Nuclear Zub in Zummerzet?

Posted on October 27, 2013 by davidsberry

Two years after the event, no-one has yet penetrated the ruins of what was once the Fukushima nuclear power station and all fifty Japanese nuclear plants remain out of commission until someone comes up with a safety plan. Nonetheless, news out of there has been a little thin of late: the world has continued quietly on its way without really taking stock and learning lessons.

But we all received a timely reminder when this last week was bracketed by two events that nobody appears to have thought to link together:

  1. With great relief, verging on joy, the UK government announced that it had, by means of a fixed offer of 92.5p per MWH, persuaded EDF to expand its UK power station empire by building a Hinkley ‘C’ nuclear plant on the seaside in Somerset, the first in the UK since Sizewell ‘C’ two decades ago.
  2. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake (considered to be an aftershock of the 2011 quake that wrecked Fukushima and much of the adjacent coast) struck the same part of Japan but this time only causing a small 1m tsunami and no new damage to the power station.

Given these are on opposite sides of the world, what possible connection could they have? With the decommissioned Hinkley ‘A’ and operational Hinkley ‘B’ already on-site, would it not be logical to add another to the isolated site where a plentiful supply of Bristol Channel is available as cooling water? And since UK nuclear reactors have given decades of reliable and carbon-free (OK -light) energy, how else are the lights to be kept on?

Well, for one thing, Scotland is developing its renewables at such a pace and the present plant exports some 20% of its power as surplus there is a valid argument that no more conventional power stations are needed in Scotland. For another, while the UK’s nuclear safety record is indeed good, here are some disturbing facts, to spite that:

  1. Safety engineers at Torness could not prevent an RAF Tornado coming down within 1km of the station and well inside a supposed strict no-fly zone in 1999.
  2. Safety engineers at Three Mile Island (1979) could not prevent a hurried and incorrect response to mechanical failure releasing 150,000 litres of radioactive water and coming close to frying Philadelphia.
  3. Safety engineers at Chernobyl (1986) could not prevent human stupidity from overriding automatic controls during an experiment in low-power operations and frying a chunk of the admittedly-large Ukraine.
  4. Safety engineers at Fukushima (2011) had—sensibly—built an anti-tsunami wall—they just didn’t allow for the worst nature could provide and build it tall enough.

This latter brings us back to zunny Zummerzet. There are no high sea—let alone tsunami—walls around ‘A’ or ‘B’ at Hinkley, nor is there to be one at ‘C’. Engineers and geologists do not regard the Bristol Channel as seismically active  and so consider such walls superfluous. But there is a reason not to be quite so glib. All parts of the globe are subject to some seismic activity, especially in areas of now-dormant plate boundaries and the flat Somerset levels are no stranger to flooding, having been sea in Roman times.

This is not just about the huge tides in the Bristol Channel that can swing water levels by 14m and create the Severn Bore, nor that, historically, the Levels were once just marshes much like the Fens. But in the winter of 1607, both coasts of the Bristol Channel were hit by a flood that sounds far more like a tsunami than any storm-surge-on-a-Spring-tide that typifies most UK coastal floods.

Whatever caused it, it was sudden and resulted in the drowning of an estimated 2,000 or more people, with houses and villages swept away, an estimated 200 square miles (518 km2) of farmland inundated and livestock destroyed, reaching inland as far as Glastonbury and wrecking the local economy. Although patchy and scientific, several accounts survive implying no ordinary flood:

  • Some historical accounts indicate that the weather was fine e.g. “for about nine of the morning, the same being most fayrely and brightly spred, many of the inhabitants of these countreys prepared themselves to their affayres”.
  • The sea appears to have been “driven back” i.e. retreated out to sea, before the wave struck, a classic tsunami herald.
  • The wave appeared as “mighty hilles of water tombling over one another in such sort as if the greatest mountains in the world had overwhelmed the lowe villages or marshy grounds. Sometimes it dazzled many of the spectators that they imagined it had bin some fogge or mist coming with great swiftness towards them and with such a smoke as if mountains were all on fire, and to the view of some it seemed as if myriads of thousands of arrows had been shot forth all at one time.”

This last is very similar to descriptions of more recent tsunami, such as the eruption of Krakatau in 1883, where accounts refer to the sea as being ‘hilly’. The reference to dazzling, fiery mountains and myriads of arrows is reminiscent of accounts of tsunami on the Burin Peninsula (Newfoundland) in 1929, where the wave crest “was shining like car headlights”, or in Papua New Guinea in 1998 where “the wave was frothing and sparkling”.

But, if it was a Fukushima-style tsunami, what might have caused it? Some fifty miles Southwest of Donegal, the shallow Continental Shelf on which Britain sits falls away into the Atlantic abyss, plunging thousands of feet in a few miles. Taking the Boxing Day (2004) tsunami originating off Ache/Sumatra as a model, a subsea earthquake there dropped a section of the seabed by many metres over a distance of many miles, displacing huge amounts of water that created a tsunami felt all around the Indian Ocean. The Fukushima tsunami appears to have come from similar vertical movement.

It is just speculation—but highly plausible—that a similar event was caused by a section of the Continental Shelf breaking off and sliding into the deep ocean abyss would displace huge volumes of water that could create such a Tsunami. And, if it has happened once, why might it not happen again, especially as the Bristol Channel amplifies the magnitude of such events as the water is squeezed into its ever-narrowing funnel. Perhaps this happened more than once but the sparsely populated west coasts of Ireland and Scotland may not have noticed or the jagged coast may have absorbed rather than amplified it.

But in 1607, Burnham-on-Sea did have its sea wall entirely overwhelmed by water. As Hinkley ‘C’ is  3 miles away but has no plans for even a vestige of sea defences, perhaps EDF can review this piece of 400-year-old history and—somewhere in the £16bn costs involved—find the lolly to provide something sufficiently robust at least better than the late-lamented but nonetheless highly relevant Fukushima.

SomersetFloods

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From Millstone to Milestone

Posted on October 26, 2013 by davidsberry

It seems that about 139% of the population of Scotland is delighted that an agreement has been reached over a future for both the INEOS refinery and petrochemical plant. And well everyone should be—as one of the largest and most important industrial sites in Scotland, it was home to not just 1,400 jobs, but 1,400 well paying, skilled, production jobs. Where once we Scots had more such jobs than we could count, global development has left us rather more short these days.

While a job that supports a family is never to be sniffed at, it seems the recent recession has made politicians in particular rather too ready to bundle up sheer numbers and worry less about the quality and longevity of jobs created or retained. While it is welcome to have more rather than fewer jobs for people to choose from, they are not all equivalent. ONe of the reasons Osbo has been struggling to make upward movement out of the £1tn-and-growing debt chasm is that most jobs powering this sickly recovery (0.8% in Q3) are service jobs. They tend not to pay well nor to survive any belt-tightening.

What Scotland (and indeed the UK) needs are skilled jobs, such as the INEOS plant has by the hundreds. These include chemists, civil & process engineers, skilled operators of a variety of complex equipment and more universal jobs like plumbers, welders, electricians etc to be found elsewhere. If Scotland is to make its way in the world, not only should we not be losing jobs like Grangemouth but we should be knuckling down and creating them. This is an aspiration in which Scottish Enterprise has been falling down on its £1/2bn job. For a quick example of what a chocolate teapot they are, try this week’s Herald.

