How Many Does It Take?

Posted on December 8, 2012 by davidsberry

Scotland has a proud history of making things. Our industrial revolution was built on a robust base of a very manly heavy industry that once supplied steel and locomotives and ships to a significant portion of the globe. The eighties boom of ‘Silicon Glen’ may now also be history but, even today, we are proportionally more engaged in making and exporting things than our English cousins, whether it be oil & gas equipment, whisky, Irn Bru or Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers.

But, like most Western economies, we have developed into a service economy, with more people earning a crust by hairdressing, sales or Macdonald’s. The extent to which this is true has been underscored by The American Lawyer. performing what it calls the Valuation Calculation, in which it estimates the market value of top law firms, as if they were regular companies.

Bearing in mind that two of the top Scottish manufacturing companies are the Wood Group (market value $4.6bn) and Weir Group (market value $6.2bn), then the ‘top ten’ law firms shown in the table below give food for thought:

LawFirms

And that’s just the top ten. There are 100 global law firms with valuations over $250m. It’s not just on TV that law firms have been taking over the world. The famous US tendency to sue first and be reasonable later has led to a litigiousness spreading around the globe. According to Reuters, legal fees in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are expected to run into nine figures—i.e. over $100,000,000.

If it were only such major actions that incurred such fees, then the costs would be buried in financial statements for large companies. But every time your bank writes to you about some change in conditions on your account or credit card; every time your insurance company adjusts your claim conditions, the letter always comes with a booklet of dozens of pages of tightly printed 6-point text that is not only illegible and incomprehensible but is invariably never read.

Such boilerplate, cover-your-ass sophistry was all created by lawyers, none of whom work for free or for you, even though you pay their (high) wages through bank charges, premiums, etc. And, because they spend a career knowing the rules and the exact square micron count each angel requires to dance on a 1 oz dressmaker sewing pin (not to mention where the bodies are buried in each deal), they have the inside track on promotion.

As a result, almost the entire 535 members of the US Congress are lawyers; according to Businessweek, 11% of the S&P 500 companies have CEOs who are lawyers—more than from any other background. Which goes a long way to explain why Western businesses have become so cautious and unimaginative and generally having rings run around them by Asian companies these days. Innovative Western companies are still led by mavericks—whether it’s Richard Branson at Virgin or Micheal O’Leary at Ryanair.

But, more importantly, their substantive-and-growing salaries (not to mention tomes that no-one reads) are all paid out of company funds, which leaves that much less for dividends or, more importantly, for investment. Coupled with bloated CEO salaries, lawyers’ fees are the biggest fiscal drag on business here in Scotland.

And, in case you think that’s their only source of income, Joe Public paid £153m to them in Legal Aid last year, with ex-MSP Gordon Jackson QC taking £407,000 of that personally. The 150 QC’s in Scotland receive fees of £500 per hour for their time, though they do nothing so vulgar as charge by the hour.

Picking on Scots lawyers is unfair because they’re no worse than elsewhere. But you have to ask what they are all for—other than their own self-serving preservation. When law firms vie with our largest companies in market valuation, do we not have our priorities about what matters seriously wrong?

No wonder the jokes continue (“What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A start.“). My favourite is a variant on the ‘lightbulb’ joke: How many lawyers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Whereas the party of the first part, also known as “Lawyer”, and the party of the second part, also known as “Light Bulb”, do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part (Light Bulb) shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part (Light Bulb) and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties.   The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following steps:

  1. The party of the first part (Lawyer) shall, with or without elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part (Light Bulb) and rotate the party of the second part (Light Bulb) in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being non-negotiable.

  2. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part (Light Bulb) becomes separated from the party of the third part (“Receptacle”), the party of the first part (Lawyer) shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part (Light Bulb) in a manner consistent with all applicable state, local and federal statutes.

  3. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part (Lawyer) shall have the option of beginning installation of the party of the fourth part (“New Light Bulb”). This installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable.

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Pretzel Logic

Posted on December 7, 2012 by davidsberry
Sebastian Junger Is Freelance Journalist in Afghanistan & Author of "The Perfect Storm"

Sebastian Junger Is a Freelance Journalist in Afghanistan & Author of “The Perfect Storm”

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Osbo’s Tunnel of Osterity

Posted on December 6, 2012 by davidsberry

We are, it must be said, lucky. Not only do we live in Scotland but, unlike the dark days of the 1980’s, we are sheltered from the worst excesses of a Tory government in London by the existence of one in Edinburgh that has scotland as its one and only priority.

Now, given that belts have been tightened for the last three years and today the Reichskanzler had little joy to spread around other than some sheepish news that—oops—he had got his sums wrong and his bitter austerity that would end in two more years would actually have another five to run, fiscal hair shirts will be the fashion for the rest of the decade.

No Consensus—Half Percent Correction Still Not Enough?

No Consensus on Future—Half Percent Growth Correction Still Not Enough?

