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

Posted in Politics, USA | 1 Comment

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

Twelve Score and Seven Years Ago

Posted on July 4, 2023 by davidsberry

After the best part of a century dominating world events and its economy and on top of its victory over “The Evil Empire” that ended the Cold War, America is having what can only be described as an “existential crisis”. To the consternation of millions of cosmopolitan Americans, their country appears locked in a debate deriving more from the 18th century than the 21st.

As with any power that comes to dominate all rivals, the risk that the only future is decline underlies any self-deluding hubris. America’s wobble started in the 1990s when Newt Gingrich steered the Republicans into the political long grass of reactionary politics. Funded by self-interested industry barons, the reality that “trickle-down” Reaganomics failed to enrich anyone but the rich did not dissuade them. The culmination was the election of Trump in 2016, with his arrogant disregard for procedure or democracy. Having burned their bridges and plunged the country into a $32 trillion debt, Republicans saw little option but to double down on tax cuts, States’ Rights, right-wing moralising and more Trumpanomics.

For the first time in the 160 years since their Civil War, America has segregated itself into two camps of mutual hostility. This threatens the foundations of a nation that once made the 20th century its own. It is time both sides in this standoff overcame their respective polemic, stop paying lip service to partisan readings of their Constitution and rediscover the spirit in which it was conceived in the first place.

Today, on their country’s 247th birthday, seems a propitious day to do just that.

On July 4th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, which said: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

—Declaration of Independence, 1776

Leave aside that blacks, women, Indians, etc. did not get a look-in until later, this document was astonishingly radical in a world dominated by a coterie of kings, nobles and rich merchants Everybody else accepted their lowlier status from birth or were punished for their effrontery. But these upstart legislators on the edge of a continent declared that no man was born better than any other. It was the foundation on which this Western civilisation of ours was built. 

America was founded on the radical principle that all men are created equal is self-evident came under pressure eighty-seven years later, when southern white men went to war to reshape America into a nation in which others were of lower status and equality was not “self-evident.” But “Honest Abe” had wisdom and courage enough to reassert that founding principle.

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and this Civil War is testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The United States—and its founding principle—endured and expanded the idea that all men are created equal to include all skin colours and genders.

Although not (yet) a civil war, America is facing serious rebellion against that founding principle, as a few seek to reshape America so that such people consider themselves better than others.

Although not (yet) a civil war, America is facing serious rebellion against that founding principle, as a few seek to reshape America so that such people are better than others.

“We pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to defend the idea of human equality.”—

.”—signatories of the Declaration of Independence

Down the years, many other Americans have sacrificed their own fortunes, honor, and even their lives, following Lincoln’s admonition: 

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

—The Gettysburg Address, 1863

Trump and his devotees deserve to have such words stapled to their foreheads.

#1074—660 words

Posted in Politics, USA | 1 Comment

Away with the Ferries

Posted on June 28, 2023 by davidsberry

Of all the various alligators snapping at Humza Yousaf’s bum, the most persistent and damaging has been one with a long, sad history, inherited from his predecessor and showing no sign of going away. Although the contract for two ships with Fergusson Marine of Port Glasgow has repeatedly been the media focus, the saga encompasses the entire ferry fleet run by CalMac, serving the Inner and Outer Hebrides. Their entire fleet is aging, many running well past their 25-year “sell-by” date, meaning repairs to patch them up now run to £8m each year.

Despite leasing a boat from Pentland Ferries for £1m, CalMac can’t cover service commitments. The main Isle of Mull crossing to Craignure is served by a boat too small for the job; the Corran ferry serving Morvern no longer takes vehicles and the Uists have had to thole no ferry at all to or from Lochmaddy throughout June.

No matter the rights and wrongs of the Fergusson fiasco, after several lost seasons through Covid, tourism across the Western Isles is being hobbled by inadequate and unpredictable ferry services upon which much of their business—not to mention day-to-day living— depends. Whether Fergusson delivers a ferry by the end of the year, or four others that have been ordered from Turkey, none will arrive in time to salvage the summer of 2023.

The prospect of CalMac, CMAL, Transport Scotland and the eighth Transport Minister in a row to reprise their ferrets-in-a-sack show is unlikely to make islanders feel more than recycled despair.