Actual 21st century business development has been driven by increasing globalisation and the fluid investment strategies of multinational tycoons like Jim Ratcliffe who built INEOS up from nothing into a $43bn (£30bn) turnover force in global petrochemicals. Scotland is perfectly capable of achieving such success—look at Brian Soutar with Stagecoach or Tom Farmer with Qwikfit—but we seem to have lost some of the touch we had when the Glasgow Tobacco barons of 200 years ago paved Scotland’s way into leading Victorian industry.

What went wrong at Grangemouth and nearly cost us a pivotal facility seems to have been an inability of Unite and its officials to recognise that they now operate in the 21st century and not the 19th. Consider how ludicrous it would have been for Scotland to be Europe’s prime oil & gas producer and have no indigenous ability to either refine or produce the rich spectrum of key chemicals that come from it.

To rummage on the trigger for the dispute would be treading on the political corns that should more rightly be dealt with in the not-yet-announced Falkirk by-election to replace Slugger Joyce. Far more relevant is the little-known appreciation of how demand for refinery products has changed. Grangemouth’s processes were built 40 years ago when leaded petrol, large cars and low demand for heavier volatiles was the norm. In the intervening decades, unleaded has come to power smaller cars, easing relative demand for petrol but greatly increasing it for diesel and heating oil.

The resulting mix of demand was not one that Grangemouth was built to supply and so its operation had, despite overall demand rising and business being fundamentally good started to lose money. Prior to INEOS buying the plant, BP had been able to offer generous wages and benefits (including a generous final-pay pension plan) to its generally happy and productive workers while the ‘old’ mix had kept it profitable. INEOS, being skilled in running such plants elsewhere, tried what they could to keep the ageing plant profitable.

But when it realised this was not going to work, they pondered before going to the workforce and clearly came up with a brinkmanship strategy in which they saw that they could not lose: confront the workers to accept losses to some wage/pension generosity in exchange for a guarantee that the £300m investment necessary for the future would be forthcoming. Otherwise, close the plant; stop the losses; concentrate on the rest of the INEOS empire.

Had that been all, the workers—knowing how bleak the financial climate beyond the gates is and looks like remaining—may have seen their weak position. But Pat Rafferty, a well experienced union official of the old school who cut his teeth in the industrial mayhem around the time the plant was built, thought Unite could fight this.

Back in the day when BP ran the site, when companies had little offshore interest, when governments were expected to facilitate industrial peace (especially in nationalised industries) rather than wring their hands at the periphery, picking such a fight usually worked. But Maggie showed how it could be done, however brutally and unfairly, to wrong-foot workers and their legitimate grievances: you ensure supplies from elsewhere, limit the impact of any action using forces of the state and effectively starve them out.

In the single market that the world economy has virtually become, multinationals operating across frontiers have a huge advantage over any national trade union, especially when global markets are depressed and shipping companies with cape-size tankers lying idle would sell their first-born into slavery just to keep from going under. INEOS owner Jim Ratcliffe and all his management on down would be briefed to hold the line and brazen it out once the announcement of revamp or closure was made. They made a strong case that the plant was losing £10m and practices had to change.

Rafferty, thinking in old money and unable to break postures of a lifetime, walked right into the INEOS trap and disparaged the offer they put on the table, despite the fact that management were already running down operations for H&S reasons in anticipation of some form of union action. The workforce split half-and-half, which gave INEOS the leeway to announce permanent closure and ridicule Unite which had painted its members into a losing corner.

If Rafferty and Unite were taken aback by the speed and decisiveness from INEOS, that was nothing compared to the shock wave that went through the hundreds of well paid workers who had watched their mates lose good jobs and take lesser ones and had not dreamed it would happen to them. It is a tribute to them that they quickly persuaded Unite to change tack and to Rafferty who did not do a Scargill and go down with the ship to no great purpose.

Overall, a lesson in 21st century industrial relations needs to be taken: such a plant can be a money-spinner for company and workers. And once a skilled welder needed only to cross the road to another shipyard if the owners got stroppy. But if it is seen as a skirmish in antiquated class war, there is every chance that the owner/employer will have global markets to fall back on and the absence of local alternatives will give workers Hobson’s Choice. This Grangemouth event must be seen as pivotal in industrial relations, much like the Miners’ Strike.

In a suitably embittered frenzy, Daily Record, tracked Jim Ratcliffe down to his yacht—Hampshire II, moored on the Côte d’Azure and valued at £130m—quoted him as saying:

“Workers’ wages and pensions had to be frozen or cut because they were too high. It was necessary for Grangemouth to enter the modern world because it had been living in the past.”

That may stick in the craw of many of us, especially union members. But, truth be told, he’s quite right.

Jim Ratcliffe, Founder and Chairman of INEOS

What DOES it take to make Jim Ratcliffe, Founder and Chairman of INEOS happy?

Posted in Commerce | Tagged | Leave a comment

Free Lunch Indigestion

Posted on October 23, 2013 by davidsberry

October 9th’s Hootsmon carried a minor tirade from David O’Neill, President of CoSLA and Leader of the Labour administration of North Ayrshire Council in which he asserts that the present freeze on Council Tax in Scotland—in place for the last six years—is unsustainable. That he has made this assertion is neither new nor surprising. But what is surprising is that the Hootsmon editorial takes him to task for it—and yet the man has a point.

Let’s look beyond the Pavlovian nay-saying of most Labour spokespeople when it comes to any chance to do down  SNP policy—and make the (admittedly brave) assumption that local politics is neither so partisan, nor so short-sighted. Let’s also ignore that Cara Hilton seems to be making up Labour policy on the hoof as she struggles to win in Irn Broon’s back yard (she claimed Labour is ‘solidly behind’ the Council Tax freeze) and presume a more senior and experienced figure than Cara has it right.

This debate needs a resolution, given either outcome of the indy referendum. We need to consider what Scotland can or cannot afford—and our balanced decision needs to come well before 2016/17. Some fiscal drivel from Project Fear—including Ruth Davidson in a good but ill-informed conference speech—is going the rounds that Scotland would face a £32bn bill. Peter Jones’ Op Ed piece in the Hootsmon on October 1st accurately nails that particular canard.

Any sensible strategy must accommodate reality. The Scottish Government’s budget, once around £30bn (2009/10), is now £4bn short of that and will continue to deteriorate because of a declining block grant from Westminster. Given that the thick end of the wedge is a decline to £24.5bn by 2016/17 before any rise can be anticipated, some rethinking what a budget cut of 25% can realistically sustain is overdue.