Those with a sense of history or really long memories might recall that it took us less time to recover from WW2 than it will take us to recover from investment banking out-of-control rave in 2007 that left many Western economies dead in the water—or should we say “dead in the sand” because liquidity, thanks to banker greed and Irn Broon complicity, is the one thing that went AWOL.

Wherever you stand on Osbo’s “Osterity”, today’s Autumn Statement announced—between sounds of humble pie being chomped—that £5bn was to be freed up for application to capital projects that will help restart the economy. This is good news. John Swinney has been arguing this for two years but no matter: a sinner has come to his understanding. Pushed through the Barnett mincer, that amounts to £394m in extra capital funding for Scotland, along with a basic revenue rise of £90m. However, because of departmental cuts of £160m, it boils down to about £330m.

As well as knock-on effects of road improvements in England, such as upgrading the A1 below Newcastle, Scotland will therefore see, for example, £34m of shovel-ready roads projects come on-stream over the next few years, including the A9 upgrade. This is in addition to Perth and Aberdeen being lined up for ultra-fast broadband. But the problem is that all this only restores part of the £1.3 bn shaved off Scotland’s capital allocation in the years up to now. Still, it’s a gift horse; let’s not quibble.

Because, as Oscar Wilde might observe, it’s what’s not being talked about that’s worse. Extending the hair shirt season to almost 2018 means that public services, far from seeing light at the end of the tunnel in 2014, will have anther three years of cuts to contend with. This is seriously bad news: both the NHS and councils—which together consume 2/3rds of the Scottish budget—have already seen three years of belt-tightening. Any low-hanging fruit for savings has long been picked.

We are just about to come into council budget-setting season. John Swinney distributed the proposed settlement to councils last week. Today’s largesse will have little or no effect on it. While it is nominally an increase on last year’s totals, all of that will be swallowed up by ‘scale progression’ (= grade promotions) and a 1% pay deal. With demand for services such as Adult Social Care increasing around 8% each year and people poorly disposed to cost cutting measures, be it charging for school buses or fortnightly bin collection, councils were already heading for a vicious squeeze.

A quick survey around the country shows that most councils are looking at serious funding shortfalls in the coming year, varying between £5m in Fife and £50m in Glasgow, with some small councils like Moray staring at £30m—a proportionately huge gap for them. This means that what reserves they have will be eaten into this year (2013/14) and some drastic action will be necessary no later than the following fiscal year of 2014/15. Now we have three more years of even worse to come.

If, as some Administrations tried to argue, council senior management teams had taken the original scale and depth of the projected trough seriously and had set up far-reaching shared services, joint working (e.g. with police/fire/NHS) and real community planning (i.e. involving the serious commitment of pooled budgets), then  the idea of even leaner operation might be feasible.

But they didn’t. Although complacency and lack of firmness or imagination did afflict some council leadership, the root of the problem lies with chief executives and their directors who, despite now pulling down respectable salaries in the £100k range and therefore every bit as well compensated as the private sector, have grown smug with the fat years of the noughties when Scottish council budgets doubled in a decade.

Consider, despite more than three years of warnings, shortcomings in their preparations for the extra lean years now upon us will become glaring, especially as few key parameters can be turned around in short order:

  • Inter-council shared services: NONE
  • Intra-council restructuring, especially management: some but many inefficiencies (e.g. full Head Teacher in village schools; small departments that have ‘aye been’)
  • Capital equipment replacement: still by schedule rather than need (IT every 3 years; vehicles almost as frequent)
  • Inefficient field working (ad hoc scheduling of social workers, transport or house repair/refit; lack of GPS tracking with dynamic routing in the field)
  • Reluctance to consider business opportunities (e.g. ground care bidding for estate maintenance; cafes/entertainment in parks/libraries; sports facilities to compete with private gyms)
  • Joint facilities with other bodies (e.g. care homes run with NHS; police/fire in smaller towns sharing joint premises with council; shared recycling/landfill)
  • Bureaucratic/inefficient shared operations (e.g. Scotland Excel; ESEC; CoSLA)

Since little progress has been made in any of these, the extensive drop in the 80% of council income that comes from Revenue Support Grant over for the next five years will be far too extensive to fund from reserves and would require something like a cumulative 50% increase in Council Tax to cover. Apart from being hugely unpopular, this tax is regressive and would hit the poorer far harder than those in mansions. (An earlier blog Ma Faither’s Howff proposes a method of increasing Council Tax take by 20% without hitting the poor at all).

So, tough though councils claim things to have been to date—and will again this year, you ain’t seen nothing yet, baby. Senior management has failed to think out of the box. On record to date, each Townhousetanic will continue at full speed into the fiscal iceberg ahead. And, though panic cuts in services will be tried, staff will still need to be shed in larger numbers to balance the books. The question isn’t if, but when—and who among the £100k salary squad who dithered us into this impasse will have the grace to join them.