Why is it this Scottish government can’t think big? Why do they persist in this softly-softly “progressive” strategy of electoral bribes—whether it’s baby boxes or free travel for rich pensioners? When are they going to stop carping about Westminster intransigence, show some imagination and think big for the country they want to run? Have they even looked elsewhere for inspiration?

Take Norway as an example—similar size to Scotland, even if they have been far more canny with their share of the oil bonanza. If you think our Hebrides are rugged and pose serious transport headaches, then examine Norway’s fjord-fragmented coastline, Their E39 coastal highway runs 1,100km (658 miles), linking Kristiansund, facing the Skagerrak in the South, through Stavanger and Bergen to reach Trondheim, most of the way to the Arctic Circle in the North.

Given this highway crosses fjords over 3km across and 1km deep, this needs a ferry system as complex as CalMac’s. Seven ferry services link isolated stretches of road, meaning a trip along the entire E39 currently takes 21 hours. It would be enough to redden any Scottish Transport Minister’s face to relate how reliable those ferries are, compared to CalMac’s. The Norwegians are too modest to rub this in. But they are not content with the service this provides in linking four of their main coastal cities, even though they are already linked through the country’s interior.

They want to dispense with the ferries altogether.

In an example of how a “small” country can think big, Norway is now engaged in a $47bn infrastructure project to link up all the parts of the E39 with soe serious thinking out of the box. Most of the crossings involved defy conventional engineering. So, they are inventing unconventional ones, starting with a 27km tunnel near Stavanger that will be longer and deeper (390m) than any other, when completed in 2026.

Other crossings require even more radical engineering. Nothing daunted, the Norwegian Roads Authority are considering radical solutions like sunken tubes and floating bridges to link across some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere.

This is no pie-in-the-sky along the lines of Boris Johnson’s link to Northern Ireland across the North Channel, which ignored vast amounts of munitions dumped in the Beaufort Dyke after WW2. The Norwegians are a pragmatic people, not given to flights of irrational fantasy. You can catch a video of the project at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCT-FurFVLQ

It may be asking much of the present pedestrian Scottish Government to hatch such inspirational ideas for the country to match those in Norway. After all, both Bergen and Trondheim boast populations of a quarter million to justify such expenditure. But it was visionary infrastructure boosting such cities that created that size in the first place. Both have grown by half since 1990. Inverness may have doubled over the same time but, at 47,000, it is still a minnow by comparison. Stornaway (5,000), Portree (2,500) or Tobermory (1,500) don’t even get a look-in.

Also, Norway’s hefty per capita GDP of $77,500 embarrasses Scotland’s $44,100, and goes some way to explain how they can afford this project.

But we must ask whether shrewd investment is what gave Norwegians that edge. Mull’s 3,000 population may not justify a bridge from Appin, over Lismore and Morvern—yet. Now it has a bridge, Skye’s population has doubled to over 10,000. 

But unless Fiona Hyslop and Humza Yousaf put their heads together and come up with similarly inspirational concepts to show what an independent Scotland might do, their collective jaikets hang—along with the prospect of indy—by an increasingly shoogly nail.

#1073—804 words

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Wanted: Unconventional Convention

Posted on June 25, 2023 by davidsberry

This weekend saw the SNP faithful gather in Dundee’s Caird Hall for an “Independence Convention”. Humza Yousaf’s idea was to agree among themselves in private on a road map to independence that would break the logjam imposed by the Tory government at Westminster to block any attempt to seriously discuss independence at all. The conclusion appears to be that, if the looming 2024 General Election produces a majority of MPs in Scotland with independence in their manifesto, this justifies another referendum.

Much though this author agrees with the moral argument and would welcome such developments, more rational thinking senses some whistling in the wind here, dictated by the SNP’s current place on a parabola of political fortunes, the unavoidable fate of all political parties.

Some history to support this contention:

After two decades abroad, disconnected from UK politics but involved in both German and American, it was an education to find SNP activists a dynamic mixture of long-serving stalwarts, youthful idealists and virulent anti-Tories, with scant experience or understanding of politics or society outside their own. There was little beyond emotion by way of either pragmatic or visionary appeal to convince others. Tory voters were given no economic case and Labour voters no social case to change their minds.

