as preparation for the stushie that is about to break out in Glasgow when this is debated. For a branch in Clydesdale (already represented by a female in the shape of Minister for Children and Young People Aileen Campbell MSP) has lodged an amendment that effectively nullifies the original motion.

The SNP is to be commended for facing up to this controversy and providing what may prove to be a lively debate on the eve of a full-scale General Election campaign. While there is little doubt that the bulk of SNP leadership, starting with Nicola Sturgeou, stand full-square behind the idea of all-women shortlists to redress a gender imbalance in SNP (and other party) representation in the Parliament, in the soaring membership now passed 100,000 (many of them women) that may not be universal.

Rewind some 17 years to a similar conference in Aberdeen prior to the first Parliament election and there was a similar motion (in that case proposing ‘zipping’ candidates on regional lists—the idea that the list should alternate between genders as you went down) which triggered lively and impassioned debate on both sides but resulted in a rejection of the proposal. Many of those arguing against were women who felt such methods were artificial and demeaned women with the presumption that they were not able to achieve selection without help. As the Burd puts it:

“That debate for me was characterised by the number of bright, young women speaking against the idea, adamant that they would get there under their own steam, thanks very much. Only one of them ever did.”

Having met and worked with many colleagues of either genders while I was a member, I was impressed both by its egalitarian culture and, (having lost as many debates as I won against them) the abilities of the distaff side.

Because of said abilities, in this case I am not fearful that any such artificial construct might dredge up some dreadful candidates simply because they are women. But it must be said that earlier parallel efforts by Scottish Labour resulted in what has been slated as a ‘coven of Karens’ getting elected in the Parliament’s early days. They brought scant experience and even less ability to the chamber, having been elected entirely because they were a) loyal b) Labour and c) female. The argument could be made that the stature and achievements of the early Parliament were hindered by such members.But let me be clear that this must not be seen as applying to all female Labour MSPs. Wendy Alexander (whom I respect immensely) and Margaret Curran (whom I detest but accept has ability) to name but two were both formidable presences who could hold their own with the boys, not to mention Bella Goldie and Nicola herself.The issue is not whether women belong in Parliament or that they are in any way naturally inferior in ability, contribution or stamina, once they are there. And there is much to be said for Nicola’s position, which is:

“People say to me, ‘I don’t want quotas, I don’t want all women shortlists because I believe people should get on on merit’. I absolutely 100 per cent believe in that, I think people should get on on merit.

“The problem is that’s not what happens very often just now. If we had a system that was purely based on merit, we’d have gender balance because women are 52 per cent of the population, and unless you think that women are somehow less capable, then if we had a merit-based system we wouldn’t have these problems of under-representation of women.”

The trouble is we DO have a merit-based system and running a dogmatic coach and horses through it will not improve democracy.

Thirty years ago, because Latinos made up a significant portion of the population of California, the new equal-rights laws there were applied to boost promotion of Latinos and entire schools became Spanish-speaking to cater to the prevailing language in their catchment areas. Latinos were promoted and school grades improved. So a win?

Actually, no. So many people—especially Latino women—who benefited found themselves out of their depth because their background ill-prepared them to operate nearer the boardroom and their skills had not had adequate training to succeed. Many were failed by this missing element. Meanwhile high school achieved excellent grades that would have set them on careers had they been in Bogota or Buenos Aires. But their English wasn’t fluent or professional enough to earn them a job in Los Angeles.

Crow-barring culture through legislation is a crude and possibly even damaging approach. And if we don’t want to train Thatcher clones (females who operate in a male dominated environment by ignoring the fact they’re women and fail to offer enlightening character traits  in which men are singularly ill-equipped), then culture has to change first. That women are able and have equal contributions to make should be a given.

But simply shoving more women in by force who will have a doubly hard time until the social environment changes is gesture politics. If supported, I hope the motion does succeed in its long-term aims. I believe it to constitute a well intentioned approach at progress—but it is actually delusional.

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GERS Swimming Lessons

Posted on March 16, 2015 by davidsberry

No, this blog is not about the Ibrox side. Unlike the Herald and Reporting Scotland we often let a day go by without mention of the latest crisis rocking that once-great team. Despite the last blog implying I was crying off politics, the jousting at UK level and the bun fight at Holyrood over whether today’s finance figures released for Scotland implied sunlit uplands or doom to rival Atlantis for its future was simply cadence to the bun fight at Westminster over whether Osbo’s austerity or Balls’ brinkmanship constitutes the most direct and unerring road towards total disaster.