Projected Budget Shortfalls for 2013-14 for a Selection of Scottish Councils

Projected Budget Shortfalls for 2013-14 for a Selection of Scottish Councils

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If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now

Posted on December 5, 2012 by davidsberry

Much is made these days of green living, whether it be using low-energy light bulbs or recycling the newspapers. And, while these and similar efforts do make contributions to minimise the impact we humans have on the ecological balance of the only planet we have, it seems we may not be doing enough.

Now, given that the Chinese plan to spend $720 bn building 363 coal-fired power stations over the next two decades (effectively a power station per fortnight) and that 300,000,000 Americans own a car each that burn an average of 2,500 litres of fuel every year, we’re talking over 1/2 bn tons of CO2 being pumped into our atmosphere each and every year from both sources. Makes taking the train to work once to save 250g of CO2 seem small beer.

But you’d be wrong. Because the reason Americans burn so much ‘gas’ is that their sprawling cities make no provision for work and home to be sited anywhere close to one another—often not even in the same city. And, even if they were, aspirations at work and home means that each family moves on (promotion, new job, etc) so often that any proximity would be a temporary fluke.

Europeans are often cited as being far more sensible about this. But, while the Germans and Scandinavians do make a decent pass at strategic planning of cities, infrastructures and the homes that inhabit them, Spain is a Heath-Robinson nightmare and we British manage to combine the worst of most worlds—lack of strategy, abysmal repetition that passes for architecture and little clue about integrating work, home and facilities beyond a crude zoning.

The English may be worse than the Scots in this regard, but any distinction seems small, at best. Consider the great swathes of Penicuik or Dalgety Bay that are little more than suburbs without a centre but few wonder why they have teenage problems because there’s nowhere to ‘hang’.

But tastelessness and bloated scale are not the worse planning crimes perpetrated across Scotland. The worst is that housing development is wholly developer-driven, while commercial falls between Scottish Enterprising clodhopping ineptitude (due to its ‘big name’ fixation) and a rabble of economic development departments without two shekels or two ideas to rub together. The result is successful business is constantly scrambling to find decent, affordable premises that aren’t ‘prestige’ glass palaces of Ocean Terminals/Edinburgh Park or some bleak and blasted industrial park in Cardenden.

The soullessness of such places are bad enough but they are always remote from where anyone lives and seldom well served by public transport. The two stations that ‘serve’ Edinburgh Park are half a mile from the nearest office block; Ocean Terminal is in the most inaccessible part of Edinburgh. Developers made a bundle from both and beaucoup bonuses were reaped by high-heid-yins responsible. But by any green measure they are nightmares—design dinosaurs we will need to live with until rising sea levels make Ocean Terminal untenable (roughly AD 2150).

All this is not just venting spleen. With modern technology, over half of present office workers could work from home—at least part-time. But, more than that, the need for graphic designers to be located cheek by jowl with their ad agency customers or the need for bank back office operations to be anywhere near HQ went out with the steam fax machine and the introduction of universal fast broadband and WiFi. So why do people waste 2 hours and £25 daily getting to/from the office? Because, to paraphrase bank robber Willie Sutton “that’s where the jobs are”.

But why?

Why, in the case of East Lothian, do over 25,000 people indulge in this daily time-waste? Is the county proud to boast a miserable per capita GDP worse than bankrupt Greece because other than a council and two power stations, its job market is a joke? Probably not. Angus and the Mearns or Dumbartonshire are not much better; almost all their resident professionals don’t work there.

But why not?

If the still-under-formulation City Region Plans were to be worth the paper they’re to be printed on, why don’t they become more than just a blueprint for developers to make another mint and SE to squander another £500m of UK & EU funds on favoured white elephants? Why don’t they focus on locating as many jobs as possible near to where people already live—in towns scattered across the country?

Imagine, if people walked or biked to work—like your grandad in all probability did. Imagine having lunch in your local cafe or pub with friends. Imagine popping out mid-afternoon to pick up your kids from school. Imagine buying your Christmas prezzies in a shop where the owner knows your taste and that are not angry zoos full of strangers. Think what all that would do to revitalise High Streets and pour money back into the community and not into Starbucks at the Gyle.

It would require planners to take off the “but the book says” blinkers and—for once—get creative, including putting dynamite under their sleepy EDU colleagues to find places for low-impact/office business in or near town centres or in attractive small enclaves near enough to bike/walk to. They need to grab developers by the lapels (or somewhere more sensitive) and say “I know you want to build nothing but acres of 5-bedroom mansions for top dollar but what our towns need are mixed housing. as far as possible integrated with jobs, retail and other infrastructure like medical centres, schools and sports facilities. Do it creatively or you get no consent.”

People will use good facilities if they are convenient; they will enjoy it all the more if it is frequented by friends and neighbours so that local shops/gyms/parks effectively become social centres at the end of the road. Then everyone will be amazed how much time they now have with their family and friends because they don’t spend their life 35 miles distant from them. They will also be surprised how much more money they have not filling the tank twice a week at £85 a pop and the corner bakery or deli does a better lunch for half the price of Ritz Bar & Grill.