As a result, the two more seats gained in the 1997 election were dwarfed by the Blair landslide and the substantial block of seats in the new Scottish Parliament negated by a Labour/LibDem coalition denied the SNP any taste of power.

But, after the loss of Donald Dewar, Labour offered only a succession of passive placeholders as First Minister, running the Scottish Parliament as they had run Scottish councils—with scant ambition and functioning as a system for rewarding loyalty. Blair may have won both the 2001 and 2005 UK General Elections s quite handily, but North of the Border, tectonic plates were shifting. In 2001, Labour won 56 seats in Scotland from 46% of the vote, while the SNP won only 5 from 20%. By 2005, that had shifted to 41 and 6, respectively, hardly presaging what came next.

A combination of assiduous local campaigning over a decade by the SNP and a dangerous presumption of entitlement by Labour produced shock results in both local and parliamentary elections in 2007. Suddenly the SNP had 47 seats to Labour’s 46 and formed a government (albeit a minority) for the first time. The advance in councils was similar. Having relied on elected representatives to fund and man their campaigns, Labour was suddenly compromised in its ability to reach people through civic activity and on doorsteps.

Casual observers could have been forgiven in thinking this had little consequence for the Union, as the SNP UK position of 6 MPs and 20% of the vote was repeated in the 2010 General Election. But the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections brought an SNP landslide, jumping the number of SNP seats by 22 to 69 on 45% of the vote, while once-dominant Labour slumped to 37 seats on 32% of the vote.

This so rattled Cameron’s unionist government in Westminster that he granted a Section 30 Order to permit an Independence Referendum to be held in September 2014 to call the SNP’s bluff, as the polls were putting support for independence in Scotland around 20%. Unfortunately for him, his political “nose” was no better than it was for the later “Brexit referendum.  Support for the cross-party “Yes” campaign ballooned until the final result of 45% Yes and 55% No scared unionists by being much closer than predicted.

Paradoxically, this defeat for the cause galvanised many switherers and sceptics to get involved, pushing SNP membership well over 100,000 and boosting other “Yes” parties lie the Scottish Greens. This momentum carried through the June 2016 Brexit referendum. Although won by the Leave campaign by a narrow 52% vs 48% margin, the figure for Scotland was a whopping 63% fir Remain. This further galvanised the SNP and the Yes campaign.

Growing momentum showed in the revolutionary result in the 2015 General Election when the map of Scotland turned yellow: 56 seats on a vote of 50% for the SNP, with the 50 gins all coming from Labour, which was reduced to a single MP on 24% of the vote. It was obvious that this was the apogee of the SNP’s political parabola: nowhere to go but down. If Humza’s contention that winning a majority of Scottish MPs next year would constitute a mandate for another referendum, then 2015 should have made the case irrefutable.

But nobody made that case. Which brings us from history, into the present day

Two years into her leadership, Nicola Sturgeon played her cards cautiously, promoting loyalty and gender balance among ministers, while pursuing laudably “progressive” social policies, such as protection of disabled children, trying to establish a National Care System and providing baby boxes to new mothers. This has eroded a once-broad appeal. Policies like the Gender Recognition Reform and their Deposit Return Scheme. Both have cost political capital as such initiatives were quashed by Westminster and made few new friends.

The difficulty arises because, ever since the Brexit vote, the SNP has been cultivating the already-converted, trying to rein in their frustration. Despite her unquestioned skills in leadership and debate, Nicola Sturgeon has neither hatched any broad-based “big ideas” to appeal to the 50% leaning towards unionism, nor created a positive platform of competence in the powers already held that would encourage the doubters to believe in the brighter, richer future Scotland might find with independence. Business for Scotland has framed such a vision in its Scotland the Brief booklet, but you’d hardly know it from the SNP. Similarly, Ireland or Denmark could be glowing examples of what Scotland-sized countries could achieve but the SNP is not making the case.

What is happening to the SNP parallels what happened to Labour as it became hollowed out in the 1990s, relying on rewards for loyalty to perpetuate the status quo.

Unfortunately for Humza, he has chosen to remain shackled to Nicola’s unambitious “progressive” agenda. This appeal to his own political backyard of Glasgow and its surroundings, where the SNP currently hold every constituency seat preaches to the choir—just as Labour did two decades ago. He has also sidelined Ash Rega’s plea for a non-party independence convention, based outside the SNP. He may galvanise the troops to get out and canvass this summer, but without more specific visionary inspiration, will they appeal to Scotland’s sceptical half?