The debate is unedifying. As Andrew Wilson accurately observes in SoS:

“The annual Scottish numbers fest is never an edifying sight and serves only to underline what a juvenile political culture and discourse Scotland currently has, at least when it comes to understanding the sustainability of public finances. Even otherwise informed and intelligent commentators indulge in the doublethink involved in framing the Scottish budget debate. It is, and always has been, nonsensical.”

The trouble is that normally competent spokespeople making the case for Scotland’s economic robustness and ability to go it alone like John Swinney have been drawn into said bun fight, accusing those who would question robustness of “talking Scotland down“. Several people other than Andrew have made more helpful (and not necessarily positive) contributions, including Kevin Hague in his Chokka Blog and Brian Ashcroft’s Scottish Economy Watch.

Now, however emotional you are on the topic of independence, it is irrational to bring that emotion front and centre when making the fiscal case either way. But that’s just what leads to a number of arguments masquerading as objective when the authors have an agenda. That Prof Ashcroft is married to Wendy Alexander does not disqualify his contributions. Let’s quickly examine some charts. Scotland does run a deficit worse than the UK’; this is shown in Figure 1

Comparison of UK vs Scotland Deficit per Capita (source Chokka Blog)

Figure 1: Comparison of UK(-Scotland) vs Scotland Deficit per Capita (source: Chokka Blog)

That’s pretty conclusive: Scotland consistently runs a fiscal deficit worse than the UK (with Scotland’s figures removed)—the 5- and 10-year averages underscore this. Looking at the absolute figures for revenues and spend for Scotland gives the charts shown in Figures 2 and 3 below.

Figure 2: Source of Scottish Finance (all above the black line is deficit

Figure 2: Source of Scottish Finance (Source: Chokka Blog)

Figure 3: Total Public Spend in Scotland (aginn black line shows taxes raised: anything above is deficit)

Figure 3: Total Public Spend in Scotland by Sector (Source: Chokka Blog)

The black line in both figures is the total of taxes raised and so anything above that constitutes a deficit. With a £2bn hole expected in next year’s figures for Scotland due to oil price drop, this picture won’t change any time soon. Several items jump out from these last two charts:

  • increases in revenue raised through employment taxes and VAT have been offset by decline in oil & gas revenue
  • education spending has effectively stagnated since the fiscal crash
  • transport spend has been maintained after a more than doubling
  • health and social protection have increased steadily by 10%
  • everything else—including justice—has stagnated.

The Scottish Government Economic Strategy has the objectives of “achieving a productive, cohesive and fairer Scotland.” It will achieve this by boosting investment, innovation, internationalisation, and inclusive growth. Where Prof Achcroft diverges is, while accepting that the Computer General Equilibrium (CGE) Model used was a rigorous basis for analysis, assumptions made on the basis of implementing Smith Commission recommendations  (a.k.a. “Devo Max”) were not. He finds no substantiation for:

  • an increase in productivity by 0.1% per annum over 10 years
  • a narrowing investment gap between Scotland and its competitors
  • a boosting of Scottish export receipts by 50%

The Scottish Government’s response to GERS foresees greater GDP, jobs and tax revenues because of the  ‘Full Revenue Retention’ concept. In this, all the tax revenues generated by growth are re-spent in Scotland, in contrast to the Smith Commission powers. Prof Ashcroft’s difficulty with this is the Scottish version of having your cake and eating it:

“It is wholly unrealistic to imagine a policy in which, in addition to the Barnett formula, the Scottish government also received any increases in Scottish tax yield.”

These seem valid points that have yet to be properly countered. In the Autumn Statement the gap between UK spending and taxation income sat at £64 billion for this year. Osborne made good that difference by borrowing and adding to the ballooning national debt. In this week’s budget, we will learn the latest plan of eliminating this shortfall, which both Labour and the Tories are pledged to do, just at a slightly different pace.

But, rather than pick up the cudgels offered in the discussion above, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, Kezia Dugdale, warned Scotland that, effectively, these Tory led cuts were preferable to home rule and the devolution of financial control to Holyrood. It is a retread of the old saw that Scots should “hold on to nurse for fear of something worse“. So even when cogent arguments that could be deployed against even fiscal autonomy present themselves, they are ignored.