But, most of all, they will have discovered pretty much the only practical formula for green living in the 21st century that doesn’t involve stone age poverty. Not only will we all enjoy a much better quality of life but those who still wish to be there in the thick of it won’t find themselves (and half of Leith) flooded out of Ocean Terminal in about 138 years time.

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Blessings Be Upon Them

Posted on December 3, 2012 by davidsberry

One of the wonderful things about Britain is its diversity. Not only can you travel less than 100 miles and get a different accent, scenery, culture, architecture, etc but there have been waves of immigrants who have all spiced up what would otherwise be a rather bland white-bread mix.

Scotland has been a part of this, whether from Vikings in the Dark Ages, Flemish weavers in the Middle Ages, Italians a century ago, Poles in WW2 or Asians since then. Edinburgh University is a cultural goulash of students and the city itself gets more foreign visitors than anywhere else in the UK outside London. But where it differs from England is that its nationalists aren’t standard-issue xenophobes; the SNP is international, multicultural and has no time for tirades against either immigrants or foreigners.

This attitude is born of the Scots’ own attitudes, which stems from a genuine curiosity about strangers and a natural reaction to treat them like the regular folk they are. This is complemented by our immigrants generally getting involved in our local culture so much so that curry now jostles with haggis to be the national dish.

In this, we Scots seem very different from our English cousins. Such is the degree of immigration there into an already crowded country that social fragmentation is rife across former industrial cities and political movements based on xenophobia are a real force in the land. From the relatively mild UKIP, through the BNP and into the unsavoury reaches of the right wing, various movements vie to be the spokespeople for those who resent sharing their country with (and I use the word advisedly) ‘foreigners’.

In some ways, this diversity of opinion is to be welcomed; it is classically British to be polite, swallow any discomfort and rub along as best you can. Britain carries a proud tradition of asylum for those persecuted elsewhere and, since the religious wars of 300 years ago, avoiding systemic persecution of any subset of its citizens (although the greedy-landlord-motivated post-1745 Clearances can be argued an exception).

So, that UKIP/BNP exist on the same ballot paper as the SSP is to be welcomed as a broad-minded country enough at peace with itself to tolerate extremes. But here’s where the unity of ‘British’ culture is now breaking down. The more BNP win council seats in Bradford or that UKIP gain MEPs and overtake the Lib-Dems in English polling, the more they are seen to be English—their ‘British’ titles and pretensions notwithstanding.

Because Scotland has no truck with them. While various groups froth at the mouth about Abu Qatada and his activities, in Scotland it is non-news. While Theresa May bangs on about taking sovereignty back from Europe by rejecting a slew of EU legislation, Scotland would argue to accept it. Few in Scotland think that its varied, if small, groups of immigrants have brought anything more than assets to the country. Repatriateing all those of Italian heritage would be a disaster: we’d lose most of our chip shops and ice cream parlours. In Scotland, UKIP/BNP/et al are nowhere.

Which is why, when I come across Facebook pages such as Infidels of Britain, I don’t quite know what to make of it. On the one hand, it is ‘patriotic’, supporting cultural icons that we Scots share—British Army, Royal Marines, Winston Churchill and the like. But then it drifts into Enoch Powell—not quite the demon some make him out to be but definitely suspect on multiracial credentials—and blames migrants for poverty, NHS collapse, green belt invasion and pretty much all evils.

Now, none of us are so naive that we think there are no right wing racists in Scotland. But the tone of such pages is distinctly English—even though they use the term ‘British’ to de facto include the Scots. And that is the point at which I get mad. If the English wish to have a lively, if not eyeball-to-eyeball, discussion about their relations with resident immigrants or our Continental cousins, they are most surely entitled to do so.

But I believe I speak for many Scots when I say that we’re fed up with them including us. Because people who belong to such causes appear to be xenophobic about almost everyone except their ‘friends’ like us—about whom they are pig ignorant. I have yet to meet a UKIP supporter capable of distinguishing ‘Britain’ from ‘England’. To this pile of ‘patriots’—as with Winston Churchill—there is no distinction.

Back in Victorian times when Britannia ruled the waves because it had more money and a bigger stick than anyone else, the glories of being British were palmed off as the ultimate aspiration of any civilised person. The Scots were supine enough to be called the ‘North British’, adopting many English mannerisms like afternoon tea, sang froid and private schools. But that was not reciprocated: England was never ‘South Britain’; Scots in London were chided on their barbaric origins, no matter Voltaire’s “We look to Scotland for our idea of civilisation“.

This fracture in the Union was always there; it was only because Scots tholed being treated as a branch office that it was not so glaring. But, now that England is falling on harder and harder times, now that much sense of identity vanished with the empire, now that large amounts of immigrants have made them question the clarity of their own culture, its reassertion is becoming ever more inward-looking and right-wing. It’s not just UKIP/BNP/et al—just listen to Tories talking about Europe.