And since the expected turning point back to growth has been revised further into the future (twice), we find ourselves in the highly unusual position of agreeing with Johann Lamont (we think, because she has swithered about on it): that the new fiscal reality demands a root-and-branch budget review is needed. We Scots have shibboleths that are overdue for re-examination, including:

  1. Council Tax Freeze. From raising ~20% of their income from Council Tax, its freezing since 2006/07 has dropped the proportion to 14%, with much of council loss compensated for by increase in Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) given to councils. It is speculation how much councils might have raised tax with no freeze but taking a low average of 3% each year across all 32 councils means a total of £1,633m is not being raised.
  2. Free Personal Care. Costing £194m in 2002/03 and doubling to £384m by 2008/09, this policy is now running at £458m and the number of those entitled is expected to rise by 26% before 2025. It last came under the spotlight in 2008, as a result of rising costs and concerns over some councils operating waiting lists for free personal care, a postcode lottery in eligibility and charges being wrongly made for services such as food preparation. Then, an independent review for the Scottish government, chaired by Lord Sutherland, expected free personal care to be sustainable until 2013, when those increasing numbers of older people would start to bite.
  3. Concessionary Travel. Although intended to free the elderly from their homes and give them cheaper access to shops and social opportunities, this has become something of a monster. Not only does it start at 60 and has no means testing but examples are legion of people not just traveling the country in express buses but taking whole vacations on the back of it. The result is a £248m bill.
  4. Free Prescriptions. Though they started out being free in 1948, by the time the Scottish Government got their hands on the NHS, there was still a nominal fee per item which was abolished by the SNP. Since then, usage has grown to 95m items annually costing just over £1bn.
  5. Free Eye Tests. Since introduction in 2006, the number of eye tests performed increased by almost 50% and a general improvement in vision health has been rather offset by a clear disparity between rich and poor, with the former taking most advantage of the programme and costs running around £95m per annum.
  6. Winter Fuel Allowance
  7. Free TV Licences

Admittedly the last two are UK-sourced and no Scottish Government will have control over them as long as we remain in the Union, although they would likely be picked up as currently implemented in the event of Independence. The threat to all these benefits was first flagged up by Scotland’s Auditor General, Robert Black, in the second half of 2009. It raised its head again in the more recent Independent Budget Review Panel Report – the “Beveridge Report” – which stated very plainly:

“The principle of universality in the delivery of many of our public services, such as concessionary travel, prescription charges, eye examinations, free personal and nursing care and tuition fees is commendable, but simply may no longer be affordable. A debate needs to be had on whether those who can afford to pay might be invited to do so, thus allowing better targeting of those in most need.”

In this era of ever-constricting budgets that has yet to come to a clear and demonstrable end, rather than pushing the popular (and populist) line that Scotland’s budget is balanced and all of the above is affordable, we should be considering what is NOT being invested in by way of services in order to preserve the shibboleths listed above. We hold John Swinney to be the most astute finance minister either Edinburgh or London have seen for a while but it seems his colleagues are twisting his arm on this one

But what could he do? Without laying waste to the principles that make them so attractive, what could be done that would ease the squeaking of local government pips?

  • Council Tax. Allow councils a rise of 2% on condition that all those paying prior to the start date were given the same as discount. This means: pay for next year by April 1st and your council tax is effectively frozen. By receiving the money early, councils can make more than 2% by putting it to work immediately. Net income boost: ~£100m. It also reclaims some of the power lost to the centre as councils are dictated to over tax.
  • Free Personal Care. If this were means tested—as financial payments for care homes already is—at least a third of current costs would be met individuals still able to afford it. This would be preferable to stretching the present budget with economy measures, such as the unpopular 15-minute visit, and releases £150m for other things.
  • Concessionary Travel. Undoubtedly one of the most popular measures, it could still be effective without being so profligate. There seems no logical reason why travel should be country-wide and not just local, why it needs to be available at peak times and why eligibility should not start at 65. Around 1/3rd of the burgeoning numbers of trips currently being made would thereby switch to normal fares at a saving of £80m.
  • Free Prescriptions & Eye Tests. The logic why these should be free when basic health elements like dentistry is not is not obvious and seems arbitrary. By using means testing mentioned above, those perfectly capable of (and often willing) to pay for services would do so, with NHS administrators given the job of managing this (and other commercial questions such as charging for health tourism). Allowing for the extra work monitoring entitlement, there should be income of around £150m from prescriptions and £25m from eye tests.

The argument that charging causes unnecessary administration overheads does not hold water: means testing exists for many things from free school meals to benefits so the issue of a single personal service card (not unlike the present concession card) used across all services would be a minimal cost per person.

The result would be (taking the amounts proposed in the bullets above) of giving the Scottish Government over £1/2bn more to spend on more urgent issues—or absorbing half of the annual reduction from Westminster they are faced with each year. In times of plenty, why not be generous to people who pay their way?

But when demand is rising and many people are perfectly capable of handling the charges involved, cutting back on essential investment in the future because monies are being locked up in populist policies like the above seems a short-sighted, if not self-serving approach by an otherwise competent government.

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Stop the World: England Wants to Get Off

Posted on October 6, 2013 by davidsberry

Around fifty years ago, the Scottish Nationalist (as it was then) Party was a joke to Labour. Ensconced as their MPs and councillors were in political fortress built out of Clyde shipyards, Motherwell steel mills, Fife coal mines and newly sprawling council estates, they laughed at the fledgling party—if they thought of them at all.

Then came Hamilton in 1967 and Winnie Ewing’s ground-breaking 1,779 majority in a place that traditionally weighed the Labour votes to save time. Since then, there has always been an SNP parliamentary presence but their advances did not appear to threaten Labour before 1974, when Labour’s Scottish Secretary Willie Ross confessed to Winnie that “It’s not the eleven wins that frighten me, Winnie, it’s your thirty-five second places“. From that point on, Labour has developed a deep hatred of the SNP for winning more and more of what they had seen as ‘their turf’ in seats, councils, geography and influence.

With a few creditable exceptions (Douglas Alexander springs to mind), this deep-seated resentment now so dominates party thinking that strategy and almost all campaigns are driven by it—see Gerry Hassan’s recent contribution in the Hootsman for a concise take. This is a pity, not just for Labour, but for Scotland as a whole. Though they have achieved landslides throughout the 1980’s, that merely underscored their impotence. Despite more recent decline, Labour is still a force in Scotland comparable to the SNP: the two together represent three votes in four and dwarf all remaining parties.

What if they found common ground?

Because, looking at what each party espouses, there are few stumbling blocks to that. Both want a fairer, more just, more egalitarian society. Neither has much time for Tory toff elitism, ineffectual Lib-Dem flannel, BNP racism or UKIP xenophobia. Both could find common ground with Greens and (at a pinch) socialists; both understand the need for a robust economy to fund their ambitions for civic enrichment; both regard the NHS and social programmes as pillars of enlightenment giving a better society; both have no patience with fascism in any disguise, especially blaming our own ills on foreigners.

Perhaps the venom that is voiced—and not all from Labour’s side—derives from having too MUCH in common and a consequent difficulty in distinguishing messages. The one difference on which they both agree is the matter of Scottish independence. Labour’s socialist past has a long and noble history of internationalism. Perhaps that’s why they see the SNP in erroneously truncated terms—they are nationalist; therefore they see all others as enemies and want to separate from everything. But this is simplistic as well as unfair.

There are two key matters here that Labour in Scotland seems too thrawn to grasp:

  1. The SNP is international: pro-Europe; pro-Nordic Council; pro-free trade; pro-UN; pro immigration; pro-cultural exchanges and (perhaps most importantly) pro-England. All they want is to establish Scotland as a normal country between Saudi Arabia and Seychelles in the world-wide panoply of countries. What happens then is up to the Scottish people and the government they choose but most of us have faith in the good sense and general outgoing inclusive curiosity about the world that Scots have exhibited since the days of the Hanseatic Ports trade and the Auld Alliance
  2. England isn’t particularly international. Used to centuries of dominance and getting its own way, it has yet to find a place in this 21st century world with which it is comfortable. Never having been in close contact with most nearby countries except on a war footing, the culture is more naturally conservative and therefore prey to the more isolationist elements of the Tory party. Together with the rise of BNP and UKIP (restricted entirely to England within the British Isles), this forms a natural majority that prejudices both the more enlightened internal policies and the more consensual international policies that the SNP and Labour share.