The trouble with parabolas is: once you pass the apogee and make no radical change, the trajectory leads inevitably downward.

#1072—1,096 words

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Hoist by Their Own Canard—Boris Johnson

Posted on June 15, 2023 by davidsberry

“My policy on cake is pro- having it and pro- eating it.”

—Boris Johnson

“By the time he graduated from Oxford at the age of 23, Johnson’s three key personality traits had been formed. After that age, he did not learn or mature an iota. (First) a skill unmatched since Tony Blair to communicate with the wider public; second, his inner emptiness made it imperative for him always to be the centre of attention, craving affirmation and breaking truth and convention to achieve it; finally, a total absence of moral compass, seriousness or ability to see anything or anyone as more than fodder to be expended for his own gratification, pleasure and career.”

—Anthony Seldon, Sunday Times, June 11th 2023

“We’ve got an oven-ready deal. We’ve just got to put it in at gas mark four, give it 20 minutes and Bob’s your uncle.” 

—BoJo, November 3rd, 2019

“If we vote to Leave and take back control, all sorts of opportunities open up. Including doing new free trade deals around the world, restoring Britain’s seat on all sorts of international bodies, restoring health to our democracy and belief to our democracy.”

—Boris Johnson

“I’m immensely proud of the achievements of this government: from getting Brexit done to settling our relations with the continent for over half a century, reclaiming the power for this country to make its own laws in parliament,” .”

—Boris Johnson

“The signing of the Withdrawal Agreement is a fantastic moment, which finally delivers the result of the 2016 referendum and brings to an end far too many years of argument and division.” 

—BoJo, January 24th, 2020

“We will prosper mightily as an independent free-trading nation, controlling our own borders, our fisheries, and setting our own laws.”

 —BoJo, October, 16th, 2020

“I believe Scotland, along with the rest of the UK, will benefit from a very strong relationship with our friends and partners across the Channel whatever the circumstances, whatever the terms we reach tonight.” 

—BoJo, December 9th, 2020

 “As for a present for Nicola, there is all sorts of things that will arise naturally from the UK getting a new relationship with our friends in the European Union. But one thing that may be of particular interest to the people of Scotland is they will become the proud possessors of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish, shellfish, crustaceans. I don’t know whether Nicola is a keen fish-eater but she will have more than she can possibly consume herself for a very, very long time to come. How about that?” —

—BoJo, December 16th , 2020

Exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions on December 8th, 2021 (eight days after the first reports of Downing Street gatherings emerged):

“Would Mr Johnson tell the house whether there was a party in Downing Street on 13 November?”

—Labour MP Catherine West

“No; the guidance was followed, and the rules were followed at all times”.

—Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Referred to the police by the Cabinet Office last year over events in Chequers and Downing Street following a review of his official diary as part of the official COVID inquiry, Boris said: “I think it’s ridiculous that elements in my diary should be cherry-picked and handed over to the police, to the privileges committee. “This whole thing is a load of nonsense from beginning to end.”

“Members of the Privileges Committee, including Labour’s Harriet Harman, have already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence. It was a kangaroo court. Its report is clearly partisan and biased.”

—Boris Johnson

“I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report.”

—Boris Johnson

“To you, the British public, I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. And I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world…Cutting taxes is the way to generate the growth and the income we need to pay for great public services. 

—BoJo, Resignation Speech, July 7th 2022

“The Privileges Committee should publish their report and let the world judge their nonsense. They have no excuse for delay. Their absurdly unfair rules do not even allow any criticism of their findings.”

—BoJo, June 13th 2023

“The Commons may have been misled multiple times.”

—House Privileges Committee

His 40 awards (cut from 100 by the Lords vetting process) included an Order of the Bath for his former principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, who oversaw a garden party during lockdown restrictions in 2020, as well a peerage to his chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, and a CBE to Jack Doyle, his former director of communications, both of whom were in office during some of the Partygate era of controversy within No 10 and the investigations into the scandal.

“Hasta la vista. Baby.” 