It is time we Scots asserted our right not to be included and implicated in any such ‘British’ nonsense. If they wish to strike these attitudes, they’re free to—but, until any significant number of Scots sign up to them, only as the ENP or EIP. We Scots like our immigrants, whether Patel or Patschky : they are our friends, our neighbours; they have enriched our lives; they have brought a culture of hard work and family that reminded us of our own values.

And, until we change our collective mind on this or we have our own country back so that they are compelled to change to ENP, etc. and we can embrace them as our new ‘foreign’ neighbours (blessings be upon them), they can just bog off.

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A Day in the Life

Posted on December 2, 2012 by davidsberry

I had planned to be in Perth for the regular meeting of the SNP’s National Council of which, for my sins, I am an elected member. There was in fact a decent debate on the merits of the European Arrest Warrant and the fact that Theresa May seems to be body-swerving it rather than fixing its more egregious flaws.

But I had also noted that the Perth Burns Club were holding their usual seminar in celebration of St Andrew’s Day, this year rather ambitiously entitling it “A Day of Scottish Life and Culture“. The afternoon was divided in three: Timothy Neat gave a talk of Hamish Henderson, Dr Marjory Harper of Aberdeen University spoke of the diaspora and selected personal interviews she’d made distinguishing the types of folk who characterised emigrants post- as opposed to pre-war.

But the highlight for me was Lesley Riddoch who gave an illustrated presentation Scotland Is a Nordic Country? (great emphasis placed on the question mark) and gave the answer best expressed by the German “Jein”. Much more than “yes and no” “Jein” implies a degree of tortured ambivalence by the person uttering it.

A student of Norwegian, Lesley delighted in pointing out obvious links in our dialects like “kirk”,”quine” or “braw”. She also emphasised the easier air links between Scotland and Norway now possible due to our common oil business. But as soon as we got down to examining details, several cultural gaps yawned open, with the Scots not usually coming down on the more favoured side.

Using two photos of Wick and Hammerfest harbours taken in 1900, both are jammed with fishing smacks gathered for the herring. A hundred years later, Wick is deserted but Hammerfest has a variety of ships in port, including one of the dozen 12,000-ton Hurtigruten (Coastal Express) ferries that provide daily sailings to/from the South.

Hammerfest lies North of the Arctic Circle and a 24-hour/2,000 km drive (via Sweden) from the capital Oslo but feels less isolated than Wick (5-hours/250 miles from Edinburgh) because of the efforts the Norwegians make to link it. And it’s not just communications. Andritz Hydro, Hammerfest is the company that not only installed a major tidal generator project there to harness tidal streams near the North Cape but they are also supplying us equipment we’re still experimenting with in the off Islay and Orkney.

But the key message Lesley brought was one of attitude. Norway faces far more complex civil engineering problems than Scots in linking our country together. Not only have their main rail lines to Stavanger, Bergen and Trondheim all been electric (efficient & green) for decades and coastal communities linked by the daily ferry (see above) but they have been furiously improving their road net and now have almost 100 major bridges and a spectacular stretch of road called the Atlantic Road that they claim to be the most scenic stretch in the world. Though I hae ma doots on that last one, it is typical of their can-do attitude.

AtlanticRoad

In Scotland the state of our train system or the A9 or Wick harbour or the drift of youngsters from the Isles are all regarded as part of life vicissitudes. “Ach, weel—whit can ye dae?” is not just a common attitude but illustrative of a state of mind our Norwegian neighbours would not thole for an instant.

Although she did not say it specifically, I think Lesley would love—instead of them roasting on Balearic beaches for two weeks—to ship boatloads of Scots wholesale to Norway to imbibe the culture instead. They’d get a lot more out of it than sunburn and their 10L of duty-free Stoly. They’d see what was possible in 21st century living if you drop your own 19th century attitudes.

And, speaking of money, Lesley was quite scathing about the cost of things in Norway. Taking £1 = NoK9, city apartments cost £1,000 per month rental, a meal for two comes in around £80 and a beer will set you back £7. But then, the average salary after tax is around £33,000 (UK median wage before tax is still under £20,000). They have around 2 1/2 times our purchasing power. But for us visiting Norway, it’s as steep as the third world visiting here.

So, when Jim Murphy is rabbiting on again about the ‘Arc of Insolvency’ as his text why Scots dare not leave the comfort of the Union, ask him if he’s been to Norway lately, failing which, ask him if he’s had both barrels from Lesley Riddoch on the matter: that would surely set him straight.

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But They Shall Be Free

Posted on November 30, 2012 by davidsberry

However Scots feel about the more peaceful Union made some 400 years later, the long fight to resist absorption into and all-conquering Edward I’s empire threw up some of our greatest heroes and forged what has since remained the Scots nation.