As Gordon Wilson, former SNP Leader and Dundee MP, and never one to temporise with the goal of full independence once pithily observed: “Fiscal Autonomy? It sounds like an Irish folk singer!”

So, while unionists are (again) doing themselves no favours by selecting increasingly strident cheap shots against a hated (but robust) SNP government, the SNP themselves are missing the chance to pitch more substantive arguments than their hapless unionist opponents seem able to manage, despite all the foregoing.

But, even leaving aside some of the more optimistic planks in their independence argument, fiscally responsible moves to address some of the detail are available to them. To date, they have made a virtue of sustaining a number of programs that need to be examined both in the light of present fiscal constraints and also regarding what needs to be done to change the relative position in Figure 1 above. These include:

  1. Revamping council tax. A blog three years ago made a proposal how to double council tax income by splitting upper bands and creating a ‘mansion’ element. That would gain around £2bn, entirely from people with houses worth £1/4m and more.
  2. Concession fares cost over £250m. While most are vital, there is neither distance restriction not means testing, both of which could save £100m
  3. Free personal care has tripled in cost to £350m since its introduction; free eye exams have doubled opthalmic costs to £100m. While both benefits may be desirable, but the question must be asked whether their free availability of either is affordable.
  4. While nobody argues against the NHS or its adequate funding, its performance in fiscal management falls woefully short of its medical prowess. An accountable management and clean-out of dead wood that allows heating to be controlled by opening windows or counts food plated as food consumed could save 10% of its £3.7bn increase over the decade cuts £350m off the deficit.
  5. But the biggest question is whether the Social Protection budget could be reduced or at least spent more effectively. The £7bn increase over the last decade also offers a chance for 10% savings through service re-provision and tighter control of private company mark-ups. This would shave a further £700m.

Given a fiscal deficit (see Figure 2) of some £10.5bn in Scottish public finances, even all these measures would only reduce the deficit by a third. But that is enough to reverse the relative position of Scotland and rUK. The question immediately becomes: if Scotland would not be viable then the argument must be that the UK is not viable as a country.

And were Scots to get more stroppily partisan, a chunk of the public expenditure burden currently allocated to Scotland could be quibbled with, as this synopsis does in Figure 4.

Figure 4: A More Partisan View of Scotland's Public Cash Flow (Source: Twitter)

Figure 4: A More Partisan View of Scotland’s Public Cash Flow (Source: Twitter)

Some items listed on the right of Figure 4 could be quibbled with as valid expenditures on Scotland’s behalf. But, if you believe, as many Scots do, that Britain’s pretensions at being a world power are already threadbare, then Scottish funding of wars abroad or a £40bn defence budget that includes Trident and super-carriers but no maritime patrol capability demand rethinking. Even allowing refurbishing parliament and High Speed Rail may be acceptable burdens to share, some significant element of the £17bn “spent on Scots’ behalf’ would disappear with Scotland’s more modest role, were it to follow the Ireland of a century ago and leave the UK. Ireland’s posture now is nothing like the UK’s.

It would be helpful if both sides of the argument would address the above and paint a realistic picture of Scotland’s financial health as a standalone country and not one simply sliced off the UK as if nothing else would happen. With oil under $60 a barrel, nobody should argue that it alone provides Scotland fiscal salvation. But, given adjustments above, any Scottish deficit would be close to half that of rUK’s. That further adjustments to achieve balance must be made are a given. But these need not be as draconian as both Osborne and Balls are offering in their 21st © equivalent of ‘blood sweat and tears’.

Kezia Dugdale argues swallowing the UK’s huge fiscal time bomb is the lesser of two evils. But, turning around an £80bn oil/whisky/tourism/engineering economy £120bn in debt running a £1k per head deficit is more plausible—and easier—than solving the present £900bn UK service economy that is a whopping £1,500bn in debt and still running a £1.8k deficit per head.

Why keep hold of nurse if she’s actually drowning?

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Cold Turkey

Posted on March 9, 2015 by davidsberry

After 20 years at the coalface, I find I am fed up with politics. A veteran of fifteen campaigns, three successful personal elections, two decades of various party offices and sixteen years representing my home town all piles up and renders this grizzled grognard fatigued. But my energy is high as ever and is probably more potent than ever; long experiences better directs its focus, as opposed to spraying invective all over the place. And tilting at windmills of smug bureaucracy still engages me as much as it ever did.