—Boo, House of Commons, 20th July 2022

#1071—907 words

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A Long Way to Tipperary

Posted on June 10, 2023 by davidsberry

Don’t tell the jingoists, but the “great” in Great Britain is not some accolade of national superiority but a geographic term. As the island stretches over 80,000 square miles and the French peninsula of Britany only covers a bare 13,000, the word is a statement of the bleeding obvious, no matter what some Tory backwoodsmen might say.

Unfortunately, the effect, combined with national nostalgia over pink-painted globes results in a UK government, such as we now enjoy, who believes the country “punches above its weight”, merits a seat on the UN Security Council and deserves a ‘special relationship with the USA. For such reasons, the UK has severed ties with its neighbours and suffers an ignorance about them worse than anywhere else in Europe.

One explanation for this might be that the British have the lowest proportion of its people who can make any fist of a foreign language. Even after half a century in the EU, four out of five Brits who do visit Europe do so on a Mediterranean holiday, conducted entirely in English. They have such little contact with local culture that they find scant reason to dispute UK government claims that we dealt with Covid; saved people’s wallets; came out of recession better than anyone else. Were British media less parochial and tabloid-minded, the truth might have been revealed.

Even where no language barrier exists—with our closest neighbour, Ireland—the collective ignorance, led by Westminster silence on Irish success and prosperity studiously ignores the object lesson that modern statistics* teach. Many Brits still believe Ireland to be a Catholic-dominated Guinness-dark agricultural backwater where the young leave to find jobs.

Time we woke up and smelled the poteen.

Ireland’s population is blossoming. At 5.123 million, it is about to overtake Scotland. At $100,170, its GDP per capita is now DOUBLE the UK’s $46,510. Ireland exports goods worth $134,510 per capita—TEN times the UK figure of $13,360. And, while UK debt climbs toward $3 trillion on the back of $61.4 billion in borrowing each year ($910 per person), in contrast the Irish state enjoys an $8.45 billion SURPLUS—or $1,680 per person. The stats demolish Westminster post-Brexit bluster: average UK household income of £44,480, vs £76,110 in Ireland; national debt of 103% of UK GDP, while Ireland’s is 55%. The list just goes on.

No wonder the government stays shtum about this. A former colony, the first to break the bonds of empire doing better than the mother country? Unthinkable!

Britain may have Canary Wharf and Fintec, but very little else not associated with tourist tat these days. Meanwhile, Dublin boasts a dynamic tech sector filling disused warehouses along the lower Liffey. This was catalysed by the likes of Apple and Google being lured by incentives. The same tax breaks encouraged the likes of Starbucks and Amazon to site European HQs here. They’ve even pinched much of the financial business that escaped London after Brexit. 

Dublin is on a roll—a lively, liveable city, full of young enthusiasm, boasting an international airport that makes Heathrow look Heath-Robinson-esque and Edinburgh’s a down-market mall with a runway attached. One of its appeals is clearing US customs BEFORE boarding. And, being an hour closer, offer flights to ten US destinations, vs.  Edinburgh’s two.

While the SNP flails about trying to make a case for “indy”, it would do well to trumpet why our prospering neighbours are won’t reverse 1922 to don the shackles of this tired Union once again. Because Westminster certainly won’t.

*See Country Comparisons at: https://www.worlddata.info/country-comparison.php?country1=GBR&country2=IRL#economy

#1070—592 words

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High Street Robbery

Posted on May 12, 2023 by davidsberry

In the past, this scribe has criticised East Lothian Council (ELC) for its economic innumeracy. As examples, it couldn’t make its pie-beans-and-chips staff canteen wash its face, so they leased it to two ladies who turned it into the money-spinner of The Loft; wholly owned Enjoy Leisure, a sink for public money, can’t see how Bannatyne’s turns a profit in the same business; they fail to license ice cream stands along their 30 miles of beaches, foregoing thousands in income to RLC. It’s classic clunky corporation cluelessness.

But…haud oan…what’s this? An initiative to raise an extra £1m to bolster empty council coffers without going cap-in-hand to the Scottish Government or whacking up Council Tax above their 10% hike this year? Has ELC finally found its fiscal mojo? After announcing it a year ago and going out to consultation at the end of last year, they have decided to impose parking charges in town centres. Much to the surprise of visitors, until now, parking has been free.