This year, the National Trust for Scotland decided that the Battle of Bannockburn Memorial built in celebration of that decisive event of 1314 was in need a makeover. NTS are passionate about the restoration of the battle site and the state-of-the-art visitor centre that will be in place for the 700th anniversary. NTS and Historic Scotland agreed there should be encouragement on the site itself of  contemplation, aided by words from poets to be inscribed on the great ring beam of the Rotunda.

This St Andrews Day is your last chance to vote in a competition among ten Scots poets as to which of their poems should be inscribed on the Rotunda if you point your browser here. All of them are worthy—but my vote went to Fifer John Burnside whose poem below for me captures the mood, history and significance of the place.

 

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If It Wisnae fer Yer Wellies

Posted on November 29, 2012 by davidsberry

This has been a bad week in a bad year across Britain for flooding. Despite an early drought in England, the volume of rain has more than caught up with the average and flood defences across England have been overwhelmed. Despite rivers up at critical levels (e.g. the Nith at Dumfries), Scotland has got off lightly, despite heavy rains here too.

Whether you believe in climate change being behind this or not, all of this has distracted from what may wind up being a far more serious issue because it will become permanent and, in most places, unstoppable: coastal flooding. Because much of Scotland’s coast is rugged, sea level rises of a few centimetres make little difference so residents of Ardnamurchan or Arran can sleep safe in their beds.

Even low-lying areas like the Angus coast or much of the Forth have an ace up their sleeve because a recent study at Durham University examined samples of peat, sand and clay sediments from 80 sites around the British and Irish coasts to see how the land has changed over time. Basically Scotland and Northern Ireland appear to be still rising after the last Ice Age, while Southern England and Ireland appear to be sinking. Their resulting Coastland Map is shown below in terms of mm/year

The Coastland Map: Changes in Land Levels (source: University of Durham)

Given that tides go up and down anywhere between 3 and 13m, depending on location and lunar cycle, this doesn’t seem much—Skegness will subside by 5cm/2″ over the next century. But for low-lying areas—especially Essex and the Lincolnshire coast where Skeggie is, it spells disaster.

Much was made of Antactica’s Larsen Ice Shelf fragmenting over the last decade and over the last two summers, the elusive NorthWest Passage—graveyard of many 19th century explorers—has opened up to ships. Indeed, seen from a distance, the scale of either becomes mind-bogglingly apparent

Recent History of the Disintegrating Larsen Ice Sheet: Red Line is the New Coast

Satellite View of Canada’s Northwest Territories, Sept. 2012. Dark Blue is Open Sea

Although both examples are startlingly graphic, neither has contributed appreciably to raising sea levels. This is because both areas were sea ice, which already displaces 90% of the volume of water it produces as it melts. Whether the world is warming or not, sea levels are rising; the main contributors are:

  • expansion of water itself as it warms—current global warming of the oceans results in a sea level rise of 1.6±0.5mm per year.
  • ice shelves like Larsen or other sea ice.
  • mountain glaciers
  • ice sheets, the two biggest being Greenland and Antarctica (so far have shown little erosion—but if they do go, much of the world will be flooded)

Evidence from retreating glaciers from Austria to Alaska show they are pouring ever more meltwater into the ocean. Every cubic km of iceberg calved displaces 0.9 cu km of ocean; every cubic km of glacier melted displaces the same cubic km of the sea. So, ice loss from glaciers is ten times worse than melting sea ice.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its most recent review of climate science, estimated that the net effect of all of the above sea levels was 2mm annually. From recent evidence, however, the figure looks more like 3.2mm annually. Leaving aside any acceleration of melting (ice reflects far more energy back into space than open sea where ice once was) the onset of serious coastal flooding is to be measured in decades, not, as we once thought, centuries.

Evidence for this came with Hurricane Sandy last month. The 80+mph winds in one of the biggest storms ever seen created low pressure, which piled a 3m (9ft) storm surge on top of an unusually high spring tide, then topped the mix with 4m waves. The low-lying undefended coastal communities on the barrier islands of Delaware, New Jersey and New York had never seen anything like this.

Walls of water surged through the communities of Atlantic City, Ocean Grove, Staten Island, Queens and others. All had houses washed off foundations, boats parked on top of cars and major utilities lost for weeks on end. In Manhattan, all subway service was suspended as tube tunnels flooded, all tunnels off the island also flooded and much of lower Manhattan was plunged in darkness as substation transformers blew up when the water reached them. The damage was in billions.

Because it is not permanent flooding that makes land untenable; inundations by salt water every few years is enough to poison farmland, render properties uninsurable and make the whole effort of staying and fighting unprofitable. This is especially true in rural coastal areas where it may be easier/cheaper to simply evacuate. This is why the Essex, Suffolk and Lincolnshire coasts are top of the UK vulnerability list.