But the ‘higher’ levels of politics (no, I don’t really see them that way either) have slowly declined into an example of squalid, self-serving opportunism. I once thought I had escaped that, left it behind in the volatile egos of Silicon Valley and the corporate lawyers, management consultants and $250/hr therapists who feed off them. We are, it appears, all living in a village more global than I had bargained for.

This realisation began last week as I witnessed yet another stylised Punch-and-Judy Show masquerading as Prime Minister’s Questions and—despite spending the next two days in the detached idyll that is St Andrews, with the poetic creativity of the StAnza festival, floods of energetic students and an Oktoberfest-in-March oompah band—I was brought low by Labour’s one-day conference. More specifically, by the speech made there by one Davie Hamilton soon-to-be-ex-MP.

Despite the furore he caused in social media, what he said wasn’t so terrible. But his tone, a knuckle-dragging tirade that was as evilly aggressive as it was passionately authentic, made my heart sink. And when more balanced members who should know better like my own MSP Iain Gray, Edinburgh South CLP Chair Duncan Hothersall and high-hied-yin Jim Murphy all praised him, I felt ashamed to be associated with the hale clamjamfrey.

All this is not new. Half a century ago, media in general and interviewers in particular were deferential to a fault. Some politicians took advantage of this but, generally, the calling was seen as public service for which standards must be kept high. But the last politician who got it wrong and fell on his sword in acknowledgement was Lord Carrington for underestimating Argentinian aggression. That was 33 years ago—ancient history now.

Examine the front benches either side at Westminster. Within the phalanx of lawyers and never-had-a-real-job politicians two motivations flow effortlessly without regard to policy or creed: 1) Survival and; 2) Power. Though there are doubtless principled MPs lurking in the backbench wilderness, the proliferation of ministers and their shadows to almost 200 has inbred a mentality that exhibits all the rentaquote characteristics of automatons.

I’ve lost count of the Politics Today or PMQs or Newsnights or Marr Shows or (sad to say) FMQs to which I have paid serious attention. But I now come to wonder why I bothered. Recently, none have added to the sum of my—let alone human—knowledge. And it almost doesn’t matter who’s in the firing line. This weekend, Philip Hammond batted as Foreign Secretary just as stolidly as he had previously as Defence Secretary; Angela Eagle, rolled out yet again as Shadow Energy Secretary, was again a safe pair of hands. Both were more than competent and—to the recently landed Martian—apparently informative and sincere.

But it is what the Germans call an “Affentheater” the illusion of theatre because primates are going though human motions that could be relating a story. From the remotest constituency office all the way to the dispatch box, Punch and Judy ply their trade using sound bites as clubs and societal shorthand for meaning. Were it all a symposium on quantum physics, it could be left to Scrödinger’s illuminati to pass judgement on performance and underlying ability in that esoteric field.

But this is about life. This is much too important to abandon to a self-serving priesthood of insiders who spend PMQs baying for blood while their gladiators on both front benches circle each other to give it to them than to enlighten the general public watching. Those with the partisan interest of a well thumbed membership card may rejoice when their lions rip unwary Christians to shreds. But, despite repeated admonishments from the Speaker, there seems alternative to testosterone-induced chest-butting and the baffled alienation of the 60-odd million Britons who are turned off by it all.

And so, at whichever party rally the next Davie Hamilton rabble-rouses with over-abrasive invective at unbelievers, real debate will continue to ossify, policy will derive from ever-shorter-term tactical advantage and politicians will be winnowed down to a sly few who know the right people, spout the right sound bite and never, ever expose themselves as a hostage to fortune by making any real, accountable commitments.

So, please forgive this squirming disillusionment with those who pull down $65k a year, finger our billions and deploy nuclear warheads, yet put nursery kids to shame on maturity. Should real debate break out or an idea benefitting society (as opposed to its administrators) before May 7th, I may find motivation to pay attention again. But meantime, I think I’ll abandon party politics and go highbrow by following darts or mud wrestling.