An enlightened approach to solve parking, congestion and encourage green travel? Well, that’s what it has been presented as. In truth, it is a further example of stodgy narrow-mindedness characterising the administration controlling one of the most pleasant and affluent areas of Scotland. So “Town Centre Parking Management: Introduction of Parking Management Proposals in North Berwick” was approved 17-4 at a virtual council meeting on April 25th, 2023. 

Sadly, for 23 of its 28 year-existence, ELC has been dominated by Labour, who have yet to show understanding of the jewel in their hands. Slow to exploit being on tourist-magnet Edinburgh’s doorstep, they instead revelled in Provost limo, special allowances for ‘senior’ colleagues and free access to the biggest private box at Musselburgh racetrack. That theirs was the fastest-growing area in the country was pure luck.

Readers who have never visited North Berwick won’t know its historic High Street, bustling with interest. Since the 1950’s, there have been a myriad of schemes to deal with growing congestion and limited parking, decades before ELC came along. They all came to naught, and this was for a reason. Despite Labour running ELC, North Berwick declines to vote Labour. 

This has led to many behind-the scenes tussles, such as an attempt to break the North Berwick Trust (failed); close the outdoor pool (succeeded) and short-change the town at every turn (succeeded). You only have to study planning consent for Kirk View to know that it blocked any hope of a viable E-W traffic alternative to relieve the High Street.

The town centre plan prior to this one is not yet five years old. A charette, involving virtually every interested party in town hammered out a traffic and parking solution acceptable to everyone. It sat gathering dust until, as with earlier plans, ELC threw it out and started again. Because the charette had specifically ruled out parking charges. ELC has form on seeking consultations until it gets the answer it wanted. And so, this umpteenth consultation blithely states:

“With East Lothian having a growing population and being a popular visitor destination, we need to achieve a balanced and sustainable approach which meets parking needs, whilst ensuring our town centres remain vibrant and attractive places in which to live, work and visit.”

—Councillor. N. Hampshire, ELC Leader

To be fair, the final parking plan does take comments on the proposals from last November on board:

  • Extending free parking from 30 minutes to 45 minutes  (Traders)
  • Increasing the long-stay maximum from 5 to 6 hours (golfers)
  • Professionals who require to park on streets will be able to apply for exemptions (Carers and Health workers)
  • Free parking on Sundays until 1pm (church-goers).
  • Reduce the original four zones to three zones
  • Residents living in them will no longer be restricted to spaces marked as resident only but will be able to park in charging spaces in their zones.

Welcome though such adjustments are, the fact remains that all town centre streets and car parks will levy £1 per hour, while residents will pay £40 for a resident permit to avoid this. The only long-stay car park will be at the rugby ground, which is a 1km walk to the main shops. There will be no extra parking, no town shuttle bus and all this will be enforced by the same “blue meanies” who plague drivers in Edinburgh.

Just how Cllr. Hamshire sees all this as a “balanced and sustainable approach which meets parking needs, whilst ensuring our town centres remain vibrant and attractive” is entirely unclear.

In fact, Traders, Area Partnership, Community Council and many residents consider this betrayal of community cohesion displayed by the charrette. Some see it as a cynical mugging of the most economically successful town in the county, likely to dissuade locals and visitors alike from using the town centre. It risks the demise of retail vitality—as happened when Berwick-Upon-Tweed introduced parking charges.

Indeed, ELC’s 2018 North Berwick Town Centre Strategy piously records, in Section 5.3:

  • “The town centre is well used and there are a wide range of uses represented in the town centre. Residents do the majority of their convenience food shopping here.”
  • “83% of people who live in North Berwick visit the town centre weekly; 26% visit daily, 60% use it in the evening.”
  • “North Berwick has the highest proportion of shops, cafes and restaurants out of all 6 settlements in East Lothian.”

North Berwick’s formula for success has evaded wastelands, as Kirkcaldy, Falkirk, etc. have not. It offers a template to follow for other towns in the county—none of which are getting parking charges. But then, they vote Labour; ELC regards North Berwick as a cash cow.

“Charging people to park in the town centre would not benefit local businesses and could, in fact, damage them.”

—Councillor J. Findlay, Ward Member

#1069—970 words

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