In short: the longer Scotland is held on to by England (and, with it, the Scottish Labour Party) the harder it will be for them to achieve the open and egalitarian society claimed to be its goal. Most Labour members know in their hearts that the 1997-2010 Labour governments were far more Islington- than Ingliston-driven. They were elected by the ambitions of the new yuppie middle classes, not by social principles familiar to the average Labour member.

Such differences with England (& things in common between the two parties) came to a head this week with Afirye’s attempt to shunt the whole European Referendum two years earlier and thereby hijack the Tory bill being teed up. This would not allow Cameron time to renegotiate parts of the treaty disliked by the more restless backwoods backbenchers. Whichever way that whole thing goes, we are faced with years of despair among Britain’s friends throughout the EU as we squabble over small-minded detail with no more affability or style than Maggie’s ill-informed hand-bagging displayed in the 1980’s.

Why would any Labour member want more of that? Combined with the loss of their tranche of Scottish MPs, that would condemn England to almost permanent Tory government. What happened to their real internationalism? What happened to their hostility to the expensive disgrace of a nuclear arsenal pointed at no-one? What happened to their bitter frustration throughout the 1980’s at having Tory policy rammed down their throat at every turn—right to buy; miners’ strike; poll tax; city’s ‘Big Bang’; bus deregulation rail privatisation; utlility privatisation; BT privatisation; privatisation of parts of the NHS.

Roll forward 25 years and we’re in another phase of the same obloquy. The PO is next. Pensions, social services, annual increments are all slashed; Britain—already the most unequal place in Western Europe—becomes more unequal year by year. Does Labour really think that if Scotland stays in the Union it’s going to be able to arrest all that any more than their ‘feeble fifty’ Labour MP’s did in the 1980’s?

But, imagine the alternative: Labour competing with the SNP to make Scotland a world example of an egalitarian society, built in a small country from its creative people and its rich resources. Learning from Scandinavia, putting its oil and energy wealth to positive use and not just funding nukes and peddling aggression wherever America’s paranoia points to. Imagine the two parties competing with innovative ideas for the votes of an enlightened Scottish population who capitalise on their world-class universities and splendid natural resources to be a beacon for the Rwandas and Malawis, the Nicaraguas and Costa Ricas, even the Estonias and Lithuanias (although if we don’t get cracking those last two at least will soon be teaching us how to achieve for our people).

It would be a country of which the great English people—once they finally wake from the myopic malaise into which Tory/UKIP small-mindedness is leading them—might be proud, even envious, to have us as their northern neighbour, much as the somewhat wayward Belgians envy the more effective, more prosperous, more globally respected Dutch.

Or you can support a union degrading further into a hard-up, third-rate power that still thinks acting as a diligent US poodle on the world stage earns its people more merit than opprobrium.

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…As Ithers See Us

Posted on October 4, 2013 by davidsberry

The independence debate encompasses cool heads, indifferent ostriches, emotional types and sheer bampots on both sides. But what should bother most Scots is that the bampots seem to be in the ascendency. A cosmopolitan friend in the States with international experience (including Scotland) recommended the following Op Ed piece from the New York Times. It is re-blogged here in full, so accurately does it whack this potentially destructive nail of bampot dominance on the head. Both sides of the debate ought to be concerned enough to address this. Soon.

NYTimes

Does Scotland Want Independence?

October 2, 2013   By DENISE MINA

GLASGOW — IN just under a year, Scotland will hold a referendum on whether to become an independent country. The issue is already so divisive that the comedian Susan Calman had to call for an end to the “name-calling, swearing and death threats” she received after making jokes about it on a radio show. It’s so controversial that it would be bad manners to bring it up with anyone who doesn’t agree with you already.

Without unpacking any of the issues of nationhood, belonging or identity, we’re stuck in a rut and things are getting nasty. Each side blames the other. Fervor has enormous social currency. The capacity to listen to people we disagree with is framed as indecision.

I recently appeared on a radio program to discuss the referendum. I was billed as “undecided,” and there were three men on the panel, one pro, one con, and one an academic political analyst. Two of them had a brutal falling out before the discussion even began — in fact, it was over the group e-mail chain giving us directions to the studio. It made me nostalgic for the ’80s; it had been so long since I had seen anyone called a Communist Stalinist.

Anyway, during the course of the show I outed myself as not “undecided,” but sick to death of the debate’s simplistic binary framing. None of you are listening, I said; voters are tuning out. Referendums have to be framed as yes or no because nuance makes terrible law, but the discussion needs to be expansive because independence is such a complex proposition.

It went down quite well. The rivals finally made eye contact. I felt, quite deeply, that in shifting the agenda from an adversarial one, I had won. Outside on the pavement we stood together and the rivals apologized for their manners. I felt like Gandhi, except with his foot on the chest of a toppled British Empire, his little walnutty face laughing triumphantly at its sobbing widows. Take that, binary discourse.

Then the Yes man took me aside and asked, how would I like him to seem to be listening? If he seemed to be listening, would that sway my vote? He confided that he’d made contact with people through the Yes campaign that he simply couldn’t have met otherwise. His contact book was bulging. First-name terms. Good for business. That was creepy.

I had a tip for him. During the program he had suggested that independence would be more popular if every person in Scotland knew they would be £500 — about $800 — better off every year if we became independent. As a writer, I’d made a mental note to counsel him that £500 was a bad number, too round, £478.43 was more believable. But in the end I didn’t say anything.

The truth is, we don’t really know what Scottish people want, let alone what independence will mean for us. We know that Scotland votes in a different pattern from the rest of Britain: the current coalition government is dominated by the Conservatives, who have a single Scottish M.P. (and Margaret Thatcher never won a national election here). But we don’t know whether this is a result of genuine political difference or of protest votes, cast in the assumption that they won’t do anything dangerous.

If Scotland leaves Britain, will we be allowed to remain within the European Union? Accepting an independent Scotland might set a precedent for Catalan separatists in Spain and the Walloons in Belgium. It could lead to the atrophy of an already tremulous European project. Rumors abound that the castles of the Highlands are being bought by Spanish, Greek and Russian millionaires in anticipation of the enormous tax cuts independence could bring.

The Scottish first minister, Alex Salmond—head of the Scottish National Party, whose raison d’être centers on independence—has been cozying up to Rupert Murdoch and Donald J. Trump. There’s been much talk of an Ireland-style business-friendly environment. Before that Mr. Salmond’s model was Iceland. Imagine all the small nations of the world saying a collective prayer that Alex Salmond doesn’t mention them in a speech and jinx their economy. Some people, very laudably, hope that as a smaller country we will be able to take a lead in eco-tech, developing sustainable energy sources and electric cars.

But sadly, we’re not really discussing any of these things. We’re discussing yes or no.

The rest of Britain is baffled, but senses the anger. Nigel Farage, a British member of the European Parliament who roughly equates with America’s own dear Rand Paul, except really smug and annoying, was chased out of Edinburgh earlier this year by an angry mob.