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Beware the polls of March

Posted on March 9, 2015 by davidsberry

No Cassandra she: the Burd deploys a shrewd, spot-on analysis of subtle key factors surging beneath remarkably smooth polls.

burdzeyeview's avatarA Burdz Eye View

While there has always been tension with the Scottish Labour party about how and where to target resources during elections, never have we enjoyed such a ringside seat to the internal drama. Such is the panic in their breasties that it’s all being played out publicly for our delectation. It makes for a very bad farce. Or even a Greek tragedy.

This weekend, we’ve had unnamed sources calling for the West of Scotland and Glasgow, those previous citadels of Labour electoral dominance, to be abandoned in favour of seats that can still be saved in the East of Scotland. Then there’s been the criticism of the amount of support going into Margaret Curran’s Glasgow East constituency at the expense of others. Finally, some have questioned how it was worked out which seats would benefit from £1,000 of Blair’s filthy lucre, while some of the beneficiaries appear to have tried and…

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Biggest in the World

Posted on February 20, 2015 by davidsberry

Living as I do in the wonderful seaside environment of North Berwick, you can get banal about its wonders—not least the Bass Rock. Empty as it is of its gannet residents just now, the sheer wonder of their teeming presence most of the year can be taken for granted.

But now comes a report that it has surpassed St Kilda as the world’s biggest colony of Northern gannets at some 75,000 nest sites on a rock barely 1 mile in circumference. Reproduced below are some details of the report published on our local Scottish Seabird Centre’s website. Of particular interest is the increase in the heart of the existing colony where you would have sworn there was no room for more nests.

The Scottish Seabird Centre, East Lothian, announces that a count of Northern gannets undertaken by Stuart Murray, in conjunction with the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH), has shown that the Bass Rock is now the world’s largest colony.

The Bass Rock is located 4km (2.5m) from North Berwick and the Northern gannet’s scientific name (Morus bassanus) is derived from the Bass itself.

In 2014, independent counts made by Stuart Murray and Mike Harris (CEH), with advice from Maggie Sheddan, the senior Bass Rock guide for the Scottish Seabird Centre, found 75,000 apparently occupied sites (AOS). This is an increase of 24% since a similar count made by Stuart Murray in 2009.

Stuart Murray said: “The colony was photographed from the air on 23 June 2014. Conditions were excellent, with no wind and a high cover of thick cloud which obscured the sun, reducing the glare from all these startlingly white birds. The images were later viewed on computer screens for counting and each occupied site was blocked-out as it was counted.

“Interestingly, the most dramatic increase is between the old lighthouse keepers’ garden and the summit of the Rock. We counted around 10,000 sites in this area compared with 6,500 five years ago.”

Sarah Wanless, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said: “Our long-term research on North Sea seabirds aims to understand how species such as the gannet will cope with the rapid pace of environmental change. This is our fifth census of the Bass Rock in the last 30 years.

“It is particularly heartening to see them doing so well when so many other seabirds in Scotland appear to be in trouble, however, the Bass Rock is a small island and the gannets have now filled most of the available nesting habitat. The colony now has only very limited capacity for further increase.”

Tom Brock OBE, Chief Executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre, said: “Scotland is of international importance for seabirds and is home to over 60% of the world’s population of Northern gannets. The figure of 75,000 sites is phenomenal especially when many apparently occupied sites will represent a breeding pair and their chick. I would expect that the total gannet population on the Bass in the breeding season will be well in excess of 150,000 birds. Every year the Bass Rock turns brilliant white with the sheer number of gannets crammed onto the Rock and not, as some people think, with their guano.

“While this is fantastic news we cannot ignore the fact that although gannet colonies are currently thriving other seabird species are not. This is a very complex issue however we know that gannets are able to travel further to forage for food – even as far as the coast of Norway.

“Many seabirds are now under threat and as a conservation and education charity we will continue to work in partnership with other organisations across Scotland to undertake further research and appropriate action, where we can, to conserve Scotland’s amazing wildlife for future generations.”

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Past Joukin Gin the Heid’s Aff

Posted on February 4, 2015 by davidsberry

After decades of political invulnerability come rain, shine or socialism, Jim Murphy has been scurrying about trying to prop up the Scottish Labour edifice. From a high point of the ‘feeble fifty’ in the 1980s, the shedding of support, Labour Clubs, activists and even members over the next two decades seemed to make little difference to solid Labour majorities across the Central Belt that were counted with shovels.