As far back as 1953, a combination of a high spring tide and a severe northerly gale caused a storm surge. In combination with a tidal surge the water was funneled south into the ever-narrowing North Sea to overwhelm flood defences, especially in Essex where water levels exceeded 5.6 metres (18.4 ft) above mean sea level. Even further back, the Somerset levels were similarly inundated in 1607, drowning an estimated 2,000 or more people, sweeping houses, livestock and villages away and flooding 200 square miles (518 km2) of farmland inundated, and destroyed.

Both events were caused by circumstances similar to Sandy described above: large waves on top of a large onshore storm surge coinciding with high spring tides. Since this rarely happens together, all three are considered 1-in-100 year events. But if we take the projections for Essex (3.2mm sea level rise added to the o.5mm land drop), by the end of this century, average sea level there will by 0.33m higher, making it more like a 1-in-25 year event.

One glance at a coastal map of Essex and  the long muddy inlets of the Ore, Deben, Orwell and Stour between Orford Ness and Southend seem indefensible. The major container port of Felixstowe is officially 0.5m above sea level. Manningtree is 15 miles ‘inland’ but still only 1m above sea level and a stop on the main line to Ipswich and Norwich.

Since 1945, extensive drainage and fertilisation of the Essex marshes for arable cropping and improved pasture has led to widespread fragmentation and loss (64 per cent) of the traditional wetland character of the marsh. Drainage leads to a similar situation to the Fens where much rich agricultural land lies below sea level. Partly because of centuries of reclamation and partly because the Wash acts less of a funnel for storm surges, the Fens between Kings Lynn (4m/on the sea), Cambridge (6m/40 miles) and Peterborough (3m/24 miles) seem less likely to flood. They are nonetheless under threat, along with the Somerset Levels and the Humber estuary.

In Scotland, the situation is not so urgent. Not only does the continuing rise in land mean that sea levels here will rise only by around 0.24m by the end of the century, but there are no equivalents to the Fens, fewer low-lying coastal marshlands and fewer ‘funnel’ effects for storm surges. But Alloa and Perth, although miles from open sea, are both 1m above sea level; both Forth and Tay do get storm surges up to 1m, so we have no reason to be smug. Our comeuppance is due a century later.

Next time you jump in your Chelsea Tractor to run the kids to school, think about its effect and whether you should leave a bequest for their children to get swimming lessons and a boat.

What We’ve Already Lost—Map of the Early Holocene ~8,000BC (Source: University of Exeter)

Posted in Environment | Tagged | 1 Comment

Getting the Message

Posted on November 28, 2012 by davidsberry

As a few blogs have tried to explain over the last few weeks, the election ‘across the pond’ in America is, as Bones might have put it “politics, Jim—but not as we know it”. Therefore it was helpful to discover on Facebook an attempt to translate some of the more esoteric poster messages seen during the 2012 campaign.

Much was made of mudslinging (in which the media joined in) so that little policy was aired

Because of its size, American grasp of events & history elsewhere is poor, especially among Republicans

The corollary of Republicans being such a white middle class ghetto is a variety of racism that verges on the innocent.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | 4 Comments

Kenny Cannae Ca’ Canny

Posted on November 27, 2012 by davidsberry

I like Kenny Macaskill. Since his stint as SNP Treasurer, he has been popular across the party too as a hard worker and passionate speaker. As a lawyer, he had the appropriate background to become Justice Minister, a post he has held with some distinction. Except that, as time goes on, our ways seem to be parting. That, in itself, is of no great moment. But his recent initiatives are causing ever increasing alarm among people whose opinion I respect—and therefore need examination.

Let’s take, for example, corroboration. Scots Law requires that evidence given by a police officer must be backed up by evidence from (preferably) another police officer. In a review, Judge Lord Carloway, who carried out a review of Scots criminal law initiated by the Justice Minister last year, said this rule (ensuring all key evidence was backed by two sources) was archaic. But, in the broader opinion of the Senators of the College of Justice:

“removing the need for corroboration—unique to Scotland’s legal system—would lead to decreased confidence in the legal system and to lower conviction rates generally. The Scottish courts have on many occasions been grateful for the requirement of corroboration, which in our view provides a major safeguard against miscarriages of justice.”

Judges are also critical of proposed restructuring of both Procurator Fiscals and Sheriff Courts and nobody—other than Stephen House and Kenny—seems overjoyed that we have folded our eight police forces into the biggest in Europe. All of the latter seem more driven by economies of scale than any operational requirement. And that economy of scale is being increasingly shown (c.f. banks or utilities) to be detrimental to customers as organisations become ever more remote and indifferent. Kenny is developing a reputation for driving things through, especially if it involves more centralisation.

Last weekend, Scotland on Sunday reported that Kenny was asked at a recent police conference if it is right that Scotland should move to one police force but continue to have 32 local authorities and 14 health boards. He replied it was “not tenable in the police and it’s not going to be tenable in other forms of public life”. So unimaginative; just because you have a hammer, doesn’t mean each problem is a nail.

Despite vocal denials by spokespeople, such thinking is one fox that needs to be shot, and soon. Because the disconnect between the Scottish people and their elected representatives is bad and getting worse. And the last thing we need is bigger and more remote bureaucracies to exacerbate that further.