He put it down to “anti-English” feeling, despite the protesters’ making their objections very clear in their chants of “racist” and “homophobe.” He tried to escape in two different taxis, both of whose drivers asked him to get out.

So, let’s hurry up and blame the media: adversarial debate is full of drama and arrives at a conclusion in time for the adverts. Tweets are short and good for the rhythmic call and response of angry debate. Make no mistake, the only clear side of this debate is that intelligent public discourse matters, and that we’re not getting any of it.

At an event on cultural identity at the Edinburgh College of Art, I recently witnessed a room of art-hipsters cower as an elderly man in a kilt walked in. Everyone mistakenly thought he was an angry nationalist who had come to disrupt the event. Actually, he was an eccentric Englishman. He made a great contribution by talking us through his outfit and sitting with his legs open.

That’s more than you can say for most of our elected officials and cultural commentators.

Denise Mina is the author, most recently, of the novel “God and Beasts.”

NYTimes

(end of re-blog)

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Scotland’s Peaceable Future

Posted on October 2, 2013 by davidsberry

This week the UK Parliament’s Defence Committee weighed into the independence debate with their orchestrated contribution to this rising Unionist babble about how crazy any country would be to want out of the UK. The committee said Scots “deserve to be presented with as full a picture as possible from both sides in the debate prior to the referendum.” Thereupon five questions were posed for the Yes campaign to answer.

Let’s leave aside much unsubstantiated “we’ll be better together” (just ‘cos) coming from the unionist camp and recognise that the MP’s may actually have a point. Answers will help towards an informed decision next September 18th if we consider their five questions. Scotland faces few enemies, especially if, as we hope, an amicable arrangement with England can be reached. Other than a Russian Arctic Fleet deploying off Shetland, it’s hard to imagine a plausible war scenario that would involve us. But we should plan for  unknown futures. Though speaking neither for the Yes campaign nor the SNP, most private citizens paying attention could make a competent response. Here’s mine:

    1. How would a sovereign Scottish government ensure the defence and security of an independent Scotland? The defence of Scotland would be very different from that of the UK. Its international involvement would be as a part of UN peace deployments and NATO co-operation. As such, it would not be involved in the next unilateral Iraq or Afghan war and would cease to be a terrorist target the way the current UK provocation of others (Lybia; Argentina; Spain; etc) makes it. It would provide an effective defence for North Sea structures and a long-range maritime patrol ability over huge swathes of the Atlantic; Britain is currently capable of neither. Also, by having balanced light ground forces (no nukes or heavy tanks) and reviving famous Scottish regiments, Scotland’s more flexible force would better suit modern ‘fire-brigade’ actions with greater numbers of front-line troops than now.
    2. For what purposes would Scottish armed forces be used? As above: as a part of UN peace deployments and NATO co-operation. A variety of light infantry, special forces, frigates and helicopters would be available for deployment with allies in joint conventional defence; regular infantry, fast attack boats and jet fighters in-country. One or more battalions would serve as UN peacekeepers. We would decline to provide a cod-piece for wherever the next US John-Wayne-esque ‘world policeman’ involvement occurred.
    3. How would Scottish armed forces be structured and trained, and where would they be based? Land forces would retain the present six battalions and revive a further three to form: a) specialist rapid deployment brigade; b) conventional infantry brigade; c) two reserve infantry brigades, all with arty/signal/logistic components, based at Ft George, Glencorse/Redford and Arbroath. Navy would deploy: a) 3 frigates; b) two fast patrol boat flotillas; c) two minesweeper/ASW/FPV flotillas, based at Coulport & Rosyth. Air force would comprise a) two fighter sqdns; b) two attack/recon helicopter sqdns; c) one ASR helicopter sqdn; d) one L-R maritime patrol sqdn, based at Leuchars, Lossie & Prestwick (plus ASR/light presence in W. Isles, Orkney/Shetland and Buchan). Training facilities would be internal (e.g. Arbroath) and external with Allies (England and/or NATO)
    4. How much would it cost to equip, support and train an independent Scotland’s armed forces and how much of this could be procured and delivered domestically? Upon independence, Scotland should be entitled to 9% of all MoDs holdings and equipment. Given Scotland will not require nuclear (or any other) subs; heavy tanks; heavy artillery; heavy transport/lift; aircraft carriers; destroyers; global deployment support; overseas bases; indigenous weapons procurement (except naval) or separate armed forces departments, a considerable proportion of holdings and equipment Scotland does need should more than cover initial requirements. The posited £2.5bn defence budget should be adequate to balance the forces as above over time. Whether preference for procurement goes to English suppliers will depend on the level of co-operation offered by the new rump English government.
    5. And how many jobs in the defence sector would be placed at risk? As the current arrangement means that Scotland contributes ~£3.5bn to defence and has less than £2.8bn spent on defence in the country, the situation could hardly get much worse. There would be no sense in not continuing to provide the aircraft carriers and the GCS development. The 20,000 workers at Clyde/Rosyth and related industries would continue to provide top-quality warships; the question is more if England would cut its nose off to spite its face and not buy them. Conversion to renewables or oil engineering would be a less desirable alternative. Non-naval armaments jobs in Scotland are minimal.

    The hon. members also wanted to know more about the proposed Scottish defence force, including the numbers of combat troops and the numbers and types of aircraft and vessels which would be needed. Refer to an earlier blog on suggested details down to unit level. For a realistic evaluation on an appropriate scale, consider countries of comparable size and ambition like Norway and Denmark, who neither like nor harbour nukes, yet are both considered making valuable contributions towards Europe’s defence.

And, speaking of Denmark, John Dyrby Paulsen is foreign and defence spokesman for the ruling Social Democrats there. He’s also chairman of the Nato Parliamentary Assembly’s transatlantic relations committee. In his (obviously qualified) opinion when asked if Scotland would have difficulty in becoming a NATO member, his comment was:

“In my view, no, you wouldn’t have to apply for it,” he said. “From my point of view you would be invited to be a part of it and you would have to say ‘no’ if you didn’t want it, rather than say ‘yes’ to get it.

“Because you have been a part of Nato since the Second World War and you have delivered your capabilities, you have sort of gained from the alliance common defence policies since 65 years now. It would be natural for you to be part of it after independence, if you were to get that.”

Asked if forcing the rest of the UK into a hugely expensive relocation of Trident from Faslane and Coulport would count against Scotland, Mr Paulsen said: “It would have absolutely no impact, whether you have nuclear weapons or not. I don’t see it as a problem, no.”

The committee might wish to discuss this with Mr Paulsen as part of their inquiry. And, while they’re at it, they might like to consider where on the English coast they would like us to dump their seven nuclear subs mouldering for decades at Rosyth. Berwick is not an option: not only is there no secure space but there’s folding money says the people there will vote themselves and the Tweed back into Scotland once they see how well we do.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | 2 Comments

How to Recruit a Twitterati Lynch Mob

Posted on October 1, 2013 by davidsberry

It had been a good couple of days away from it all. Being out of 3G and WiFi has its blessings and spurred a couple of thoughts. So, just to get myself back in the swing of things, for around 24 hours I tried tweeting/retweeting on a dozen or so of—to me at least—pithy issues in the hope of generating some debate and alternate insights.