Then came the surprise result of 2007. Any stimulation from the shock of losing control of Scotland eased and faded when 2010’s General Election seemed to put Labour back in the driving seat with 41 out of 59 MPs and dismayed the SNP with only six of the rest. A sigh of relief bred a sense of comfort that carried them to last September when the ‘No’ win was bigger than predicted. A disinterred Gordon Brown and ‘The Vow’ was credited with turning the corner.

But since then, a succession of wheels have come off with alarming frequency. And, despite the choice of a heavyweight spinmeister as leader, even Hydra Jim has too few heads to plug all the holes in the dyke. Polls have consistently rung alarm bells but, until now, there was no way to predict where the shift was concentrated—if at all. Given that major Labour heartlands had voted ‘Yes’, answering this became the $64,000 question.

Now Lord Ashcroft’s Polling has made a start. And disconcerting reading it is too for Murphy et al who claim they’ll hold all 41. Willie Bain looks like the last man standing. Here is the introduction to Ashcroft’s startling analysis of just those heartland seats Labour was so shocked to lose in the last SP elections—yet has done precious little to recover. If this is accurate, it will make that earlier gubbing seem nirvana by comparison.

(excerpt begins)

Most of my constituency research is focused on marginal seats. But in post-referendum Scotland, the concept of a marginal seat is rather obsolete. Huge swings to the SNP in national polls suggest that even some MPs who must have thought they had a job for life are threatened.

My first round of Scottish constituency research therefore required a different approach. I decided to look primarily at Labour seats – including some with colossal majorities – in areas which voted yes to independence, or where the result was very close. This included all the Glasgow seats, plus Airdrie & Shotts; Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill; Cumbernauld, Kilsyth & Kirkintilloch East, Dundee West; Motherwell & Wishaw; Paisley & Renfrewshire South; and West Dunbartonshire. I also looked at two current Liberal Democrats seats of interest: Gordon, where Alex Salmond is standing in May, and Danny Alexander’s constituency of Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey. In total, the research covers more than a quarter of all the constituencies in Scotland.

I found the SNP ahead in fifteen of these sixteen seats. In the Labour-held constituencies the overall swing to the SNP was 25.4%. This ranged from 21% in Airdrie & Shotts to 27% in Dundee West and Motherwell & Wishaw. Among these seats only Glasgow North East would stay in Labour hands if these results were to be repeated at the election, with the party’s majority in the constituency down from 54 points to just seven.

Douglas Alexander, Labour’s campaign manager and the Shadow Foreign Secretary, would lose his Paisley & Renfrewshire South seat with a swing to the SNP of 25%. Elsewhere, Salmond would be back in Westminster with a comfortable majority over the Lib Dems, and Chief Secretary Danny Alexander would lose by 29 points.

In the Labour-held seats, only 60% of those who voted Labour in 2010 said they would do so again this year; more than one third (35%) said they would support the SNP. While the Conservative vote (such as it was) has held up in these seats well, the Lib Dems have collapsed: only 12% of the party’s 2010 supporters said they would vote Lib Dem again; nearly half (47%) said they would switch to the SNP.

Labour-SNP switchers were markedly less optimistic than most about the economy. Just 41% expected things to go well for the country as a whole over the next year, and 49% for themselves and their families, compared to 59% and 67% of those sticking with Labour.

In the Labour-held seats only just under four in ten (38%) said they were dissatisfied with David Cameron and would rather have Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. Meanwhile 44% said either that they were satisfied with Cameron (18%) or that they were dissatisfied but preferred him to Miliband (26%). Just over half (59%) of Labour voters said they would rather see Miliband as PM, as did just under half (49%) of Labour-SNP switchers.

Despite this, the single most popular general election outcome in these seats was a coalition involving Labour and the SNP – a result favoured by 39% of voters overall, including 62% of SNP supporters and 79% of Labour-SNP switchers. Around one in seven SNP voters (14%) hoped for the unlikely prospect of a coalition between the SNP and the Tories.

What are the implications for the wider general election battleground? If a swing to the SNP of 21%, the smallest in this range, were to be repeated across the board next May it would endanger 35 of Labour’s 41 seats in Scotland. But we cannot assume such a uniform swing. Most of the seats in this survey are in areas which returned a particularly strong yes vote in September, where the SNP attraction will naturally be greater; in future rounds of research we may find a different pattern where support for independence was lower. Even so, the prospect of losing heartland seats will be a blow to Labour’s hopes: every seat they lose in Scotland means another they have to win from the Conservatives in England, while the national polls could not be much narrower.