Now, I can well understand that this cat was untimely in being let out of the bag. The Scottish Government wants to focus on the 2014 referendum and not have major distractions like reorganisations of councils or health boards within that time horizon. But, as Lesley Riddoch pointed out in Monday’s Hootsmon, the system is broke and needs fixing, so we must devise a solution, although not Kenny’s “cookie-cutter”.

There are varying opinions around on this. Lesley’s plea for more local and responsive representation flies in the face of economy of scale. Others like Stuart Currie argue that, because shared services and other cost-saving joint ventures have not materialised among councils, we must consolidate and/or merge in order to have a hope of staying within a reducing budget with ballooning service demands.

The problem is there IS no one optimal size that can combine economy of scale with a good accessibility by and responsiveness to the public. Bizarrely, the answer seems to lie in the two-tier structure abandoned in 1996 when we shot the regions and kept the districts. Leave aside and gerrymandering by the Tories of the time, we should probably have done the opposite—kept the regions and shot the districts. But with a rider, which is the revival of burghs as responsible elected bodies. Here’s how it might work:

A) Introduce City Regions, based on travel-to-work and common culture with 40-70 members (about one per 15,000 voters) and paid well. There should be about six regions in all (one possibility: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, Dumfries). These would be major organisations with large budgets around £4bn based on population, with a bureaucracy geared to handle big-business civic items, which should include:

  • Ability to borrow from PWLB for capital projects
  • Basic Council Tax fixed rate provides >50% of income
  • Strategic and infrastructure Planning
  • NHS and Social Work (if not integrated then tightly linked)
  • Water and sewage (i.e. split up monolithic Scottish Water)
  • Police, Fire and emergency services in general
  • Education & Further Education (Vocational colleges)
  • Benefits & Council Tax administration
  • Transport (incl. Lighting, Roads & SPT equivalent)
  • Culture, Sports and Leisure
  • Cleansing & recycling
  • Public housing repair & maintenance
  • Trading Standards, Environmental Health & Safety

B) Re-introduce burghs, based on historic entities and appropriate new communities. There should be about two hundred in all—but each would be a minor organisations, with 5-7 unpaid councillors (c.f. USA), budgets in seven figures or less based on population and no bureaucracy beyond a town manager, admin assistance and a few officials handling:

  • Ability to levy local surcharge on Basic Council Tax
  • Limited ability to borrow or raise bonds
  • Local Planning
  • Economic development and tourism
  • Landscape and countryside
  • Public housing management
  • Local infrastructure (street signs, trees, licensing)
  • Traffic wardens

Note the entwined fiscal relationship between the two. Burghs should be lean machines, not much different to the pre-1976 burghs in size. They are tasked with looking after their communities. Regions provide major services such as cleansing on a contract basis—or with a private supplier if they so chose. Though Burghs would be allocated a significant portion of council tax levied, much of this would then transfer to the Region to pay for such services—if they so chose.

With only a half-dozen Regions handling all the major cost centres and roughly that number of directors running major departments, it is plausible that they would justify the kind of salaries they are pulling down. But, more importantly, while there would be some economies in general staff, senior management costs—the one area that has boomed disproportionately in recent years—should come down by more than 75% or something better than £20m alone. With a quarter the number of paid councillors, this would save the same again.

By having planning, housing, green spaces and jobs handled locally, many of people’s immediate concerns should be accessible in the same community. The really local councillors will be daily among the people they represent and motivated by improving their own community rather than money. The trade-off is that the big, costly items will be remote—but, given the present structure, outside of cities, they already are.

While a number of prominent politicians besides Kenny are keen to combine councils into larger units, that is counterproductive unless the truly local element is restored as people start talking and thinking of ‘their’ council. Andy Wightman—no stranger to campaigning for local rights across Scotland—presents a cogent series of arguments for council units of this size in his blog on Sunday.

Of particular interest are his tables, showing the contraction of local representation in Fife down the centuries and a comparison of how local government is elsewhere. In Europe, France has 1,150 times as many municipalities as us; Germany 360 times and in comparable-sized Norway, it is still 13 times as many. Adopting the scheme above would still only shift Scotland from worst to 13th in democratic accountability.

It’s sensible that we don’t change anything before 2014. But the present councils are a non-local neither-fish-nor-fowl gerrymandering hatched 20 years ago by Tories in the hope that some might land in their control. Kenny’s right there’s a problem to face but he and his minister colleagues should ca’ canny; folding 32 councils into fewer monoliths of faceless bureaucrats still won’t engage people—they’d be neither local or responsive by themselves. As the Christie Commission put it:

“we saw evidence which demonstrated that Scotland has the lowest number of local councils among European countries of similar population size, This suggests that it is the joining up of discrete service functions at a local level rather than the number of discrete council areas that is the key issue.”

Posted in Community | Tagged | 3 Comments