I needn’t have bothered. As with similar forays I had tried in the past, there seem to be few out there with much insight, most of whom appear to tweet cautiously (pictures of the Rest-and-be-Thankful or pious comments on party conferences). I ran the idea of setting a cat among these Twitterati pigeons by a friend who acted as if I had just suggested trailing muddy boots across his wife’s new carpet: ‘cautioned against it’ would be heavily understating the vigour of his opposition.

But…being who I am (for readers unfamiliar with detail, I am not much of a respecter of unearned authority, or anal health & safety sticklers or those who believe political correctness and the moral high ground go ipse facto hand-in-hand) I persisted in testing the waters. There was an innocuous tweet with a picture of Ruth Davidson doing her bit for Better Together at the Tory Conference, holding one of their posters, which urged us all to keep the British family together. That would do nicely. My tweet said:

@RuthDavidsonMSP sez: “Good to see @UK_Together spread the word” Is there no contradiction in her promoting ‘family’ pic.twitter.com/gqvveVw9bv”

No question that was provocative: indeed, that was rather the point. But the following few hours were the same as if you had gone fishing for a few mackerel and landed a shoal of sharks. There were people early on who challenged the undoubted implications in the above, but did so in a firm and even-handed way—i.e. they gave me the benefit of the doubt but asked what I specifically meant. I want to thank the dozen or so of them for their forebearance to which I extended the following amplification:

“For the record, (recipients) I think those w/no family should keep opinions private.”

Which, though still out on a limb and deserving of challenge, ought to have knocked suspicion of homophobia on the the head. Or so I thought. But that was just the beginning. While the usual suspects among those hostile to whatever I say (even if I just quote the phone book) were to the fore, a whole new congregation of hostility joined them and, perhaps most disappointing to me, a number of people familiar with me and my against-the-flow utterances over the years put as venal an interpretation on my original tweet as any of the signed-up hate squad. It was quite an eye-opener.

But my original theory—that real debate is hard to find but you only have to stick a toe into un-PC waters and the moral pirhanas have half your leg before you feel the first bite—seems to stand. There has been debate previously—egged on some by their opponents—that Twitter was awash with Nasty Nats. Brian Wilson, Jim Murphy, David Mundell et al disparaged their harsh, condemnatory hostility as unworthy of the debate. Well, I’m a nat and (the foregoing notwithstanding) not nasty (if you’ve read this far, you may as well find out why by continuing), yet you could have cut the venom with a knife.

First off, my one and only fulsome apology goes to Ms Davidson. I used her and her sexuality (though never specifically mentioned) as bait for the morally oversensitive. The fact that no-one gets to be Tory Leader in Scotland without being able to shrug off such minor jibes as mine is not the point. Her personal life should not be fair game and I made it so to make my point. I have apologised to her for doing that.

And to the (so far) ~57 other tweets that range from unsubstantiated prejudgement to insults, I would ask them to cite—even if I were a homophobic bigot, which I emphatically deny—more than a flimsy hook baited like this one before they go overboard in venting  spleen online. Ask yourself if communication on Twitter, let alone the debate on Scotland’s future and the sum of human knowledge, is advanced by your contribution. And, though my second, amplifying statement (above) is flawed in its attempt to project my opinion on that of another person, I would argue that decent debate should allow such flaws without a black sentencing wig being donned with each transgression.

I cheerfully confess to being a flawed debater. But no statement I have ever made was intentionally homophobic, racist, anti-feminist or any other form of disrespect for other human beings, no matter their provenance or preference. I have disparaged some that I felt were being overly hostile to me but it takes some to rile me and—in being flawed myself—I do almost always see and appreciate the humanity in others. In short, I respect all and seek common ground.

So if any responsible for the 57 ‘hostile’ comments still feel aggrieved, comment here and I will respond to all that are not simply egregiously hostile/insulting. I want a Scotland where people talk to each other (hence my original frustration) and do so in a way that does not resemble lobbing grenades between trenches (see Tweets of Shame below). Nobody remembered that I have praised, quoted and retweeted Ruth Davidson in the past, despite my own hostility to Conservatives and much of what they stand for. We need to understand one another if we are going to have a prayer of discussing options for what matters to us all. Simply jumping all over what others seem to say will not lead to that.

Perhaps I don’t have as broad a mind as I think I have, but I’m trying to improve it.

Are you?

Appendices

The Only One to ‘Get’ It: @Mr_Mark_Brown Ahhh, so this is a parody account after all. Stand at ease folks…

Best Response goes to: @Taffoma Mother Theresa never had kids, but I always respected her opinion!

Second Place goes to: @GeoLaird No is the short answer, but Ruth Davidson needs to learn to hold the sign level

Third Place goes to: @euanmccolm and people without trident missiles in the shed shouldn’t talk nukes.

Tweets of Shame

@greiglam Thank god you only came “ve-e-ery” close to becoming an MSP in 2011. Desperate stuff. With views like those, I feel sorry for your family.

@JamieJamjrw Another ridiculous tweet from @DavidSBerry. Contributes nothing to the debate. Will you ever learn?

@ochayethenews Dickensian! No child or partner but still my community

@Anniewells12 what a complete Pratt

@Jamie4Labour Do your views extend to the Catholic Church or just gay people?

@GeoLaird best quit, you are only digging a deeper hole, real lack of talent in SNP

@endless_psych Glad to see @DavidSBerry was only very close to being one of our MSPs with ill considered tweets like that! FFS. It’s the 21st century mate

‏@dagwells for the record I think those with opinions like yours should keep quiet.

@colmhowardlloyd  @DavidSBerry asks what @RuthDavidsonMSP would know about families? Because LGBT don’t have families? Idiot..

@RossMcCaff everyone has a family you Fucking moron

@Lrhewat I’m sure you do (have a wonderful supportive family). Don’t let this ignorant mug dampen that.

@biscuit_ersed well aren’t *you* a nasty little man.

@DoctorWallis For the record, you should probably consider keeping your opinions private.

@Lrhewat I’m sure you do. Don’t let this ignorant mug dampen that.

@TheBellesPal Deary me Dave, big foot in big gub again. Dignified response Ruth, he is not worthy.

@MajorDMalpas *Ignorant peasant alert* you must feel so proud David.

@LawryONeill There really is no excuse in this day and age for this sort of nonsensical input

@andyneil_After reading this, I have to say that I’m pleased that you’re no longer in the SNP.

@sonnim8 a bit like heir apparent Osborne talkin about working class. Not a clue!

@indigohumbly plonkers is the only word to describe you

@GarethJAnderson You’re a sad individual, aren’t you? Do you even know what family means?

@greiglam As you can tell from his professional-looking website graphics!

@Fireflysghost &you should be thePosterBoy for #AbortionAsAChoice

@AndrewSouthside Thanks for the info. He’s not fit to hold public office. For the record nothing. It was a homophobic attack & @theSNP should kick u out. Perhaps someone should say the same to @DavidSBerry about his homophobic attack on @RuthDavidsonMSP #shameful

@mrjamesmack My guess is that the SNP leadership will hope @DavidSBerry follows his own Twitter biog and spends more time under the sea after today

@Squidge142 for the record Mr Berry, stupid, illogical, offensive tweet. Say sorry move on

@FraserForsyth Last R/T shows the SNP are still Scotland’s Nasty Party thanks to @DavidSBerry

@tommy_ball that is possibly the most bizarre sentence I’ve ever seen in Scottish politics. Thank God Iain Gray beat you in East Lothian.