But as ever, it is vital to remember that these polls are a snapshot, not a prediction. The Labour majorities in some of these seats are such that even a swing of this magnitude has not put the SNP far ahead – for example, just three points in Glasgow South West and Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill, and six points in Glasgow North West.

With a vigorous Labour campaign there remains room for movement before May. For such a crucial battleground the campaign in these seats has yet to reach fever pitch – perhaps not surprisingly given the exhausting referendum campaign. Just 13% said they had heard locally from the SNP in the last few weeks, and only 9% from Labour.

More importantly, by no means all voters have made up their minds. Just over two thirds (68%) of switchers from Labour to the SNP say they definitely rule out voting Labour again in 2015 – which means nearly one third are at least open to the idea of returning.

(excerpt ends)

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Irn Guru

Posted on February 3, 2015 by davidsberry

I am no great fan of the Gordon Gecko school of ambition; if everyone plays dog-eat-dog, there’s won’t be much hope for civilisation. That said, most Scots still have some way to go to get the hang of entrepreneurship. In this field, the US has blazed an uncompromising trail. While we need not follow blindly, there are nonetheless lessons for us to learn.

Despite many charlatans, some Stateside gurus are worth studying. Despite once stalling my career for daring to gift my boss In Search of Excellence, a short cut to learning still involves absorbing someone else’s experience/insight to dust off your own cobwebs. A more recent example of this is Peter Diamandis‘ new book Bold. Eleven key points he highlights seem worth consideration—even among those like me who branched off the road to billionairedom some way back.

  1. Agility will trump size: In the same year that Kodak went bankrupt (2012), another company in the digital imagery business (Instagram) was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion, but Instagram had only 13 employees. As the rate of change continues to increase, large, slow-moving linear companies will be unable to keep up with rapidly experimenting, exponential entrepreneurs.
  2. You either disrupt yourself, or someone else will: 40% of today’s Fortune 500 companies will be gone in ten years. Products and services are being dematerialization and demonetization. The entrepreneurs who win are those who can think exponentially, digitize a service (think Uber and Airbnb), then dematerialize and demonetize the marketplace.
  3. Reading an exponential roadmap is key to your success. How do you predict when technology is going from deceptive to disruptive? One key is looking for the creation of an ‘interface-moment’ (e.g. Andreessen’s creation of the Mosaic browser for the Internet) which allows entrepreneurs to build new businesses. Today’s 3D printing software is just one example of an interface-moment that will disrupt a trillion dollar industry.
  4. Tech to change the World: Robotics, infinite computing, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, networks and sensors are the technologies that will produce the next group of billionaires. These technologies gives each of the the capabilities only available to governments and the largest corporations just 20 years ago. While you don’t need to be a technologist to play this game, you do need to have a Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP) that attracts a talented team.
  5. Bold Mindset & Moonshots: Both Lockheed Skunkworks and GoogleX show us how to go 10x bigger, rather than 10% bigger. Taking a Moonshot inside of your Massively Transformative Purpose is the fuel you need to go big and bold. Moonshot thinking is100 times more worth it. And it’s rarely 100 times harder.
  6. The Secrets of Going Big: Super-Credibility and Stone Soup are two terms you probably don’t know, but exponential entrepreneurs depend on both to punch above their weight class. This chapter offers a step-by-step roadmap for starting, building momentum, and attracting the right people to your big idea.
  7. Billionaire Wisdom: Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos share eight key strategies that help them think at scale. Passion, experimentation and optimistic thinking are three of the eight. Your mindset matters. Here’s a glimpse of what it takes to play on a global scale.
  8. Crowdsourcing: With five billion people online by 2020, the most successful entrepreneurs and companies will use the power of the hyper-connected crowd to source their latest ideas, products and solutions.
  9. Crowdfunding: By 2020, $100 billion of capital is coming on-line from Crowdfunding. Bold offers a proven and detailed how-to guide to turn the crowd into your personal cash machine for funding your next product or service.
  10. Building Communities: Communities built Wikipedia and Linux (both valued at tens-of-billions). Communities can design your next products, spread your video to millions, or finance your next company.
  11. Incentive Competitions: Incentive Prizes let you tap into the world’s smartest people to help you solve your biggest problem. Best part you don’t pay until after it’s solved.
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