@libertycaledoni your point was lost in your moronic ramblings! Distasteful and sublimely ignorant!

@alandssmith It’s a case being nowhere near as bright as he likes to think he is. I found it interesting that in your “apology” you use the word “fulsome” which usually means insincere.

@jasoneccles bigoted tweet alert

@haitch7 elected officials??? Heaven help us.

@euanmccolm this stuff about you “using” ruth to make a twitter point is pitiful. you’re making a bigger fool of yourself.

@daftquine He’s a very silly man. Type that always seeks a platform. & worse…they don’t know that they don’t know!

@UnionistRichard Unfortunately this sort of attitude sums up the separatists; they foment division and discord wherever they can.

@euanmccolm I don’t need to do that (describe why it was seen as homophobic), you idiot. It was a repulsive thing to write.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | 3 Comments

Head Examination

Posted on September 30, 2013 by davidsberry

This weekend, a minor fracas broke out in Scottish education circles that barely broke the surface of the media. Professor Andy Hargreaves, an educationalist based at Boston College in the United States, was reported as saying that “England’s education system was obsessed with testing children almost to destruction” and that Scotland’s “will become better than its English counterpart if its fledgling school curriculum is implemented effectively.”

Education secretary Mike Russell found that understandably encouraging, commenting “Such a strong international endorsement of Curriculum for Excellence shows we are moving in the right direction”. And yet, Carole Ford, retired head of Kilmarnock Academy and former president of School Leaders Scotland retorted “the main problem is that there’s no external assessment whatsoever in the pri­mary sector. Teachers know their kids, and don’t like marking them down.”

Clearly there is no meeting of minds between the minister and the chalk face—but then there seldom is. Education has to be one of the worst areas of endeavour in Scotland where those who practice it are most at loggerheads with those who govern it. However, this should not be seen as round umpteen of that bout—and still less another jingoistic ‘yah-boo-sucks’ one-up-man-ship on England—but time for some serious anaysis.

Everybody liked this year’s school exam results which were (again) better than last year’s. But, as this blog has pointed out, there is a natural collusion of teachers, pupils and government in making it so because no-one gains if they get worse. Good results are the key to a university education, which everyone from government to employers are claiming is an unalloyed good. But, with the proportion going to university rising from 19% in 1989 to over 40% now, the mismatch of school focus with graduate reality has become damaging both to students and the economy.

A 2008 study by Francis Green and Yu Zhu at the University of Kent found that a third of graduates were “overqualified”, doing work that wouldn’t usually require a university degree. One out of every 10 graduates was “really overqualified” – doing a job that didn’t use any of their costly university training. Spicerhaart, the lettings agent, has its own graduate-training scheme. Only firsts and 2:1s need apply; stick it out for two years, and you can manage a local lettings agency. What’s getting lost in all this is the original virtue of a Scottish education—breadth and flexibility—as opposed to a focus of training for professional careers via narrowing ‘A’ level subjects and ‘The Greats’ that has so long dominated English education.

Examining Scottish school results shows how far this has already gone with league tables that focus on university-qualifying Highers achieved. This applies in spades to the private schools but they pride themselves as hothouses for future high-flying careers so you get what it says on the very expensive tin. But the rest of the 384 high schools in Scotland exhibit a huge variety of results and, unfortunately, an even wider swathe of NEET (not in employment, education or training) among its former pupils.

STV has published its own league table of state schools, but this is ranked purely on the percentage of the S4 cohort in each school that achieves 5 of more higher passes in later years. On that measure, East Renfrewshire and East Dumbartonshire pack heavily into the top decile, along with Aberdeen’s Cults, Edinburgh’s Boroughmuir and Glasgow’s Jordanhill. Trailing in the lowest decile are Dundee’s Craigie, Edinburgh’s Wester Hailes and Glasgow’s Castlemilk. East Lothian comes in averaging in the middle, with three schools well above and three others well below that average.

All of this is fairly unsurprising. Such league tables are criticised by many for not taking many key factors into account, not least the strong correlation that exists between socially deprived areas and poor academic performance. It is understandably difficult to perform well at school in a substandard, perhaps noisy or disruptive household, with neither support nor example from them to achieve among peer pressure that is all too often the exact opposite. But what if allowance is made for this by multiplying higher results by a factor that can be over two, using the free school meal entitlement as a measure of the depredation in the school catchment?

The results are surprising in that, despite new entries in the top decile (like Notre Dame in both Glasgow and Inverclyde—61st to 2nd & 93rd to 5th respectively) the clutch of East Renfrewshire & East Dunbartonshire schools, plus most of the usual suspects remain. At the other end, while Wester Hailes still languishes in the bottom decile, Craigie moves up into the ninth decile (367th to 323rd) and Castlemilk into the eighth (371st to 306th). That may be a better estimate of their actual performance but it is hard to argue that pupils are leaving with adequate qualifications, even for the social circumstances.

In fact, most disappointing is the case of East Lothian, whose six high schools fall into two distinct groups of three. Evaluated under the STV approach, some disparity might be expected because of a variety of social backgrounds of the six main towns in the county. However, applying the social modifier described above, almost all of their ratings deteriorate—and in a uniform manner across all six, dropping two deciles in five out of six cases, as shown in Table 1.

Comparison of STV School Result Ratings with Modified Ratings

Table 1—Comparison of STV School Result Ratings with Modified Ratings

This seems entirely unexpected. That the three better performing schools should be lower rated when social factors are added would seem logical. But those schools with the more deprived population do equally as badly with the modification and the EL Average drops two deciles in sympathy with that. Examining the modifier for the bottom three, it seems their free school meal entitlement (9.8 – 12.0) is only just above those of the better performing trio (4.4 – 7.7).

So, in East Lothian’s case, any adjustment for social deprivation to explain disparities appears misplaced—1,000’s of new homes in all three western school catchment areas has brought the social mix of the county nearly into balance, with none near the 54 rating of Edinburgh’s Castlebrae or the 43 at Glasgow’s Lochend. (In fact the worst 20 are all in Edinburgh or Glasgow). So what’s the explanation for such disparity? Perhaps it’s a symptom of community dissolution amidst relative affluence?

Examination of school sport in East Lothian soon disproves that. Rugby is the game of choice in all East Lothian High Schools and the Scottish Rugby Union maintains a score card on all Scottish schools, most of whom play rugby as the main sport. They also compile a table for rating teams across the local authorities, shown in Table 2.

Table 2—SRU Rating of Top Performing School Rugby Teams by Council

Table 2—SRU Rating of Top Performing School Rugby Teams by Council

Here we see that the top half of all councils by SRU’s measure are almost exclusively rural councils, many of which inhabit the middle deciles of academic performance. There are few industrial heritage sites or relatively minor levels of social deprivation to be found in any of the above. So why is it that the hard work and dedication (not to mention social support) necessary for success on the rugby field appears strongly present across all East Lothian when the academic equivalent seems present only weakly present in some?
Nobody’s going to tell you that an evening rugby training in December is easier than the same evening spent cribbing Women in Love for an English exam.

Those rugby players fight hard for a place on the 1st XV. And nobody gets a careers guidance officer pushing them into any XV over taking Higher French. Aren’t we now at that foolish point, begun sometime in the 1980’s (when only 1 in 5 went on to Uni) when far too many inadequate pupils get shovelled into academic careers that make little sense to them (or to logic)? They are drafted into the 40+% we now expect to wander the dreaming spires for 3-4 of the most momentous years of anyone’s life.

East Lothian Rugby is just one measure of what can happen when staff, pupils and parents agree on a goal. But, worse than underselling sports like rugby, why do schools persist in placing academic exam results ahead of turning out creative carpenters, subtle cooks and electronic gizmo wizards? By disrespecting vocational training, all of us willfully ignore properly educating a good third of human endeavour on the useful—and lucrative—paths available to them.There are millionaire farmers and plumbers, most of whom enjoy getting their fingernails dirty to see a job well done.

Andy Hargreaves only said the half of it when he claimed “English schools are testing children almost to destruction”. In fact, Scottish schools and their CfE may indeed be avoiding that during a school career, but then they insist on it being the only measure that matters, come the real decision point of that career—school leaving.

The present parent/teacher/pupil self-interest conspiracy that worships written exams (as a route to natty careers) needs to have a word with itself. The careers guidance ‘experts’ who recommend media studies or social anthropology as well paying career paths need to get out more. Both need to lobby HMI and the minister for a sea change in priorities to drop student numbers and boost quality vocational training (and its status) by harnessing the competitive enthusiasm seen in rugby. That might actually see exam results improve as only those who need to take them do so. Or have they all been playing rugby without head protection too long?

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Why Labour wants us to vote no

Posted on September 23, 2013 by davidsberry

Johann Lamont’s Brighton speech welcomes the ‘defeat of independence’ next year so that ‘the Labour Party will not be broken up’. But The Burd goes behind that grandstanding to get at the truth.

burdzeyeview's avatarA Burdz Eye View

I am puzzled by the virulence with which Labour folk have thirled themselves to the Union. 

To put it another way, I am bemused by their inherent opposition to independence.  Oh, there are a few hardy souls who still hold to the notion of an international struggle to create a socialist utopia where the workers have united to defeat the dead hand of capitalism.  But even that doesn’t explain it.  For one, you wonder what they are doing in the modern Labour party at all and for another, why does a union which was formed 300 years ago for politically and economically expedient reasons, represent the most effective vehicle in the 21st Century for achieving such a goal? 

But for the rest of them, those who got with the new Labour project either willingly or with reluctance, why does it matter so much? 

In trying to fathom out what’s going…

View original post 1,140 more words

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‘Murdoch’ She Wrote

Posted on September 16, 2013 by davidsberry

I am not Cllr. Lesley Hinds’ greatest fan. Much of her work—up to and including the ill-fated Trams—has come in for some stick in this blog. But she is to be commended for highlighting a key issue in our communities as she takes an axe to the £2.7m that Edinburgh City spends on what is called ‘additional officer funding’. Ordinarily, I would take an opposite stance and keep funding but Cllr Hinds has sussed that the rules have changed since our local polis all got herded into one big Police Scotland.

It is generally agreed by most observers (not on the SNP payroll) that Kenny Macaskill got that one wrong. Whatever was flawed in the eight police forces we had across Scotland, rolling them all together and then trying to run the result as if Scotland were Strathclyde writ large was not the way to fix it. Personally, I concede some rationalisation was needed (e.g. four city regions, plus two large rural areas). But the differences in policing Wester Hailes vs the Western Isles puts any one-size-fits-all solution in the dock accused of smash-and-grab management.

When local government was shaken up in 1996, water, police and fire were removed from direct council control. Water eventually became the Scottish Water quango and the other two run by boards of local councillors—until this year. The result was neither democratic nor accountable but it sort of worked because many councils struck up good working relations with their local divisional commander and especially the inspectors who ran local stations. This resulted in the police taking community policing more seriously, being a community officer was seen as a rewarding post and not some career backwater and the value of an officer being in post for years gave them massive visibility into and from their community.

An outcome of this is generally agreed to be the huge drop in crime statistics over the last decade and an engagement by councils to encourage this virtuous cycle. As a result 2 in 3 councils diverted part of their budget above and beyond the obligatory Police Requisition and negotiated with their local force to support additional officers to be deployed where the council felt they would have the most positive social impact. In East Lothian, this meant a serious six-figure sum went to support eight officers in the two wards with the highest social deprivation measures with the understanding that they would be employed in positive intervention, support for an early years scheme and complement the good work done by community officers and the council’s own squad of seven community wardens.

While everyone recognised that there could be no return to the rich, daily ‘Dixon-of-Dock-Green’ knowledge of each citizen, nonetheless PC Murdoch’s ability to distinguish Oor Wullie and his pals’ japes from real crime was fundamental to keeping information flowing from the community so that the bad lads got shopped as often as not. What nobody wanted was to recreate the 1970’s situation in much of Ulster where the RUC might as well have been an occupying army for all the information it got from certain communities.

But that’s just what seems to be happening.

Sir Stephen House (formerly of Strathclyde Police and now Scotland’s Chief Constable) seems to be applying Strathclyde methods across the country. This includes zero-tolerance crackdowns on Edinburgh saunas when they were formerly left largely in peace by Lothian & Borders finest. The Glasgow practice of stop-and-search, used to crack down on armed gangs, has now appeared in other cities where knife and other serious crimes were much less prevalent. The manpower to do this appears to have come from council-funded additional officers who were recently praised for having brought calls to ASBO hot lines donw from hundreds to tens a month.

Were some long-term strategy in place to do this temporarily with the agreement of local councils, this might not be so serious. As chair of the local Community and Police Partnership, I can vouch there has been no such consultation. Worse than that, my home town of North Berwick was almost wholly without traffic wardens all summer—its busiest season—as they were deployed elsewhere (apparently in preparation for police getting out of the traffic warden business altogether). Again, this was done with no consultation and it is only because 99% of mobs of visitors actually adhered to traffic/parking regulations that we did not have jams and avoidable accidents.

And it is this unilateralism and lack of PR awareness that makes all this so tragic. No-one but bad lads wish the police ill. But, after over a decade of assiduous (re-)building of relations between communities and their police to repair damage from closing stations, indifference to minor crime, disappearing beat bobbies and over-reliance on panda cars, what Stephen House is up to smacks of indifference, if not ignorance.

As well as community officers, CAPP meetings include councillors, community groups, wardens, Tenant & Resident panels so when residents with a gripe they want help solving show up, it is dealt with swiftly because all the right people are working together. Everyone knew it was working because not only was crime falling but complaints about possible crime were falling too.

The £10.7m extra councils were willing to share may not look big compared to the police budget of £1.2bn. But it represents incremental spend right at the coal face direct in officers and not equipment, buildings or support staff. It also represents thousands of hours in time by council staff and ordinary citizens on police business that feeds them a stream of invaluable local data that makes solving crimes much easier.

If Stephen House is unappreciative that, then Cllr Hinds is doing us all a favour by firing her £2m shot across his bows to remind him of the essential job that all our splendid PC Murdochs still out there do for our quality of life. But if he proves unaware and/or thrawn about it (and his career largely in English metropolitan areas suggests he could well be) then we have the wrong man and, despite his early Glesca roots, he should piss off back to England.

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